Rusty and the Leopard Read online

  ‘No, it won’t. It has to be corrected some time, so you will save the master some trouble. Anyway, I’m leaving this rotten school soon. I’m going to Mussoorie.’

  ‘To the same place as Ranbir? He’ll be glad to see you.’

  Suri handed the copy-book to me. On the cover was a pencil sketch of a rather over-developed nude.

  ‘Don’t tell me this is your school book!’ I exclaimed. ‘No, only rough work.’

  ‘You drew the picture?’

  ‘Of course, don’t you like it?’

  ‘Did you copy it, or imagine it, or did someone pose for you?’

  Suri winked. ‘Someone posed.’

  ‘You’re a liar. And a pig.’

  ‘Oh, look who’s talking! You’re not such a saint yourself, Mister Rusty.’

  ‘Just what do you mean,’ I said, getting between Suri and the door.

  ‘I mean, how is Mrs Kapoor, eh?’

  ‘She is fine.’

  ‘You get on well with her, eh?’

  ‘We get on fine.’

  ‘Like at the picnic?’

  Suri rubbed his hands together, and smiled beatifically. I was momentarily alarmed.

  ‘What do you mean, the picnic?’

  ‘What did you do together, Mister Rusty, you and Mrs Kapoor? What happened in the bushes?’

  I leant against the wall, and returned Suri’s smile, and said: ‘I’ll tell you what we did, my friend. There’s nothing to hide between friends, is there? Well, Mrs Kapoor and I spent all our time making love. We did nothing but love each other. All the time. And Mr Kapoor only a hundred yards away, and you in the next bush . . . Now what else do you want to know?’

  Suri’s smile was fixed. ‘What if I tell Mr Kapoor?’

  ‘You won’t tell him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you are the last person he’ll believe. And you’ll probably get a kick in the pants for the trouble.’

  Suri’s smile vanished.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I said. ‘What about the essay, do you want me to correct it?’

  That afternoon the old car stood beneath the banana trees with an impatient driver tooting on the horn. The dicky and bumpers were piled high with tin trunks and bedding rolls, as though the Kapoors were going away for a lifetime. Meena wasn’t going to let Kapoor drive her all the way to Delhi, and had taken on a professional instead.

  Kapoor sat on the steps of the house, wearing his green dressing-gown, and making a throaty noise similar to that of the motor horn.

  ‘The devil!’ he exclaimed, gesticulating towards Meena, who was bustling about indoors. ‘The devil of a wife is taking me to Delhi! Ha! The car will never get there.’

  ‘Oh yes, it will,’ said Meena, thrusting her head out of the window, ‘and it will get there with you in it, whether or not you shave and dress. So you might as well take a seat from now.’

  I went into the house, and found Meena locking rooms. She was looking a little tired and irritable.

  ‘You’re going sooner than I expected,’ I said. ‘Has Kishen got the money?’

  ‘No, you must keep it. I’ll give it to you in five-rupee notes, wait a minute . . . He’ll have to sleep with you, I’m locking the house . . .’

  She opened a drawer and, taking out an envelope, gave it to me.

  ‘The money,’ she said. I picked up a small suitcase and followed Meena outside to the car. I waited until she was seated before handing her the case and, when I did, our hands touched. She laced her fingers with mine, gave me a quick smile, and squeezed my fingers.

  From the front seat Kapoor beckoned me. He grasped my hand, and slipped a key into it.

  ‘My friend,’ he whispered, ‘these are the keys of the back door. In the kitchen you will find six bottles of whisky. Keep them safe, until our return.’

  I shook Kapoor’s hand, the hand of the man I laughed at, but whom I could not help liking as well.

  In the confusion Kishen had gone almost unnoticed, but he was there all the time, and now he suffered a light kiss from his mother and a heavy one from his father.

  The car belched and, after narrowly missing a banana tree, rattled down the gravel path, bounced over a ditch, and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  Kishen and I were flapping our handkerchiefs for all we were worth. Kishen was not a bit sorry that his parents had gone away, but I felt like crying. I was conscious now of a sense of responsibility, which was a thing I did not like having, and of a sense of loss. But the depression was only momentary.

