Rusty Comes Home Read online

  There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. One morning, quite early, I went down to the stream, and using the boulders as stepping-stones, moved downstream for about half a mile. Then I lay down to rest on a flat rock in the shade of a wild cherry tree and watched the sun shifting through the branches as it rose over the hill called Pari Tibba (Fairy Hill) and slid down the steep slope into the valley. The air was very still and already the birds were silent. The only sound came from the water running over the stony bed of the stream. I had lain there ten, perhaps fifteen minutes, when I began to feel that someone was watching me.

  Someone in the trees, in the shadows, still and watchful. Nothing moved; not a stone shifted, not a twig broke. But someone was watching me. I felt terribly exposed; not to danger, but to the scrutiny of unknown eyes. So I left the rock and, finding a path through the trees, began climbing the hill again.

  It was warm work. The sun was up, and there was no breeze. I was perspiring profusely by the time I got to the top of the hill. There was no sign of my unseen watcher. Two lean cows grazed on the short grass; the tinkling of their bells was the only sound in the sultry summer air. I went home.

  That song again! The same song, the same singer. I heard her from my window. And putting aside the book I was reading, I leant out of the window and stared down through the trees. But the foliage was too heavy and the singer too far away for me to be able to make her out. ‘Should I go and look for her?’ I wondered. ‘Or is it better this way—heard but not seen? For, having fallen in love with a song, must it follow that I will fall in love with the singer? No. But surely it is the voice and not the song that has touched me . . .’ Presently the singing ended, and I turned away from the window.

  A young woman was gathering bilberries on the hillside. She was fresh-faced, honey-coloured. She must have been in her early twenties. Her lips were stained with purple juice. She smiled at me. ‘Are they good to eat?’ I asked.

  She opened her fist and thrust out her hand, which was full of berries, bruised and crushed. I took one and put it in my mouth. It had a sharp, sour taste. ‘It is good,’ I said. Perhaps she felt that I was rather harmless, for, she came nearer, said, ‘Take more then,’ and filled my hand with bilberries. Her fingers touched mine. The sensation was almost unique, for it was a long time since my hand had touched a woman’s.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked. She pointed across the valley to where a small village straddled the slopes of a terraced hill.

  ‘It’s quite far,’ I said. ‘Do you always come so far from home?’

  ‘I go further than this,’ she said. ‘The cows must find fresh grass. And there is wood to gather and grass to cut.’ She showed me the sickle held by the cloth tied firmly about her waist. ‘Sometimes I go to the top of Pari Tibba, sometimes to the valley beyond. Have you been there?’

  ‘No. But I will go some day.’

  ‘It is always windy on Pari Tibba.’

  ‘Is it true that there are fairies there?’

  She laughed. ‘That is what people say. But those are people who have never been there. I do not see fairies on Pari Tibba. It is said that there are ghosts in the ruins on the hill. But I have never seen any ghosts.’

  ‘I have heard of the ghosts,’ I said. ‘Two lovers who ran away and took shelter in a ruined cottage. At night there was a storm, and they were killed by lightning. Is it true, this story?’

  ‘It happened many years ago, before I was born. I have heard the story. But there are no ghosts on Pari Tibba.’

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Twenty-two, twenty-three, I do not know for sure.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mother know?’

  ‘She is dead. And my grandfather has forgotten. And my brother, he is younger than me and he’s forgotten his own age. Is it important to remember?’

  ‘No, it is not important. Not here, anyway. Not in the hills. To a mountain, a hundred years are but as a day.’

  ‘Are you very old?’ she asked.

  ‘I hope not. Do I look very old?’

  ‘Only a hundred,’ she said mischievously, and laughed, and the bangles on her wrists tinkled as she put her hands up to her laughing face.

  ‘Why do you laugh?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you looked as though you believed me. How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-five, thirty-six, I do not remember exactly.’

  ‘Ah, it is better to forget!’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘but sometimes one has to fill in forms and things like that, and then one has to state one’s age.’

