DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES Read online

  He was pitted against the Russian, a bear of a man, who wore a black mask across his eyes; and in two minutes Hassan’s Dehra supporters saw their hero slung about the ring, licked in the head and groin, and finally flung unceremoniously through the ropes.

  After this humiliation, Hassan did not venture into competitive bouts again. I saw him sometimes at the akhara, where he made a few rupees giving lessons to children. He had a paunch, and folds were beginning to accumulate beneath his chin. I was no longer a small boy, but he always had a smile and a hearty backslap reserved for me.

  I remember seeing him a few days before I went abroad. He was moving heavily about the akhara; he had lost the lightning swiftness that had once made him invincible. Yes, I told myself.

  The garlands wither on your brow;

  They boast no more your mighty deeds …

  That had been over three years ago. And for Hassan to have been reduced to begging was indeed a sad reflection of both the passing of time and the changing times. Fifty years ago, a popular local wrestler would never have been allowed to fall into a state of poverty and neglect. He would have been fed by his old friends, and stories would have been told of his legendary prowess. He would not have been forgotten. But those were more leisurely times, when the individual had his place in society, when a man was praised for his past achievement, and his failures were tolerated and forgiven. But life had since become fast and cruel and unreflective, and people were too busy counting their gains to bother about the idols of their youth.

  It was a few days after my last encounter with Hassan that I found a small crowd gathered at the side of the road, not far from the clock tower. They were staring impassively at something in the drain, at the same time keeping a discreet distance. Joining the group, I saw that the object of their disinterested curiosity was a corpse, its head hidden under a culvert, legs protruding into the open drain. It looked as though the man had crawled into the drain to die, and had done so with his head in the culvert so the world would not witness his last unavailing struggle.

  When the municipal workers came in their van, and lifted the body out of the gutter, a cloud of flies and bluebottles rose from the corpse with an angry buzz of protest. The face was muddy, but I recognized the beggar who was Hassan.

  In a way, it was a consolation to know that he had been forgotten, that no one present could recognize the remains of the man who had once looked like a young god. I did not come forward to identify the body. Perhaps I saved Hassan from one final humiliation.

  His Neighbour’s Wife

  No (said Arun, as we waited for dinner to be prepared), I did not fall in love with my neighbour’s wife. It is not that kind of story.

  Mind you, Leela was a most attractive woman. She was not beautiful or pretty but she was handsome. Hers was the firm, athletic body of a sixteen-year-old boy, free of any surplus flesh. She bathed morning and evening, oiling herself well, so that her skin glowed a golden-brown in the winter sunshine. Her lips were often coloured with paan juice, but her teeth were perfect. I was her junior by about five years, and she called me her ‘younger brother’. Her husband, who was forty to her thirty-two, was an official in the Customs and Excise Department: an extrovert, a hard-drinking, backslapping man, who spent a great deal of time on tour. Leela knew that he was not always faithful to her during these frequent absences, but she found solace in her own loyalty and in the well-being of her only child, a boy called Chandu.

  I did not care for the boy. He had been well spoilt, and took great delight in disturbing me whenever I was at work. He entered my rooms uninvited, knocked my books about, and, if guests were present, made insulting remarks about them to their faces.

  Leela, during her lonely evenings, would often ask me to sit on her veranda and talk to her. The day’s work done, she would relax with a hookah. Smoking a hookah was a habit she had brought with her from her village near Agra, and it was a habit she refused to give up. She liked to talk and, as I was a good listener, she soon grew fond of me. The fact that I was twenty-six years old and still a bachelor never failed to astonish her.

  It was not long before she took upon herself the responsibility of getting me married. I found it useless to protest. She did not believe me when I told her that I could not afford to marry, that I preferred a bachelor’s life. A wife, she insisted, was an asset to any man. A wife reduced expenses. Where did I eat? At a hotel, of course. That must cost me at least sixty rupees a month, even on a vegetarian diet. But if I had a simple homely wife to do the cooking, we could both eat well for less than that.

  Leela fingered my shirt, observing that a button was missing and that the collar was frayed. She remarked on my pale face and general look of debility, and told me that I would fall victim to all kinds of diseases if I did not find someone to look after me. What I needed, she declared between puffs at the hookah, was a woman—a young, healthy, buxom woman, preferably from a village near Agra.

  ‘If I could find someone like you,’ I said slyly, ‘I would not mind getting married.’

  She appeared neither flattered nor offended by my remark.

  ‘Don’t marry an older woman,’ she advised. ‘Never take a wife who is more experienced in the ways of the world than you are. You just leave it to me, I’ll find a suitable bride for you.’

  To please Leela, I agreed to this arrangement, thinking she would not take it seriously. But, two days later, when she suggested that I accompany her to a certain distinguished home for orphan girls, I became alarmed. I refused to have anything to do with her project.

  ‘Don’t you have confidence in me?’ she asked. ‘You said you would like a girl who resembled me. I know one who looks just as I did ten years ago.’

  ‘I like you as you are now,’ I said. ‘Not as you were ten years ago.’

