The Parrot Who Wouldn't Talk & Other Stories Page 3

  Next day Grandfather took me to the station and put me on the train to Delhi. It was the right train this time.

  ‘I’ll look after the white mice,’ he said.

  Grandfather grew quite fond of the mice and even wrote to Mr Ghosh, asking if he could spare another pair. But Mr Ghosh, he learnt later, had been transferred to another part of the country, and had taken his family with him.

  We Capture a Ghost

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  This is a question I am often asked, especially by young people who seem to be fascinated by the supernatural even if their daily routine is dominated by the latest in technology.

  I don’t actually believe in ghosts, I have to admit. But I do see or hear them from time to time!

  I guess we all see ghosts occasionally—those faces of strangers passing by, teasingly familiar, although we are unable to place them . . . Did we know them in some former life? Have we met them in our dreams? What are ghosts, after all, but the phantoms who people our dreams. Some we recognize, others we meet for the first time.

  I do hear ghosts occasionally. That tapping on the windowpane late at night, when I am only half asleep. Is it a moth or bat or some passing spirit trying to make me aware of its presence? I cannot see anything even if I put my face to the glass. But then, we cannot see the wind, although it is always present. Invisible wind—sometimes gentle, sometimes demonic.

  And here I must tell you about the little ghost my grandparents captured.

  I came down from boarding school one winter, when I was twelve or thirteen, and went to stay with my grandparents in their old house in Dehra. They gave me a room to myself—a room that really belonged to my uncle, Ken. But he refused to stay in it, because he did not like having his sleep disturbed by strange noises. Uncle Ken could fall asleep at any time of the day or night, and usually did.

  There was a large wooden trunk in a corner of the room, very heavy and solid, so heavy that I could barely move it an inch or two. It was always locked and Granny had the key, and she did not give the key to anyone, including Grandfather.

  On my first night in the room, I was woken up by a loud knocking. I got up and opened the bedroom door, but there was no one outside. As soon as I was back in bed, the knocking started again, and I realized that it was coming from inside the wooden trunk. This knocking continued on and off throughout the night.

  Next day, when I told grandfather about it, he just laughed and said, ‘Oh, that’s our resident ghost. We had to catch him and lock him up; he was becoming a real nuisance. A very mischievous fellow, always breaking things when he was in a temper—throwing furniture about, leaving doors and windows open, frightening your Aunt Mabel! He’s a wicked little pret—an Indian version of a poltergeist—and we had to lock him up.’

  ‘But how did you manage that?’ I asked. ‘How do you catch a ghost?’

  ‘Well, one day he was in the laundry basket, busy ripping up my pyjamas, when I slammed the basket shut. And then we put pret and basket into that empty trunk in your room, and locked it up forever. Granny has the key, and she won’t part with it. Says she’s lost most of her valuable china.’

  I felt a bit sorry for the ghost, locked up on its own in a dark trunk. But when, at night, it started its incessant knocking, I got quite angry and shouted: ‘Shut up, you noisy little imp!’ And he did shut up for some time. But then, towards morning, he would start knocking again and I thought I heard a squeaky little voice crying, ‘Let me out, please let me out!’ No wonder Uncle Ken refused to sleep in the room.

  But I got used to it; and when a few weeks later I returned to school, the room was closed and remained unoccupied except for the imprisoned pret. A year or two later, when my grandparents left the country to retire in New Zealand, they left the property in charge of my cousin Percy, a selfish young man who had no intention of inviting me or Uncle Ken or anyone else to stay in the old house.

  I heard later that Granny’s keys had come into his possession, and that he had gone through all the locked cupboards and boxes in the house, coming at last to the locked trunk in Uncle Ken’s old room.

  Convinced that the trunk contained valuables or even treasure, Percy lost no time in unlocking it. But when he raised the lid, there was a rush of foetid air, and he fell over as something soft and clammy embraced him.