  ‘I have never filled a form. I have never seen one.’ ‘And I hope you never will. It is a piece of paper covered with useless information. It is all a part of human progress.’

  ‘Progress?’

  ‘Yes. Are you unhappy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you go hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you don’t need progress. Wild bilberries are better.’

  She went away without saying goodbye. The cows had strayed and she ran after them, calling them by name: ‘Neelu, Neelu!’ (Blue) and ‘Bhuri!’ (Old One). Her bare feet moved swiftly over the rocks and dry grass.

  Early May. The cicadas were singing in the forest; or rather, orchestrating, since they make the sound with their legs. The whistling thrushes pursued each other over the treetops in acrobatic love-flights. Sometimes the langurs visited the oak trees to feed on the leaves. As I moved down the path to the stream, I heard the same singing, and coming suddenly upon the clearing near the water’s edge I saw her sitting on a rock, her feet in the rushing water—the same girl who had given me bilberries. Strangely enough, I had not guessed that she was the singer. Unseen voices conjure up fanciful images. I had imagined a woodland nymph, a graceful, delicate, beautiful, goddess-like creature, not a mischievous-eyed, round-faced, juice-stained, slightly ragged pixie. Her dhoti—actually a rough, homespun sari—was faded and torn; an impractical garment, I thought, for running about on the hillside, but the village folk put their girls into dhotis before they are twelve. She’d compromised by hitching it up and by strengthening the waist with a length of cloth bound tightly about her, but she’d have been more at ease in the long, flounced skirt worn in the hills further away.

  However, I was not disillusioned. I had clearly taken a fancy to her cherubic, open countenance; and the sweetness of her voice added to her charms.

  I watched her from the banks of the stream, and presently she looked up, grinned, and stuck her tongue out at me.

  ‘That’s a nice way to greet me,’ I said. ‘Have I offended you?’

  ‘You surprised me. Why did you not call out?’

  ‘Because I was listening to your singing. I did not wish to speak until you had finished.’

  ‘It was only a song.’

  ‘But you sang it sweetly.’

  She smiled. ‘Have you brought anything to eat?’

  ‘No. Are you hungry?’

  ‘At this time I get hungry. When you come to meet me you must always bring something to eat.’

  ‘But I didn’t come to meet you. I didn’t know you would be here.’

  ‘You do not wish to meet me?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. It is nice to meet you.’

  ‘You will meet me if you keep coming into the forest. So always bring something to eat.’

  ‘I will do so next time. Shall I pick you some berries?’

  ‘You will have to go to the top of the hill again to find the kingora bushes.’

  ‘I don’t mind. If you are hungry, I will bring some.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, and looked down at her feet, which were still in the water.

  Like some knight errant of old, I toiled up the hill again until I found the bilberry bushes, and stuffing my pockets with berries I returned to the stream. But when I got there I found she’d slipped away. The cowbells tinkled on the far hill.

  Glow-worms shone fitfully in the dark. The night wa
s full of sounds—the tonk-tonk of a nightjar, the cry of a barking deer, the shuffling of porcupines, the soft flip-flop of moths beating against the window-panes. On the hill across the valley, lights flickered in the small village—the dim lights of kerosene lamps swinging in the dark.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked, when we met again on the path through the pine forest.

  ‘Binya,’ she said. ‘What is yours?’

  ‘I’ve no name.’

  ‘All right, Mr No-name.’

  ‘I mean I haven’t made a name for myself. We must make our own names, don’t you think?’

  ‘Binya is my name. I do not wish to have any other. Where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘No-name goes nowhere! Then you cannot come with me, because I am going home and my grandfather will set the village dogs on you if you follow me.’ And laughing, she ran down the path to the stream; she knew I could not catch up with her.

