Our Favourite Indian Stories (40 page)

'Where are you going now?'

'Mandapaka. How are you, brother? Do you still have the same clerk?'

'Yes.'

The male figure fell down in a heap and his lighted cheroot, slipped from his mouth. The woman put it out.

'Sit down properly,' she said.

'Shut up, you bitch. Do you think I am drunk? I'll break your ribs if you disturb me.'

He rolled over from one side to the other. The woman covered him with the sheet of cloth which had slipped to one side when he had rolled over. She lighted a cheroot herself. When the match caught the flame, I saw her face for a brief moment. The dark face glowed red.

There was a hint of bass in her voice. When she talked, you felt she was artlessly confiding to you her innermost secrets. She was not beautiful; her hair was dishevelled. And yet there was an air of dignity about her. The black blouse she was wearing gave the impression that she was not wearing any. In the darkness her eyes sparkled as if they were very much alive. When she lighted the match, she noticed me lying nearby.

'There is some one sleeping here,' she said trying to wake up the man.

'Lie down, you slut. I'll break your neck if you disturb me again.'

With an effort he moved away from me.

The clerk stood on the footboard with the oil lamp in his hand. He asked, 'Who is that fellow, Rangi?'

'He is my man, Paddalu. Please do not charge us, sir, for the journey.'

'Is it Paddalu? Get him out! He is a rogue and a thief. Have you no sense? He's dead drunk and you have brought him on to this boat!'

'Why says I am drunk?' complained Paddalu.

'You fools. Throw the fellow out. Why did you allow him to step on the boat? He is dead drunk,' the clerk shouted to the boatmen.

'I'm not dead drunk. I have merely quenched a little of my thirst,' protested Paddalu.

'Why don't you keep mum?' admonished the woman.

'Please, sir, I beg of you. May God bless you, sir. We'll get down at Mandapaka,' she pleaded.

The man joined in the pleading, 'I'm not drunk, sir. Please be kind and allow us to go to Mandapaka.'

'If you make any row I'll have you thrown into the canal. Be careful.' The clerk went back to his room. Paddalu sat up. He was not really drunk.

'He will have me thrown into the canal—the son of a bitch!' he said in a low voice.

'Keep quiet. If he hears what you said, then we will be finished.'

'Let him look around the boat tomorrow morning. He puts on airs, the son of a bitch.'

'S..s..s. Someone is sleeping there.'

Paddalu lighted a cheroot. He had a very thick moustache. His face was oval. His spine curved like a bow drawn by a string. He was lean and sinewy and there was an air of nonchalance about him.

The boat was gliding along softly again. The boatmen were washing the utensils after dinner, talking among themselves.

It was not cool, but I covered myself with a sheet. I felt a little afraid of leaving my body exposed helplessly to the darkness. The breeze was sharp-the boat glided softly on the water like the touch of a woman. The night was wrapped with tenderness-as in the caress of an unseen woman. I felt lost in that embrace and many memories of my past as well as tales tinged with melancholy about woman tending man and bringing him happiness flitted across my consciousness.

At a little distance from me two cheroots were glowing red in the darkness. It appeared as though Life was sitting there heavily, smoking, and thinking about itself.

'Which is the next village on our way?' asked Paddalu.

'Kaldari,' said Rangi.

'We have a long distance to go.'

'Don't do it today. You ought to be careful. Not today. We will try some other time when it is safer. Will you not listen to me?' pleaded Rangi.

'You are afraid—you slut,' said Paddalu. He tickled her side with a dig of his finger.

'Oh!' she said and looked skyward as if she wished the feeling this gave her would last forever.

Gradually, I fell asleep. The boat moved downstream as if also in sleep. The two figures not far from me were talking in whispers to each other for some time. Though I was sleeping, a part of me was awake. I knew that the boat was moving, that the water was lapping its sides, that the trees on the banks were moving backwards. Inside the boat every one was asleep. Rangi moved from my side to the rudder and sat beside the man who was handling it.

'How are you, brother?' she asked.

'How are you?' asked the man at the rudder.

