DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES (49 page)

As the train entered the cutting, the engine whistled once, loud and piercingly. The tiger raised his head, then slowly got to his feet. He found himself trapped like the man. Flight along the cutting was impossible. He entered the tunnel, running as fast as his wounded leg would carry him. And then, with a roar and a shower of sparks, the train entered the yawning tunnel. The noise in the confined space was deafening but, when the train came out into the open, on the other side, silence returned once more to the forest and the tunnel.

At the next station the driver slowed down and stopped his train to water the engine. He got down to stretch his legs and decided to examine the headlamps. He received the surprise of his life; for, just above the cow catcher lay the major portion of the tiger, cut in half by the engine.

There was considerable excitement and conjecture at the station, but back at the cutting there was no sound except for the sobs of the boy as he sat beside the body of his father. He sat there a long time, unafraid of the darkness, guarding the body from jackals and hyenas, until the first faint light of dawn brought with it the arrival of the relief watchman.

Tembu and his sister and mother were plunged in grief for two whole days; but life had to go on, and a living had to be made, and all the responsibility now fell on Tembu. Three nights later, he was at the cutting, lighting the signal lamp for the overland mail.

He sat down in the darkness to wait for the train, and sang softly to himself. There was nothing to be afraid of—his father had killed the tiger, the forest gods, were pleased; and besides, he had the axe with him, his father’s axe, and he knew how to use it.

M
r Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night, on the outskirts of the hill station of Simla. From before Kipling’s time, the school had been run on English public school lines and the boys, most of them from wealthy Indian families, wore blazers, caps and ties.
Life
magazine, in a feature on India, had once called it the ‘Eton of the East’. Mr Oliver had been teaching in the school for several years.

The Simla bazaar, with its cinemas and restaurants, was about three miles from the school and Mr Oliver, a bachelor, usually strolled into the town in the evening, returning after dark, when he would take a short cut through the pine forest.

When there was a strong wind the pine trees made sad, eerie sounds that kept most people to the main road. But Mr Oliver was not a nervous or imaginative man. He carried a torch and its gleam—the batteries were running down—moved fitfully down the narrow forest path. When its flickering light fell on the figure of a boy, who was sitting alone on a rock, Mr Oliver stopped. Boys were not supposed to be out after dark.

‘What are you doing out here, boy?’ asked Mr Oliver sharply, moving closer so that he could recognize the miscreant. But even as he approached the boy, Mr Oliver sensed that something was wrong. The boy appeared to be crying. His head hung down, he held his face in his hands and his body shook convulsively. It was a strange, soundless weeping and Mr Oliver felt distinctly uneasy.

‘Well, what’s the matter?’ he asked, his anger giving way to concern. ‘What are you crying for?’ The boy would not answer or look up. His body continued to be racked with silent sobbing. ‘Come on, boy, you shouldn’t be out here at this hour. Tell me the trouble. Look up!’ The boy looked up. He took his hands from his face and looked up at his teacher. The light from Mr Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face—if you could call it a face.

It had no eyes, ears, nose or mouth. It was just a round smooth head—with a school cap on top of it! And that’s where the story should end. But for Mr Oliver it did not end here.

The torch fell from his trembling hand. He turned and scrambled down the path, running blindly through the trees and calling for help. He was still running towards the school buildings when he saw a lantern swinging in the middle of the path. Mr Oliver stumbled up to the watchman, gasping for breath. ‘What is it, sahib?’ asked the watchman. ‘Has there been an accident? Why are you running?’

‘I saw something—something horrible—a boy weeping in the forest—and he had no face!’

‘No face, sahib?’

‘No eyes, nose, mouth—nothing!’

‘Do you mean it was like this, sahib?’ asked the watchman and raised the lamp to his own face. The watchman had no eyes, no ears, no features at all—not even an eyebrow! And that’s when the wind blew the lamp out.

W
hile I was walking home one day, along the path through the pines, I heard a girl singing.

It was summer in the hills, and the trees were in new leaf. The walnuts and cherries were just beginning to form between the leaves.

The wind was still and the trees were hushed, and the song came to me clearly; but it was not the words—which I could not follow—or the rise and fall of the melody which held me in thrall, but the voice itself, which was a young and tender voice.

I left the path and scrambled down the slope, slipping on fallen pine needles. But when I came to the bottom of the slope the singing had stopped and there was no one there. ‘I’m sure I heard someone singing,’ I said to myself and then thought I might have been wrong. In the hills it is always possible to be wrong.

So I walked on home, and presently I heard another song, but this time it was the whistling thrush rendering a broken melody, singing a dark, sweet secret in the depths of the forest.

I had little to sing about myself. The electricity bill hadn’t been paid, and there was nothing in the bank, and my second novel had just been turned down by another publisher. Still, it was summer and men and animals were drowsy, and so, too, were my creditors. The distant mountains loomed purple in the shimmering dust haze.

I walked through the pines again, but I did not hear the singing. And then for a week I did not leave the cottage, as the novel had to be rewritten, and I worked hard at it, pausing only to eat and sleep and take note of the leaves turning a darker green.

The window opened on to the forest. Trees reached up to the window. Oak, maple, walnut. Higher up the hill, the pines started, and further on, armies of deodars marched over the mountains. And the mountains rose higher, and the trees grew stunted until they finally disappeared and only the black spirit-haunted rocks rose up to meet the everlasting snows. Those peaks cradled the sky. I could not see them from my windows. But on clear mornings they could be seen from the pass on the Tehri road.

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.

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 started 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 girl was gathering bilberries on the hillside. She was fresh-faced, honey-coloured. 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. Finding that I could speak haltingly in her language, 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 nine or ten years since my hand had touched a girl’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 do not see 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.

‘Fifteen, sixteen, I do not know for sure.’

‘Doesn’t your mother know?’

‘She is dead. And my grandmother 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, and laughed, and the silver 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.’

‘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 langoors 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 the girl 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—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.

But 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.