Shining Hero (14 page)

When they came to Dolly’s soap they began to argue over whether it was worth saving or chucking and in the end it got the latter treatment. Dolly let out a sob as she saw her only hope for the future bursting open over the rails. The sound made a dacoit turn his attention onto her. Grinning, he jerked at her choli, ripping the cloth, while Karna watched from his basket, his eyes round with dismay. Now his hot dinner in the village would be gone. The dacoits were going to take away Dolly’s money.

The dacoit tore the cloth away then pulled at her sari, jerking the folds out, but nothing fell from her body. Then the bandit saw her clenched hand and began to prise at her fingers with his, ordering her, ‘Open it.’

Dolly clung frantically to Karna’s chain.

‘Give it to him,’ urged the other passengers. ‘He’ll only hurt you if you don’t.’

But they would have to kill her or chop her hand off to get possession of Karna’s chain.

Karna suddenly emerged, orange faced, from his basket and shouted, ‘Stop doing that to my mother.’ Jumping up he caught at the bandit’s hand and tried to pull it away. As though swatting off an insect, the dacoit whacked Karna aside and took out a heavy, curved-bladed knife.

‘No, no, no,’ screamed Dolly. ‘Please, oh, please.’

Holding her arm tightly the man raised the knife.

Dolly was screaming, writhing, frantic, but could not get away. The knife came down and bit deep into Dolly’s arm as Karna, yelling, launched himself at the man.

The dacoit dropped the knife, let go of Dolly and grabbed Karna by the hair. Dangling the kicking screaming child he called out, ‘Look at this disgusting thing, Raj.’ Karna tried to struggle free as he swiftly licked the last drops of mango pulp from his fingers.

‘Eh, Mohun, throw it out of the door with the other rubbish,’ laughed the second dacoit as he chucked a hessian bundle of bedding,
but Karna, who had already been thrown from a train once and knew what it felt like, grabbed tightly at the fingers gripping his hair. ‘Don’t dare, you banchod,’ he screeched.

‘What a hero.’ The dacoit swung Karna back, preparing to hurl him but the boy clung like a kitten with claws, gripping the man’s ears, his fingers, the back of his shirt.

‘He is only a little boy. He is only six. Let him go,’ yelled Dolly, wrapping the sari end round her arm to staunch the bleeding. Her fingers were still gripping the precious medallion. Karna’s jaws were chattering and his voice shrill. ‘Put me down. My head is hurting.’

Mohun put his face close to Karna’s, grinned and asked, ‘Aren’t you afraid of me? Everybody else on the train is.’

‘No. I’m not afraid of anything,’ the child yelled. But all the same his whole body was shaking like paddy in a monsoon storm and his teeth were clacking together so hard that they sounded like dice being shaken.

‘Why aren’t you afraid of me?’ laughed the dacoit.

‘Because I hate you,’ screeched Karna. ‘Because you hurt my mother. When I am grown up I shall never hurt people’s mothers.’

Mohun gazed down at the tiny defiant figure and with a laugh, dropped the child onto the floor. Then, turning on Dolly, he grabbed her hand with both of his and jerked it open. He saw the gold she was holding, froze and stood staring.

‘It’s his,’ Dolly whispered, gesturing to her son who was struggling from the floor. ‘It is all he has.’

The bandit, whose eyes had not left the glittering treasure in Dolly’s hand, suddenly seemed to come to some decision. Quickly folding Dolly’s fingers over the chain again, he called out to his partner, ‘This small fellow has defeated me. Come on, Raj. That’s all we can get from here.’

As the dacoits reached the door Mohun called back to Karna, ‘You can join us when you are older. We want brave men like you.’

‘When I am old enough I shall find you to fight with you, not to join you,’ shouted Karna, massaging his head.

‘Hush hush,’ implored the people in the compartment. ‘They will
come back and kill us all,’ and Dolly put her hand over her son’s mouth to stop him talking, but Mohun only laughed as he jumped down onto the lines.

