Tikkipala (21 page)

Back at the palace people gathered round to watch the animal being hauled into one of the empty rooms.

‘Someone bring water and some straw for it to sleep on,' shouted Devi. ‘I will be watching to make sure it is treated properly.' By now the animal had started growling, making the people round it cringe and giggle.

When at last they managed to get it into the room and dump it on the ground, Devi demanded, ‘Which one of you will cut it free?'

The thags shrank back.

‘I will offer a hundred rupees….Two hundred.' There was no response.

‘Then I must,' said Devi.

Khan tried to catch her sleeve and stop her. ‘No, no, Madam. Order one of these bandit fellows to do it.'

Gingerly she reached out and swiftly chopped the ropes that bound Animal's legs. It leapt to its feet and came at her, snarling through tied jaws. As it reached her, she managed to catch the end of the muzzle rope, give one swift chop, then, with the foul creature's breath on her heels, dash from the room. Animal was stiff from having been tied up so long, or it would certainly have caught her.

‘That creature is a hunting animal of the monkey people,' said an old woman, squatting in the passage, rolling chuppatties. ‘They know all kinds of bad magic, and probably their animal knows such things as well.'

The thags had told her before, with little shivers, of these monkey people, and though Devi did not believe a word, all the same she felt curious and wondered how the superstition had begun. ‘You say they know magic. What kind?'

The woman smacked another ball of dough down and said, ‘My mother saw one monkey woman rise in the air like a moth.'

A girl at the stove, stirring dhall said, ‘My grandfather saw fire coming out of the mouth of a monkey child.'

Another woman said, ‘And my grandmother saw a monkey child baby that was entirely transparent so that you could look right into its body and see it's little heart beating.'

‘They blow into the bones of their ancestors,' the chuppati maker told Devi, ‘and that is how they make their magic.'

‘You must not believe these fellows, Madam,' Khan told Devi later. ‘For they are big liars and murdering bandits also and this animal is a dangerous creature and someone should put some bullets into it.' As though confirming his words there came a great thump against the door of storeroom where Animal was kept.

Two days later the palace began to reverberate with the sound of Animal. All day and all night the people in the palace would hear the thump thump thump of the captured creature hurling its body against the wall and the clattering of its hooves as it clashed against the barred glass window. Even though it was securely locked away, the people of the palace felt afraid when they passed the storeroom and would creep past cautiously. No one dared go in, so men dropped food and water through the window bars, snatching their hands away before the animal's curved and yellow teeth plunged into their fingers.

She should have called people to come and put a bullet through the head of the animal when it lay wounded on the mountain side, Devi saw now. When she was little, she had brought back sick pye dogs to the palace and, overcoming her father's protests of, ‘they are vermin and bring disease,' she had fed and cared for them till they were well again. Even when he told her, ‘Some lives are not worth living,' she had persisted in saving the creatures. She had not believed him then, when he said, ‘Saving a life isn't always kind,' but she knew now that he had been right. However it was too late to shoot the jungle animal. The creature had been returned to health and somehow she must find a way of getting it back to its jungle. She had originally intended merely to open the door and let it out, hoping that, as a wild animal, it would be able to do what no man could and climb back up to its home. But the animal was clearly very dangerous and she was afraid that, instead of returning to where it came from, it might injure, or even kill people at the palace or down in the village. She did not know what to do next and in the meanwhile the animal remained where it was, locked in the store room which became daily smellier because no one dared go in to clean it.

Maw and Pala were resting, lying in each other's arms and lazily drawing in the soma smoke from their pipes, when they heard some sounds that let them know that something terrible had happened. They leapt up and rushing over, looked out. Far away, through the trees came the clear sound of Coarseones' voices.

‘The Coarseones have killed one of our Animals,' the people were shouting.

Maw put his arms round Pala and his body started shaking. ‘The Coarseones are here and our people are finished,' whispered Maw.

When the winch had been established, and reached the high jungle peak, Mr Dar said, ‘Now the next stage will be to make a clearing for the helicopters.' His managers were already feeling shocked at the huge expense of the operation when there were so many other more accessible and profitable jungles available. ‘It is as if he has a personal hatred for this particular piece of jungle,' they said to each other and wondered what was at the bottom of it. If Mr Dar had a wife, the other women might have found out. But Mr Dar was not married. Although he was one of the richest men in the district, he lived alone in one small rented room. He did not even employ a servant, but did all his own housework including his own cooking. It was thought that this latter did not require much labour, since it was said that Mr Dar lived on nothing but dahi, chuppatties and bananas. He was thin enough for this to be true.

‘But even though we now have a winch up there, how will we get the wood down?' the managers asked him. ‘For there is no road, the winch will only take the smallest amount and it certainly can't be carried by helicopter.'

‘We will have to build a road, then,' said Mr Dar.

‘Impossible,' said the surveyor to Mr Dar. ‘A road is out of the question. It will have to go through the rear mountains for over a hundred miles and through the most dangerous country in India. The mountains there are well known for being unstable and prone to landslides and also wild elephants abound there.'

‘That is good,' said Mr Dar. ‘For we shall be needing elephants for the carting of the timber, once the road is built. We shall set about having some of these wild ones captured for the purpose.'

‘And these mountains pass through the country of thags,' said the surveyor firmly. ‘This project is out of the question, Mr Dar Sir.'

‘This must be merely rumour,' said Mr Dar. ‘For it is well known that thagism was eradicated in the nineteenth century.'

‘That may be,' said the man. ‘But to this day there are tales of travellers failing to arrive at their destination and never seen again. Some members of our own company have vanished in such a way and surely these people must have been murdered and robbed by the thags and if they can do such things on lower roads, imagine with what ease they will carry off their villainy in the high and hidden mountains. There are a hundred pieces of jungle on the way which are more accessible and I suggest you abandon this project.'