  ‘Hey!’ said Kishen. ‘Do you see what I see?’

  ‘I can see a lot of things that you can see, so what do you mean?’

  ‘The clothes! Mummy’s washing, it is all on the rose bushes!’

  Meena had left without collecting her washing which, as always, had been left to dry on the rose bushes. Mr Kapoor’s underwear spread itself over an entire bush, and another tree was decorated with bodices and blouses of all colours.

  I said: ‘Perhaps she means them to dry by the time she comes back.’

  Then I began to laugh with Kishen. It was a good thing, Meena’s forgetfulness; it softened the pain of parting.

  ‘What if we hadn’t noticed?’ chuckled Kishen. ‘They would have been stolen.’

  ‘Then we must reward ourselves. What about the chaat shop, bhai?’

  At the risk of making myself unpopular, I faced Kishen and, with determination, said: ‘No chaat shop. We have got seventy rupees to last a month, and I am not going to write to your mother for more once this finishes. We are having our meals with Somi. So, bhai, no chaat shop!’

  ‘You are a swine, Rusty.’

  ‘And the same to you.’

  In this endearing mood we collected the clothes from the rose bushes, and marched upstairs to the room on the roof.

  There was only one bed, and Kishen was a selfish sleeper; twice during the night I found myself on the floor. Eventually I sat on the chair, with my feet on the table, and stared out of the window at the black night. Even if I had been comfortable, I would not have slept; I felt terribly lovesick. I wanted to write a poem, but it was too dark to write; I wanted to write a letter, but she hadn’t been away a day; I wanted to run away with Meena, into the hills, into the forests, where no one could find us, and I wanted to be with her for ever and never grow old . . . neither of us must ever grow old . . .

  VIII

  In the morning there was a note from Suri. I wondered how Suri had managed to leave it on the doorstep without being seen. It went:

  ‘Tomorrow I’m going up to Mussoorie. This is to request the pleasure of Misters Rusty and Kishen to my goodbye party, five o’clock sharp this same evening.’

  As soon as it became known that Suri was leaving, everyone began to love him. And everyone brought him presents, just so he wouldn’t change his mind and stay.

  Kishen bought him a pair of cheap binoculars so that he could look at the girls more closely.

  The guests sat down at a table and Suri entertained them in grand style; and everything he said was tolerated and all of us were particularly friendly and gave him three cheers, hooray, hooray, hooray, we were so glad he was going.

  We drank lemonade and ate cream cakes (specially obtained from the smart restaurant amongst the smart shops) and Kishen said, ‘We are so sorry you are leaving, Suri,’ and we had more cream cakes and lemonade, and Kishen said, ‘You are like a brother to us, Suri dear’; and when the cream cakes had all been finished, Kishen fell on Suri’s neck and kissed him.

  It was all very moving, those cream cakes and lemonade and Suri going away.

  Kishen made himself sick, and I had to help him back to the room. He lay prostrate on the bed, whilst I sat in front of the window, gazing blankly into the branches of the banyan tree.

  ‘It’s drizzling,’ I said. ‘I think there’ll be a storm, I’ve never seen the sky so black.’

  As though to confirm this observation, there was a flash of lightning in the sky. It wa
s quite exciting, for I had always liked storms; sometimes they were like an expression of my innermost feelings.

  ‘Shut the window,’ said Kishen.

  ‘If I shut the window, I will kill the flowers on the creeper.’

  Kishen snorted, ‘You’re a poet, that’s what you are!’

  ‘One day I’ll write poems.’

  ‘Why not today?’

  ‘Too much is happening today.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Nothing ever happens in Dehra. The place is dead. Why don’t you start writing now? You’re a great writer, I told you so before.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘One day . . . one day you’ll be a king . . . but only in your dreams . . . Meanwhile, shut the window!’

  But I liked the window open, I liked the rain flecking my face, and I liked to watch it pattering on the leaves of the banyan tree.

  ‘They must have reached Delhi now,’ I said, half to myself.

  ‘Daddy’s drunk,’ said Kishen.

