The Laughing Skull Read online

  The Major had climbed down from the tonga and was watching his luggage being carried on to the verandah. He was red in the face and the ends of his handlebar moustache were stiff with brilliantine. Dhuki approached with a half-hearted salaam.

  ‘Ah, so there you are, you old scoundrel!’ exclaimed the Major, trying to sound friendly and jocular. ‘More jungle than garden, from what I can see. You’re getting too old for this sort of work, Dhuki. Time to retire! And where’s the Memsahib?’

  ‘Gone to the bazaar,’ said Dhuki.

  ‘And the boy?’

  Dhuki shrugged. ‘I have not seen the boy, today, Sahib.’

  ‘Damn!’ said the Major. ‘A fine homecoming, this is. Well, wake up the cook-boy and tell him to get some sodas.’

  ‘Cook-boy’s gone away,’ said Dhuki.

  ‘Well, I’ll be double-damned,’ said the major.

  The tonga went away, and the Major started pacing up and down the garden path. Then he saw Dhuki’s unfinished work at the well. He grew purple in the face, strode across to the well, and started ranting at the old gardener.

  Dhuki began making excuses. He said something about a shortage of bricks; the sickness of a niece; unsatisfactory cement; unfavourable weather; unfavourable gods. When none of this seemed to satisfy the Major, Dhuki began mumbling about something bubbling up from the bottom of the well, and pointed down into its depths. The Major stepped on to the low parapet and looked down. Dhuki kept pointing. The Major leant over a little.

  Dhuki’s hands moved swiftly, like a conjurer’s making a pass. He did not actually push the Major. He appeared merely to tap him once on the bottom. I caught a glimpse of my stepfather’s boots as he disappeared into the well. I couldn’t help thinking of Alice in Wonderland, of Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole.

  There was a tremendous splash, and the pigeons flew up, circling the well thrice before settling on the roof of the bungalow.

  By lunch time—or tiffin, as we called it then—Dhuki had the well covered over with the wooden planks.

  ‘The Major will be pleased,’ said my mother, when she came home. ‘It will be quite ready by evening, won’t it, Dhuki?’

  By evening, the well had been completely bricked over. It was the fastest bit of work Dhuki had ever done.

  Over the next few weeks, my mother’s concern changed to anxiety, her anxiety to melancholy, and her melancholy to resignation. By being gay and high-spirited myself, I hope I did something to cheer her up. She had written to the Colonel of the Regiment, and had been informed that the Major had gone home on leave a fortnight previously. Somewhere, in the vastness of India, the Major had disappeared.

  It was easy enough to disappear and never be found. After several months had passed without the Major turning up, it was presumed that one of the two things must have happened. Either he had been murdered on the train, and his corpse flung into a river; or, he had run away with a tribal girl and was living in some remote corner of the country.

  Life had to carry on for the rest of us. The rains were over, and the guava season was approaching.

  My mother was receiving visits from a colonel of His Majesty’s 32nd Foot. He was an elderly, easy-going, seemingly absent-minded man, who didn’t get in the way at all, but left slabs of chocolate lying around the house.

  ‘A good Sahib,’ observed Dhuki, as I stood beside him behind the bougainvillaea, watching the colonel saunter up the verandah steps. ‘See how well he wears his sola-topee! It covers his head completely.’

  ‘He’s bald underneath,’ I said.

  ‘No matter. I think he will be all right.’

  ‘And if he isn’t,’ I said, ‘we can always open up the well again.’

  Dhuki dropped the nozzle of the hosepipe, and water gushed out over our feet. But he recovered quickly, and taking me by the hand, led me across to the old well, now surmounted by a three-tiered cement platform which looked rather like a wedding cake.

  ‘We must not forget our old well,’ he said. ‘Let us make it beautiful, Baba. Some flower pots, perhaps.’

  And together we fetched pots, and decorated the covered well with ferns and geraniums. Everyone congratulated Dhuki on the fine job he’d done. My only regret was that the pigeons had gone away.

  A Face Under the Pillow

  ‘Camping in the jungle was full of danger,’ I remarked. ‘You must have felt much safer working in the house.’