‘This is the one I want,' said Mr Dar.

The people came to Maw and asked what they should do next.

Maw, sitting as straight and dignified as any of his ancestors, looked calmly back at them while he thought and Pala, seated at the far end of the floor, watched and felt filled with pride and love. Pulling in the smoke of his soma pipe, he remembered how a couple of years ago the elders had considered doing away with this boy because they thought they saw the Coarseones' characteristics in him. Now, thought Pala, who would even guess for a single moment, that Maw had come from any seed but that of the tribe. No smallest vestige of the Coarseones' vile habits and gestures were
manifested by this wonderful young Maw, except perhaps that he was a little too good at running on the ground.

‘Now that the Coarseones have found a way onto our jungle and killed one of our hunting Animals, they will return and kill everything unless we get rid of their metal thing,' said Maw.

The elders nodded.

‘Have you an implement that can cut it?' Maw asked the subtle ones.

‘Yes,' said the subtle ones. ‘Though because of the nature of this metal material, it will take us some time to create an instrument that will cut it.'

‘You must act fast,' said Maw. ‘You must remove this thing before the Coarseones can make use of it again for who knows what damage they will do to us next time.'

The elders said, ‘Though perhaps, after looking here, the Coarseones have decided, once again, that there is nothing for them in our jungles. After all others have tried and failed to find something of profit in our jungles. Perhaps they will not come again.'

In the days that followed the subtle ones worked with all their tools and fluids to cut away the Coarseones' iron. ‘This stuff is very hard,' they said. ‘It will take time.' But the people of the tribe were starting to feel calm. They came down from their trees and tried to continue with their normal lives and to ignore the iron wheel, while the subtle ones experimented with ways of cutting it.

But before the subtle ones had completed their task, there came a clanking and a grinding sound and when the people of the tribe looked down they saw four Coarseones standing in a swinging box that was attached to the chain the mountaineers had brought. It was coming slowly up the mountain side.

‘They will never get here,' laughed the people of the tribe as the men in the box swung from side to side and sometimes banged against the rock brow. They were very far below and only seemed to move inches at a time.

But five hours later the box appeared abruptly over the lip of the rock and the four men staggered out. The people of the tribe peeped through the branches, felt filled with horror and did not know what to do.

For a while the men sat on the ground smoking cigarettes and rubbing their bodies as though they had been bruised. Then they got up, took from their belts the metal axes hanging there and began to cut a tree.

‘We must stop them,' Maw said, as the tree that had stood for five hundred years was wounded, started toppling, then came crashing to the ground.

‘There are only four of them,' said the elders. ‘So how much damage can they do? Their ligament winch is small and cannot take much wood. This must be all they need. Soon they will go away and we will be at peace again.'

So the people of the tribe watched secretly and felt sad that the tree they had known since the world began should now have fallen, but knew the elders spoke the truth. The elders were right. The Coarseones cut the fallen wood into parts, pulled the logs aside to leave a naked patch of ground, then got back in the winch again and disappeared down the mountain again. The people sighed with relief, but wondered too, for the men had not taken any wood away.

‘Who can understand the strange thinking ways of the Coarseones,' the people said to each other. ‘That they should come up here with such great difficulty just to cut down one tree then go away again.'

Others said, ‘We are safe now and they will not return because they know the kind of wood they look for is not here.'

Only Maw continued to worry. ‘Maybe this cutting is some kind of preparation for a new attack on us. I think we should be ready and this time have Animals prepared for killing any marauding Coarseones that return. Our people should become ready for war.'

‘War?' said the elders, shocked. ‘But we are not war people. Even when other tribes attacked us in the old days, we did not wage war. The Tikki drove them off, and surely she will drive away these Coarseones too.'

‘Perhaps,' said Maw, but all the same looked doubtful.

‘Does your expression mean that you think the Coarseones are stronger than the Tikki?' asked Pala later. ‘Because if so you would be thinking a heresy, and that is dangerous.'

‘The Coarseones are dangerous,' Maw said, ‘We don't know enough about them. We don't know what they want up here. And perhaps the Tikki is growing old and cannot help us like she used to.'

Pala stared at him, afraid. ‘Please don't talk like that, Maw,' he begged. ‘Or the elders will hear you.'

But Maw was firm. ‘We must attack the Coarseones before they destroy us. You must send the Animals to drive them away, Pala.'

Then just as the people were feeling confident that the danger had passed them once again, the gigantic noise of a Coarseones' flying machine rose in the sky. This time the machine did not pass on and vanish over the horizon like the last ones, but hovered right above the tribal trees. And then began to sink, until, with a roaring of its motor and a terrible petrol-smelling wind that blew the leaves up as though a storm
was going through them, the helicopter landed on the place where, previously, the tree had been felled. Six Coarseones jumped onto the ground and, looking cautiously from right to left, as though expecting attack, took up some kind of machines and held them to the trunks of trees. Minutes later the air was filled with a shrill and sharp roar and there rose a cloud of sawdust. This time it did not take all day to cut one tree. The machines sliced through the trunks like blades going through wild pig fat. Twenty trees were down by midday and the cutting was coming ever closer to the place where the tribal people lived.

Down in the palace Devi saw the trees falling and was filled with anger because the Collector had lied to her. Ever since she had first seen the winch prepared she had been dreading this and now there appeared the first small slash like a wound on the skin of the high jungle.

All next day helicopters went back and forth ferrying wood cutters. Squads of screaming parakeets rushed from the branches and fruit bats rose with the sound of hands clapping as trees toppled. The air became filled with the hideous sound of the lumberjacks' harsh voices and instead of the jungle scents of pollen, blossom, fungi, monkey and sun on ripeness, there was only the smell of saw-dust, hot oil and petrol.