B006NZAQXW EBOK (24 page)

What!

It made a neat beetle-like turn and disappeared again!
‘To hell with that bloody van,’ yelled the Brigadier. Surely this could not be happening? But again and again, driving sometimes in front of them or sometimes behind, disappearing into side streets, then reappearing, was the icecream van! ‘I am going to shoot him,’ the Brigadier vowed, speaking quietly all of a sudden. ‘I tell you, I am going to shoot that lunatic dead.’

‘Aiii, sir,’ said Mr Gupta, sitting up and squawking like an alarmed bird. ‘Don’t do that, sir. He is only an ice-cream vendor.’

White-faced, the DC hung on to the side of the jeep. What were things coming to? He was caught up in a nightmare. He wasn’t even awake and this was a grisly awful nightmare.

Mr Chawla went to check on Sampath. ‘They will be here soon,’ he said and went back along the path to rejoin Ammaji, who was awaiting the police superintendent at the entrance to the orchard, along with all the roadblock policemen. But the police superintendent was still in bed. For he had decided the night before, in the hope that he might be demoted, to absent himself from this sensitive operation. Happily, with his blanket pulled over his head, he dreamt and snored.

For a minute, the orchard was empty. ‘Aha!’ thought the spy, still hiding in the bush where Kulfi had passed him a little while ago. The cooking pot stood bubbling enticingly as he darted out towards it and, his heart in his mouth, he clambered up the tree beneath which the pot stood. He would position himself above the cauldron so that he might watch exactly what was going on. In his pocket was his collection of vials and string; hopefully, he would be able to take samples from the gravy while seated above it … A
man possessed, he edged his way along the branches.

The langurs moved restlessly as morning dawned. The army crawled up the bazaar road. In the back of the Brigadier’s jeep lay the Hungry Hop boy, trussed up with monkey nets, firmly tied to keep him from making any more trouble down one way streets. ‘Let me go,’ he had cried, struggling. ‘Let me go. Today I have to decide my life.’

‘You are not deciding anything,’ the Brigadier had replied. With a scarf taken from Mr Gupta, he tied up the Hungry Hop boy’s mouth.

And the Hungry Hop boy fidgeted and struggled in silence, borne towards Pinky despite his vacillations.

‘There they are, Sampath,’ shouted Mr Chawla when he caught sight of them. ‘Sampath! They are here!’

All of a sudden, with explosive alarm, like a physical expression of an exclamation mark, the langurs leapt out of Sampath’s tree, confusion and terror upon their faces.

‘Keep to the plan,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Get set … Ready … Go!’

Clearly, the langurs were wide awake and likely to escape at any moment. The men leapt into battle formation.

‘What about the nets, you donkeys? You’re supposed to have the nets with you,’ yelled the Brigadier.

They should have been unloaded already. But the nets that were to hold the langurs now held the Hungry Hop boy instead and when the soldiers went to get them, they found their efforts to pull them out of the jeep greatly disrupted by his being entangled in them.

Pinky, hearing the noise, arrived to discover that Hungry Hop had been caught by the army. She looked at him with disgust. Oh, the sorry slug. All trussed up like that! She had
never appeared so lovely to him, so angry and scornful. Hungry Hop gave her a pleading look, but the expression on her face was unforgiving. He had let her down at a crucial time.

Mr Chawla ran to Sampath’s tree to bring him down. He should really have been made to descend earlier. It was already getting dangerous. But … wait a minute –

‘Sampath,’ he shouted. ‘Sampath, Sampath, Sampath …’

The tree was empty.

‘Sampath.’ Mr Chawla’s voice rose to a shriek that echoed about the hillside and he clutched at his heart. His worst fears had come true. ‘Sampath,’ he wailed. ‘Sampath, where are you? Where are you?’

Ammaji ran to the guava tree, as over her head the monkeys leapt back into it. Its branches moved like the sea with the slam of froth and rough green water. The monkeys jabbered and muttered, widened and narrowed and rubbed their eyes.

‘Baba,’ wept Miss Jyotsna, who had just arrived to witness this terrible event. She staggered as if she were about to faint – and was caught by Mr Gupta’s waiting arms. ‘Baba, Baba …’

They looked here. They looked there. Up and down the guava tree. In the neighbouring trees. In the bushes. Behind the rocks. They stared up into the branches again and again, into the undisturbed composition of leaves and fruit bobbing up and down. Its painfully empty cot. But wait! Upon the cot lay a guava, a single guava that was much, much bigger than the others: rounder, star-based, weathered … It was surrounded by the silver langurs, who stared at it with their intent charcoal faces. On one side was a brown mark, rather like a birthmark …

‘Wait,’ shrieked Ammaji. ‘Give me that fruit. Wait! Sam-path! Sampath!’

But the Cinema Monkey picked up the fruit himself before anybody had time to move and, calmeyed and wise, holding it close to his chest, with the other monkeys following in a band, he leapt from the guava tree’s branches and bounded away.

‘Wait!’

The army chased them, giving up their struggle with the nets. Mr Chawla chased them and Ammaji. The crowd of devotees, who had by now broken through the police lines, and finally even the lazy policemen without their superintendent – how they all ran, wheezing, panting, desperate. Pinky too had joined in the chase. In front of her the Brigadier cut a dashing figure. She was filled with an urge to tweak his buttocks. Hadn’t her father told her to set her sights higher than herself, not lower?

The spy crawled farther along the branches and the sound of a rising tempest filled the air as the monkeys jumped over the wall into the university research forest, the tree tops churning as if a whirlwind were passing through, the monkeys’ path into the mountains traced by a silver trembling through the pines, by a shivering of branches and foliage. The forest birds flew up and scattered in alarm, their cries mingling with the voices down below, the air full of red and blue and black satin, the golden and brass feathers of pheasants and peacocks, woodpeckers and bulbuls …

Still, the monkeys travelled. Higher and higher. Like a gust of wind that comes out of nowhere, rustles through the trees and melts into nothing like a ghost. The crowd stood panting in the orchard. The spy crawled along the branches.

High in a mossy magnolia, gathering orchids, Kulfi was caught up for an instant in a shaking storm, saw a pale blur flash past her. She stood up on the branch where she had been sitting, shielding her eyes against the rays of the sun, to watch as the monkeys climbed on. Up into the wilderness, up to the shoulder of the highest mountain. Here the trees at the very summit wavered for a moment, bowed their heads as if in farewell – and then they were gone. Without a trace.

The air was suddenly still. The birds flew back into the forest. The feathers floated gently down after them.

And in this sudden stillness, from the direction of the orchard, people heard:

A crack!

A howl!

A watery splash!

The sound reached Kulfi in her tree. She turned back down towards the valley. ‘What was that?’

‘Did you hear?’ Pinky fired at the Brigadier with her beautiful big eyes. ‘Did you hear that sound?’

‘What was that?’ asked Mr Chawla and Ammaji, the army men and the policemen, the devotees and the townspeople.

Despite themselves, they drew their attention from the mountain top. Above Kulfi’s enormous cooking pot hung a broken branch. In the pot were spices and seasonings, herbs and fruit, a delicious gravy.

And something else.

Gingerly, they approached the bubbling cauldron.