The Village by the Sea (17 page)

‘Go, go,' she screamed. ‘As if I can stop you. That's all you want – to go to your toddy shop. All you want from me is an excuse. What do I care if you go and poison yourself? Go kill yourself with the poison the shops sell you – I will come and laugh at your funeral. I will take the children home to the village so we can starve in the fields and let the vultures pick our bones …'

Hari sat over his plate with his head sinking lower and lower, unwilling to eat a bite of the food. But Jagu had swallowed it all in great gulps and now got up saying, ‘All right, if you force me – I'll go,' and disappeared, leaving Hari alone with the woman.

But as soon as he left, she fell silent. She huddled on the string bed, drew a rag over her head and stared at Hari from under it. He stared back. After a while she sniffed and started to pat the child who slept beside her. He heard her sigh heavily.

‘Go, go to sleep,' she sighed, and Hari was not sure whether she spoke to him or to the child. ‘What is there to do but to lie down and sleep? Or die? Men can go to the toddy shop and drink and forget, but we can do nothing, so we must lie down and sleep. Sleep,' she said again, patting the child and sighing.

Hari wanted to speak to her. He knew what made her speak in that bitter, sad tone. It was how Lila and he spoke to each other when they sat in their hut late at night, waiting for their father to come home from the village in the dark. Indeed, he felt as if this woman were speaking for him and for Lila and for their mother. He was no longer afraid of her.

‘Does he drink every night?' he mumbled at last.

The woman shook her head. ‘No. He is not as bad as some of the others in this
zopadpatti.
He does it only when he is very sad, or very worried.'

‘My father drinks every night,' Hari told her. He had never said this to anyone before but now he found himself talking openly to this strange woman who had screamed at him and abused him for eating her food.

‘He does, does he? And beats your mother? And starves you?' she asked, interested.

He nodded and coughed instead of speaking. He did not need to tell her – she already knew.

‘Lie down, son. In the morning we'll get you medicine from the dispensary. The doctor there has medicine for coughs and colds. I take my baby to him, too. My baby is sick. She has fever,' and she began to pat the sleeping child at her side, sighing.

Hari curled up on the bench, tried to sleep and wondered why Jagu had brought him to this wretched home to add to his family's misery.

Next morning, while following Jagu along the path to the dispensary on the other side of the muddy hill – the rich and comfortable and happy side – Hari told him, ‘I will go back to the shop, Jagu. There is no room for me here. I will go back.'

Jagu gave him a sharp look. ‘Did that woman tell you to go? Don't listen to her – she's a devil, a she-devil.'

‘No, she didn't say that,' Hari said quickly. ‘But your child is sick, and she has enough to do. And the house –'

‘Hmm,' said Jagu thoughtfully. ‘The house is not at its best in the rain. In the dry season it is not so bad where we live. We have no water connection and she has to line up with all the other women at the pump to fetch water, but in the rainy season when there is water everywhere, it is even worse.' He nodded and Hari could see that he realized he had made a mistake in bringing Hari home. He had done it out of kindness and a wish to help, Hari knew, and he wanted to thank Jagu but could not.

At the dispensary, a broken building with a tin roof on which the rain drummed loudly, there was a long queue of men, women and children waiting on the veranda and out in the rain for the doctor to see to them. Seeing the queue, Jagu said gloomily, ‘It will take a long time.'

Hari said, ‘I will wait. Please go to the shop – I can wait alone.'

Jagu shuffled away, looking deeply ashamed for the muddle he had made of everything.

While Hari stood waiting, he saw Jagu's wife come up with the baby in her arms and an empty bottle for medicine in one hand, and stand right at the end of the queue, in the rain. Hari went to her and said, ‘Let me get the medicine for you. Let me hold the baby.' She looked at him in surprise, then shook her head, saying, ‘No, no – I can do that,' and he turned away, knowing he could not help her.

Hari stayed on at the eating house all through the monsoon for there was nowhere else in the city he could go. Mr Panwallah's shop next door remained shut and he was the only friend Hari had here. Once the watchman of the tall building who had first brought him to the Sri Krishna Eating House stopped by, under a big black umbrella, and called him out.

‘How are you, boy?' he shouted to make himself heard above the spatter of raindrops. ‘Still here? Working away? Liking it? Everything all right?'

Hari nodded and tried to smile. It was because of him that he had found shelter, a job, food and friends, and he knew he ought to be grateful
although this was hard considering what the job, food and shelter were like. ‘Yes, yes,' he said, ‘all right,' because he knew it was better than what most people had in Bombay.