  Summer rain streamed down her face as she climbed the steep hill, calling the white cow home. She seemed very tiny on the windswept mountainside. A twist of hair lay flat against her forehead and her torn blue dhoti clung to her firm round thighs. I went to her with an umbrella to give her shelter. She stood with me beneath the umbrella and let me put my arm around her. Then she turned her face up to mine, wonderingly, and I kissed her quickly, softly on the lips. Her lips tasted of raindrops and mint. And then she left me there, so gallant in the blistering rain. She ran home laughing. But it was worth the drenching.

  Another day I heard her calling to me—‘No-name, Mister No-name!’—but I couldn’t see her, and it was some time before I found her, halfway up a cherry tree, her feet pressed firmly against the bark, her dhoti tucked up between her legs that were strong and vigorous.

  ‘The cherries are not ripe,’ I said.

  ‘They are never ripe. But I like them green and sour. Will you come onto the tree?’

  ‘If I can still climb a tree,’ I said.

  ‘My grandfather is over sixty, and he can climb trees.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind being more adventurous at sixty. There’s not so much to lose then.’ I climbed into the tree without much difficulty, but I did not think the higher branches would take my weight, so I remained standing in the fork of the tree, my face on a level with Binya’s breasts. I put my hand against her waist, and kissed her on the soft inside of her arm. She did not say anything. But she took me by the hand and helped me to climb a little higher, and I put my arm around her, as much to support myself as to be close to her.

  ‘Why aren’t you married, Binya?’ I asked. In those days, it was customary for girls to be married off by the time they turned seventeen. She looked down at me seriously and then quietly said, ‘I’m a widow. Have been one for a long time . . .’

  The full moon rides high, shining through the tall oak trees near the window. The night is full of sounds—crickets, the tonk-tonk of a nightjar, and floating across the valley from your village the sound of drums beating and people singing. It is a festival day, and there will be feasting in your home. Are you singing too, tonight? And are you thinking of me, as you sing, as you laugh, as you dance with your friends? I am sitting here alone, and so I have no one to think of but you.

  Binya . . . I take your name again and again—as though by taking it I can make you hear me, and come to me, walking over the moonlit mountain . . .

  There are spirits around tonight. They move silently in the trees; they hover about the window at which I sit; they take up with the wind and rush about the house. Spirits of the trees, spirits of the old house. An old lady died here last year. She’d lived in the house for over thirty years; something of her personality surely dwells here still. When I look into the tall, old mirror which was hers, I sometimes catch a glimpse of her pale face and long, golden hair. She likes me, I think, and the house is kind to me. Would she be jealous of you, Binya?

  The music and singing grows louder. I can imagine your face glowing in the firelight. Your eyes shine with laughter. You have all those people near you and I have only the stars, and the nightjar, and the ghost in the mirror.

  I woke early, while the dew was still fresh on the grass, and walked down the hill to the stream, and then up to a little knoll where a pine tree grew in solitary splendour, the wind going hoo-hoo in its slender branches. This was my favourite place, my place of power, where I came to renew myself from time to time. I lay on the grass, dreaming. The sky in its blueness swung round above me. An eagle soared in the distance. I heard her voice down among the trees; or I thought I heard it. But when I went to look, I could not find her.

  I’d never prided myself on my rationality, I was sure that I’d never be anything but impulsive; I had never taught myself to be wary of emotional states, like ‘falling in love’, which for me always turned out to be ephemeral and illusory. And although I told myself again and again that the attraction was purely physical, on my part as well as hers, I had to admit to myself that my feelings towards Binya differed from the feelings I’d had for others . . . Binya represented something else—something wild, dreamlike, fairy-like. She moved close to the spirit-haunted rocks, the old trees, the young grass. She had absorbed something from them—a primeval innocence, an unconcern with the passing of time and events, an affinity with the forest and the mountains, and this made her special and magical.

  And so, when three, four, five days went by, and I did not find her on the hillside, I went through all the pangs of frustrated love: had she forgotten me and gone elsewhere? Had we been seen together, and was she being kept at home? (For, though I wasn’t bothered by her being a widow, the village surely would have something to say if a widow’s behaviour brought shame or scandal.) Was she ill? Or had she been spirited away?

