Thick as Thieves Read online

  He gripped me more tightly as the fit took possession of him. Instead of struggling, I lay still, tried to absorb some of his anguish, tried to draw some of his agitation to myself. I had a strange fancy that by identifying myself with his convulsions, I might alleviate them.

  I pressed against Kamal, and whispered soothingly into his ear, and then, when I noticed his mouth working, I thrust my fingers between his teeth to prevent him from biting his tongue. But so violent was the convulsion that his teeth bit into the flesh of my palm and ground against my knuckles. I shouted with the pain and tried to jerk my hand away, but it was impossible to loosen the grip of his jaws. So I closed my eyes and counted—counted till seven—until consciousness returned to him and his muscles relaxed. My hand was shaking and covered with blood. I bound it in my handkerchief and kept it hidden from Kamal.

  We walked back to the room without talking much. Kamal looked depressed and weak. I kept my hand beneath my shirt, and Kamal was too dejected to notice anything. It was only at night, when he returned from his classes, that he noticed the cuts, and I told him I had slipped on the road, cutting my hand on some broken glass.

  The rains came upon Shahganj. And, until the rain stops, Shahganj is fresh and clean and alive. The children run out of their houses, glorying in their nakedness. The gutters choke, and the narrow street becomes a torrent of water, coursing merrily down to the bus stop. It swirls over the trees and the roofs of the town, and the parched earth soaks it up, exuding a fragrance that comes only once in a year, the fragrance of quenched earth, that most exhilarating of smells.

  The rain swept in through the door and soaked the cot. When I had succeeded in closing the door, I found the roof leaking, the water trickling down the walls and forming new pictures on the cracking plaster. The door flew open again, and there was Kamal standing on the threshold, shaking himself like a wet dog. Coming in, he stripped and dried himself, and then sat shivering on the bed while I made frantic efforts to close the door again.

  ‘You need some tea,’ I said.

  He nodded, forgetting to smile for once, and I knew his mind was elsewhere, in one of a hundred possible places from his dreams.

  ‘One day I will write a book,’ I said, as we drank strong tea in the fast-fading twilight. ‘A real book, about real people. Perhaps it will be about you and me and Shahganj. And then we will run away from Shahganj, fly on the wings of Garuda, and all our troubles will be over and fresh troubles will begin. Why should we mind difficulties, as long as they are new difficulties?’

  ‘First I must pass my exams,’ said Kamal. ‘Otherwise, I can do nothing, go nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t take exams too seriously. I know that in India they are the passport to any kind of job, and that you cannot become a clerk unless you have a degree. But do not forget that you are studying for the sake of acquiring knowledge, and not for the sake of becoming a clerk. You don’t want to become a clerk or a bus conductor, do you? You must pass your exams and go to college, but do not feel that if you fail, you will be able to do nothing. Why, you can start making your own buttons instead of selling other people’s!’

  ‘You are right,’ said Kamal. ‘But why not be an educated button manufacturer?’

  ‘Why not, indeed? That’s just what I mean. And, while you are studying for your exams, I will be writing my book. I will start tonight!

  It is an auspicious night, the beginning of the monsoon. The light did not come on. A tree must have fallen across the wires. I lit a candle and placed it on the windowsill and, while the candle spluttered in the steamy air, Kamal opened his books and, with one hand on a book and the other hand playing with his toes—this attitude helped him to concentrate—he devoted his attention to algebra.

  I took an ink bottle down from a shelf and, finding it empty, added a little rainwater to the crusted contents. Then I sat down beside Kamal and began to write; but the pen was useless and made blotches all over the paper, and I had no idea what I should write about, though I was full of writing just then. So I began to look at Kamal instead, at his eyes, hidden in shadow, and his hands, quiet in the candlelight; and I followed his breathing and the slight movement of his lips as he read softly to himself.

  And, instead of starting my book, I sat and watched Kamal.

  Sometimes Kamal played the flute at night, while I was lying awake; and, even when I was asleep, the flute would play in my dreams. Sometimes he brought it to the crooked tree, and played it for the benefit of the birds; but the parrots only made harsh noises and flew away.

  Once, when Kamal was playing his flute to a group of children, he had a fit. The flute fell from his hands, and he began to roll about in the dust on the roadside. The children were frightened and ran away. But the next time they heard Kamal play his flute, they came to listen as usual.

  That Kamal was gaining in strength I knew from the way he was able to pin me down whenever we wrestled on the grass near the old brick kilns. It was no longer necessary for me to yield deliberately to him. And, though his fits still recurred from time to time—as we knew they would continue to do—he was not so depressed afterwards. The anxiety and the death had gone from his eyes.

  His examinations were nearing, and he was working hard. (I had yet to begin the first chapter of my book.) Because of the necessity of selling two or three rupees’ worth of articles every day, he did not get much time for studying; but he stuck to his books until past midnight, and it was seldom that I heard his flute.

  He put aside his tray of odds and ends during the examinations, and walked to the examination centre instead. And after two weeks, when it was all over, he took up his tray and began his rounds again. In a burst of creativity, I wrote three pages of my novel.

