Collected Short Stories Read online

  Ruskin Bond

  COLLECTED SHORT STORIES

  Contents

  About the Author

  Untouchable

  The Coral Tree

  Going Home

  The Daffodil Case

  The Eyes Have It

  The Night Train at Deoli

  The Woman on Platform No. 8

  The Thief

  The Photograph

  The Window

  The Boy Who Broke the Bank

  Most Beautiful

  The Haunted Bicycle

  The Fight

  A Rupee Goes a Long Way

  Faraway Places

  How Far Is the River?

  Tribute to a Dead Friend

  The Trouble with Jinns

  Time Stops at Shamli

  The Crooked Tree

  The Flute Player

  Chachi’s Funeral

  The Man Who Was Kipling

  The Girl from Copenhagen

  Hanging at the Mango Tope

  A Tiger in the House

  All Creatures Great and Small

  Calypso Christmas

  Bhabiji’s House

  Masterji

  As Time Goes By

  Death of a Familiar

  Dead Man’s Gift

  The Most Potent Medicine of All

  The Story of Madhu

  My First Love

  The Kitemaker

  The Prospect of Flowers

  Sita and the River

  The Tunnel

  The Leopard

  Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

  Coming Home to Dehra

  My Father’s Trees in Dehra

  The Room of Many Colours

  The Last Tonga Ride

  The Tiger in the Tunnel

  A Face in the Dark

  Binya Passes By

  He Said It with Arsenic

  Whispering in the Dark

  Escape from Java

  The Last Time I Saw Delhi

  A Guardian Angel

  Love Is a Sad Song

  Listen to the Wind

  The Garlands on His Brow

  His Neighbour’s Wife

  The Monkeys

  A Case for Inspector Lal

  Panther’s Moon

  The Good Old Days

  Death of the Trees

  Miss Bun and Others

  The Funeral

  The Last Truck Ride

  Dust on the Mountain

  Would Astley Return?

  A Job Well Done

  A Crow for All Seasons

  The Playing Fields of Simla

  The Wind on Haunted Hill

  From Small Beginnings

  When Darkness Falls

  Whistling in the Dark

  Something in the Water

  Wilson’s Bridge

  On Fairy Hill

  Reunion at the Regal

  Grandfather Fights an Ostrich

  Grandfather’s Many Faces

  Here Comes Mr Oliver

  Susanna’s Seven Husbands

  What’s Your Dream?

  Eyes of the Cat

  The Cherry Tree

  When You Can’t Climb Trees Any More

  A Love of Long Ago

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  COLLECTED SHORT STORIES

  Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published by Penguin. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

  Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

  Untouchable

  The sweeper boy splashed water over the khus matting that hung in the doorway and for a while the air was cooled.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out of the open window, brooding upon the dusty road shimmering in the noon-day heat. A car passed and the dust rose in billowing clouds.

  Across the road lived the people who were supposed to look after me while my father lay in hospital with malaria. I was supposed to stay with them, sleep with them. But except for meals, I kept away. I did not like them and they did not like me.

  For a week, longer probably, I was going to live alone in the red-brick bungalow on the outskirts of the town, on the fringe of the jungle. At night the sweeper boy would keep guard, sleeping in the kitchen. Apart from him, I had no company; only the neighbours’ children, and I did not like them and they did not like me.

  Their mother said, ‘Don’t play with the sweeper boy, he is unclean. Don’t touch him. Remember, he is a servant. You must come and play with my boys.’

  Well, I did not intend playing with the sweeper boy . . . but neither did I intend playing with her children. I was going to sit on my bed all week and wait for my father to come home.

  Sweeper boy . . . all day he pattered up and down between the house and the water-tank, with the bucket clanging against his knees.

  Back and forth, with a wide, friendly smile.

  I frowned at him.

  He was about my age, ten. He had short-cropped hair, very white teeth, and muddy feet, hands, and face. All he wore was an old pair of khaki shorts; the rest of his body was bare, burnt a deep brown.

  At every trip to the water tank he bathed, and returned dripping and glistening from head to toe.

  I dripped with sweat.

  It was supposedly below my station to bathe at the tank, where the gardener, water carrier, cooks, ayahs, sweepers, and their children all collected. I was the son of a ‘sahib’ and convention ruled that I did not play with servant children.

  But I was just as determined not to play with the other sahibs’ children, for I did not like them and they did not like me.

  I watched the flies buzzing against the windowpane, the lizards scuttling across the rafters, the wind scattering petals of scorched, long-dead flowers.

  The sweeper boy smiled and saluted in play. I avoided his eyes and said, ‘Go away.’

  He went into the kitchen.

  I rose and crossed the room, and lifted my sun helmet off the hatstand.

  A centipede ran down the wall, across the floor.

  I screamed and jumped on the bed, shouting for help.