  ‘Well, cooking was certainly easier,’ said Mehmood. ‘But I don’t know if it was much safer. The animals couldn’t get in, true, but there were ghosts and evil spirits lurking in some of the rooms. I changed my room thrice, but there was always someone—something—after me. I don’t know if I should tell you this, baba. You have your own small room and you may start imagining things…’

  ‘I’m not afraid of ghosts, Mehmood.’

  ‘That’s because you haven’t seen one. Although I’m not sure it was a ghost. And I did not actually see anything. But I felt it all right!’

  ‘You can’t feel a ghost, Mehmood. At least not in stories.’

  ‘This wasn’t a story. It was my first night in Carpet-sahib’s house in the jungle. It has a big house with many rooms, and I was given a room of my own. But there was no electricity in that out-of-the way place. We used kerosene lamps or candles.

  ‘I had brought my own razai and blanket, but the mattress was a strange one, and so was the pillow. Not a pillow, really, but an old cushion, very hard and lumpy. It was my first night in that bed, and I was very uncomfortable. The candle burnt itself out, and I was still wide awake. I could see very little, there was just a small window allowing a little moonlight into the room. I was almost asleep when I heard someone groaning beside me. Groaning loudly, as though in pain. But there was no one else in the bed, and no one beneath it.

  ‘The groaning stopped for a time, and then, just as I was about to fall asleep, it started again. Groan, groan, groan. Now it seemed to come from beneath my pillow.

  ‘I turned on my side, and slowly, carefully, I slipped my hand beneath the pillow.

  ‘It encountered a hairy face, a gaping mouth, hollow sockets instead of eyes. Horrible to touch! Not the face of a human, baba—the face of a rakshas!

  ‘I tried to pull my hand away, but it was seized by that terrible mouth. A mouth with long sharp teeth—teeth like daggers! It would have bitten my fingers off if I hadn’t screamed and shouted for help.

  ‘Carpet-sahib and his sister and the other servants came running. As they rushed into the room with torches and a lamp, these awful teeth released my hand.

  ‘Under the pillow!’ I screamed. ‘Under the pillow!’

  ‘They looked under the pillow! But there was nothing there. I showed them my fingers—they were bleeding badly.’

  ‘A rat must have bitten you,’ said Carpet-sahib’s sister. But she knew it wasn’t a rat. And she gave me another room to sleep in.

  ‘And were you all right in the second room?’

  ‘For a couple of nights, baba. And then it happened again.’

  ‘You put your hand under the pillow again? And the face was there?’

  ‘Not the whole face, baba. Just something soft and squishy. I thought it was a snail under my pillow. So I got up, lit my lamp, and looked under the pillow.’

  ‘What was it, Mehmood? Tell me quickly.’

  ‘It was an eyeball, baba. An eye that had been removed from its socket. It was staring up at me. Just an eyeball, staring! I picked it up and threw it out of the window. I threw the pillow away too. Something terrible had happened upon that pillow, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘So it wasn’t the room?’

  ‘It wasn’t the room. It was the pillow, baba. Next day I went into town and bought a new pillow, and from then on I slept beautifully every night. Never use a strange cushion or pillow, baba. Terrible things have happened on pillows. So remember—when you return to school next month, take a new pillow, and don’t use anyone else’s!’

  After lis
tening to Mehmood’s story, I was always careful to use my own pillow. Even now, many many years later, I carry my own pillow wherever I go. No hotel pillows for me. You never knew what might be lurking beneath them.

  A Demon for Work

  In a VILLAGE in South India there lived a very rich landlord who owned several villages and many fields; but he was such a great miser that he found it difficult to find tenants who would willingly work on his land, and those who did, gave him a lot of trouble. As a result, he left all his fields unfilled, and even his tanks and water channels dried up. This made him poorer day by day. But he made no effort to obtain the goodwill of his tenants.

  One day, a holy man paid him a visit. The landlord poured out his tale of woe.

  ‘These miserable tenants won’t do a thing for me,’ he complained. ‘All my lands are going to waste.’