  On the morning the results of the examination were due, I rose early, before Kamal, and went down to the news agency. It was five o’clock and the newspapers had just arrived. I went through the columns relating to Shahganj, but I couldn’t find Kamal’s roll number on the list of successful candidates. I had the number written down on a slip of paper, and I looked at it again to make sure that I had compared it correctly with the others; then I went through the newspaper once more.

  When I returned to the room, Kamal was sitting on the doorstep. I didn’t have to tell him he had failed. He knew by the look on my face. I sat down beside him, and we said nothing for some time.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Kamal, eventually. ‘I will pass next year.’ I realized that I was more depressed than he was, and that he was trying to console me.

  ‘If only you’d had more time,’ I said.

  ‘I have plenty of time now. Another year. And you will have time in which to finish your book; then we can both go away. Another year of Shahganj won’t be so bad. As long as I have your friendship, almost everything else can be tolerated, even my sickness.’

  And then, turning to me with an expression of intense happiness, he said, ‘Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on. I feel that life isn’t long enough to satisfy me.’

  He stood up, the tray hanging from his shoulders.

  ‘What would you like to buy?’ he said. ‘I have everything you need.’

  At the bottom of the steps he turned and smiled at me, and I knew then that I had written my story.

  My Best Friend

  My best friend

  Is the baker’s son,

  I gave him a book

  And he gave me a bun!

  I told him a tale

  Of a magical lake,

  And he liked it so much

  That he baked me a cake.

  Yes, he’s my best friend—

  We go cycling together,

  On bright sunny days,

  And in rain and bad weather.

  And if we feel hungry

  There’s always a pie

  Or a pastry to feast on,

  As we go riding by!

  A Little Friend

  When I firs
t arrived in London I knew no one. I was eighteen and on my own; looking for a room, looking for a job. I spent a week in a students’ hostel, a noisy place full of foreign students talking in every tongue except English. Then I saw an ad for a room to let, for just a pound a week. I was on the dole, getting just three pounds a week, so I took the room without even looking at it.

  It turned out to be a tiny attic at the top of the building. Nothing above me but a low ceiling and a slanting tiled roof. There was a bed, a small dressing table, and a gas fire in the corner of the room. You had to shove several pennies into a slot before you could light the fire. It was November, very cold, and I kept running out of pennies. The toilet was about two floors below me. Above the potty was a notice which said ‘Do not throw your tea leaves in here.’ As I did not have anything to cook on, I had no tea leaves to deposit in the loo. I supposed that the other tenants (whom I seldom saw) were given to flushing away their tea leaves.

  My landlady was Jewish, and I did not see much of her either, except when the rent was due. She was a Polish refugee, and I think she’d had a hard time in Europe during the War. It was seldom that she emerged from her room.

  There was no bath in the building, I had to use the public baths some way down Belsize Road. I took my meals, the cheapest I could get, at a snack bar near the underground station. Some evenings I would bring home a loaf of bread and a tin of sardines; this was luxury.

  Was I lonely? You can bet I was … terribly lonely. I had no friends in that great city. Even the city looked lonely, all grey and fogbound. Every day I visited the employment exchange, and after two weeks I landed a job as a ledger clerk in a large grocery store. The pay was five pounds a week.

  I was rich! For once I could have a proper lunch instead of the usual beans on toast. I bought ham and cheese and celebrated with sandwiches and a bottle of cheap sherry. Soon there were crumbs all over the floor of my room. My landlady wouldn’t like that. I was about to get up to sweep them away when there was a squeak and a little mouse ran across the floor with a bit of cheese that it had found. He darted across the room and disappeared behind the dressing table.

  I decided not to clear away the crumbs; let the mouse have them. ‘Waste not, want not,’ as my grandmother used to say.

  I did not see the mouse again, but after I’d put the light out and gone to bed, I could hear him scurrying about the room, collecting titbits. Now and then he emitted a little squeak, possibly of satisfaction.

  ‘Well, at least I did not have to celebrate alone,’ I said to myself, ‘a mouse for company is better than no company at all.’

  I was off to work early next morning, and in my absence my landlady had my room cleaned. I came back to find a note on the dressing table which said: ‘Please do not scatter food on the floor.’

  She was right, of course. My room-mate deserved better than a scattering of crumbs. So I provided him with an empty soap dish, which I placed near the dressing table, and I filled it with an assortment of biscuit crumbs. But for some reason he wouldn’t go near the soap dish. I stayed up quite late, waiting for him to appear, and when he did, he explored all corners of the room and even approached my bed, but stayed well away from the soap dish. Perhaps he didn’t like the colour, a bright pink. I’ve been told by a scientist that mice are colour-blind and wouldn’t be able to distinguish a pink soap dish from a blue one. But I think the scientist got it wrong. Quite often, they do.

  I couldn’t tell if my mouse was a male or a female, but for some indefinable reason I felt that he was a bachelor, like me. Surely a female mouse would be living with her family. This one was very much a loner.

