Our Favourite Indian Stories (8 page)

The balcony looked forlorn. In front of me in the walled compound of the school, I could see small boys, satchels in hand, standing four in a row, reciting their prayers in a nasal sing-song;
'God's name comes to my lips with the fervour of a keen desire...'
Unable to stand their shrill lacerating voices any more, I looked beyond, over the haunted house across the ravine, and then along the serpentine path which lost itself behind the compound of Bano's house. Fetching Father's old discarded walking stick, at the end of which I had tied a red piece of cloth I waved it above my head. This was a favourite game with Bano and me. She saw me and waved back. Then she pointed me to her mother, who also waved. Embarrassed, I threw away the stick and ran inside.

Before I could enter my room, a servant came to tell me that Father wanted to see me. A wave of joy surged through me. It was rare for Father to invite me to his room. Hastily, I bit my nails to make sure that they were clean; Father always looked at my nails the first thing.

Father's room had a distinct individuality compounded of the smell of cigarsmoke, an oppressive stillness, subdued lighting which did not change with night or day and, above it all a sour medicinal odour that hung pervasively, like a layer of thinly spun colour.

'What were you doing outside?' I knew Father's moods. There was no anger in his voice.

'I was looking for Bano.' I fumbled and became silent. 'Father!'

Father looked up.

'I am well now. The fever has left me.'

Father placed my hands one upon the other and held them in his big hairy hands. 'You must rest in bed a few days more,' he said.

'Father, when are we going to Delhi?' It was a question I always asked whenever I met him.

Father removed his cigar from his mouth, and studied the wallpaper, as if trying to read something there.

'Son, are you sometimes afraid?'

'Afraid? Afraid of what?' I asked.

Father's eyes turned to me. 'I mean, now that your mother is away.'

'But she'll be back soon.' I hoped that Father would affirm my statement; but he just looked on expressionlessly and then said

'Yes' in a feeble voice as if speaking to himself. 'Son!'

'Yes, Father?'

'Would you like to meet your mother?' His voice sounded hard and his question strange and devoid of meaning. I wanted to say 'Yes' but when I looked at him I sensed that he wanted me to reply differently, to deliberately lie to him.

I shook my head. He looked at me, surprised, and removed my hands from his lap.

He got up from the chair and went to the window.

As I watched him I felt sympathy well up in my heart for him. My relations with Mother were not hedged with complexity. I did not feel tense and withdrawn with her, as I did with Father. She would agree to all my demands without ado. Yet she failed to win my sympathy, whereas, even though I was afraid of Father and could not make demands on him or open my heart to him, he touched a chord in my heart. Separating Mother and us lay some intangible reality.

Father looked quite forlorn. The stillness that reigned in his room seemed to permeate the whole house. Without Mother every room looked empty and desolate.

Mother had left for her aunt's place without seeing me. I had happened to wake up in the middle of the night before she went.

My room was dark. In the breeze the window curtain flew up and kept fluttering over my pillow. For some time a doubt hovered in my mind; everything in the room seemed to have shifted from its proper place. The window on my left had quietly moved down to the middle of the wall. The door had slipped two yards to the right. The door was ajar, and from Father's room showed a thin mercurial column of light so slender and fragile that a touch would have slivered it to bits. Suddenly, flapping like a black birdwing, the door stood open for a second, then slowly closed. As it closed, a beam of light streaked across the floor and climbed the opposite wall. I heard someone breathing heavily behind the door and I thought it was Mother come to fasten the latch. But no one came. I heard voices, now coming from afar— indistinct, wordless sounds, then so close it was as if someone were whispering into my ear.

'No, you won't go in.' It was Father's voice.

A thin cry, like a bright sliver of glass pierced the heart of darkness. What was wrong with Mother? Why did she shriek in this strange manner?

'Let go my hand!' she cried.

'Pono, I won't allow you to go in.'

'Who are you to stop me? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?'

'Pono, don't shout, he's sleeping.'

'I won't shout. Let me go in.'

'No, no, not now.'

'Do you think I am mad? Do you think I'll tell him... ?'