  Percy rushed from the room, but the grateful pret—freed at last—was after him, following him from room to room and then all over the garden and mango grove. Cousin Percy packed his bags and fled to Bombay where he had a flat on the seafront. But the ghost clung to him and followed him everywhere. Percy took passage on an Arab dhow and sailed for the coast of Africa. But there was no escape. He was last seen on a beach in Zanzibar, playing with a pet lobster and holding an animated conversation with an invisible companion, presumably the ever-present pret.

  And what of the old house? Well, Uncle Ken moved in and lived there quite comfortably for the rest of his days, making a modest living from the proceeds of the mangoes and papayas in Grandfather’s orchard.

  Bitter Gooseberries

  As a young man, Grandfather had spent a few years in Burma, and this was one of the stories he liked to tell us . . .

  This is the story of the snake and the gooseberries and much else besides, so be still, don’t interrupt, and don’t ask questions. Are you listening? Well, then. There was once a snake and he lived in a gooseberry bush, and every night he turned into a handsome prince. Now there is nothing extraordinary about this, it happens all the time, especially in Burma where everyone is handsome anyway . . . But a story can’t succeed unless there’s a woman in it, so there was also a woman who lived in a little bamboo house with orchids hanging in the veranda, and she had three daughters called Ma Gyi, Ma Lat and Ma Nge. And Ma Nge was the youngest and the nicest and the most beautiful, because a story can’t succeed unless she is all these things.

  Well, one day the mother of Ma Nge had to go out to fetch gooseberries from the forest. They were bitter gooseberries. Burmese ladies call them zi-byu-thi, and prefer them to sweet gooseberries. The woman took her basket along; and just as she was starting to pick gooseberries, the snake who lived in the gooseberry bush hissed at her, as much as to say: ‘Be off.’ This was the snake who was a prince by night, but now of course it was broad daylight, and anyway Burmese women aren’t afraid of snakes. Moreover, the snake recalled that this was the mother of three daughters, and he had a fondness for daughters, so he changed his mind about sending the woman away, and waited for her to speak first, because she was a woman, and women are remarkable for their business capacity.

  The woman said, ‘Please give me a gooseberry.’ Women are always wanting something; it’s a part of their business philosophy.

  But the snake said no. He had remembered that he was a prince and that princes aren’t supposed to say yes to anything; not at first, anyway. It was a matter of principle.

  Then the woman said, ‘If you like my eldest daughter, Ma Gyi, give me a gooseberry.’ He didn’t care for Ma Gyi, because he knew she had a terrible temper (or perhaps it was a distemper), but he gave the woman a gooseberry as a matter of policy. ‘One gooseberry is about all that Ma Gyi is worth,’ he said to himself.

  But women all over the world, from Burma to Bermuda and beyond, are never satisfied with only one of anything, and she said, ‘If you like my second daughter, Ma Lat, give me another gooseberry.’

  The prince knew that Ma Lat had a squint, but he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so he gave the woman another gooseberry; and thus encouraged, she said, ‘And if you like my youngest daughter, Ma Nge, give me another gooseberry.’

  At that, the snake trembled so violently from tip to tail that every gooseberry fell off the bush; for the snake prince knew that Ma Nge was the youngest and nicest and most beautiful of them all. And the woman gathered up all the gooseberries, put them in her basket, and took them home because they were bitter (zi-byu-thi), and because she was a woman of remar
kable business capacity.

  On the way she met a signpost and gave it a gooseberry, saying, ‘If a snake comes enquiring which way I have gone, don’t tell him, but point in the opposite direction.’ She said this because she knew the signpost would do just the opposite.

  Then she went on and said the same thing to two more signposts (everything has to be done three times in the best stories), and the posts all did the same thing, which was to show the snake the proper road, because that is what signposts are supposed to do.

  The snake had little difficulty in following the woman to her house. He hid in a large jar, and when she came to get something, he slid out and coiled round her arm in the manner of a prospective son in-law.

  ‘If you love my daughter Ma Gyi, let go,’ cried the woman, pretending to be frightened. (She knew quite well that the snake was a prince.)

