Read Children of the Wolf Online
Authors: Jane Yolen
Children of the Wolf
Jane Yolen
For my son Jason Stemple, who loves
all of nature
And for Linda Zuckerman
and Deborah Brodie,
who ask the right questions
RAMA AND ME
A
WOLF BARKED OUTSIDE UNDER THE WINDOW OF THE
bedroom that Rama and I shared. It woke me out of an uneasy sleep. I had been dozing when what I really wanted to do was wait up for Rama’s return.
I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was the moon shining in the window, making a mark on Rama’s empty bed. It was a stark, accusing finger, that white light, but if Rama had been there at that moment to see it, he would have shrugged it away. He did not care if anyone knew he sneaked out of The Home at night to go out dancing and drinking in the village. He wore his new manhood easily, as proud of it as a soldier of his colored riband medals.
The wolf barked again, and I sat up. I shivered, though it was hot, the beginning of the rainless season. Rather than stare at the window where the wolf waited, I stared at Rama’s bed. If only I dared to go out with him, to sing and dance to the music of the wailing
narh
and the pounding beat of the tabor drum; to parade with him on the back streets of Tantigoria and sit in the little bazaar drinking green coconut water or homemade wine.
I shivered once more, not knowing if I was more afraid of the wolf outside or of the village men, wondering if they were all made more dreadful because of imagination. Even at fourteen I was more boy than man, more dreamer than doer, making monsters where there were none.
The wolf barked a third time, and then the bark turned into a giggle.
“Rama!” I whispered fiercely.
“Mo-han-das,” came a ghostly voice from the compound.
Of course, no wolf could have gotten in, past the great wooden gates and fence, past the dogs which roamed loose at night inside the compound. Even though we lived close by the great sal jungle, we had no fear of wild animals. Between us and the sal lay first the
maidan
, the parade grounds, and then the rice fields. They served as further defenses. Civilization, we Indians knew, was an effective barrier to beasts.
All the fears I had conjured up disappeared. I would have laughed at myself if Rama had not already laughed at me. Wolf, indeed!
Rama climbed in the window and sat on the sill, his long, strong legs dangling down almost to the floor.
“You were not afraid of a wolf, Mohandas?” he teased.
“They steal children,” I said. “I am not a child.”
He nodded. We knew all about wolves. There was not a village in the sal jungle that did not have a story about a child taken from its mother’s side as she gathered firewood or picked herbs. But I had no mother to be stolen from. And I was
not
a child.
“And you are no wolf,” I added aloud.
“I am the wolf of Tantigoria,” he said in English, smiling that sweet, wide smile that had all of us at The Home ready to do his bidding. Then he switched to Bengali, the tongue of his own people, and described what had happened that night.
I lay back and listened, closing my eyes so that he might think I had fallen asleep, but I heard it all. In Bengali, which he spoke with grace and ease, the tale was full of village rhythms. He even sang a song about the end of the rains.
I knew I would write it down in my notebook in the cipher hand I had devised, come morning.
Once Rama had read out to the others what I had written in my book. The Reverend Mr. Welles had given each of us a book in which to practice our English writing. I made up stories and bits and pieces of poems, and sometimes I wrote down things about the other children. About Rama, who had been nearly eight when his dying grandmother had brought him to The Home, who spoke Bengali like a singer and English like a fool. About Krithi, who had a shriveled leg and so had been left in the forest by his parents when he was an infant and found by an Englishman on
shikar
. About Veda, who had been picked up unclaimed from the streets of Santalia and who braided the
pipal
flowers in her hair but did not speak above a whisper. About Preeti, whose seeing was shadowed and who had to look from the corners of her eyes. About the dark anger of Indira, no orphan at all, whose parents had sent her to The Home to be schooled and who loved to pinch the younger girls until they cried out loud.
Rama had performed nearly half a page of my poetry in his halting English in front of the others, his voice still cracking from his manhood change, before I had had the courage to leap on him, hitting and kicking, screaming curses in Bengali, though the language is forbidden in The Home. Rama laughed and apologized and returned the book to me. Not because I had hurt him. None of the rest of us was strong enough for that. But because he was not mean by nature. He returned the book, I think, because he had judged how much anger there was in me. He did not know that it was not anger but fear, fear that he would read out what I had written about him—about his beauty and his power over all of us children—and that armed with that knowledge he would somehow be changed.
That was when I invented my cipher hand, a code part English, part Bengali, and part made-up words with which to hide my innermost thoughts. But it did not matter that I wrote it in cipher. Rama never again tried to look at my book, nor would he let any of the others. The one time Indira tried, he shook her like a puppy until she dropped it. The other girls cheered—even Vedar—and Indira’s face turned nearly black with loathing. But her anger was toward me, not Rama. None of us could be angry with him.
The mornings after one of Rama’s night wanderings always came too early. We were expected to perform many chores at The Home: weeding the kitchen garden, emptying the trash, cleaning up after the dogs. Rama and I, being the oldest boys, had the most arduous tasks, but even the little ones had their duties.