'Pono, go to your room. You are not in your senses.'

Before Father could say more, the curtain parted and my bed was flooded with light. I saw two marble-like arms spread against the curtain and a shadowy figure with two hungry, distraught eyes. Thin, long fingers clutched the curtain, trembling violently, and a nosepiece shone like a star above quivering lips. I glimpsed the phantasmagoric sight in the fleeting instant before the curtain was pulled across the door. Then there were only muffled groans.

After this, I could not believe my ears. I could only hear slow continuous laughter behind the curtain. No, it could not be Mother. I had never before heard her laughing like that. I could neither hear nor see anything more. My mind went blank and I felt that the darkness had gathered itself into something tangible, something foul and ragged that coiled and twisted before my eyes.

I was lying on the terrace one afternoon during my convalescence. No one was taking any notice of me and I had my way with everything. Father did not drop into my room in the evenings and I had not seen uncle Biren for a long time. If any one was sorry about my recovery it was Bano. Had I remained ill the chances of our going to Delhi would have receded.

Behind the terrace there were two low hills, pointing towards the sky like a pair of scissors. Between them a forest range stretched far into the distance. When the train bound for Kalka passed through it, a column of smoke drifted above the trees toward the sky.

'Bano, we'll be leaving for Delhi soon,' I told Bano who was busy picking apricots from the terrace. The apron of her skirt was filled with apricots. She knelt and her booty spilt on the ground.

'Here, eat this,' she said picking up a ripe yellow apricot. 'It's nice.'

I shook my head. Father had forbidden me to eat apricots.

'Its ripe, it will do you no harm,' she said and, without waiting for my answer popped it into her mouth. She turned the apricot in her cheek and said that if it was turned often enough the saliva made the fruit juicier.

'So it is settled that you are going to Delhi,' she said sucking noisily at the apricot.

'Yes, as soon as mother returns.'

'Where has your mother gone?'

'To her aunt's place.'

'Are you sure?' Bano looked at me mysteriously.

'What's the matter, Bano?' I asked, puzzled.

'Nothing. Just asking.' She pressed the apricot between her lips and added, 'I won't tell you. Mother has warned me not to.'

I felt angry but smiled, feigning indifference. When I was angry I tried to hide my feelings behind a smile so that no one would think me an ill-tempered fool.

The hills behind the terrace were grey under the low clouds and their thin elongated shadows flitted across them from the east.

'Is Delhi beyond those mountains?' Bano asked me.

'Delhi is in the plains,' I replied. 'One has to climb over those hills to reach Delhi.'

Bano looked at me skeptically. 'But below us is Annandale Race Course, and beyond that the ravine. Is Delhi in the ravine?'

Without trying to satisfy her curiosity I turned my back on her.

Near the terrace was the pavillion and behind it the guestroom of the haunted house. Bano threw the apricot stones into the guestroom and stood leaning against the wall.

All of Simla was hushed in the afternoon; only the sound of falling apricots punctuated the silence. Bano beckoned me to her. The glass of one of the guesthouse doors was broken. She peeped through the hole and invited me to join her.

The room was empty, its wallpaper faded. It was full of stale air and cobwebs. In the middle of the floor there was a small circle of light, which seemed to change from white to faded yellow and back again. In the darkness the spot of light looked eerie.

'That English woman must have lived in this room,' Bano whispered.

'And she must have died in this room,' I added, and a shiver ran down my spine. I saw a face gradually emerging on the peeled off plaster of the wall — its mouth gaped, its lustreless eyes seeming to mock me, and I heard laughter. It must have been the face of the woman who had taken her own life here, years ago... her laughter reminded me of mother's laughter that night.

'Bano, did your mother tell you something about my mother?'

'How does that concern you?'

The doors of the deserted house rattled in the wind.

'Bano, when I was ill, sometimes I had strange feelings. I felt I was also like Mother — that there was something common between us, something which no one likes. I saw an apparition wrapped in snow, whose hands were white as marble and it remained dangling in the air. An apparition which, coming from behind suddenly bottled me up — and then I fell apart from my own self. Yes, from my own being, Bano!'