  I threw the soap dish away, and the following evening, on my way home from work, I bought a pretty little saucer, and this I placed near his residence, with a piece of cheese in the middle. He came to it almost instantly, nibbled at the cheese, approved of it, and carried the rest of it back to his hole behind the dressing table.

  A fussy mouse! No soap dish for him. He had to have a saucer with a Chinese willow-pattern design.

  After some time we become protective of our own. Summer came to London early in May, and finding the room stuffier than usual, I opened the small window that looked out upon a sea of rooftops, all similar to ours and to each other. But I could not leave it open for long. Suddenly I heard an agitated squeak from below my bed, and the mouse scurried across the room to the safety of the dressing table. Looking up, I saw a large tabby cat framed in the open window, looking in with a speculative air. I think he had seen, or sensed, that there was a free lunch in the offing if he was patient enough.

  ‘No free lunches for cats,’ I said, and closed the window and kept it shut.

  On weekends I roamed the city, occasionally visiting suburban cinemas where the seats were cheap; but on weekdays I’d stay at home in the evenings, working on my novel, my romance of India, and occasionally reading aloud from my manuscript.

  The mouse wasn’t a very good listener, he was never long in one place, but he was now trusting enough to take a piece of cheese or bread from my fingers, and if I spent too much time on my book, he would remind me of his presence by giving several little squeaks—scolding me for not paying attention to his needs.

  Alas, the time came when I had to consider parting from the ‘Lone Ranger’, as I had come to call my fellow lodger. A slight increase in salary, and a cheque from BBC radio for a couple of stories, meant I could move to bigger and better lodgings in a more congenial area of London. My landlady was sorry to see me go, for, in spite of my untidy ways, I had been regular with the rent. And the little mouse—would he too be sorry to see me go? He would have to forage further afield for his meals. And the next tenant might prefer cats to mice!

  This was my worry, not his. Unlike humans, mice don’t worry about the future—their own or the world’s.

  The problem was partly resolved by the arrival of another tenant—not a human tenant, but another mouse, presumably a female, because she was a little smaller and a little prettier than my room-mate. Two or three days before I was to leave, I came home to find them chasing each other about the room with a great deal of squeaking and acrobatic play. Was this romance?

  I felt a twinge of envy. My little friend had found a companion, and I was still without one. But when the time came for me to leave, I made sure they were well supplied with an assortment of crackers and rusks—enough to last well over a month, provided our landlady did not find them first.

  I packed my battered old suitcase and left that small attic behind. As we journey through life, old friends and new friends, are often left behind, never to be met with again. There are times when we are on our own, lonely, in need of a friendly presence. Just someone to be there when we return to that empty, joyless room. And at such times, even a little mouse, can make a big difference.

  The Thief

  I was still a thief when I met Arun, and though I was only fifteen I was an experienced and fairly successful hand.

  Arun was watching the wrestlers when I approached him. He was about twenty, a tall, lean fellow, and he looked kind and simple enough for my purpose. I hadn’t had much luck of late and thought I might be able to get into this young person’s confidence. He seemed quite fascinated by the wrestling. Two well-oiled men slid about in the soft mud, grunting and slapping their thighs. When I drew Arun into conversation, he didn’t seem to realize I was a stranger.

  ‘You look like a wrestler yourself,’ I said.

  ‘So do you,’ he replied, which put me out of my stride for a moment, because at the time I was rather thin and bony and not very impressive physically.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I wrestle sometimes.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Deepak,’ I lied.

  Deepak was about my fifth name. I had earlier called myself Ranbir, Sudhir, Trilok and Surinder.

  After this preliminary exchange Arun confined himself to comments on the match, and I didn’t have much to say. After a while he w
alked away from the crowd of spectators. I followed him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Enjoying yourself?’

  I gave him my most appealing smile. ‘I want to work for you,’ I said.

  He didn’t stop walking. ‘And what makes you think I want someone to work for me?’

  ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘I’ve been wandering about all day looking for the best person to work for. When I saw you I knew that no one else had a chance.’

  ‘You flatter me,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘But you can’t work for me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I can’t pay you.’

  I thought that over for a minute. Perhaps I had misjudged my man.

  ‘Can you feed me?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you cook?’ he countered.

  ‘I can cook,’ I lied.

  ‘If you can cook,’ he said, ‘I’ll feed you.’

  He took me to his room and told me I could sleep on the veranda. But I was nearly back on the street that same night. The meal I cooked must have been pretty awful, because Arun gave it to the neighbour’s cat and told me to be off. But I just hung around smiling in my most appealing way, and then he couldn’t help laughing. He sat down on the bed and laughed for a full five minutes and later patted me on the head and said, never mind, he’d teach me to cook in the morning.

  Not only did he teach me to cook but he taught me to write my name and his, and said he would soon teach me to write whole sentences and add money on paper when you didn’t have any in your pocket!

  It was quite pleasant working for Arun. I made the tea in the morning and later went out shopping. I would take my time buying the day’s supplies and make a profit of about twenty-five paise a day. I would tell Arun that rice was fifty-six paise a pound (it generally was), but I would get it at fifty paise a pound. I think he knew that I made a little this way but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t giving me a regular wage.