DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES (66 page)

It is not often that a panther is taken by surprise, as its power of sight and hearing are very acute. It is a master at the art of camouflage, and its spotted coat is admirably suited for the purpose. It does not need heavy jungle to hide in. A couple of bushes and the light and shade from surrounding trees are enough to make it almost invisible.

Because the Manjari panther had been fooled by Bisnu, it did not mean that it was a stupid panther. It simply meant that it had been a little careless. And Bisnu and Puja, growing in confidence since their midnight encounter with the animal, became a little careless themselves.

Puja was hoeing the last field above the house and Bisnu, at the other end of the same field, was chopping up several branches of green oak, prior to leaving the wood to dry in the loft. It was late afternoon and the descending sun glinted in patches on the small river. It was a time of day when only the most desperate and daring of maneaters would be likely to show itself.

Pausing for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, Bisnu glanced up at the hillside, and his eye caught sight of a rock on the brown of the hill which seemed unfamiliar to him. Just as he was about to look elsewhere, the round rock began to grow and then alter its shape, and Bisnu watching in fascination was at last able to make out the head and forequarters of the panther. It looked enormous from the angle at which he saw it, and for a moment he thought it was a tiger. But Bisnu knew instinctively that it was the maneater.

Slowly, the wary beast pulled itself to its feet and began to walk round the side of the great rock. For a second it disappeared and Bisnu wondered if it had gone away. Then it reappeared and the boy was all excitement again. Very slowly and silently the panther walked across the face of the rock until it was in direct line with the corner of the field where Puja was working.

With a thrill of horror Bisnu realized that the panther was stalking his sister. He shook himself free from the spell which had woven itself round him and shouting hoarsely ran forward.

‘Run, Puja, run!’ he called. ‘It’s on the hill above you!’

Puja turned to see what Bisnu was shouting about. She saw him gesticulate to the hill behind her, looked up just in time to see the panther crouching for his spring.

With great presence of mind, she leapt down the banking of the field and tumbled into an irrigation ditch.

The springing panther missed its prey, lost its foothold on the slippery shale banking and somersaulted into the ditch a few feet away from Puja. Before the animal could recover from its surprise, Bisnu was dashing down the slope, swinging his axe and shouting, ‘
Maro
,
maro
!’ (Kill, kill!)

Two men came running across the field. They, too, were armed with axes. Together with Bisnu they made a half-circle around the snarling animal, which turned at bay and plunged at them in order to get away. Puja wriggled along the ditch on her stomach. The men aimed their axes at the panther’s head, and Bisnu had the satisfaction of getting in a well-aimed blow between the eyes. The animal then charged straight at one of the men, knocked him over and tried to get at his throat. Just then Sanjay’s father arrived with his long spear. He plunged the end of the spear into the panther’s neck.

The panther left its victim and ran into the bushes, dragging the spear through the grass and leaving a trail of blood on the ground. The men followed cautiously—all except the man who had been wounded and who lay on the ground, while Puja and the other womenfolk rushed up to help him.

The panther had made for the bed of the stream and Bisnu, Sanjay’s father and their companion were able to follow it quite easily. The water was red where the panther had crossed the stream, and the rocks were stained with blood. After they had gone downstream for about a furlong, they found the panther lying still on its side at the edge of the water. It was mortally wounded, but it continued to wave its tail like an angry cat. Then, even the tail lay still.

‘It is dead,’ said Bisnu. ‘It will not trouble us again in this body.’

‘Let us be certain,’ said Sanjay’s father, and he bent down and pulled the panther’s tail.

There was no response.

‘It is dead,’ said Kalam Singh. ‘No panther would suffer such an insult were it alive!’

They cut down a long piece of thick bamboo and tied the panther to it by its feet. Then, with their enemy hanging upside down from the bamboo pole, they started back for the village.

‘There will be a feast at my house tonight,’ said Kalam Singh. ‘Everyone in the village must come. And tomorrow we will visit all the villages in the valley and show them the dead panther, so that they may move about again without fear.’

‘We can sell the skin in Kemptee,’ said their companion. ‘It will fetch a good price.’

‘But the claws we will give to Bisnu,’ said Kalam Singh, putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘He has done a man’s work today. He deserves the claws.’

A panther’s or tiger’s claws are considered to be lucky charms.

‘I will take only three claws,’ said Bisnu. ‘One each for my mother and sister, and one for myself. You may give the others to Sanjay and Chittru and the smaller children.’

As the sun set, a big fire was lit in the middle of the village of Manjari and the people gathered round it, singing and laughing. Kalam Singh killed his fattest goat and there was meat for everyone.

IX

Bisnu was on his way home. He had just handed in his first paper, arithmetic, which he had found quite easy. Tomorrow it would be algebra, and when he got home he would have to practice square roots and cube roots and fractional coefficients.

Mr Nautiyal and the entire class had been happy that he had been able to sit for the exams. He was also a hero to them for his part in killing the panther. The story had spread through the villages with the rapidity of a forest fire, a fire which was now raging in Kemptee town.

When he walked past the hospital, he was whistling cheerfully. Dr Taylor waved to him from the veranda steps.

‘How is Sanjay now?’ she asked.

‘He is well,’ said Bisnu.

‘And your mother and sister?’

‘They are well,’ said Bisnu.

‘Are you going to get yourself a new dog?’

‘I am thinking about it,’ said Bisnu. ‘At present I have a baby goat—I am teaching it to swim!’

