When Darkness Falls and Other Stories Read online

  One afternoon, when Granny was at a bridge-party and Uncle Ken was taking a walk, I rummaged through the storeroom adjoining the back veranda, leafing through old scrapbooks and magazines. Behind a pile of books I discovered an old wind-up gramophone, an album of well-preserved gramophone records, and a box of steel needles. I took the gramophone into the sitting-room and tried out one of the records. It sounded all right. So I played a few more. They were all songs of yesteryear, romantic ballads sung by tenors and baritones who were popular in the 1920s and 30s. Granny did not listen to music, and the gramophone had been neglected a long time. Now, for the first time in many years, the room was full of melody. One Alone, I’ll See You Again, Will You Remember?, Only A Rose …

  Only a rose

  to give you,

  Only a song

  dying away,

  Only a smile

  to keep in memory

  It was while this tender love song was playing that a transformation seemed to come over the room.

  At first it grew darker. Then a soft pink glow suffused the room, and I saw the figure of a woman, a smiling melancholy woman in white, drifting, rather than walking, towards me. She stopped in the centre of the room, and appeared to be watching me. She wore the long flowing dress of an earlier day, and her hair was arranged in a sort of coiffure that I’d seen in old photographs.

  As the song came to an end, the apparition vanished. The room was normal again. I put away the gramophone and the records. I felt disturbed rather than afraid, and I did not wish to conjure up further emanations from the past.

  But in my dreams that night I saw the beautiful sad lady again. She was waltzing in the garden, sometimes by herself, sometimes partnered by other phantom dancers. She beckoned to me in my dream, inviting me to join her, but I remained standing on the veranda steps until she danced away into the distance and faded from view.

  And in the morning when I woke I found a red rose, moist with dew, lying beside my pillow.

  Return of the White Pigeon

  About fifty years ago, on the outskirts of Dehra Dun, there lived a happily married couple, an English colonel and his beautiful Persian wife. They were both enthusiastic gardeners, and their beautiful bungalow was covered with bougainvillaea and Gul-i-Phanoos, while in the garden the fragrance of the rose challenged the sweet scent of the jasmine.

  They had lived together many years when the wife suddenly became very ill. Nothing could be done for her. As she lay dying, she told her servants that she would return to her beloved garden in the form of a white pigeon so that she could be near her husband and the place she loved so dearly.

  The couple had no children, and as the years passed after his wife’s death the Colonel found life very lonely. When he met an attractive English widow a few years younger than himself, he married her and brought her home to his beautiful house. But as he was carrying his new bride through the porch and up the veranda steps, a white pigeon came fluttering into the garden and perched on a rose bush. There it remained for a long time, cooing and murmuring in a sad, subdued manner.

  Every day it entered the garden and alighted on the rose bush where it would call sadly and persistently. The servants became upset and even frightened. They remembered their previous mistress’s dying promise, and they were convinced that her spirit dwelt in the white pigeon.

  When the Colonel’s new wife heard the story, she was naturally upset. Her husband did not give any credence to the tale, but when he saw how troubled his wife looked, he decided to do something about it. And so one day, when the pigeon appeared, he took his rifle and slipped out of the house, quietly making his way down the verandah steps. When he saw the pigeon on the rose bush, he raised his gun, took aim, and fired.

  There was a high-pitched woman’s scream. And then the pigeon flew away unsteadily, its white breast dark with blood. Where it fell, no one knew.

  That same night the Colonel died in his sleep. The doctor put it down to heart failure, which was true enough; but the servants said he had always kept good health, and they were sure his death had something to do with the killing of the white pigeon.

  The Colonel’s widow left Dehra Dun, and the beautiful bungalow fell into ruin. The garden became a jungle, and jackals passed through the abandoned rooms. The Colonel had been buried in the grounds of his estate, and the gravestone can still be found, although the inscription has long since disappeared.

  Few people pass that way. But those who do, say that they have often seen a white pigeon resting on the grave; a white pigeon with a crimson stain on its breast.

