III
'I FEEL so awfully sleepy, Indra. Do let us go back home.' Indra laughed softly, and there was a woman's tenderness in his voice as he said, 'Of course you feel sleepy, my boy: but I can't help it, Srikanta. We shall be a little late—I have got a lot to do yet. But why don't you lie down here and have some sleep?'
I did not need to be told a second time. I lay down, huddled together on the narrow board on which I had been sitting. But I found it impossible to fall asleep. In silence and with half-closed eyes I watched the hide-and-seek of the moonlight and the clouds in the sky. The dull monotony of the water's hiss and roar came to my ears in an unending stream. I wonder now how I could have lost myself utterly in that game of the clouds and the moon. That was hardly an age for such entrancing reveries. Perhaps, after all, as grown-ups say, neither the moon nor the clouds are so real as the mind: perhaps my mind, after passing through our wild and strange adventures, wanted just at that hour to repose, listless and weary, in the calm, unearthly beauty of the night.
About two hours must have passed in this way, though indeed I lay unconscious of the passage of time. Suddenly I felt as if the moon had dived under the clouds on my right and, after a long swim, emerged on my left. Raising my head, I saw that our canoe was preparing to cross the river. I had little energy left for asking questions and lay down again as before. Once more I watched the play of the moon and the clouds and listened to the roar of the water. Thus another hour must have passed away.
Swish!—Our canoe had come up on the sandbanks. Sitting up, I saw that we had crossed over to our own side of the river. But what place was this? How far away was our home? Nothing but immense wastes of sand lay before us. Suddenly I heard the barking of dogs. Surely, I thought, sitting up, there must be human habitations close by.
'Just wait for a bit, will you?' said Indra. 'I'll be back presently: there is nothing to be afraid of. Just over there are fishermen's huts.'
I had no desire to show myself unequal to the occasion, after having passed so many difficult tests. So without the least hesitation I said, 'Why should I be afraid? I will wait for you here.' Indra said nothing more and in an instant disappeared out of sight.
Above me, the same hide-and-seek of light and darkness; behind, the long, unceasing, murmurous moan of the big river, and before me, dim stretches of a sandy bank. As I sat trying to conjecture what place this might be, all of a sudden Indra came running back to me. 'Srikanta,' he said, 'I have come back to say something particular. If anybody comes and asks you for fish, don't give him any. Be very careful you don't give any fish to anybody, even if you see somebody exactly like me. Mind this. If anyone asks for fish, say to him, "I'll put ashes into your mouth. You can take them yourself if you want them." But don't, for God's sake, give away fish with your own hand—even if he were exactly like me. Do you understand?'
'But why?'
'I'll tell you when I come back. But be careful!' He disappeared as quickly as he had come.
This time every hair on my body stood on end. Through every vein my blood suddenly ran cold, cold as melted ice. I was no child that I could not guess at what awful thing Indra was hinting. Many events have occurred in my life compared to which our little adventure was an insignificant affair. But I can truly say that language is powerless to describe the terror which surged through my soul when Indra left me. I all but lost consciousness through sheer fright. Every minute it seemed to me as if somebody was peering at me from beyond the high, sandy bank in front of me, and every time I looked sideways at him he seemed to thrust forward his head.
What an endless time Indra was taking to return!
At last I thought I heard human voices. I twisted my sacred thread a hundredfold round my thumb and sat with my head bent low, straining to catch the slightest sound. As the voices became clearer I realized that two or three men were coming towards me talking. One of them was Indra and the other two were up-country men. But before I saw their faces, I had a good look to see if they cast shadows in the moonlight; for I had known the indisputable truth from my childhood that those beings cast no shadows.
Ah! what a relief! For they had shadows, though very faint ones: I wonder if any sight has brought more joy and satisfaction to anyone. The up-country men removed the fish from our canoe with extraordinary despatch and tied them up in a piece of gauze-like cloth. A jingling sound revealed to me what it was they pressed into Indra's hands.