  The sweeper boy darted in. He saw me on the bed, the centipede on the floor; and picking a large book off the shelf, slammed it down on the repulsive insect.

  I remained standing on my bed, trembling with fear and revulsion.

  He laughed at me, showing his teeth, and I blushed and said, ‘Get out!’

  I would not, could not, touch or approach the hat or hatstand. I sat on the bed and longed for my father to come home.

  A mosquito passed close by me and sang in my ear. Half-heartedly, I clutched at it and missed; and it disappeared behind the dressing-table.

  That mosquito, I reasoned, gave the malaria to my father. And now it was trying to give it to me!

  The next-door lady walked through the compound and smiled thinly from outside the window. I glared back at her.

  The sweeper boy passed with the bucket, and grinned. I turned away.

  In bed at night, with the lights on, I tried reading. But even books could not quell my anxiety.

  The sweeper boy moved about the house, bolting doors, fastening windows. He asked me if I had
any orders.

  I shook my head.

  He skipped across to the electric switch, turned off the light, and slipped into his quarters. Outside, inside, all was dark; only one shaft of light squeezed in through a crack in the sweeper boy’s door, and then that too went out.

  I began to wish I had stayed with the neighbours. The darkness worried me—silent and close—silent, as if in suspense.

  Once a bat flew flat against the window, falling to the ground outside; once an owl hooted. Sometimes a dog barked. And I tautened as a jackal howled hideously in the jungle behind the bungalow. But nothing could break the overall stillness, the night’s silence . . .

  Only a dry puff of wind . . .

  It rustled in the trees, and put me in mind of a snake slithering over dry leaves and twigs. I remembered a tale I had been told not long ago, of a sleeping boy who had been bitten by a cobra.

  I would not, could not, sleep. I longed for my father . . .

  The shutters rattled, the doors creaked. It was a night for ghosts.

  Ghosts!

  God, why did I have to think of them?

  My God! There, standing by the bathroom door . . .

  My father! My father dead from the malaria, and come to see me!

  I threw myself at the switch. The room lit up. I sank down on the bed in complete exhaustion, the sweat soaking my nightclothes.

  It was not my father I had seen. It was his dressing gown hanging on the bathroom door. It had not been taken with him to the hospital.

  I turned off the light.

  The hush outside seemed deeper, nearer. I remembered the centipede, the bat, thought of the cobra and the sleeping boy; pulled the sheet tight over my head. If I could see nothing, well then, nothing could see me.

  A thunderclap shattered the brooding stillness.

  A streak of lightning forked across the sky, so close that even through the sheet I saw a tree and the opposite house silhouetted against the flashing canvas of gold.

  I dived deeper beneath the bedclothes, gathered the pillow about my ears.

  But at the next thunderclap, louder this time, louder than I had ever heard, I leapt from my bed. I could not stand it. I fled, blundering into the sweeper boy’s room.

  The boy sat on the bare floor.

  ‘What is happening?’ he asked.

  The lightning flashed, and his teeth and eyes flashed with it. Then he was a blur in the darkness.

  ‘I am afraid,’ I said.

  I moved towards him and my hand touched a cold shoulder. ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I too am afraid.’

  I sat down, my back against the wall; beside the untouchable, the outcaste . . . and the thunder and lightning ceased, and the rain came down, swishing and drumming on the corrugated roof.

  ‘The rainy season has started,’ observed the sweeper boy, turning to me. His smile played with the darkness, and then he laughed. And I laughed too, but feebly.

  But I was happy and safe. The scent of the wet earth blew in through the skylight and the rain fell harder.

  This was my first short story, written when I was sixteen.

  The Coral Tree

  The night had been hot, the rain frequent, and I slept on the veranda instead of in the house. I was in my twenties and I had begun to earn a living and felt I had certain responsibilities. In a short while a tonga would take me to a railway station, and from there a train would take me to Bombay, and then a ship would take me to England. There would be work, interviews, a job, a different kind of life; so many things that this small bungalow of my grandfather’s would be remembered fitfully, in rare moments of reflection.

  When I awoke on the veranda I saw a grey morning, smelt the rain on the red earth, and remembered that I had to go away. A girl was standing on the veranda porch, looking at me very seriously. When I saw her, I sat up in bed with a start.

  She was a small, dark girl, her eyes big and black, her pigtails tied up in a bright red ribbon; and she was fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth.

  She stood looking at me, and she was very serious.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, smiling, trying to put her at ease.

  But the girl was businesslike. She acknowledged my greeting with a brief nod.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ I asked, stretching my limbs. ‘Do you stay near here?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘With your parents?

  With great assurance she said, ‘Yes. But I can stay on my own.’

  ‘You’re like me,’ I said, and for a while I forgot about being an old man of twenty. ‘I like to do things on my own. I’m going away today.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a little breathlessly.