  Young Man in a Tonga

  Ever since I was five, tongas and their drivers have been great favourites with me. I do not count the tonga-driver who eloped with my beloved ayah. Though I could not help admiring his bright green waistcoat and the swiftness of his pony, I could never forgive him for stealing the heart of my ayah, a heart which had, till then, been entirely in my possession. His elopement left me with a vague prejudice against tonga-drivers—until I met Latif.

  Latif was a dreamy sort of fellow who should have been writing poetry instead of driving a two-wheeled buggy for a living. He did occasionally dabble in verse, whenever he could find a sufficient amount of inspiration in women or alcohol. He was, by his own account, descended from one of the Nawabs of Avadh, and he kept his glossy black hair at shoulder-length in order to look the part of a decadent poet-nawab.

  He was slim, wore the cool, airy Lucknow kurta and pyjama, and outlined his eyes with kohl.

  I must have been seven years old when I first met him. It was raining heavily. I had hoped that this would prevent me from attending school, but my grandmother, with whom I was frequently at war, sent the servant out for a tonga.

  It came rattling up the driveway, the pony splashing through the puddles, the wheels churning up soft mud. The driver salaamed, and I clambered up on the front seat beside him. I had decided that I would at least enjoy the ride to school; and that could only be done by sitting in the front seat.

  Away we went.

  That first ride with Latif made me his devoted admirer. The rain, and the wind whipping it across our faces, seemed to unleash the high spirits of both Latif and his pony. Shouting profanities and endearments at the beast, he sent the tonga careering along the road at break-neck speed.

  He gave me a sly look out of the corner of his eyes to see how I was reacting to this mad, Gilpin-like gallop; and when he saw that I was enjoying it (though a trifle apprehensively), he drew me nearer and, making his whip sing through the air and twang on his pony’s rump, he had us going at such a spanking pace that my school was left far behind before I realized we had passed it.

  But we had made such good time that I wasn’t late. When he put me down at the school gate, he said, ‘My name is Latif. Whenever you want a tonga ride, send for me, all right? Are we friends?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘And when I grow up, I will have a tonga like yours.’

  He laughed at that—afterwards I thought it might have been a slightly bitter laugh—and sent his pony cantering down the road, while I gazed after the contraption with worshipful admiration.

  As it was the monsoon season, we had many rides together; sometimes to and from school, and sometimes even further afield, off the main road, across the little river bed, through fields and a small village, and then home by a short cut through the slums of the town.

  When I was sent to a boarding school in the hills, I deeply missed Latif and his tonga. It was not only the rides that I missed, but the man himself, his lively conversation, sly grin, the Urdu poetry which he recited aloud and which I was never able to follow, the songs he shouted at the top of his voice.

  I would, of course, come down to the plains for my winter holidays, and Latif would always be there, his tonga bells jingling at the gate. He would look thinner and a little wilder each year, but never older. I never did know how old he was. There is something deceptive in the appearance of a person suffering from tubercul
osis, and Latif’s youth and high spirits were all the more noticeable for their impermanence. The tendency to snatch at life, to sweep together greedily all the sensations life offers, is said to be characteristic of the consumptive temperament.

  Tongas were no longer a common sight in the town. Buses and cycle-rickshaws were beginning to take their place. But Latif wasn’t strong enough to pedal a cycle-rickshaw all day in the heat, and he persevered with his tonga in spite of diminishing returns. I don’t think he would have given it up even if he could have run a rickshaw or driven a bus.

  He did not eat much but he kept himself going on some orange-coloured country liquor. Whether this stuff shortened his life or helped to extend it, I couldn’t say. But it helped him to laugh at his poverty, and to recite new verses, and to gallop his pony even faster—and that, of course, was what I wanted.

  I was fifteen when we had our most daring adventure.

  Latif overtook me in the evening while I was walking home from a cinema. At first he set his pony’s head in the direction of my house; then he suggested a brief spin on the outskirts of the town. As it was not yet dark, I readily agreed. He gave a shout of joy, promised his pony all the pleasures of the bridal bed, and sent the ageing creature cantering through the mango groves that surrounded the town.

