DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES Read online

  ‘As long as I don’t have to cook the food,’ said Bisnu.

  The truck driver laughed. ‘You might prefer to do so, once you’ve tasted the depot food. Are you coming on my truck? Make up your mind.’

  ‘I’m your man,’ said Bisnu; and waving goodbye to Chittru, he followed the Sikh to his truck.

  V

  A horn blared, shattering the silence of the mountains, and the truck came round a bend in the road. A herd of goats scattered to left and right.

  The goatherds cursed as a cloud of dust enveloped them, and then the truck had left them behind and was rattling along the bumpy, unmetalled road to the quarries.

  At the wheel of the truck, stroking his grey moustache with one hand, sat Pritam Singh. It was his own truck. He had never allowed anyone else to drive it. Every day he made two trips to the quarries, carrying truckloads of limestone back to the depot at the bottom of the hill. He was paid by the trip and he was always anxious to get in two trips every day.

  Sitting beside him was Bisnu, his new cleaner. In less than a month Bisnu had become an experienced hand at looking after trucks, riding in them, and even sleeping in them. He got on well with Pritam, the grizzled, fifty-year-old Sikh, who boasted of two well-off sons—one a farmer in Punjab, the other a wine merchant in far-off London. He could have gone to live with either of them, but his sturdy independence kept him on the road in his battered old truck.

  Pritam pressed hard on his horn. Now there was no one on the road—neither beast nor man—but Pritam was fond of the sound of his horn and liked blowing it. He boasted that it was the loudest horn in northern India. Although it struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it—for it was louder than the trumpeting of an elephant—it was music to Pritam’s ears.

  Pritam treated Bisnu as an equal and a friendly banter had grown between them during their many trips together.

  ‘One more year on this bone-breaking road,’ said Pritam, ‘and then I’ll sell my truck and retire.’

  ‘But who will buy such a shaky old truck?’ asked Bisnu. ‘It will retire before you do!’

  ‘Now don’t be insulting, boy. She’s only twenty years old—there are still a few years left in her!’ And as though to prove it he blew the horn again. Its strident sound echoed and re-echoed down the mountain gorge. A pair of wildfowl burst from the bushes and fled to more silent regions.

  Pritam’s thoughts went to his dinner.

  ‘Haven’t had a good meal for days.’

  ‘Haven’t had a good meal for weeks,’ said Bisnu, although in fact he looked much healthier than when he had worked at the cinema’s tea stall.

  ‘Tonight I’ll give you a dinner in a good hotel. Tandoori chicken and rice pilaf.’

  He sounded his horn again as though to put a seal on his promise. Then he slowed down, because the road had become narrow and precipitous, and trotting ahead of them was a train of mules.

  As the horn blared, one mule ran forward, another ran backward. One went uphill, another went downhill. Soon there were mules all over the place. Pritam cursed the mules and the mule drivers cursed Pritam; but he had soon left them far behind.

  Along this range, all the hills were bare and dry. Most of the forest had long since disappeared.

  ‘Are your hills as bare as these?’ asked Pritam.

  ‘No, we still have some trees,’ said Bisnu. ‘Nobody has started blasting the hills as yet. In front of our house there is a walnut tree which gives us two baskets of walnuts every year. And there is an apricot tree. But it was a bad year for fruit. There was no rain. And the stream is too far away.’

  ‘It will rain soon,’ said Pritam. ‘I can smell rain. It is coming from the north. The winter will be early.’

  ‘It will settle the dust.’

  Dust was everywhere. The truck was full of it. The leaves of the shrubs and the few trees were thick with it. Bisnu could feel the dust under his eyelids and in his mouth. And as they approached the quarries, the dust increased. But it was a different kind of dust now—whiter, stinging the eyes, irritating the nostrils.

  They had been blasting all morning.

  ‘Let’s wait here,’ said Pritam, bringing the truck to a halt.

  They sat in silence, staring through the windscreen at the scarred cliffs a little distance down the road. There was a sharp crack of explosives and the hillside blossomed outwards. Earth and rocks hurtled down the mountain.

