Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories Read online

  ‘And the Iron Cross? Do you still have it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking her in the eye. ‘I left it in the jackfruit tree. ‘You left it in the tree!’

  ‘Yes, I was so busy at the time — packing, and saying goodbye to friends, and thinking about the ship I was going to sail on — that I just forgot all about it.’

  She was silent, considering, her finger on her lips, her gaze fixed on the jackfruit tree.

  Then, quietly, she said, ‘It may still be there. In the hollow of the branch.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘After twenty-five years, it may still be there. Unless someone else found it.’

  ‘Would you like to take a look?’

  ‘I can’t climb trees any more.

  ‘I can! I’ll go and see. You just sit here and wait for me.’

  She sprang up and ran across the grass, swift and sweet of limb. Soon she was in the jackfruit tree, crawling along the projecting branch. A warm wind brought little eddies of dust along the road. Summer was in the air. Ah, if only he could learn to climb trees again!

  ‘I’ve found something!’ she cried.

  And now, barefoot, she runs breathlessly towards him, in her outstretched hand a rusty old medal.

  He takes it from her and turns it over on his palm.

  ‘Is it the Iron Cross?’ she asks eagerly.

  ‘Yes, this is it.’

  ‘Now I know why you came. You wanted to see if it was still in the tree.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not really sure why I came. But you can keep the Cross. You found it, after all.’

  ‘No, you keep it. It’s yours.’

  ‘But it might have remained in the tree for a hundred years if you hadn’t gone to look for it.’

  ‘Only because you came back —’

  ‘On the right day, at the right time, and with the right person.’ Getting up, he squeezed the hard rusty medal into her soft palm. ‘No, it wasn’t the Cross I came for. It was my lost youth.’

  She understood this, even though her own youth still lay ahead of her, she understood it, not as an adult, but with the wisdom of the child that was still part of her. She walked with him to the gate and stood there gazing after him as he walked away. Where the road turned, he glanced back and waved to her. Then he quickened his step and moved briskly towards the bus stop. There was a spring in his step. Something cried aloud in his heart.

  A Love of Long Ago

  Last week, as the taxi took me to Delhi, I passed through the small town in the foothills where I had lived as a young man.

  Well, it’s the only road to Delhi and one must go that way, but I seldom travel beyond the foothills. As the years go by, my visits to the city — any city — are few and far between. But whenever I am on that road, I look out of the window of my bus or taxi, to catch a glimpse of the first-floor balcony where a row of potted plants lend colour to an old and decrepit building. Ferns, a palm, a few bright marigolds, zinnias and nasturtiums — they made that balcony stand out from others; it was impossible to miss it.

  But last week, when I looked out of the taxi window, the balcony garden had gone. A few broken pots remained; but the ferns had crumpled into dust, the palm had turned brown and yellow, and of the flowers nothing remained.

  All these years I had taken that balcony garden for granted, and now it had gone. It jerked me upright in my seat. I looked back at the building for signs of life, but saw none. The taxi sped on. On my way back, I decided, I would look again. But it was as though a part of my life had come to an abrupt end; a part that I had almost come to take for granted. The link between youth and middle-age, the bridge that spanned that gap, had suddenly been swept away.

  And what had happened to Kamla, I wondered. Kamla, who had tended those plants all these years, knowing I would be looking out for them even though I might not see her, even though she might never see me.

  Chance gives, and takes away, and gives again. But I would have

  to look elsewhere now, for the memories of my love, my young love, the girl who came into my life for a few blissful weeks and then went out of it for the remainder of our lives.

  Was it almost thirty years ago that it all happened? How old was I then? Twenty-two at the most! And Kamla could not have been more than seventeen.

  She had a laughing face, mischievous, always ready to break into smiles or peals of laughter. Sparkling brown eyes. How can I ever forget those eyes? Peeping at me from behind a window curtain, following me as I climbed the steps to my room — the room that was separated from her quarters by a narrow wooden landing that creaked loudly if I tried to move quietly across it. The trick was to dash across, as she did so neatly on her butterfly feet.

  She was always on the move — flitting about on the verandah, running errands of no consequence, dancing on the steps, singing on the rooftop as she hung out the family washing. Only once was she still. That was when we met on the steps in the dark, and I stole a kiss, a sweet phantom kiss. She was very still then, very close, a butterfly drawing out nectar, and then she broke away from me and ran away laughing.

  ‘What is your work?’ she asked me one day.

  ‘I write stories.’

  ‘Will you write one about me?’

  ‘Some day.’