‘You know what, boy? Those people you came to see that night at Seabird – they're back. They came back from abroad last week. Why don't you come and see them? They might have a job for you in their flat.'

Hari was taken aback: he had stopped thinking about them long ago. His time and his mind had become wholly occupied with his work in the kitchen and with the watchmending he was learning from Mr Panwallah and with saving money to take home: he had no time in which to think of the future beyond the next day and the next. Now his head filled with thoughts of that first night in Bombay, how amazed he had been by the lights, the great buildings, the crowds. He thought of the block of flats, the lift that had taken him up as if by magic, the polished door that opened on to that shining room, and the haughty servant in the white clothes. He kept thinking about them as he went back to kneading dough, scrubbing pans, rolling out
chapatis
and serving lentils or tea. Could he leave all this
behind and go? Could he find himself a place in that rich, gleaming world of high-rise apartments, take part in that fairytale world of servants, cars, holidays, money and freedom?

It made him feel feverish to think about it. He could not go to sleep that night, wondering if he should take the watchman's advice and try his luck there the next time he had a free afternoon.

That night a great storm broke over the Indian Ocean and lashed the city. It began with daggers of lightning striking through the black clouds banked in the sky, and peals of thunder that echoed from one building to another. Early in the morning before daylight, it began to pour with rain. Once again the streets were flooded. The wind blew up from the sea and hurled the rain at the walls and windows of the city. One of the great trees in the park came down with a crash and lay across one of the lanes, blocking the traffic which piled up, madly hooting and honking. There was chaos on the streets. Of course buses and cars broke down and stalled everywhere. Hari watched from the eating house door, shivering in his damp clothes.

They had few customers that day – even pedestrians were keeping off the streets. One lorry driver who came in for tea had to stay all day, his lorry stranded in hub-deep water. He had a transistor radio with him which he put on the table beside his tea tumbler and listened to while he ate and drank. The boys hung around, listening. They listened to the songs from the Bombay cinema, they listened to advertisement jingles about toothpaste, cleaning powder, cooking oil and face cream. They listened to a play about kings, queens and battles lost and won. Then, at the end of the play when the king had died and the queen had sung her last song, the voice of the announcer broke in with the news.

The news was all about the storm: how it had rained ten inches in twelve hours, how the whole city was ‘paralysed'. Then the announcer went on to say: ‘Ten fishing boats are reported lost at sea. Many fishermen are feared dead.'

Hari gave a cry and put his ear to the radio. ‘Where?' he shouted, as if demanding an answer from the announcer. ‘Where?'

The boys began to laugh at him and the lorry driver grinned, but Hari got his answer.

‘Search parties are to be sent out from Alibagh as soon as the storm subsides.'

‘Alibagh!' cried Hari, staring at the three watching faces. ‘That's my home! That's my land!'

‘All right, boy, all right,' said the lorry driver, a Sikh with big moustaches and a red turban. ‘You're not a fisherman, are you? You're not on a boat. You're safe and sound in a restaurant with plenty of good food and hot tea. Don't get so upset.'

Jagu was more understanding. He had hardly spoken to Hari since the dismal failure of his visit to their house, but now he grunted, ‘What's the matter? Is your father a fisherman? Does he own one of those boats?'

‘No,' said Hari, shaking his head, ‘no,' and went into the kitchen to worry by himself It was true that his father was not in one of those boats, and that his family owned none. But it was the men from his village who went out fishing, and it could be men he knew, friends or neighbours, who were lost. He suddenly remembered Biju's boat and thought that by now it must be launched and on the high seas.

He thought of the sails one saw along the horizon, and the lights of the boats by night which
were visible from the beach. He thought of the catch coming in in the evenings, the voices of the women quarrelling over the baskets of shining fish on the sand. He thought of his net and how he walked through the shallows with it. He thought of the crows picking up the crabs he caught, and the gulls swooping low over the waves in search of fish. He thought of the heron standing stock still on a stone by the pond near their hut, and the blue flash of the kingfisher as it darted from the trees. He thought of Lila coming down the path with a basket of flowers to sprinkle on the rock in the sea, and of Bela and Kamal sitting on the rocks and chipping at the limpets. He thought he heard Pinto bark. How he longed for them all. Sitting down on his heels by the fire, he put his head on his knees, shut his eyes and tried hard to see them again – beautiful and bright, his own.