As soon as they were gone Karna saw the blood on his mother’s arm, and was all ready to go after the dacoits again. ‘They cut you so I will kill them.’ Dolly and other people in the compartment had to hold him back. They began saying, ‘You can see that he is the son of the film star, Dilip Baswani. Only the child of the sun god would be strong and brave enough to fight off the dacoits.’

But Dolly slapped Karna, shouting, ‘You stupid boy, do you want to be killed?’ Tears shot down her cheeks.

‘What were you holding?’ Karna asked at last, when her fury began to subside. Wrenching himself out of her grip he demanded, ‘Let me see it. Why wouldn’t you let the dacoits have it?’ And he too began to prise at his mother’s fingers, trying to get them apart and to see.

‘Stop that.’ She pushed him away. ‘I will show you soon. It is yours and that’s why I didn’t want them to have it. I would have given it to them if it was mine.’

‘Mine,’ breathed Karna, who until the new clothes had never before owned anything he had not stolen.

He craned this way and that, trying to see, as she smuggled the secret thing back into a bag at her waist. ‘What is it? Why won’t you let me see? I want to see it.’

‘Be quiet.’ He knew this voice. She really meant it this time. He sank back, silent and forlorn, a little boy again instead of a conqueror of dacoits.

She suddenly hugged him. ‘As soon as we get to the village I will buy you a hot pilau.’

‘But he took your money. I saw him pull your choli,’ cried Karna.

She took hold of his hand and pressed it in the fold between her breasts. ‘Here,’ she whispered. Karna felt the hot damp of her skin under the ripped choli, the softness of her body, the thin hard fold of paper money. ‘See.’ She was not crying or angry anymore. She was smiling and Karna laughed too because he and his mother had both outwitted the dacoits.

People had already begun rootling among the shattered objects on the line. The owner of the milk found, miraculously, a single kujah unbroken. Dolly and Karna found some of the soap but the packets were soiled and torn.

The train did not leave for hours. The passengers, after they had gathered up whatever they could of their possessions, waited in long and whimpering silence, broken only by the constant piping of the ducklings.

During the night Dolly started to cough and put aside the soap tablets she was trying to clean. Karna struggled up and put his arms round her. He could feel her shivering. ‘Are you cold?’ When they got back to Calcutta he would get her a shawl, he thought. He would sneak past one of those New Market stalls, snatch one from the stand and rush off along the aisles with it, before the shopkeepers or the watchmen could catch up with him.

She shook her head. ‘Just happy because I have you,’ she said.

‘I will get her pashmina,’ he thought. ‘Soft and warm. She will stop coughing once I have got the pashmina shawl for her. Or shahtoosh.’ Shahtoosh was the wonderful soft wool that came only from the throat of a particular kind of wild mountain sheep and was so fine that a full shawl could be pulled through a finger ring. Maharajas were given shahtoosh shawls as wedding gifts. He was quicker than anyone. Surely he could steal such a shawl for his mother.

The fit at last over, Dolly went on wiping the tarnished bars.

They reached the village of Hatipur in the morning. Dolly felt very weak. She had lost a lot of blood, and the wound hurt. Karna was disappointed. He had expected the platform to be thronging with elephants for otherwise why should this place be called ‘Village of Elephants’? He had even been slightly nervous, and wondered how he and his mother would cope among all the gigantic tuskers. But there was not an elephant to be seen anywhere.

He realised his mother was trembling.

‘It’s OK,’ he told her. ‘You needn’t be afraid. The elephants have all gone.’

‘Elephants, you silly. Why are you talking about elephants?’ she laughed.

‘If it’s not the elephants, then why are you shivering?’ he asked. ‘It’s not at all cold now.’ Instead of answering, she caught him by the hand as though something urgent had come up. ‘We have to go somewhere,’ she said and began hurrying him, ignoring his demand for the hot pilau. ‘Come, come, don’t dawdle.’ Lugging her bag of soap samples, she thrust herself and her son through the packed station crowd.

‘I am looking for a house called the Hatibari,’ she told the ticket collector.

‘The Hatibari.’ He repeated her question with a hushed tone of respect and, gesturing, told her, ‘It is there. That way. Half a mile.’