  I was living in a room above Moti-Bibi’s grocery shop near the cinema. At night I could hear the sound-track from the film. The songs did not help me much with my writing, nor with my affair, for Kamla could not come out at night. We met in the afternoons when the whole town took a siesta and expected us to do the same. Kamla had a young brother who worked for Moti-Bibi (a widow who was also my landlady) and it was through the boy that I had first met Kamla.

  Moti-Bibi always a sent me a glass of Kanji or sugar-cane juice or lime-juice (depending on the season) around noon. Usually the boy brought me the drink, but one day I looked up from my typew- riter to see what at first I thought was an apparition hovering over me. She seemed to shimmer before me in the hot sunlight that came slashing through the open door. I looked up into her face and our eyes met over the rim of the glass. I forgot to take it from her.

  What I liked about her was her smile. It dropped over her face slowly, like sunshine moving over brown hills. She seemed to give out some of the glow that was in her face. I felt it pour over me. And this golden feeling did not pass when she left the room. That was how I knew she was going to mean something special to me.

  They were poor, but in time I was to realise that I was even poorer. When I discovered that plans were afoot to marry her to a widower of forty, I plucked up enough courage to declare that I would marry her myself. But my youth was no consideration. The widower had land and a generous gift of money for Kamla’s parents. Not only was this offer attractive; it was customary. What had I to offer? A small rented room, a typewriter, and a precarious income of two to three hundred rupees a month from freelancing. I told the brother that I would be famous one day, that I would be rich, that I would be writing bestsellers! He did not believe me. And who can blame him? I never did write bestsellers or become rich. Nor did I have parents or relatives to speak on my behalf.

  I thought of running away with Kamla. When I mentioned it to her, her eyes lit up. She thought it would be great fun. Women in love can be more reckless than men! But I had read too many stories about runaway marriages ending in disaster, and I lacked the cour- age to go through with such an adventure. I must have known instinctively that it would not work. Where would we go, and how would we live? There would be no home to crawl back to, for either of us.

  Had I loved more passionately, more fiercely, I might have felt compelled to elope with Kamla, regardless of the consequences. But it never became an intense relationship. We had so few moments together. Always stolen moments — on the stairs, on the roof, in the deserted junk-yard behind the shops. She seemed to enjoy every moment of this secret affair. I fretted and longed for something more permanent. Her responses, so sweet and generous, only made my longing greater
. But she seemed content with the immediate moment and what it offered.

  And so the marriage took place, and she did not appear to be too dismayed about her future. But before she left for her husband’s house, she asked me for some of the plants that I had owned and nourished on my small balcony.

  ‘Take them all,’ I said. ‘I am leaving, anyway.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Delhi — to find work. But I shall come this way sometimes.’

  ‘My husband’s house is on the Delhi road. You will pass that way. I will keep these flowers where you can see them.’

  We did not touch each other in parting. Her brother came and collected the plants. Only the cactii remained. Not a lover’s plant, the cactus! I gave the cactii to my landlady and went to live in Delhi.

  *

  And whenever I passed through the old place, summer or winter, I looked out of the window of my bus or taxi and saw the garden flourishing on Kamla’s balcony; leaf and fern abounded, and the flowers grew rampant on the sunny ledge.

  Once I saw her, leaning over the balcony railing. I stopped the taxi and waved to her. She waved back, smiling like the sun break- ing through clouds. She called to me to come up, but I said I would come another time. I never did visit her home, and I never saw her husband. Her parents had gone back to their village, her brother had vanished into the great grey spaces of India.

  In recent years, after leaving Delhi and making my home in the hills, I have passed through the town less often; but the flowers have always been there, bright and glowing in their increasingly shabby surroundings. Except on this last journey of mine . . .

  And on the return trip, only yesterday, I looked again, but the house was empty and desolate. I got out of the car and looked up at the balcony and called Kamla’s name — called it after so many years — but there was no answer.

  I asked questions in the locality. The old man had died, his wife had gone away, probably to her village. There had been no children. Would she return? No one could say. The house had been sold; it would be pulled down to make way for a block of flats.

  I glanced once more at the deserted balcony, the withered, drooping plants. A butterfly flitted about the railing, looking in vain for a flower on which to alight. It settled briefly on my hand, before opening its wings and fluttering away into the blue.

  Footnote

  Introduction

  *The words are by a little-known poet, Sarah Doudney.

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  First published by Penguin Books India 1988

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  Copyright © Ruskin Bond 1988

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  ISBN: 978-0-140-11615-1

  This digital edition published in 2016.

  e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75441-4

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