  ‘My dear good landlord,’ said the holy man. ‘I think I can help you, if you will repeat a mantra—a few magic words—which I will teach you. If you repeat it for three months, day and night, a wonderful demon will appear before you on the first day of the fourth month. He will willingly be your servant and take upon himself all the work that has been left undone by your wretched tenants. The demon will obey all your orders. You will find him equal to a hundred servants!’

  The miserly landlord immediately fell at the feet of the holy man and begged for instruction. The sage gave him the magic words and then went his way. The landlord, greatly pleased, repeated the mantra day and night, for three months, till, on the first day of the fourth month, a magnificent young demon stood before him.

  ‘What can I do for you, master?’ he said. ‘I am at your command.’

  The landlord was taken aback by the sight of the huge monster who stood before him, and by the sound of his terrible voice, but he summoned up enough courage to say, ‘You can work for me provided—er—you don’t expect any salary.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the demon, ‘but I have one condition. You must give me enough work to keep me busy all the time. If I have nothing to do, I shall kill you and eat you. Juicy landlords are my favourite dish.’

  The landlord, certain that there was enough work to keep several demons busy for ever, agreed to these terms. He took the demon to a large tank which had been dry for years, and said: ‘You must deepen this tank until it is as deep as the height of two palm trees.’

  ‘As you say, master,’ said the demon, and set to work.

  The landlord went home, feeling sure that the job would take several weeks. His wife gave him a good dinner, and he was just sitting down in his courtyard to enjoy the evening breeze when the demon arrived, casually remarking that the tank was ready.

  ‘The tank ready!’ exclaimed the astonished landlord. ‘Why, I thought it would take you several weeks! How shall I keep him busy?’ he asked, turning to his wife for aid. ‘If he goes on at this rate, he’ll soon have an excuse for killing and eating me!’

  ‘You must not lose heart, my husband,’ said the landlord’s wife. ‘Get all the work you can out of the demon. You’ll never find such a good worker again. And when you have no more work for him, let me know—I’ll find something to keep him busy.’

  The landlord went out to inspect the tank and found that it had been completed to perfection. Then he set the demon to plough all his farm lands, which extended over a number of villages. This was done in two days. He next asked the demon to dig up all the waste land. This was done in less than a day.

  ‘I’m getting hungry,’ said the demon. ‘Come on, master, give me more work, quickly!’

  The landlord felt helpless. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘my wife says she has a little job for you. Do go and see what it is she wants done. When you have finished, you can come and eat me, because I just can’t see how I can keep you busy much longer!’

  The landlord’s wife, who had been listening to them, now came out of the house, holding in her hands a long hair which she had just pulled out of her head.

  ‘Well, my good demon,’ she said. ‘I have a very light job for you. I’m sure you will do it in a twinkling. Take this hair, and when you have made it perfectly straight, bring it back to me.’

  The demon laughed uproariously, but took the hair and went away with it.

  All night he sat in a peepul tree, trying to straighten the hair. He kept rolling it against his thighs and then lifting it up to see if it had become straight. But no, it would still bend! By morning the demon was feeling very tired.

  Then he remembered that goldsmiths, when straightening metal wires, would heat them over a fire. So he made a fire and placed the hair over it, and in the twinkling of an eye it frizzled and burnt up.

  The demon was horrified. He dared not return to the landlord’s wife. Not only had he failed to straighten the hair, but he had lost it too. Feeling that he had disgraced himself, he ran away to another part of the land.

  So the landlord was rid of his demon. But he had learnt a lesson. He decided that it was better to have tenants working for him than demons, even if it meant paying for their services.

  The Happy Herdsman

  A young herdsman was watching some sheep at the edge of the jungle, when a tiger came out and asked him for a sheep.

  ‘They are not my sheep,’ said the herdsman. ‘How can I give you one?’

  ‘All right, don‘t,’ said the tiger. ‘I‘ll eat you instead, one of these nights.’

  When the herdsman came home, he told his mother what had happened, and she said, ‘We had better get the neighbours to sleep in the house, as a precaution.’