'Oh!' what wonders we have seen, my man and I! We went to a cinema. We saw a ship. What a ship it was! Brother, it was as big as our village. I do not know where its rudder was.'

She told him of a hundred things and her voice caressed me in my sleep.

'Oh girl! I am feeling sleepy,' said the man at the rudder.

'I'll hold it, you lie down there,' said Rangi.

The boat moved on silently-slowly. Without disturbing the silence, Rangi raised her voice in a song:

Where is he! Oh where is he, my man!

I put the food in the plate and

Sit there awaiting his return.

Like a shadow the night deepens,

But no sleep comes to my eyes-Where is he, my man?

The cold wind stings me like a scorpion

And my nerves contract and ache,

Unless you press me with your warm body

I may die,.. Where is he?—my man!

 

Rangi's voice had music in it. It seemed as though all living creatures heard the song in their sleep. Age-old tales of love reverberated sadly and mysteriously in that song. It spread like a sheet of water and the world was afloat in it like a small boat. Human life, with its love and longing, seemed heavy, inevitable and strange.

A little distance from me, Paddalu sat with his head covered with a sheet. But a gulf seemed to separate him from Rangi.

After some time Paddalu went inside the boat. I shook off sleep and lay looking at the stars. Rangi was singing.

You thought there was a girl in the lane behind the hut

And sneaked there silently.

But who is the girl, my dear man ?

Is she not I in my bloom ?

 

Rangi's song travelled through the worlds; then returned and touched me somewhere in my heart. I felt drowsy. In my sleep, the elemental longing of man and woman for one another danced before me like rustic lovers playing hide and seek. A dream world entirely new to me, spread before me in my sleep. Rangi and Paddalu moved about in a myriad forms. The song slipped away from my consciousness, and the doors of my mind were gradually closed even to dreams.

Some confusion in the boat woke me and I sat up. The boat was tied to a peg on the bank. The boatmen were moving about hurriedly in the boat and on the bank, with lanterns. On the bank two men stood on either side of Rangi holding her by her arms. One of them was the clerk. He had a piece of rope folded in one of his hands. It looked as if Rangi was going to receive a thrashing. I jumped on to the bank and asked them what was wrong.

The clerk's face flushed with anger. He said, 'The rogue has run away with some of our things. This daughter of a bitch must have got the boat to a bank while everybody was asleep. She was holding the rudder, the slut." There was a note of despair and helplessness in his tone.

'What were the goods stolen?' I asked

'Two baskets of jaggery and three bags of tamarind. That was why I said I would not allow them on the boat. I will have to make up the loss.' Then he asked Rangi, 'Where did he unload the goods?'

'Near Kaldari, my good sir!'

'You liar! All of us were awake at Kaldari.'

'Then it must have been at Nidadavolu.'

'No, she will never tell us. We will hand her over to the police at Attili. Get on to the boat!'

'Kind sir, please allow me to go.'

'Get on the boat,' he ordered pushing her towards the boat

Two boatmen dragged her into the boat.

'Sleepy beggars! Careless idiots! Have you no sense of responsibility? Why should you put the rudder in her hands?' The clerk was very angry. He went back to his room.

Rangi resumed her former seat. One boatman sat beside her to guard her. The boat moved again. I lighted a cheroot.

'Kind sir, spare me one too,' she asked me in a tone which suggested intimacy.

I gave her a cheroot and a box of matches. She lighted it.

'Dear brother! What can you gain by handing me over to the police?'

'The clerk will not let you go,' said the boatman.

'Is Paddalu your husband?' I asked her.

'He is my man,' she replied.

The boatman said, 'He seduced her when she was a young girl. He did not marry her. Now he has another girl.'

'Where is she, Rangi?'

'In Kovvur. Now she is in her bloom. When she has endured as many blows as I have, she will look worse than I do. The dirty bitch!'

'Then why do you have anything to do with him?' I asked.

'He is mine, sir!' she replied, as if that explained everything.

'But he has another woman.'

'What can he do without me? It does not matter how many women a man has. I tell you sir, he is a king among men. There is not another like him.'