  ‘Of course. We shall arrange for you to see the girl first.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I protested. ‘It’s not that I feel I have to be in love with someone before marrying her—I know you would choose a fine girl, and I would really prefer someone who is homely and simple to an MA with honours in psychology—it’s just that I’m not ready for it. I want another year or two of freedom. I don’t want to be chained down. To be frank, I don’t want the responsibility.’

  ‘A little responsibility will make a man of you,’ said Leela; but she did not insist on my accompanying her to the orphanage, and the matter was allowed to rest for a few days.

  I was beginning to hope that Leela had reconciled herself to allowing one man to remain single in a world full of husbands when, one morning, she accosted me on the veranda with an open newspaper, which she thrust in front of my nose.

  ‘There!’ she said triumphantly. ‘What do you think of that? I did it to surprise you.’

  She had certainly succeeded in surprising me. Her henna-stained forefinger rested on an advertisement in the matrimonial columns.

  Bachelor journalist, age twenty-five, seeks attractive young wife well versed in household duties. Caste, religion no bar. Dowry optional.

  I must admit that Leela had made a good job of it. In a few days the replies began to come in, usually from the parents of the girls concerned. Each applicant wanted to know how much money I was earning. At the same time, they took the trouble to list their own connections and the high positions occupied by relatives. Some parents enclosed their daughters’ photographs. They were very good photographs, though there was a certain amount of touching-up employed.

  I studied the pictures with interest. Perhaps marriage wasn’t such a bad proposition, after all. I selected the photographs of the three girls I most fancied and showed them to Leela.

  To my surprise, she disapproved of all three. One of the girls she said had a face like a hermaphrodite; another obviously suffered from tuberculosis; and the third was undoubtedly an adventuress. Leela decided that the whole idea of the advertisement had been a mistake. She was sorry she had inserted it; the only replies we were likely to get would be fro
m fortune hunters. And I had no fortune.

  So we destroyed the letters. I tried to keep some of the photographs, but Leela tore them up too.

  And so, for some time, there were no more attempts at getting me married.

  Leela and I met nearly every day, but we spoke of other things. Sometimes, in the evenings, she would make me sit on the charpoy opposite her, and then she would draw up her hookah and tell me stories about her village and her family. I was getting used to the boy, too, and even growing rather fond of him.

  All this came to an end when Leela’s husband went and got himself killed. He was shot by a bootlegger, who had decided to get rid of the excise man rather than pay him an exorbitant sum of money. It meant that Leela had to give up her quarters and return to her village near Agra. She waited until the boy’s school term had finished, and then she packed their things and bought two tickets, third class to Agra.

  Something, I could see, had been troubling her, and when I saw her off at the station, I realized what it was. She was having a fit of conscience about my continued bachelorhood.

  ‘In my village,’ she said confidently, leaning out from the carriage window, ‘there is a very comely young girl, a distant relative of mine; I shall speak to the parents.’

  And then I said something which I had not considered before; which had never, until that moment, entered my head. And I was no less surprised than Leela when the words came tumbling out of my mouth: ‘Why don’t you marry me now?’

  Arun didn’t have time to finish his story because, just at this interesting stage, the dinner arrived.

  But the dinner brought with it the end of his story.

  It was served by his wife, a magnificent woman, strong and handsome, who could only have been Leela. And a few minutes later, Chandu, Arun’s stepson, charged into the house, complaining that he was famished.

  Arun introduced me to his wife, and we exchanged the usual formalities.

  ‘But why hasn’t your friend brought his family with him?’ she asked.

  ‘Family? Because he’s still a bachelor!’

  And then as he watched his wife’s expression change from a look of mild indifference to one of deep concern, he hurriedly changed the subject.

  The Monkeys

  I couldn’t be sure, next morning, if I had been dreaming or if I had really heard dogs barking in the night and had seen them scampering about on the hillside below the cottage. There had been a golden Cocker, a Retriever, a Peke, a Dachshund, a black Labrador and one or two nondescripts. They had woken me with their barking shortly after midnight, and had made so much noise that I had got out of bed and looked out of the open window. I saw them quite plainly in the moonlight, five or six dogs rushing excitedly through the bracket and long monsoon grass.

  It was only because there had been so many breeds among the dogs that I felt a little confused. I had been in the cottage only a week, and I was already on nodding or speaking terms with most of my neighbours. Colonel Fanshawe, retired from the Indian army, was my immediate neighbour. He did keep a Cocker, but it was black. The elderly Anglo-Indian spinsters who lived beyond the deodars kept only cats. (Though why cats should be the prerogative of spinsters, I have never been able to understand.) The milkman kept a couple of mongrels. And the Punjabi industrialist who had bought a former prince’s palace—without ever occupying it—left the property in charge of a watchman who kept a huge Tibetan mastiff.

  None of these dogs looked like the ones I had seen in the night.

  ‘Does anyone here keep a Retriever?’ I asked Colonel Fanshawe, when I met him taking his evening walk.

  ‘No one that I know of,’ he said and gave me a swift, penetrating look from under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Why, have you seen one around?’