Suddenly, showing Karna the house of Koonty seemed more important to Dolly than selling soap, eating food or even cleaning herself and her child. The events on the train and her coughing fit in the night had made her realise that she must act quickly. The dacoits would have taken the medallion if it had not been for Karna and then no one would ever believe he was the son of Koonty of Hatibari. Or they might have killed Dolly before she had time to tell Karna how she had found him. She gasped at her first sight of the Hatibari house with its domed roof and multitude of windows. Great trees surrounded it, and the drive leading up to it was flanked with an avenue of Asoka trees. The entrance was protected by high golden gates, the archway of which was formed from two rearing elephants, tusks jutting, trunks touching. At the side sat a durwan on a stool, wearing a pair of heavy spectacles and reading a newspaper.

Dolly had suspected, ever since she had found the baby in the river, that the place must be somewhere of importance, but this palatial home was far grander than anything she had expected. Even in Calcutta she had never seen such a large and awe-inspiring residence as this. Guilt and panic grabbed her because this was where
Karna should have spent his earliest years, not existing, hungry, on a stretch of dirty pavement.

‘Does the Maharaja live here?’ asked Karna, dancing with excitement, his eyes wide with wonder at the marvel of the place. And then with a shriek of joy, ‘Look at the elephants, Ma, look at the elephants.’ He felt happy again because, as well as the colossal gateway ones, there were four others, trunks raised, tusks thrusting, carved in pure white marble and vastly larger than life-size, flanking the corners of the roof. ‘Or I bet it’s the house of Diliswani,’ said the little boy remembering the name of the film star to whom he had been compared on the train. ‘I shouldn’t think even a Maharaja could have enough money to live in a house like this. It must be a film star’s house.’

‘Dilip Baswani,’ corrected his mother vaguely. Her mind was reeling with sorrowful thoughts.

‘What is this place? Does Diliswani want to buy your soap?’ Karna was asking. ‘I want to see the film star.’

The grandly uniformed durwan thrust his glasses to the end of his nose and looked over them at Dolly and her child approaching the gates.

‘Is there a lady called Koonty living in this house?’ Dolly asked, trying to keep the tremble out of her tone.

‘Koonty Memsahib is the wife of the zamindar. What do you want with her?’ said the durwan in a tone of irritation.

For a moment Dolly felt as though she had been winded. She tried desperately to get her breathing level before asking her next question. ‘Has she any children?’

‘She has a son, yes. His name is Arjuna. But what is that to you? Please take your child and leave from here. They don’t like to have people hanging around. Go.’ He waved an imperious hand at her.

Dolly, still gripping the thrilled Karna by one hand, stood firm. ‘Look at this house, Karna. If I am not here you must remember it and come back here because this Koonty must look after you when I am gone …’

‘Go away and don’t talk crazy,’ said the man without looking up
and returned to his reading. After a while he looked up. ‘Why are you standing there? Go off with you.’

Dolly sat Karna at her side and showed him the medallion. ‘Now look at this. You can read now, can’t you?’ For the first time Karna was able to examine the secret thing that his mother always kept inside the waist of her sari.

‘This is what I would not let the dacoits take away. This is yours. Read what’s written there.’ She pointed to the word, ‘Hatibari’.

Laboriously Karna struggled through the letters, then stared from the medallion to the elephant gates where this same word was written. He looked bewildered.

Dolly lifted the chain and hung it round the child’s neck. ‘From now on, because you are brave and because you are old enough, I do not need to keep it for you. You can wear it yourself, now, my son,’ she said.

‘But what does it mean?’ asked Karna. ‘Why is Hatibari written on the gates and on my medal too?’

‘This chain was round your neck when I found you as a baby in this very river. You were lying in the hand of Durga, and must have floated forty miles downstream to Calcutta.’ It took the little boy a long time to understand what Dolly was telling him.

Dolly tucked the medallion under Karna’s shirt and went on, ‘If anything ever happens to me you must come back here again. If I go away and can’t come back to you again, you must bring it to this house. You must show it to Koonty and force her to understand that you are her son.’

‘But you are my mother, not this Koonty person,’ he wailed.

‘Haven’t you been listening to the things I told you?’ asked Dolly. ‘Anyway that is what you must say.’