The boatman said, 'Sir, you cannot imagine what this fellow really is, without knowing him. She was just bubbling with life and youth when she got entangled with him. One night he locked her up in her hut and set fire to it. She was almost burnt to death. It was only her good fortune that saved her.'

'I felt like strangling him with my bare hands. If I could have only got at him. A red-hot bamboo fell across my back from the roof of the hut.' She lifted her blouse a little. Even in that darkness I could see a white scar on her back.

'Why are you still with him after all this cruelty?' I asked.

'I cannot help it, sir. When he is with me, I simply cling to him. He can talk so well and my sense of pity wells up like a spring. This evening we started from Kovvur. On the way, he begged me on his knees to help him in this affair. He said he was completely broke.. We reached the Nidadavoli channel by a short cut across the fields...'

'Where did he land the goods?'

'How should I know?'

'Oh! she will never tell the truth, the rogue!' said the boatman laughing.

There was a sudden impulse of curiosity in me to have a close look at her face. But in that darkness, she remained hazy and inscrutable.

The boat crawled slowly on the smooth sheet of water. As midnight passed, the breeze developed a colder sting. There was a slight rustle of leaves on the trees. I did not sleep again that night. Rangi's guard tried ineffectually to fight his overpowering desire to sleep and finally yielded to it. But Rangi sat there listlessly smoking her cheroot, reconciled to her position.

'You were not married at all?' I asked her.

'No. I was very young when Paddalu took me away.'

'Which is your native village?'

'Indrapalem... Then I did not know he was a drunkard... Now, of course, I have caught it from him. There is nothing wrong if one drinks. But sometimes when he is drunk, he is wild.'

'You could have left him and gone back to your parents.'

'That is what I feel like when he becomes wild. But then there is no one else like him. You do not know him. When he is not drunk he is as meek as a lamb. He might take a hundred women, but he comes back to me. What can he do without me?'

The woman's attitude struck me as strange, and I could not divine what held those two together. Rangi said again. 'No job suited either of us. So we had to take to thieving. When my mother was alive, she used to scold me for making a fool of myself. One night he brought that girl to my hut.'

'Which girl?'

'The one he is now living with. He put her on my bed and lay down beside her. Before my very eyes! Both of them were drunk. The slut! I pounced upon her and scratched her violently. He intervened and beat me out of my breath. About midnight he went away with her somewhere. He returned again. I called him names and refused to admit him into the house. He collapsed on the doorstep and began to weep like a child. I was touched. I sat beside him. He took me into his lap and asked me to give him my necklace. What for? I asked him. He said it was for the other girl. I was beside myself with anger and heaped on him torrents of abuse. He told me, weeping that he could not live without that girl. My anger knew no bounds. I pushed him out and bolted the door from inside. He pulled at it for a while and went away. I lay with my eyes wide open and could not sleep for a long time. But after I fell asleep, the house caught fire. He had locked the hut on the outside and set fire to it. I tried the door desperately and at that time of the night my shouts for help did not reach my neighbours. My body was being fried alive. I fell unconscious. My neigbours must have rescued me in that state. The police arrested him the next day. But I told them categorically that he could not have been the author of the crime. That evening he came to me and wept for hours. Sometimes, when he is drunk he weeps like that. But when he is not drunk, he is such a jolly fellow. I gave him that necklace.'

'Why do you still assist him in these crimes?'

'What am I do when he comes and begs me as if his whole life depends on it?'

'Did he really take you to all those places, Vijayanagaram, Visakhapatnam and what not?'

'No. I wanted to gain the confidence of the boatmen. On two former occasions, this very boat was robbed.'

'What will you do if the police arrest you?'

'Why should I do anything? What can they do? I have no stolen goods in my possessions. Who knows who was responsible for the robbery? They might beat me. But ultimately they will have to set me free.'

'Supposing Paddalu is caught with these goods?'

'No, he would have disposed of them by now. I remained in the boat to give him enough time to effect his escape.'

She heaved a sigh and then said
sotto voce
, 'All this goes to that damned bitch. He will not leave her till her freshness fades away. I have to suffer all this for the sake of that slut.'