Bano shook like a leaf and her eyes grew wide with fear.

We were all packed and ready to leave. Labels of 'Simla-Delhi' had been pasted on all the boxes, bags and bedrolls, with Father's name in bold letters below. The servants and peons from Father's office ran all over the place, busy with the arrangements. The house bustled with activity.

Mother was in her room upstairs, doing nothing. Father had asked me not to go to her. Perhaps she was not well. I had not met her since she had returned from her aunt's place. She had arrived in the night when I was asleep.

Having nothing to do, I knocked about the house till I felt suffocated with boredom. Keeping out of everyone's way I escaped from the house.

Descending the footpath I started along the ravine, picking pine cones till both my pockets were stuffed with them. On the distant hills the late sunlight still lingered, too tired to merge into darkness.

I had come a long way from home and when I started walking back, I suddenly spotted uncle Biren's tiny cottage down below, cosily ensconced amidst a cluster of trees. I remembered that particular evening when I had come to the cottage with Mother. Since the time Mother had gone to stay with her aunt, uncle Biren had stopped calling on us. Once I had asked Father about uncle Biren. But his expression had become so hard that I dared not pursue the subject.

I walked down to the cottage. In the western sun, the sloping roof had become a glowing red. The wicket gate was open. I tiptoed on to the lawn. The wind sighing through the grass added to the sense of desolation. At the edge of the lawn I could see the stone bench on which Mother had sat.

I gently knocked at the door, 'Uncle Biren, uncle.' My voice went ringing through that lonely, mute cottage. I felt it was not my own voice, but an unfamiliar one, which chased my own.

'Come in. The door is unlocked.'

I went in. The dim light of the table lamp fell on the book and the papers which lay in disorder on the table. Uncle Biren asked me to sit on his bed and pulled up his easy chair beside me.

'Have you walked alone, this long distance?' He took my hand in his and smiled.

Suddenly his eyes fell upon my bulging pocket and I went red in the face.

'What have you in those pockets of yours?' he asked me. 'Pine cones?'

I nodded.

'What will you do with them?'

'They are for the train.'

'For the train?' Biren uncle's face had become a question mark.

'Yes, we are leaving for Delhi tonight, uncle.'

He looked at me without blinking. Then he got up and without taking further notice of me started gazing out of the window. A suffocating silence filled the room. I felt he had already known about our going away. When he turned from the window his blue eyes shone.

'You remember the photograph you took that day?' he asked me. 'Its ready. Would you like to see it?'

He took out an envelope from the almirah and handed it to me. 'You are quite an expert,' he said. 'The photograph has come out very well.'

I looked at the photograph. The event, which I had consigned to the limbo returned vividly.

Against a hazy backdrop of mountains, I saw uncle Biren standing close to the railing of the balcony, his arm unknowingly touching mother's
sari.
And mother... she stood with half-closed eyes, her lips parted, as though she was on the point of uttering something, and had then abruptly checked herself.

I kept looking at the photograph for a time.

Then I was reminded of the train journey which I had to make. I climbed off the bed.

'Well, uncle...' I was too overwhelmed to unburden my thoughts.

Uncle Biren came close to me. He touched my hair and gently kissed me on the forehead — the same way Mother had kissed me that night.

We came out.

'May I see you home?' he asked me.

I shook my head. I knew the way. For a while we stood silent in the verandah.

'Son... !' Startled, I looked at him.

'Your mother once wanted a book. I forgot about it...' He hesitated.

'Please give it to me. I'll take it with me.'

Handing me the book I thought he wanted to say something, but could not.

The cottage was left behind. I made my way back along the deserted road. When I neared home, I stopped under a lamp post and examined the book.

The envelope containing the photograph was lying within its pages.

The book was very old. Even today I can vividly recall its yellow and brittle pages—
'Flauberts' Letters to George Sand.'
Those days I was not familiar with the names of Flaubert or George Sand. Years after when I read the book, Mother was no more and uncle Biren had long since left the country and settled in Italy.