  So the neighbours brought their beds and slept in the house. The herdsman‘s bed was placed in the centre. In the middle of the night the tiger came in quietly, crept under the herdsman‘s bed, and carried it off on his shoulders.

  When they had gone a little distance, the herdsman fortunately woke, to find himself being borne away on his bed. As they passed under a huge banyan tree, he caught hold of one of its dangling shoots and climbed up. The tiger, knowing nothing of this, went off with the bed.

  The herdsman was so afraid of the tiger that he remained in the tree all next day. In the evening a herd of cows came to the spot and lay down under the banyan tree. They remained there all night and next morning went off to graze. While they were away, the herdsman came down and cleaned up the area under the banyan tree.

  Next night, when the cows came again, they were delighted to find that someone had cleaned the area. They wondered who had done them this service. When the same thing happened three days in succession, the cows called out, ‘Show yourself, oh unknown friend! We are grateful, and wish to make your acquaintance.’ But the herdsman thought this might be some trick on the part of the tiger. He kept quiet and remained hidden in the banyan tree.

  Then the cows made a plan. One of them was old and weak, so the others told her: ‘You lie here and pretend to be sick. Our friend is sure to come down to help you after we have gone. When he comes, catch hold of his dhoti, and don‘t let go until we return.’

  The old cow did as she was told. When she caught hold of the herdsman‘s dhoti, he did his best to drag himself away, but she held fast.

  When the cows came back, they told the herdsman how grateful they were to him. They said, ‘You may have as much of our milk as you want.’

  So the herdsman continued to live in the banyan tree, and he would milk the cows every day.

  One day, as he was walking about beneath the tree, he saw several young snakes coming out of a hole in the ground. They looked thin and miserable. The herdsman felt sorry for them, so every day he gave them some milk. When they grew strong and began to move about in the jungle, they met their mother, who exclaimed: ‘I can‘t believe it! I left you starving, and now here you are, well and strong!’ They told her how the herdsman had taken care of them. So she went to the herdsman and said:. ‘Ask any boon you will.’ And the herdsman said: ‘I wish that my hair and skin would turn the colour of gold.’ The change took place alm
ost at once, and then the snakes went away.

  On a hot summer‘s day the herdsman went down to the river to bathe. As he was bathing, a strand of golden hair came away in his hands. He made a little leaf-boat, and he put the hair in it, and let it float downstream.

  Many miles downstream a king‘s daughter was bathing. As the leaf-boat floated past, she picked up the golden hair. ‘Oh, how lovely!’ she exclaimed. ‘My father must marry me to the man who has hair like this!’

  When she showed her father the hair, and told him of her desire to marry its owner, the king made every effort to find him. Finally his soldiers traced the herdsman and told him to accompany them back to the king‘s palace. ‘I will do nothing of the sort,’ he said.

  They tried to drag him away, but he played on his flute and all the cows rushed up, charged the soldiers and drove them off. When they told the king what had happened, he sent his pet crows to get the flute. They came and perched on the banyan tree, and made a lot of noise. The herdsman threw stones at them, but could not drive them away. Finally he became so angry that he threw his flute at them. One of the crows caught it neatly in its beak and flew off with it.

  Having got possession of the flute, the king sent another party of soldiers to seize the herdsman. He blew upon another flute, but this one did not have the same magic, and the cows did not rush to his rescue. He was carried off to the king‘s palace.

  The king lost no time in marrying the herdsman to the princess. They were given a beautiful house and lots of money. But, although the herdsman was fond of his wife, he longed for his former life as a cowherd.

  One day he asked his wife to give him the old flute. She took it out of her box and gave it to him. When he blew it, the sound reached the cows, and they all rushed to the king‘s palace and began knocking down the walls.

  The king was terrified and asked them what they wanted. ‘We want our cowherd!’ they replied.

  So the king had to give in. But, being a king, he built a palace for his son-in-law near the banyan tree, and gave him half his kingdom. The palace remained empty, because the herdsman and his princess preferred to stay in the banyan tree, where they lived happily together for many a year.