  Bisnu watched in awe as shrubs and small trees were flung into the air. It always frightened him—not so much the sight of the rocks bursting asunder, as the trees being flung aside and destroyed. He thought of the trees at home—the walnut, the chestnuts, the pines—and wondered if one day they would suffer the same fate, and whether the mountains would all become a desert like this particular range. No trees, no grass, no water—only the choking dust of mines and quarries.

  VI

  Pritam pressed hard on his horn again, to let the people at the site know that he was approaching. He parked outside a small shed where the contractor and the foreman were sipping cups of tea. A short distance away, some labourers, Chittru among them, were hammering at chunks of rock, breaking them up into manageable pieces. A pile of stones stood ready for loading, while the rock that had just been blasted lay scattered about the hillside.

  ‘Come and have a cup of tea,’ called out the contractor.

  ‘I can’t hang about all day,’ said Pritam. ‘There’s another trip to make—and the days are getting shorter. I don’t want to be driving by night.’

  But he sat down on a bench and ordered two cups of tea from the stall. The foreman strolled over to the group of labourers and told them to start loading. Bisnu let down the grid at the back of the truck. Then, to keep himself warm, he began helping Chittru and the men with the loading.

  ‘Don’t expect to be paid for helping,’ said Sharma, the contractor, for whom every rupee spent was a rupee off his profits.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Bisnu. ‘I don’t work for contractors, I work for friends.’

  ‘That’s right,’ called out Pritam. ‘Mind what you say to Bisnu—he’s no one’s servant!’

  Sharma wasn’t happy until there was no space left for a single stone. Then Bisnu had his cup of tea and three of the men climbed on the pile of stones in the open truck.

  ‘All right, let’s go!’ said Pritam. ‘I want to finish early today—Bisnu and I are having a big dinner!’

  Bisnu jumped in beside Pritam, banging the door shut. It never closed properly unless it was slammed really hard. But it opened at a touch.

  ‘This truck is held together with sticking plaster,’ joked Pritam. He was in good spirits. He started the engine, and blew his horn just as he passed the foreman and the contractor.

  ‘They are deaf in one ear from the blasting,’ said Pritam. ‘I’ll make them deaf in the other ear!’

  The labourers were singing as the truck swung round the sharp bends of the winding road. The door beside Bisnu rattled on its hinges. He was feeling quite dizzy.

  ‘Not too fast,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Pritam. ‘And since when did you become nervous about my driving?’

  ‘It’s just today,’ said Bisnu uneasily. ‘It’s a feeling, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re getting old,’ said Pritam. ‘That’s your trouble.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Bisnu.

  Pritam was feeling young, exhilarated. He drove faster.

  As they swung round a bend, Bisnu looked out of his window. All he saw was the sky above and the valley below. They were very near the edge; but it was usually like that on this narrow mountain road.

  After a few more hairpin bends, the road descended steeply to the valley. Just then a stray mule ran into the middle of the road. Pritam swung the steering wheel over to the right to avoid the mule, but here the road turned sharply to the left. The truck went over the edge.

  As it tipped over, hanging for a few seconds on the edge of the cliff, the labourers leapt
from the back of the truck. It pitched forward, and as it struck a rock outcrop, the loose door burst open. Bisnu was thrown out.

  The truck hurtled forward, bouncing over the rocks, turning over on its side and rolling over twice before coming to rest against the trunk of a scraggly old oak tree. But for the tree, the truck would have plunged several hundred feet down to the bottom of the gorge.

  Two of the labourers sat on the hillside, stunned and badly shaken. The third man had picked himself up and was running back to the quarry for help.

  Bisnu had landed in a bed of nettles. He was smarting all over, but he wasn’t really hurt; the nettles had broken his fall.

  His first impulse was to get up and run back to the road. Then he realized that Pritam was still in the truck.

  Bisnu skidded down the steep slope, calling out, ‘Pritam Uncle, are you all right?’

  There was no answer.