  ‘There’s nothing for him to drink.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll find something. You know, one day he drank up all the hair oil in the house. Hey, didn’t he give you the keys of the back door? Let’s drink one of the bottles ourselves . . .’

  I didn’t reply. The tense sky shuddered. The blanket of black cloud groaned aloud and the air, which had been still and sultry, trembled with electricity. Then there was a great clap of thunder, and all at once the hailstones came clattering down on the corrugated iron roof.

  ‘What a noise!’ exclaimed Kishen. ‘You’d think a lot of skeletons were having a fight on the roof!’

  The hailstones, as big as marbles, bounced in from the doorway, and formed a layer of white ice on the roof. Through the window I could see one of the ayahs tearing down the gravel path, the pram bouncing madly over the stones, the end of her head-cloth flapping wildly.

  ‘Will you shut the window!’ screamed Kishen. ‘Why are you so cruel?’

  ‘I’m not cruel, I’m sick! Do you want me to get sick all over the place?’

  As gently as I could, I pushed the creeper out of the window and laid it against the outside wall. Then I closed the window. This shut out the view, because the window was made of plywood and had no glass panes.

  ‘And the door,’ moaned Kishen.

  With the door also closed, the room was plunged into darkness.

  ‘What a room,’ complained Kishen, ‘not even a light. You’ll have to live downstairs when they come back.’

  ‘But I like it here.’

  The storm continued all night; it made Kishen so nervous that, instead of pushing me off the bed, he put his arms round me for protection.

  The rain had stopped by morning, but the sky was still overcast and threatening. Kishen and I lay in bed, too bored to bestir ourselves. There was some dried fruit in a tin, and we ate the nuts continuously. We could hear the postman making his rounds below, and I suddenly remembered that the postman wouldn’t know the Kapoors had left. So I leapt out of bed, opened the door, and ran to the edge of the roof.

  ‘Hey postman! Anything for Mr and Mrs Kapoor?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the postman, ‘but there is something for you, shall I come up?’

  But I was already on my way down, certain that it was a letter from Meena.

  It was a telegram. My fingers trembled as I tore it open. I finished reading it before I reached the room. My face must have gone white by the time I entered the room, for Kishen instantly asked me, ‘What’s wrong? You look sick. Doesn’t Mummy love you any more?’

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, and stared emptily at the floor.

  ‘You’re to go to Hardwar,’ I said at last. ‘To stay with your aunty.’

  ‘Well, you can tell Mummy I’m staying here.’

  ‘It’s from your aunty.’

  ‘Why couldn’t Mummy say so herself?’

  ‘I don’t want to tell you.’

  ‘But you have to tell me!’ cried Kishen, making an ineffectual grab at the telegram. ‘You have to tell me, Rusty, you have to!’

  There was panic in Kishen’s voice, he was almost hysterical.

  ‘All right,’ I said, my own voice was strained and hollow. ‘The car had an accident.’

  ‘And something happened to Daddy?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a terrible silence. Kishen looked helplessly at me, his eyes full of tears and bewilderment. Unable to stand the strain any longer, I threw my arms round Kishen, and wept uncontrollably.

  ‘Oh, Mummy, Mummy,’ cried Kishen, ‘Oh, Mummy . . .’

  IX

  It was late evening the same day, and the clouds had passed and the whole sky was sprinkled with stars. I sat on the bed, looking out at the stars. I was waiting for Kishen.

  Presently bare feet sounded on the stone floor, and I could make out the sharp lines of Kishen’s body against the faint moon in the doorway.

  ‘Why do you creep in like a ghost?’

  ‘So’s not to wake you.’

  ‘It’s still early. Where have you been, I have been looking for you.’

  ‘Oh, just walking . . .’

  He sat down beside me, facing the same way, the stars. The moonlight ran over our feet, but our faces were in darkness.

  ‘Rusty,’ said Kishen.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Hardwar.’

  ‘I know you don’t. But you will not be allowed to stay here. You must go to your relatives. And Hardwar is a beautiful place, and people are kind . . .’

  ‘I’ll stay with you.’

  ‘I can’t look after you, Kishen, I haven’t got any money, any work . . . you must stay with your aunt. I’ll come to see you.’