  I could hardly go and ask for her. I would probably be driven from the village. It straddled the opposite hill, a cluster of slate-roof houses, a pattern of little, terraced fields. I could see figures in the fields, but they were too far away, too tiny, for me to be able to recognize anyone.

  She had gone to her mother’s village, a hundred miles away or so, a small boy told me.

  And so I brooded; walked disconsolately through the oak forest, hardly listening to the birds—the sweet-throated whistling thrush; the shrill barbet; the mellow-voiced doves. Happiness had always made me more responsive to nature. Feeling miserable, my thoughts turned inward. I brooded upon the trickery of time and circumstance; I felt the years were passing by, had passed by, like waves on a receding tide, leaving me washed up like a bit of flotsam on a lonely beach. But at the same time, the whistling thrush seemed to mock at me, calling tantalizingly from the shadows of the ravine: ‘It isn’t time that’s passing by, it is you and I, it is you and I . . .’

  Then I forced myself to snap out of my melancholy. I kept away from the hillside and the forest. A couple of times I went to visit Miss Pettibone—one of the oldest residents of Dehra. I did not look towards the village. I buried myself in my work, tried to think objectively, and wrote an article on ‘The Inscriptions on the Iron Pillar at Kalsi’; very learned, very dry, very sensible.

  But at night I was assailed by thoughts of Binya. I could not sleep. I switched on the light, and there she was, smiling at me from the looking glass, replacing the image of the old lady who had watched over me for so long.

  The Good Old Days

  I TOOK MISS Pettibone an offering of a tin of Malabar sardines, and so lessened the sharpness of her rebuke.

  ‘Ah, so you deign to come this way at last’, she said, looking reproachfully at me over her spectacles. ‘I might have been dead all this time . . .’ She was exaggerating a bit; I visited her now and then, but she liked to receive visitors more often, and let up no chance to remind them that she was an old, dying woman and she definitely had the knack of making people feel they were somehow responsible for her.

  However Miss Pettibone, at eighty-five, did not show the least signs of dying. She lived in a small cott
age halfway up a hill. The cottage, like Longfellow’s village of Attri, gave one the impression of having tried to get to the top of the hill and failed halfway up. It was hidden from the road by oaks and maples.

  ‘I’ve been busy. I hope you’ve been all right?’

  ‘I can’t complain. The weather’s been good, and the padre sent me some eggs.’

  She set great store on what was given to her in the way of food. Her pension of a hundred and forty rupees a month only permitted a diet of dal and rice; but the thoughtfulness of people who knew her and the occasional gift parcel from England lent variety to her diet and frequently gave her a topic of conversation.

  ‘I’m glad you have some eggs,’ I said. ‘They’re four rupees a dozen now.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And there was a time when they were only six annas a dozen.’

  ‘About thirty years ago, I suppose.’

  ‘No, twenty-five. I remember, May Taylor’s eggs were always the best. She lived in Fairville—the old house near the Raja’s estate.’

  ‘Did she have a poultry farm?’

  ‘Oh no, just her own hens. Very ordinary hens too, not White Leghorns or Rhode Island Reds—but they gave lovely eggs; she knew how to keep her birds healthy . . . May Taylor was a friend of mine. She didn’t supply eggs to just anybody, you know.’

  ‘Oh, naturally not. Miss Taylor’s dead now, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh yes, quite dead. Her sister saw to that.’

  ‘Oh!’ I sensed a story. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘Well, it was a bit of a mystery really. May and Charlotte never did get on with each other and it’s a wonder they agreed to live together. Even as children they used to fight. But Charlotte was always the spoilt one—prettier, you see. May, when I knew her, was thirty-five, a good woman if you know what I mean. She saw to the house and saw to the meals and she went to church like other respectable people and everyone liked her. But Charlotte was moody and bad-tempered. She kept to herself—always had done, since the parents died. And she was a little too fond of the bottle.’