  VII

  When Bisnu saw Pritam’s arm and half his body jutting out of the open door of the truck, he feared the worst. It was a strange position, half in and half out. Bisnu was about to turn away and climb back up the hill, when he noticed that Pritam had opened a bloodied and swollen eye. It looked straight up at Bisnu.

  ‘Are you alive?’ whispered Bisnu, terrified.

  ‘What do you think?’ muttered Pritam. He closed his eye again.

  When the contractor and his men arrived, it took them almost an hour to get Pritam Singh out of the wreckage of the truck, and another hour to get him to the hospital in the next big town. He had broken bones and fractured ribs and a dislocated shoulder. But the doctors said he was repairable—which was more than could be said for the truck.

  ‘So the truck’s finished,’ said Pritam, between groans when Bisnu came to see him after a couple of days. ‘Now I’ll have to go home and live with my son. And what about you, boy? I can get you a job on a friend’s truck.’

  ‘No,’ said Bisnu, ‘I’ll be going home soon.’

  ‘And what will you do at home?’

  ‘I’ll work on my land. It’s better to grow things on the land, than to blast things out of it.’

  They were silent for some time.

  ‘There is something to be said for growing things,’ said Pritam. ‘But for that tree, the truck would have finished up at the foot of the mountain, and I wouldn’t be here, all bandaged up and talking to you. It was the tree that saved me. Remember that, boy.’

  ‘I’ll remember, and I won’t forget the dinner you promised me, either.’

  It snowed during Bisnu’s last night at the quarries. He slept on the floor with Chittru, in a large shed meant for the labourers. The wind blew the snowflakes in at the entrance; it whistled down the deserted mountain pass. In the morning Bisnu opened his eyes to a world of dazzling whiteness. The snow was piled high against the walls of the shed, and they had some difficulty getting out.

  Bisnu joined Chittru at the tea stall, drank a glass of hot sweet tea, and ate two stale buns. He said goodbye to Chittru and set out on the long march home. The road would be closed to traffic because of the heavy snow, and he would have to walk all the way.

  He trudged over the hills all day, stopping only at small villages to take refreshment. By nightfall he was still ten miles from home. But he had fallen in with other travellers, and with them he took shelter at a small inn. They built a fire and crowded round it, and each man spoke of his home and fields and all were of the opinion that the snow and rain had come just in time to save the winter crops. Someone sang, and another told a ghost story. Feeling at home already, Bisnu fell asleep listening to their tales. In the morning they parted and went their different ways.

  It was almost noon when Bisnu reached his village.

  The fields were covered with snow and the mountain stream was in spate. As he climbed the terraced fields to his house, he heard the sound of barking, and his mother’s big black mastiff came bounding towards him over the snow. The dog jumped on him and licked his arms and then went bounding back to the house to tell the others.

  Puja saw him from the courtyard and ran indoors shouting, ‘Bisnu has come, my brother has come!’

  His mother ran out of the house, calling, ‘Bisnu, Bisnu!’

  Bisnu came walking through the fields, and he did not hurry, he did not run; he wanted to savour the moment of his return, with his mother and sister smiling, waiting for him in front of the house.

  There was no need to hurry now. He would be with them for a long time, and the manager of the Picture Palace would have to find someone else for the summer season … It was his home, and these were his fields! Even the snow was his. When the snow melted he would clear the fields, and nourish them, and make them rich.

  He felt very big and very strong as he came striding over the land he loved.

  Would Astley Return?

  The house was called Undercliff because that’s where it stood—under a cliff. The man who went away—the owner of the house—was Robert Astley. And the man who stayed behind—the old family retainer—was Prem Bahadur.

  Astley had been gone many years. He was still a bachelor in his late thirties when he’d suddenly decided that he wanted adventure, romance and faraway places. And he’d given the keys of the house to Prem Bahadur—who’d served the family for thirty years—and had set off on his travels.