Indra unloosed the canoe, but did not let it move down the stream. He began to punt it slowly along the bank of the river.
I said nothing, for my mind had risen against him in inexpressible bitterness and contempt. And this was the boy whom a moment ago I had wanted to embrace in sheer delight, at the mere sight of his pale shadow in the moonlight! Yes, that is how man is constituted. At the slightest discovery of another's fault we forget in an instant everything we have known to his credit. But what had I seen? Only this—he had not shown the least sign of hesitation in taking money from disreputable men. Until then it had never entered my mind that our nocturnal adventure might be regarded as a thieving expedition. In our boyhood it is the stealing of money that is synonymous with theft, not the stealing of other things. That was why all the glory and splendour of our adventure vanished at the mere sound of the jingling coin. If Indra had thrown away all the fish into the Ganges, if he had done any conceivable thing with them except this one thing of bartering them for money, I should have been the first to resent the suggestion that we were out on a thieving expedition. I have no doubt that in my boyish enthusiasm I should have wanted to knock down anyone who expressed so outrageous an opinion and should have felt completely justified in doing so. But this! Was not this vile thing the deed of jail-convicts?
'You didn't get frightened, did you, Srikanta?' asked Indra.
'No,' I answered shortly.
'Do you know what you have done?' asked Indra 'Nobody else could have sat here alone as you have done, you know. You are the best friend I've got and I'll never forget this. How would you like me to bring you with me every time I come out in future?'
I made no reply, but just then the light of the moon, released from the clouds, fell on his face and something that I saw in his features made me forget all my irritation and indignation in one sweep of reconciliatory emotion. I said to him, 'Indra, have you seen anything of that kind yourself?'
'What kind?'
'Well, those who come and ask for fish?'
'Why, no, I haven't: I told you what I've heard from others.'
'But can you come here alone?'
Indra laughed. 'I do come alone.'
'Don't you get afraid?'
'No, I don't. I take the name of Rama, and then those people can never come to me.' He paused for an instant and then continued, 'Do you think taking the name of Rama a simple thing? If you pass near a snake with that name on your lips, you will be absolutely safe. All creatures, you will see, will make way for you and flee from you in terror. But you mustn't be afraid. They will know if you really are afraid and if your courage is only a make-believe, because they can read your thoughts, you know.'
The sandy bank now began to be more gravelly. The current was not strong on this side of the river as it was on the other. It almost seemed as if it were flowing in the direction in which we were going. Indra changed his pole for the paddle and said, 'We shall have to go through that part which looks like a forest. I shall have to get down there. I won't be long; I shall be back in a minute.'
'All right,' I said with reluctance, for I had no excuse left for stopping him. And, besides, Indra appeared to have implicit faith in my fearlessness. As for myself, however, I was far from feeling easy about the matter. The place looked dark like a real forest; and, in spite of the reassuring account of the potency of Rama's name to which Indra had just treated me, I had no desire to put it to the test in that eerie solitude under the dark, gaunt branches of an old banyan tree, alone in the canoe. An uncontrollable inward tremor took possession of me. It was true that there was no more fish with us; and so there was less chance of being pestered with requests for them; but who could say that 'their' importunities were confined to begging for fish? And memories of stories of people's necks' being twisted, of their warm blood's being sucked, and their flesh's being munched flitted across my brain.
Indra began to paddle hard, and our canoe advanced at a a rapid pace. Before long we were confronted by a clump of kasar and wild casuarina trees. To our right, submerged except for their tops, they appeared to be looking in silent wonder at the two adventurous human boys, and gravely shook their heads at us as if in disapproval or warning; while on the high, gravelly bank to our left stood more of their blood-relations in massed crowds, looking equally stupefied with amazement, equally deprecating and solemn. But our indomitable helmsman was so well fortified with the name of Rama that he looked neither to the right nor to the left. Owing to the lowness of the right bank, this part of the river had become like a lake, with two openings on the two opposite sides. I asked Indra how he would get up the bank as I could discover no path at the foot of which the dinghy could be tied.