Rama got up easily, as supple as a jungle cat, stretching and moving comfortably. I always had to be shaken awake.
“Come, Mohandas, quickly, or there will be another speech.” Rama hated the English words that poured so easily from Mr. Welles’ mouth. “A waterfall of words,” Rama often said with disgust. “Someday we will all drown in them.” It was unusual for Rama to display such imagination. He mistrusted words, especially the English ones. His was a language of touch and laughter. Was it any wonder that the one person not under Rama’s spell was Mr. Welles?
I nodded reluctantly. To me the words that flowed so easily out of Mr. Welles were a miracle. They matched the words I could read in books. I only hoped that someday there would be some way to unlock the flood of words that was stopped up inside of me. I wanted to pour those words out. But I did not let Rama—or anyone else—know of this.
I got up and dressed quickly, and with the
kharom
on our feet clickety-clacking on the floor as we walked, we went out of our room.
As always, I was aware of what a strange pair we made—brothers and not brothers. By chance kin and friends. By chance only, the dark and unhappy forces that had brought us to this place had bound us to each other for seven years, like someone in the Bible. He was so tall and smiling, his handsome face mobile and open. And I was his small, brown, smileless shadow, always a step behind.
We reported, as usual, with all the other children to the hall near the kitchen, where Mr. Welles waited. Showered and brushed and polished, even in a jungle setting, the Reverend Mr. Welles gleamed.
“We are here, sir,” I said, speaking in English for Rama as well as myself.
Rama smiled.
The other children bowed.
And so, as always, began our day.
Mr. Welles put out his white hands, too white, for the sun never seemed to change them, the palms turned up as if receiving a gift from the skies. We did the same. In a great circle before him, we children stood for five long, silent minutes and prayed. For me the silence was no chore, though for some of the younger ones it was an agony. Often I watched them under lowered lids as they tried not to shift from one foot to another. Krithi, with one leg noticeably shorter than the other, always had the worst time. But Mr. Welles was strict on that account, even with Krithi.
After the silence Mr. Welles preached at us for another five minutes, most of the time about duty, though occasionally about other things. And then at last we were set free to attend to our chores. That was how it was every day.
But the day I remember best was the one that began with the barking man-wolf and the moon’s outstretched finger. I remember it because it was different from the rest, the day that began the strange events that unraveled all our lives, for it was the day that the man from Godamuri appeared.
T
HE VILLAGE OF GODAMURI
lies uncomfortably between the city of Midnapore and the Morbhanj border on the edge of the great sal jungle. It is a small, insignificant place of very primitive people, or so Mr. Welles said. He had visited it many times on his missionary tours. But insignificant or not, Godamuri was a thorn in his side, for he had not been able to convert a single villager to the god Christ. They were Hindus there, and ghost worshipers.
The village was so poor that, even though each house had a courtyard and a cowshed, Mr. Welles preferred to stay overnight in the sheds rather than in the houses.
“It is infinitely more comfortable,” he said, adding as a quiet afterthought, “and cleaner, too. And better company.” The last was said only to his lady wife. I overheard it, although I think I was not supposed to. Better company the cows probably were. They, at least, did not believe in ghosts.
It was because of a particular ghost, a
manush-bagha
, a man-ghost, that we made the trip that fall day in 1920 to Godamuri—Mr. Welles, Rama, several carters, and I. The villagers had become so frightened of this
manush-bagha
that they sent one of their number to The Home. They hoped that Mr. Welles, being a Christian and a good hunter, might come and frighten the
manush-bagha
away.
The man who came from Godamuri was named Chunarem. He was a small and wiry dark man, with a face marked clearly by a succession of diseases. (“A veritable map of smallpox,” Mrs. Welles later said. I wrote that down in my book.) He made a steeple of his fingers, lowered his head to greet Mr. Welles, and spoke like this:
“It is hideous,
sahib
, and only partly human. Its body and hands and feet are like a little man’s. Its head is enormous.” He rubbed his own head vigorously as he spoke.
Mr. Welles stroked his beard, which is something he does when he is thinking. “Did you see it yourself?”
“Oh, yes,
sahib
. It has hair that grows all the way down its back. Perhaps it changes into a wolf when the moon is at its fullest. This last, though, I have not yet seen, though my wife assures me it is so.”
“Tell me, Chunarem, at what time does this man-ghost appear?” asked Mr. Welles. He took off his eyeglasses and cleaned them on his white linen handkerchief. He always carries one. Then he put the glasses on again, tucked the handkerchief securely into his jacket pocket, and stared at the villager quite intently with his piercing blue eyes. “Christ eyes,” the villagers call them, being all dark-eyed themselves.
For a moment Chunarem looked as if he did not know whom to be more frightened of—the
manush-bagha
or the missionary. Then, summoning the last of his fading courage, he said, “It comes at dusk. Reverend
Sahib
. When the sun has gone out of the sky but still the soft light lingers.”