  But the snake hung on, because he didn’t love Ma Gyi, who had a bad temper and probably distemper, too.

  ‘If you love Ma Lat, let go!’

  But the snake hung on. Although he personally had nothing against squinty-eyed women, he did not relish the prospect of being stared at by one all his life.

  And then (because everything must be done three times) the woman cried, ‘If you love my daughter Ma Nge, let go!’

  The snake fell swooning to the ground. And as night had come on quite suddenly, in the snake’s place the mother found the supplicant prince, smitten with love for her youngest daughter. And she wasted no time in getting him married to Ma Nge.

  That ought to be the end of the story. But in Burma stories don’t end, they just go on and on forever, so that sometimes it is difficult to print them. But the prince had to do something to break the spell, because after some time Ma Nge found it rather irritating being married to a prince who was her husband by night and a snake by day. She said she preferred a man about the place even during the day. It was she who managed to break the spell because, like her mother, she had this remarkable business capacity. All she did was to find her husband a job, and the shock was so great that it broke the spell. It was the first time in his life that the prince had been expected to do any work, and he was so shaken that he completely forgot how to turn himself back into a snake.

  But the prince stuck to his job, and worked so hard that sometimes his wife felt quite lonely; she didn’t know that his employers had given him a beautiful secretary, and that this was encouraging him to work overtime. And so, when he came home late and went straight to bed after dinner, she began to scold him and complain of his indifference. One morning he became so disgusted with her constant nagging that he found he could remember the magic spell and immediately turned himself into an enormous snake.

  He started by trying to swallow his wife’s feet. Ma Nge called out to her mother, but her mother said that was quite all right.

  ‘He has swallowed my knees,’ wailed poor Ma Nge.

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ replied her mother, who was cooking in the next room. ‘You never can tell what an amorous husband will do.’

  ‘He has swallowed my neck.’

  The mother thought this was going too far; and when no further calls came from her daughter, she burst into the room and remonstrated with the snake, who had entirely swallowed Ma Nge.

  ‘Give her up at once,’ cried the indignant mother.

  ‘Not unless you agree to my terms,’ said the snake. ‘First, I’m to be a snake whenever I feel like it. Second, I’m to be a real prince and go to work only when I feel like it. How can your daughter love me if I come home tired from the office like any other man? You wanted a prince for a son-in-law. You got one. Now you must let me live like a prince.’

  The mother agreed to his terms, and he un-swallowed his wife, and from that day onwards the two women did all the work while the prince sat in the veranda under the hanging orchids and drank a wonderful beer made from bitter gooseberries.

  *

  ‘Can you make gooseberry beer?’ I asked Grandfather when he had finished his story.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Grandfather. ‘The day your grandmother allows it, I’ll make gooseberry beer and plum wine and apple cider and a gin tonic, too!’

  But Grandmother did not allow it. Strong drink had been banned ever since Uncle Ken had taken too much and fallen into a ditch.

  A Bicycle Ride with Uncle Ken

  Kissing a girl while sharing a bicycle with her is no easy task, but I managed it when I was thirteen and my cousin Melanie was fourteen. Of course we both fell off in the process, and landed in one of Granny’s flower beds where we were well cushioned by her nasturtiums.

  I was a clumsy boy always falling off bicycles, and Cousin Melanie was teaching me to ride properly, making me sit on the front seat while she guided the infernal machine from the carrier seat. The kiss was purely experimental. I had not kissed a girl before, and as Cousin Melanie seemed eminently kissable, I thought I’d start with her. I waited until we were stationary, and she was instructing me on the intricacies of the cycle chain, and then I gave her a hurried kiss on the cheek. She was so startled that she fell backwards, taking me and the bicycle with her.

  Later, she reported me to Granny who said, ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on that boy. He’s showing signs of a dissolute nature.’

  ‘What’s dissolute, Uncle Ken?’ I asked my favourite uncle.

  ‘It means you’re going to the dogs. You’re not supposed to kiss your cousin.’

  ‘Can I kiss other girls?’