'There is a narrow path,' he said, 'beside that banyan tree over there.'
For some time a peculiar bad smell had been assailing my nostrils. It became more intense as we advanced. A sudden gust of wind came charged with so formidable an odour that, unable to bear it, I had to press my dhoti[1] against my nose. 'Something must be rotting here, Indra.'
'It's a corpse,' he replied coolly. 'People are dying of cholera in hundreds. It's not every one that can properly burn the dead; some leave the dead body after just putting a little fire into the mouth. Then dogs and jackals devour the flesh and it rots; this smell is from rotten flesh.'
'Where do they leave their dead?'
'Just there—from that part to this—all this is the cremation-ground. They drop the body wherever is most convenient, take a bath over there under the banyan tree, and go home. Cheer up! that's only jackals fighting. Well then, come and sit near me here.'
I was too frightened to speak; I went sprawling on all fours and sank down heavily near him. 'What are you afraid of, Srikanta?' he asked, putting out his hands to me. 'I have passed by this way on many a night. Do you think anybody would dare to come near you if you took the name of Rama?'
His touch seemed to infuse some life into my body, 'For God's sake,' I said faintly, 'don't get down here—let us pass straight on.'
He touched me again on the shoulder as he said, 'No, Srikanta, I must go there now. I must give them this money; they have been looking forward to it, and I haven't been able to come to them for the last three days.'
'But couldn't you do it to-morrow?'
'No, don't ask me to. You come with me, but mind you don't speak of it to anyone.'
I assented vaguely and sat still as a statue, never once releasing my hold of him. My throat had dried up, and I had not the energy left to reach forward to the water or to make any other movement.
We were now passing under the shadow of trees, and I could see the place where we had to alight, as it had no trees overhead. It was lit up with the wan moonlight; this was some consolation, in the condition of mind I was in. Just as the canoe was going to dash against the gravelly bank, Indra stepped up on the prow and jumped down before a collision could take place. An exclamation of startled terror from him made me look down: the next instant, he from the bank below and I from the dinghy above, were both looking down on the same object.
Never since have I been face to face with untimely death wearing so piteous an aspect. It would be impossible for anyone to realize the full pathos of it, unless he saw it, as we saw it on that night. There in the depth of tie midnight silence that was broken only by the howls of hungry jackals, wandering invisible behind the thick gloom of the shrubs and clumps of trees, by the flappings of the wings of vultures and other obscene birds on the branches aloft, and by the roar and moan of the ceaseless waters eddying past us, we stood without a word, looking on the most pitiful of objects. We saw a healthy-looking boy of fair complexion, aged six or seven years, his head lying on the bank and the rest of his body floating in the waters. Probably jackals had just been busy pulling him out of the water, and our sudden approach had made them retreat until we should depart. The boy could not have been dead more than three or four hours. The poor thing looked as if, worn out by the intolerable sufferings of cholera, he had at last fallen asleep on the lap of the mother Ganges; and the mother was just laying her boy gently, very gently, on her bed.
When I looked at Indra I saw big tears running down his cheeks. 'Just stand aside a bit, Srikanta!' he said. 'I'll take the poor little fellow in our dinghy over to those casuarinas on the reef and put him into the water there.'
It is true that, at the sight of his tears, tears were starting out of my eyes too; but his proposal to handle the thing was too much for me. It is no easy matter to shed tears at another's misery or suffering, I will admit; but it is quite a different and a much harder thing to go out of one's way and voluntarily to shoulder responsibilities like this. How many of our prejudices and fixed ideas are put to the test at such a time! For one thing, being born in a highly sacred line of descent from the venerable Rishis, in the Hindu community, which, in point of purity and sanctity, easily takes the lead of all the communities on the face of the earth, I had been taught to regard the touch of the dead as a terrible defilement and abomination, forbidden by a hundred rules and injunctions of the shastras, reinforced by as many scriptural prohibitions and expiations. Add to that the fact that we did not know of what disease the boy had died, what his caste was, and who his parents were. How could we touch the corpse, not knowing these things, not to speak of our total ignorance as to whether before the dead boy was taken from his home, the necessary penances had been performed for him? But as soon as with an inward shrinking I said to Indra, 'You do not know what his caste is—will you touch the corpse?' he put one arm under the neck and the other below the knee of the body and said as he lifted it up lightly, 'If I don't, the jackals will tear him to shreds and devour him. Poor thing! there is still the smell of medicine on his lips.' And he put the corpse down on the plank on which I had just been lying. Giving the canoe a push, he jumped into it. 'Do you really think a dead body has any caste?' he asked.