  We were soon in the countryside, and Latif would every now and then reach down under the seat where fodder was kept, produce a large bottle of orange liquor and take a generous swig from it. I, too, occasionally put the bottle to my lips, but it was like an acid tearing at the walls of my stomach and I gladly handed my companion the lion’s share.

  It had grown dark, and I suggested that we return home. Latif, always ready to oblige, turned the tonga about. It may have been the darkness, or the drink, but he took the pony down an altogether different road which grew narrower and more bumpy as we went along. Finally, the pony blew hard through its nostrils and came to a halt. The reins slipped from Latif’s fingers, he slid his length along the seat and broke into loud snoring.

  Knowing that I ought to have been at home long before this, I was far from sleepy. I got down from the tonga and tramped back along the broken path until I reached the main road. There I waited until a bullock cart came along. Begging a ride, I got back to town and finally reached home at about ten o’clock. My grandmother was furious, but she finally believed my story that the film was Gone with the Wind and that it had lasted almost four hours.

  To this day I don’t know how Latif got home. Perhaps he spent the night in the open, in his tonga. When I met him a few weeks later, he did not remember the incident! He was looking pale and rather emaciated; and he told me he had been sick.

  ‘It’s this cough of mine,’ he complained. ‘My friend, I am coughing my lifeblood away. One of these days I will simply fade into invisibility, and the world will have lost a great poet.’ Then, seeing that I was not very impressed, he added, ‘And you will have lost a great tonga-driver.’

  He was right, of course. He had no equal when it came to dealing with tongas. But he was no longer a common sight on the roads. His beautiful hair had lost much of its sheen, and his eyes, always bright, looked brighter than ever in his cavernous face.

  But he still laughed at himself and at the world, and continued to compose his verses. His poetry was spontaneous, arising from the immediate moment, and as he never put any of it down on paper—he was much too lazy—it has been lost to posterity.

  One evening I saw his tonga standing by itself under a tall peepul tree, and I called out, ‘Latif, will you take me home today?’

  The man who looked up at me from the other side of the carriage was not Latif, but a rather coarse-looking individual with paan-stained teeth. But I could not mistake the pony and the tonga.

  ‘Where is Latif?’ I asked.

  ‘Gone,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘God knows. But that he has gone a considerable distance I am absolutely certain, because I helped to bury him last week. He coughed his lungs out one night, and there was very little left of him to bury. His wife and children sold me this tonga of his, so they have enough to carry on with for a few months.’

  I had not known that Latif possessed a wife and children in addition to his tonga. He had never told me anything about his private life, and I had never been curious. For me, he had been inseparable from his pony. He had been a wild, exulting fellow who liked the breeze slapping him in the face and the ground swerving and snaking beneath him, as he galloped through life with all the exhilaration of the short-lived.

  I vowed that I would allow no other tonga-driver to replace Latif in my life and affections. And I sent up a prayer, to his God and mine and whatever gods there be, that my friend might find large numbers of fast ponies wherever they chose to send him.

  The Writer’s Bar

  For some time now, Nandu has had this notion, or dream if you like, of naming the old Savoy bar the ‘Writers’ Bar’.

  ‘But to do that,’ I said, ‘You’d have to get a few writers in here, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, you’re one, aren’t you? Don’t you have any writer friends?’

  ‘Hardly any. And the few I know are teetotallers. The Hemingway type is out of fashion.’

  ‘Last year, when I was in Singapore,’ said Nandu, ‘I revisited the historic Raffles Hotel—it’s about the same age as the Savoy—and they had a Writer’s Bar with brass plaques on the walls stating that Somerset Maugham had been there, and Joseph Conrad, and Graham Greene.’

  ‘All very sober people,’ I remarked.

  ‘Yes, but they stayed there, and they must have had the occasional drink at the Bar, even if it was only a nimbu pani.’