  ‘Would you care to go to England?’

  ‘I want to go everywhere,’ she said, ‘to America and Africa and Japan and Honolulu.’

  ‘Maybe you will,’ I said. ‘I’m going everywhere, and no one can stop me . . . But what is it you want? What did you come for?’

  ‘I want some flowers but I can’t reach them.’ She waved her hand towards the garden. ‘That tree, see?’

  The coral tree stood in front of the house surrounded by pools of water and broken, fallen blossoms. The branches of the tree were thick with the scarlet, pea-shaped flowers.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Just let me get ready.’

  The tree was easy to climb, and I made myself comfortable on one of the lower branches, smiling down at the serious upturned face of the girl.

  ‘I’ll throw them down to you,’ I said.

  I bent a branch but the wood was young and green, and I had to twist it several times before it snapped.

  ‘I’m not sure that I ought to do this,’ I said, as I dropped the flowering branch to the girl.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

  ‘Well, if you’re ready to speak up for me—’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  I felt a sudden nostalgic longing for childhood and an urge to remain behind in my grandfather’s house with its tangled memories and ghosts of yesteryear. But I was the only one left, and what could I do except climb coral and jackfruit trees?

  ‘Have you many friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Who is the best?’

  ‘The cook. He lets me stay in the kitchen, which is more interesting than the house. And I like to watch him cooking. And he gives me things to eat, and tells me stories . . .’

  ‘And who is your second best friend?’

  She inclined her head to one side, and thought very hard.

  ‘I’ll make you the second best,’ she said.

  I sprinkled coral blossoms over her head. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’m happy to be your second best.’

  A tonga bell sounded at the gate, and I looked out from the tree and said, ‘It’s come for me. I have to go now.’

  I climbed down.

  ‘Will you help me with my suitcases?’ I asked, as we walked together towards the veranda. ‘There is no one here to help me. I am the last to go. Not because I want to go, but because I have to.’

  I sat down on the cot and packed a few last things in a suitcase. All the doors of the house were locked. On my way to the station I would leave the keys with the caretaker. I had already given instructions to an agent to try and sell the house. There was nothing more to be done.

  We walked in silence to the waiting tonga, thinking and wondering about each other.

  ‘Take me to the station,’ I said to the tonga driver.

  The girl stood at the side of the path, on the damp red earth, gazing at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I hope I shall see you again.’

  ‘I’ll see you in London,’ she said, ‘or America or Japan. I want to go everywhere.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ I said. ‘And perhaps I’ll come back and we’ll meet again in this garden. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’

  She nodded and smiled. We knew it was an important moment. The tonga driver spoke to his pony
, and the carriage set off down the gravel path, rattling a little. The girl and I waved to each other.

  In the girl’s hand was a sprig of coral blossom. As she waved, the blossoms fell apart and danced lightly in the breeze.

  ‘Goodbye!’ I called.

  ‘Goodbye!’ called the girl.

  The ribbon had come loose from her pigtail and lay on the ground with the coral blossoms.

  ‘I’m going everywhere,’ I said to myself, ‘and no one can stop me.’

  And she was fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth.

  Going Home

  The train came panting through the forest and into the flat brown plain. The engine whistled piercingly, and a few cows moved off the track. In a swaying third-class compartment two men played cards; a woman held a baby to an exposed breast; a Sikh labourer, wearing brief pants, lay asleep on an upper bunk, snoring fitfully; an elderly unshaven man chewed the last of his pan and spat the red juice out of the window. A small boy, mischief in his eyes, jingled a bag of coins in front of an anxious farmer.

  Daya Ram, the farmer, was going home; home to his rice fields, his buffalo and his wife. A brother had died recently, and Daya Ram had taken the ashes to Hardwar to immerse them in the holy waters of the Ganga, and now he was on the train to Dehra and soon he would be home. He was looking anxious because he had just remembered his wife’s admonition about being careful with money. Ten rupees was what he had left with him, and it was all in the bag the boy held.

  ‘Let me have it now,’ said Daya Ram, ‘before the money falls out.’ He made a grab at the little bag that contained his coins, notes and railway ticket, but the boy shrieked with delight and leapt out of the way.

  Daya Ram stroked his moustache; it was a long drooping moustache that lent a certain sadness to his somewhat kind and foolish face. He reflected that it was his own fault for having started the game. The child had been sulky and morose, and to cheer him up Daya Ram had begun jingling his money. Now the boy was jingling the money, right in front of the open window.

  ‘Come now, give it back,’ pleaded Daya Ram, ‘or I shall tell your mother.’

  The boy’s mother had her back to them, and it was a large back, almost as forbidding as her front. But the boy was enjoying his game and would not give up the bag. He was exploiting to the full Daya Ram’s easy-going tolerant nature, and kept bobbing up and down on the seat, waving the bag in the poor man’s face.