'Why shouldn't it have?' I asked.
'Why, it's just a dead body. How can anything dead have caste? This dinghy of ours—has it got any caste? Whatever may have been the tree out of which it was made, mango, jack, or any other, nobody would now call it mango or jack tree. Don't you see?'
Of course, I can now say that his instance was very childish indeed. But I know at the same time that his words contained a subtle kernel of truth hidden somewhere. Now and then he would utter such naked truths. And I have often wondered where this boy, who had learnt nothing from anyone and rather defied and transgressed the established customs and beliefs, could have got those profound truths. I believe now that I have got an answer to this question. There was not a speck of insincerity in Indra; he could not conceal or give the lie to his motives in any action. Was it not possible that this innate veracity of nature, by virtue of some hidden law, could spontaneously draw the universal truths into his individual soul? His simple, unsophisticated intelligence, by refusing all allegiance to what is known as the practical mind, could see unvarnished truth face to face. Is not such unconventionalized intelligence indeed the highest and clearest intelligence? Looked at properly, the whole universe does not reveal a scrap of untruth in its constitution. What we call untruth is but the result of our faulty understanding and imperfect explanation. If you regard gold as brass or call it brass, you are no doubt guilty of falsehood; but, for all that, what does it matter to gold or brass? Your imperfect understanding cannot change the nature of either. If you hoard brass in your safe, that does not increase its value, nor can you depreciate the value of gold by flinging it contemptuously away as brass. Nobody is responsible for your mistakes but yourself, and nobody else is affected by them. So it is not strange that Indra, who had never harboured an untruth in his heart in all his life, could, with his untainted intelligence, spontaneously reach out for and attain the true and the good in everything.
On coming to the reef Indra placed the dead body of the unknown boy with infinite tenderness on the water under the deep shadows of the half-submerged casuarinas. The night was then almost spent. Indra remained for a time bending low over the body as if he were straining to catch some sound, some voice. When at length he raised his face in the wan moonlight, it looked very pale.
'Let us go now,' I said.
'Where shall we go?' Indra asked absent-mindedly.
'I thought you just said we were to go somewhere.'
'No, not to-day.'
'All right, then,' I said in an access of relief, 'that's good: let us go home.'
In reply Indra fixed his eyes on my face and asked, 'Do you know, Srikanta, what happens to men when they die?'
'Why, no, I don't,' I said hurriedly. 'Let's get back home. They all go to heaven. Take me back to our house, Indra, in God's name.'
Indra seemed hardly to hear what I said. 'It isn't everyone,' he said, 'that can go to heaven. Besides, they have all to stay here for some time. I tell you, Srikanta, when I was laying him on the water that little boy whispered clearly in Hindi, "Brother".'
I was on the point of bursting into tears out of fright and I said in a trembling voice, 'Don't, please don't frighten me. I shall faint.' Indra said nothing, and did not even attempt to reassure me; he took the paddle and, bringing the canoe slowly out of the grove, began to paddle it straight on. 'Srikanta,' he said presently in a low, grave voice, 'repeat the name of Rama to yourself: he has not left our boat; he is sitting behind me.'
I remember that immediately after that I fell forwards on my face. I remember nothing else, except that when I opened my eyes, I saw that it was already light and that the canoe had been tethered to the bank. Indra was sitting near my feet and he said, 'You will have to walk this little distance, Srikanta: can you sit up?'
- ↑ Cloth.