  Someone saw him in Sri Lanka. He’d been heard of in Burma around the ruby mines at Mogok. Then he turned up in Java seeking a passage through the Sunda Straits. After that the trail petered out. Years passed. The house in the hill station remained empty.

  But Prem Bahadur was still there, living in an outhouse.

  Every day he opened up Undercliff, dusted the furniture in all the rooms, made sure that the bedsheets and pillowcases were clean and set out Astley’s dressing gown and slippers.

  In the old days, whenever Astley had come home after a journey or a long tramp in the hills, he had liked to bathe and change into his gown and slippers, no matter what the hour. Prem Bahadur still kept them ready. He was convinced that Robert would return one day.

  Astley himself had said so.

  ‘Keep everything ready for me, Prem, old chap. I may be back after a year, or two years, or even longer, but I’ll be back, I promise you. On the first of every month I want you to go to my lawyer, Mr Kapoor. He’ll give you your salary and any money that’s needed for the rates and repairs. I want you to keep the house tip-top!’

  ‘Will you bring back a wife, sahib?’

  ‘Lord, no! Whatever put that idea in your head?’

  ‘I thought, perhaps—because you wanted the house kept ready …’

  ‘Ready for me, Prem. I don’t want to come home and find the old place falling down.’

  And so Prem had taken care of the house—although there was no news from Astley. What had happened to him? The mystery provided a talking point whenever local people met on the Mall. And in the bazaar the shopkeepers missed Astley because he had been a man who spent freely.

  His relatives still believed him to be alive. Only a few months back a brother had turned up—a brother who had a farm in Canada and could not stay in India for long. He had deposited a further sum with the lawyer and told Prem to carry on as before. The salary provided Prem with his few needs. Moreover, he was convinced that Robert would return.

  Another man might have neglected the house and grounds, but not Prem Bahadur. He had a genuine regard for the absent owner. Prem was much older—now almost sixty and none too strong, suffering from pleurisy and other chest troubles—but he remembered Robert as both a boy and a young man. They had been together on numerous hunting and fishing trips in the mountains. They had slept out under the stars, bathed in icy mountain streams, and eaten from the same cooking pot. Once, when crossing a small river, they had been swept downstream by a flash flood, a wall of water that came thundering down the gorges without any warning during the rainy season. Together they had struggled back to safety. Back in the hill station, Astley told everyone tha
t Prem had saved his life while Prem was equally insistent that he owed his life to Robert.

  This year the monsoon had begun early and ended late. It dragged on through most of September and Prem Bahadur’s cough grew worse and his breathing more difficult.

  He lay on his charpoy on the veranda, staring out at the garden, which was beginning to get out of hand, a tangle of dahlias, snake lilies and convolvulus. The sun finally came out. The wind shifted from the south-west to the north-west and swept the clouds away.

  Prem Bahadur had shifted his charpoy into the garden and was lying in the sun, puffing at his small hookah, when he saw Robert Astley at the gate.

  He tried to get up but his legs would not oblige him. The hookah slipped from his hand.

  Astley came walking down the garden path and stopped in front of the old retainer, smiling down at him. He did not look a day older than when Prem Bahadur had last seen him.

  ‘So you have come at last,’ said Prem.

  ‘I told you I’d return.’

  ‘It has been many years. But you have not changed.’

  ‘Nor have you, old chap.’

  ‘I have grown old and sick and feeble.’

  ‘You’ll be fine now. That’s why I’ve come.’

  ‘I’ll open the house,’ said Prem and this time he found himself getting up quite easily.

  ‘It isn’t necessary,’ said Astley.

  ‘But all is ready for you!’

  ‘I know. I have heard of how well you have looked after everything. Come then, let’s take a last look around. We cannot stay, you know.’

  Prem was a little mystified but he opened the front door and took Robert through the drawing room and up the stairs to the bedroom. Robert saw the dressing gown and the slippers and he placed his hand gently on the old man’s shoulder.

  When they returned downstairs and emerged into the sunlight Prem was surprised to see himself—or rather his skinny body—stretched out on the charpoy. The hookah was on the ground, where it had fallen.