He started down the path to the valley. Dark clouds had gathered and there was a rumble of thunder. A storm was imminent.

‘Wait for me!’ shouted Sarru, running down the path behind Bisnu, his milk pails clanging against each other. He fell into step beside Bisnu.

‘Well, I hope we don’t have any more maneaters for some time,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost a lot of money by not being able to take milk up to Kemptee.’

‘We should be safe as long as a shikari doesn’t wound another panther. There was an old bullet wound in the maneater’s thigh. That’s why it couldn’t hunt in the forest. The deer were too fast for it.’

‘Is there a new postman yet?’

‘He starts tomorrow. A cousin of Mela Ram’s.’

When they reached the parting of their ways, it had begun to rain a little.

‘I must hurry,’ said Sarru. ‘It’s going to get heavier any minute.’

‘I feel like getting wet,’ said Bisnu. ‘This time it’s the monsoon, I’m sure.’

Bisnu entered the forest on his own, and at the same time the rain came down in heavy opaque sheets. The trees shook in the wind and the langoors chattered with excitement.

It was still pouring when Bisnu emerged from the forest, drenched to the skin. But the rain stopped suddenly, just as the village of Manjari came into view. The sun appeared through a rift in the clouds. The leaves and the grass gave out a sweet, fresh smell.

Bisnu could see his mother and sister in the field transplanting the rice seedlings. The menfolk were driving the yoked oxen through the thin mud of the fields, while the children hung on to the oxen’s tails, standing on the plain wooden harrows, and with weird cries and shouts sending the animals almost at a gallop along the narrow terraces.

Bisnu felt the urge to be with them, working in the fields. He ran down the path, his feet falling softly on the wet earth. Puja saw him coming and waved to him. She met him at the edge of the field.

‘How did you find your paper today?’ she asked.

‘Oh, it was easy.’ Bisnu slipped his hand into hers and together they walked across the field. Puja felt something smooth and hard against her fingers, and before she could see what Bisnu was doing, he had slipped a pair of bangles on her wrist.

‘I remembered,’ he said with a sense of achievement.

Puja looked at the bangles and burst out: ‘But they are blue, Bhai, and I wanted red and gold bangles!’ And then, when she saw him looking crestfallen, she hurried on: ‘But they are very pretty and you did remember … Actually, they’re just as nice as red and gold bangles! Come into the house when you are ready. I have made something special for you.’

‘I am coming,’ said Bisnu, turning towards the house. ‘You don’t know how hungry a man gets, walking five miles to reach home!’

I
took Miss Mackenzie an offering of a tin of Malabar sardines, and so lessened the sharpness of her rebuke.

‘Another doctor’s visit, is it?’ she said, looking reproachfully at me over her spectacles. ‘I might have been dead all this time …’

Miss Mackenzie, at eighty-five, did not show the least signs of dying. She was the oldest resident of the hill station. She lived in a small cottage 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 away,’ I explained. ‘I had to go to Delhi for a fortnight. I hope you’ve been all right?’

I wasn’t a relative of Miss Mackenzie’s, nor a very old friend; but she had the knack of making people feel they were somehow responsible for her.

‘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 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 Red—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.’

‘Neither of them were married?’

‘No—I suppose that’s why they lived together. Though I’d rather live alone myself than put up with someone disagreeable. Still they were sisters. Charlotte had been a gay, young thing once, very popular with the soldiers at the convalescent home. She refused several offers of marriage and then when she thought it time to accept someone there were no more offers. She was almost thirty by then. That’s when she started drinking—heavily, I mean. Gin and brandy, mostly. It was cheap in those days. Gin, I think, was two rupees a bottle.’

‘What fun! I was born a generation too late.’

‘And a good thing, too. Or you’d probably have ended up as Charlotte did.’

‘Did she get delirium tremens?’

‘She did nothing of the sort. Charlotte had a strong constitution.’

‘And so have you, Miss Mackenzie, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘I take a drop when I can afford it—’ She gave me a meaningful look. ‘Or when I’m offered …’

‘Did you sometimes have a drink with Miss Taylor?’

‘I did not! I wouldn’t have been seen in her company. All over the place she was when she was drunk. Lost her powers of discrimination. She even took up with a barber! And then she fell down a khud one evening, and broke her ankle!’

‘Lucky it wasn’t her head.’

‘No, it wasn’t her own head she broke, more’s the pity, but her sister May’s—the poor, sweet thing.’

‘She broke her sister’s head, did she?’ I was intrigued. ‘Why, did May find out about the barber?’

‘Nobody knows what it was, but it may well have been something like that. Anyway, they had a terrible quarrel one night. Charlotte was drunk, and May, as usual, was admonishing her.’

‘Fatal,’ I said. ‘Never admonish a drunk.’

Miss Mackenzie ignored me and carried on.

‘She said something about the vengeance of God falling on Charlotte’s head. But it was May’s head that was rent asunder. Charlotte flew into a sudden rage—she was given to these outbursts even when sober—and brought
something
heavy down on May’s skull. Charlotte never said what it was. It couldn’t have been a bottle, unless she swept up the broken pieces afterwards. It may have been a heavy—what writers sometimes call a blunt instrument.

‘When Charlotte saw what she had done, she went out of her mind. They found her two days later wandering about near some ruins, babbling a lot of nonsense about how she might have been married long ago if May hadn’t clung to her.’