  ‘Well, in the good old days, the Savoy must have had the occasional writer staying here.’

  ‘There was Pearl Buck. I still have her autograph in one of her books. She won the Nobel Prize, didn’t she?’

  ‘She did, but I doubt if she frequented the bar. I believe she was the daughter of missionaries.’

  ‘All the more reason for taking to drink. In any case, she must have looked in here from time to time. We’ll put her name on a plaque.’

  ‘All right. We’ve got Pearl Buck.’

  ‘What about Rudyard Kipling? He must have stayed here.’

  ‘My dear chap,’ I said. ‘The hotel opened in 1905. By that time Kipling had left India, never to return.’

  ‘You’re not being very helpful,’ said Nandu. ‘What about John Masters?’

  ‘Quite possible,’ I said. ‘He served with a Gurkha regiment in Dehra Dun. Must have come up the hill occasionally. Probably dropped in for a drink. Here or at the Charleville.’

  ‘Forget about the Charleville, it burnt down years ago. We’ll give John Masters a plaque. That’s two we’ve got!’

  ‘Why don’t we look up the old hotel register?’ I asked.

  ‘The previous manager walked off with it,’ said Nandu ruefully.

  ‘Probably wanted Pearl Buck’s autograph.’

  ‘Who was that fellow who wrote about the separation bell? You know, the bell they used to ring at four every morning so that people could get back to their own rooms?’

  ‘I’ve heard of the bell,’ I said. ‘But I can’t remember the name of the writer.’

  ‘Somerset Maugham?’

  ‘I don’t think he visited Mussoorie. It was a travel writer.’

  ‘The Gantzers? Bill Aitken?’

  ‘They are still alive. But if you ask them in for a drink, they might let you put their names up.’

  ‘A free drink, you mean?’ Nandu didn’t look too happy.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Let’s stick to the dead. Pandit Nehru stayed here. He was a writer.’

  ‘Yes, Nandu. But I don’t think you’d have found him in the bar.’

  ‘Sir Edmund Hillary?’

  ‘Well, he wrote his autobiography. Probably stopped by for a drink after climbing Everest.’

 
‘All right, I’ve got it! Jim Corbett!’

  ‘But he lived in Naini Tal,’ I protested. ‘I doubt if he ever came here.’

  ‘His parents were married in Mussoorie. You told me so yourself. And he wrote that book, The Maneater of Rudraprayag. Rudraprayag is only eighty miles from here, as the crow flies.’

  ‘All right, all right. And after shooting the maneater, Corbett tramped all the way to Mussoorie to have a refreshing beer at the Savoy. There was no motor road then, Nandu. He must have needed a drink very badly.’

  ‘It’s possible. He used to walk great distances.’

  ‘To shoot maneaters, not to drink beer. But let’s give him a plaque, on the strength of his parents having been married in Mussoorie. Who do we have now?’

  ‘Pearl Buck, John Masters, Jim Corbett!’

  The plaques are being prepared. The Writers’ Bar will be inaugurated in the spring. If any reader can come up with a suitable candidate for inclusion, he’ll be entitled to a free drink.

  Only the other evening, when I was into my third whisky, a gentleman who looked exactly like Rudyard Kipling, walked up to the bar and asked the barman, ‘Do you serve spirits?’

  Before we could ask him to join us, he’d vanished.

  Topaz

  It seemed strange to be listening to the strains of ‘The Blue Danube’ while gazing out at the pine-clad slopes of the Himalayas, worlds apart. And yet the music of the waltz seemed singularly appropriate. A light breeze hummed through the pines, and the branches seemed to move in time to the music. The record player was new, but the records were old, picked up in a junk shop behind the Mall.

  Below the pines there were oaks, and one oak tree in particular caught my eye. It was the biggest of the lot and stood by itself on a little knoll below the cottage. The breeze was not strong enough to lift its heavy old branches, but something was moving, swinging gently from the tree, keeping time to the music of the waltz, dancing …

  It was someone hanging from the tree.