  ‘You’ll never come.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Every night the jackals could be heard howling in the nearby jungle, but that night their cries sounded nearer, much nearer the house.

  Kishen slept. He was exhausted; he had been walking all evening, crying his heart out. I lay awake; my eyes were wide open, brimming with tears; I did not know if the tears were for myself or for Meena or for Kishen, but they were for someone.

  Meena is dead, I told myself. Meena is dead; if there is a God, then God look after her; if God is Love, then my love will be with her; she loved me; I can see her so clearly, her face speckled with sun and shadow when we kissed in the forest, the black waterfall of her hair, her tired eyes, her feet like jade in the lamplight, she loved me, she was mine . . .

  A feeling of impotence and futility overcame me and I pondered about the unimportance of life. Like everyone I too knew that every moment someone is born and someone dies, you can count them one, two, three, a birth and a death for every moment . . . what is this one life in the whole pattern of life, what is this one death but a passing of time . . . And if I were to die now, I asked myself, suddenly and without cause, what would happen, would it matter? . . . We live without knowing why or to what purpose.

  The moon bathed the room in a soft, clear light. The howl of the jackals seemed to be coming from the field below, and at that moment, both—the jackal and death—seemed to be similar to one another—ugly, cowardly and mad. I heard a faint sniff from the doorway, and lifted my head.

  In the doorway, a dark silhouette against the moonlight, stood the lean, craving form of a jackal, its eyes glittering balefully.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw everything in the room at the snivelling, cold-blooded beast, or throw myself out of the window instead. But I seemed to be immobilized and could do none of these things.

  The jackal lifted its head to the sky and emitted a long, blood-curdling howl that ran like an electric current through my body. Kishen sprang up with a gasp and threw his arms round me.

  And then I screamed.

  It was half shout, half scream. It began in the pit of my stomach, was caught by my lungs, and catapulted into the empty night. Everything around me seemed to be shaking, vibrating to the pitch of the scr
eam.

  The jackal fled. Kishen whimpered and sprang back from me and dived beneath the bedclothes.

  And as the scream and its echo died away, the night closed in again with a heavy, petrifying stillness; and all that could be heard was Kishen sobbing under the blankets, terrified not so much by the jackal’s howl as by my own terrible scream.

  ‘Oh, Kishen bhai,’ I cried, putting my arms around the boy, ‘don’t cry, please don’t cry. You are making me afraid of myself. Don’t be afraid, Kishen. Don’t make me afraid of myself . . .’

  And in the morning our relationship seemed to be under a little strain.

  Kishen’s aunt arrived. She had a tonga ready to take Kishen away. She gave me a hundred rupees, which she said was from Mr Kapoor; I didn’t want to take it, but Kishen swore at me and forced me to accept it.

  The tonga pony was restless, pawing the ground, chomping at the bit of grass there and snorting a little. The driver got down from the carriage and held the reins whilst Kishen and his aunt climbed on to their seats.

  Kishen made no effort to conceal his misery.

  ‘I wish you would come, Rusty,’ he said.

  ‘I will come and see you one day, be sure of that.’

  It was very seldom that Kishen expressed any great depth of feeling; he was always so absorbed with comforts of the flesh that he never had any profound thoughts; but he did have profound feelings, though they were seldom thought or spoken.

  He grimaced and prodded his nose.

  ‘Inside of me,’ he said, ‘I am all lonely . . .’

  The driver cracked his whip, the horse snorted, the wheels creaked, and the tonga moved forward. The carriage bumped up in the ditch, and it looked as though everyone would be thrown out; but it bumped down again without falling apart, and Kishen and his aunt were still in their seats. The driver jingled his bell, and the tonga turned on to the main road that led to the station; the horse’s hoofs clip-clopped, and the carriage wheels squeaked and rattled.

  I waved. Kishen sat stiff and straight, clenching the ends of his shirt.

  I couldn’t help feeling a bit afraid for Kishen, who seemed to be sitting on his own, apart from his aunt, as though he disowned or did not know her: it seemed as though he were being borne away to some strange, friendless world, where no one would know or care for him; and, though I knew Kishen to be wild and independent, I felt apprehensive for him.