  ‘Only if they are willing.’

  ‘Did you ever kiss a girl, Uncle Ken?’

  Uncle Ken blushed. ‘Er . . . well . . . a long time ago.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Another time.’

  ‘No, tell me now. How old were you?’

  ‘About twenty.’

  ‘And how old was she?’

  ‘A bit younger.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘We went cycling together. I was staying in Agra, when your grandfather worked there on the railways. Daisy’s father was an engine driver. But she didn’t like engines; they left her covered with soot. Everyone had a bicycle in those days, only the very rich had cars. And the cars could not keep up with the bicycles.

  ‘We lived in the cantonment, where the roads were straight and wide. Daisy and I went on cycle rides to Fatehpur Sikri and Agra and of course the Taj Mahal, and one evening we saw the Taj Mahal by moonlight and it made us very romantic, and when I saw her home we kissed under the Asoka trees.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so romantic, Uncle Ken. Why didn’t you marry Daisy?’

  ‘I didn’t have a job. She said she’d wait until I got one, but after two years she got tried of waiting. She married a ticket-inspector.’

  ‘Such a sad story,’ I said. ‘And you still don’t have a job.’

  Uncle Ken had been through various jobs—private tutor, salesman, shop assistant, hotel manager (until he brought about the closure of the hotel), and cricket coach, this last on the strength of bearing a close resemblance to Geoff Boycott—but at present he was unemployed, and only too ready to put his vast experience of life at my disposal.

  Not only did he teach me to ride a bicycle, he also accompanied me on cycle rides around Dehra and along the lanes and country roads outside the town.

  A bicycle provides its rider with a great amount of freedom. A car will take you further, but the fact that you’re sitting in a confined space detracts from the freedom of the open spaces and unfamiliar roads. On a cycle you can feel the breeze on your face, smell the mango trees in blossom, slow down and gaze at the buffaloes wading in the ponds, or just stop anywhere and get down and enjoy a cup of tea or a glass of sugar cane juice. Footslogging takes time, and cars are too fast—everything whizzes past before you can take a second look—and car drivers hate having to stop; they are intent only on reaching their destinations in good time. But a bicycle is just right for someone who likes to take a leisurely look at the world as well
as to give the world a chance to look at him.

  Uncle Ken and I had some exhilarating bicycle rides during my winter holidays, and the most memorable of these was our unplanned visit to a certain ‘Rest Home’ situated on the outskirts of the town. It isn’t there now, so don’t go looking for it.

  We had cycled quite far that day, and were tired and thirsty. There was no sign of a tea shop on that particular road, but when we arrived at the open gate of an impressive building with a signboard saying ‘Rest and Recuperation Centre’, we presumed it was a hotel or hostelry of sorts and rode straight into the premises. There was an extensive lawn on one side, surrounded by neat hedges and flowering shrubs. A number of people were strolling about on the lawn; some were sitting on benches; one or two were straddling a wall, talking to themselves; another was standing alone, singing to a non-existent audience. Some were Europeans; a few were Indians.

  We left our cycles in the porch and went in search of refreshment. A lady in a white sari gave us cool water from a surahi and told us we could wait on a bench just outside their office. But Uncle Ken said we’d prefer to meet some of the guests, and led me across the lawn to where the singer was practising his notes. He was a florid gentleman, heavily built.

  ‘Do you like my singing?’ he asked, as we came up.

  ‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed Uncle Ken. ‘You sing like Caruso.’

  ‘I am Caruso!’ affirmed the tenor, and let rip the opening notes of a famous operatic aria. ‘Your tiny hand is frozen,’ he sang, although it was an unusually warm day.

  We hurried on and met an elegant couple who were parading up and down the lawn, waving their hands to an invisible crowd.

  ‘Good day to you, gentlemen,’ said a flamboyant individual. ‘You’re the ambassadors from Sweden, I suppose.’

  ‘If you so wish,’ said Uncle Ken gallantly. ‘And I have the honour of speaking to—?’