  ‘No, I just wondered. There are a lot of dogs in the area, aren’t there?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Nearly everyone keeps a dog here. Of course, every now and then a panther carries one off. Lost a lovely little terrier myself only last winter.’

  Colonel Fanshawe, tall and red-faced, seemed to be waiting for me to tell him something more—or was he just taking time to recover his breath after a stiff uphill climb?

  That night I heard the dogs again. I went to the window and looked out. The moon was at the full, silvering the leaves of the oak trees.

  The dogs were looking up into the trees and barking. But I could see nothing in the trees, not even an owl.

  I gave a shout, and the dogs disappeared into the forest.

  Colonel Fanshawe looked at me expectantly when I met him the following day. He knew something about those dogs, of that I was certain; but he was waiting to hear what I had to say. I decided to oblige him.

  ‘I saw at least six dogs in the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘A Cocker, a Retriever, a Peke, a Dachshund and two mongrels. Now, Colonel, I’m sure you must know whose they are.’

  The colonel was delighted. I could tell by the way his eyes glinted that he was going to enjoy himself at my expense.

  ‘You’ve been seeing Miss Fairchild’s dogs,’ he said with smug satisfaction.

  ‘Oh, and where does she live?’

  ‘She doesn’t, my boy. Died fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Then what are her dogs doing here?’

  ‘Looking for monkeys,’ said the colonel. And he stood back to watch my reaction.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ said the colonel. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  ‘I’ve never seen any,’ I said.

  ‘But you have, my boy, you have. Miss Fairchild’s dogs died years ago—a Cocker, a Retriever, a Dachshund, a Peke and two mongrels. They were buried on a little knoll under the oaks. Nothing odd about their deaths, mind you. They were all quite old, and didn’t survive their mistress very long. Neighbours looked after them until they died.’

  ‘And Miss Fairchild lived in the cottage where I stay? Was she young?’

  ‘She was in her mid-forties, an athletic sort of woman, fond of the outdoors. Didn’t care much for men. I thought you knew about her.’

  ‘No, I haven’t been here very long, you know. But what was it you said about monkeys? Why were the dogs looking for monkeys?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the interesting part of the story. Have you seen the langoor monkeys that sometimes come to eat oak leaves?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will, sooner or later. There has always been a band of them roaming these forests. They’re quite harmless really, except that they’ll ruin a garden if given half a chance … Well, Miss Fairchild fairly loathed those monkeys. She was very keen on her dahlias—grew some prize specimens—but the monkeys would come at night, dig up the plants and eat the dahlia bulbs. Apparently they found the bulbs much to their liking. Miss Fairchild would be furious. People who are passionately fond of gardening often go off balance when their best plants are ruined—that’s only human, I suppose. Miss Fairchild set her dogs on the monkeys whenever she could, even if it was in the middle of the night. But the monkeys simply took to the trees and left the dogs barking.

  ‘Then one day—or rather one night—Miss Fairchild took desperate measures. She borrowed a shotgun and sat up near a window. And when the monkeys arrived, she shot one of them dead.’

  The colonel paused and looked out over the oak trees which were shimmering in the warm afternoon sun.

  ‘She shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘Never shoot a monkey. It’s not only that they’re sacred to Hindus—but they are rather human, you know. Well, I must be getting on. Good day!’ And the colonel, having ended his story rather abruptly, set off at a brisk pace through the deodars.

  I didn’t hear the dogs that night. But the next day I saw the monkeys—the real ones, not ghosts. There were about twenty of them, young and old, sitting in the trees munching oak leaves. They didn’t pay much attention to me, and I watched them for some time.

  They were handsome creatures, their fur a
silver-grey, their tails long and sinuous. They leapt gracefully from tree to tree, and were very polite and dignified in their behaviour towards each other—unlike the bold, rather crude red monkeys of the plains. Some of the younger ones scampered about on the hillside, playing and wrestling with each other like schoolboys.

  There were no dogs to molest them—and no dahlias to tempt them into the garden.

  But that night, I heard the dogs again. They were barking more furiously than ever.

  ‘Well, I’m not getting up for them this time,’ I mumbled, and pulled the blanket over my ears.

  But the barking grew louder, and was joined by other sounds, a squealing and a scuffling.

  Then suddenly, the piercing shriek of a woman rang through the forest. It was an unearthly sound, and it made my hair stand up.

  I leapt out of bed and dashed to the window.

  A woman was lying on the ground, three or four huge monkeys were on top of her, biting her arms and pulling at her throat. The dogs were yelping and trying to drag the monkeys off, but they were being harried from behind by others. The woman gave another bloodcurdling shriek, and I dashed back into the room, grabbed hold of a small axe and ran into the garden.

  But everyone—dogs, monkeys and shrieking woman—had disappeared, and I stood alone on the hillside in my pyjamas, clutching an axe and feeling very foolish.

  The colonel greeted me effusively the following day.

  ‘Still seeing those dogs?’ he asked in a bantering tone.

  ‘I’ve seen the monkeys too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes, they’ve come around again. But they’re real enough, and quite harmless.’

  ‘I know—but I saw them last night with the dogs.’