Children of the Wolf (5 page)

With that, he blessed us and sent us off to bed.

Rama fell asleep at once, but I lay restless for many hours. At last I got up and looked out the window. I could see the brushwood wall of the compound, bleached by the full moon. It was the very edge of my comfortable universe.

Then I heard a whining sound, like that made by a puppy newly taken from its littermates. After the whine came a kind of snuffling whimper.

I knew it was the wolf-children.

Rama was still snoring lightly, and I did not waken him. On the nights when he stayed home, he slept like a lump until dawn.

I climbed out the window and dropped to the ground, turning my ankle slightly.

The whimpers stopped at once, but I was able to follow the memory of that sound to the place where two walls made a corner. There, curled around each other, were the wolf-girls. Snuggled against them were three puppies who, when they noticed me, looked up and wagged their tails.

At my approach, the younger wolf-girl lifted her head and stared past me. Her wide night-shining eyes glinted with blue lights. She growled.

The larger girl put her head back and howled, baying at the bright orb of the moon. The sound lifted the hairs on the back of my neck, and I wanted to cry.

“There, there,” I muttered. “Hush, now, hush.”

My crooning efforts made no difference. She howled once more.

I moved closer, despite the snarl of the younger girl, and put my hand out to them.

It must have been the motion that stopped a third howl. The older girl turned toward me. I could see the shape of her head clearly now. Without that huge ball of snarled hair, she seemed smaller, more vulnerable.

“There, there,” I said again. Then I pointed to myself, saying in the most persuasive voice I could manage, “I am your friend, Mohandas. Friend. Mohandas.”

The little one did not growl again, but rather put her head down on her hands and feigned a sleepy indifference. The big one looked at me once more, scratched quickly behind her right ear, then turned away. Like an animal, she could not bear a human’s eyes upon her.

“I am Mohandas,” I said once again. “What are your names?”

But then she, too, lay down to sleep.

I stood slowly and when neither of them moved again, I returned to the window. At least I had quieted them. That much was easy. I had a harder time getting back in the window.

Just before dropping off to sleep, I realized that it had been I, not Rama, who had slipped in and out without being caught. The thought of
that
made me smile, and I must have been smiling, still, when I fell asleep.

T
ROUBLE BEGAN ALMOST AT
once. In the morning we saw that the wolf-girls had torn off their shifts and ripped them to shreds. Little pieces of the clothing were found all over the compound. While Mrs. Welles tried matter-of-factly to put new dresses on them, Indira started pinching the younger children. Preeti stood with her back to the compound wall, head tilted, trying to see what all the excitement was about. And Veda gave up talking altogether in favor of periodic screams.

Mr. Welles, who usually spent mornings in his study working on parish business, came out and tried to quiet everyone down, but he was clearly ill at ease and got in the way.

Rama, looking at Krithi, who was sucking his finger and half a fist as well, muttered, “They have brought evil here.”

I turned to Mr. Welles. “Sir, could such a thing be so?”

“Nonsense,” he growled. “Rama, Mohandas, I am surprised at you. Such a notion is a heathen notion. I thought we had taught you better. It is just that these poor girls disturb us. They are, in ways both subtle and unsubtle, not quite human—yet. And we all find that unsettling. But evil? Nonsense. In a little while we will all look back at today and laugh at it. ‘A day of troubles,’ we will say. Now run along and do your homework.”

“Words,” muttered Rama in Bengali. “You will see. They are
bhuts
and evil. No amount of words will change that.”

But they did not look evil to me, just pathetic. And so very alone.

Before the noon meal Cook had threatened to quit. Though the day maids and the carters had all, in their turn, threatened to quit many times that I knew of, this was the first time for Cook. She was loyal, possibly, Indira had suggested once, because she was such a bad cook that no one else would have her.

“They are filthy beasts,” Cook shrieked at Mrs. Welles. The trouble, it seemed, was that the wolf-girls had used one of the day’s quieter moments to steal an uncooked, unplucked chicken from the pantry window. The two of them had shared their catch with the dogs, eating the chicken raw and rubbing the bones on the ground to separate the meat. The smaller wolf-girl still had feathers and particles of meat on her lips.

“Beasts!” Cook screamed once more, which started Veda shrieking all over again.

The wolf-girls responded by howling, and Indira smiled, looking radiant. Trouble was definitely her element.

Mr. Welles came out of his study and stood in the arched doorway. His face was purple. He took off his glasses and cleaned them quite thoroughly with his handkerchief, a gesture that took enough time to calm everyone down. Then he listened to Cook’s complaint and sighed loudly, a sound I had never heard from him before.

“Rama, get the bones away from them,” he ordered. “You know that chicken bones could choke the dogs.”

Rama went outside at once, almost grateful to be away from the shrieking women, though he was less than eager to go near the wolf-girls.

Mr. Welles turned to me. “And now, Mohandas, tell me why you are smiling.”

It was true. My grin spread broadly. I was absurdly pleased. “Because they are eating, sir. Real food. Not just a bit of milk sucked up from a handkerchief wick.”

Mr. Welles looked down at the handkerchief, which he still held in his left hand. He folded it slowly, carefully, and put it back in his coat pocket.

“Quite so,” he said at last. “You are right, Mohandas.” He turned to his wife and Cook. “Mohandas has put his finger on it. The girls are eating.
Eating
. Let us give thanks.”

Cook scowled, ready to give another shriek instead, but Mrs. Welles cast a strange, unreadable look at her husband, then clicked her tongue at Cook. We all folded our hands and were preparing to offer thanks for the wolf-girls’ appetites—and the momentary peace—when there came an awful scream from outside, the sound of a slap, and then some truly terrible cursing in Bengali.

Rama ran in. “She bit me.
Bit
me!” he said, first in Bengali, then in English. Blood coursed down his palm. “And now they are eating dirt.”

Mrs. Welles turned quickly. “Indira, you get me the bandages. You, Veda, the carbolic. Really, David, what will we do if sepsis sets in? They may be rabid, you know. It’s already clear they have fleas.”

“They are hardly rabid, my dear. I was bitten myself and nothing happened. And wild animals often eat pebbles and sand after a meal.” His words seemed to bring her little comfort, and she bustled about with twice the movement necessary as a kind of signal of her anger and concern.

Rama gritted his teeth when she cleansed his hand and poured the carbolic on the wound.

And that was only the morning.

In the afternoon Mrs. Welles attempted giving the wolf-girls another bath and hair washing, and this time was more successful. She used the strongest soap—the carbolic soap—and then noticed that the smaller girl was developing sores on her legs, strange granulations that were eating away at the hard calluses on her knees. I helped by holding each of the girls in turn, for Rama would not go near them again, and Indira, Preeti, and Veda were much too weak for the task. Only when Mrs. Welles bathed their private parts, under the loincloths, did I have to look away.

Mrs. Welles dosed the little one’s sores with boric acid and zinc oxide and bandaged the worst places with cotton. But the wolf-girl never made a sound all the while Mrs. Welles touched the wounds. It was as if she did not know how to cry.

When the other children came into the courtyard to play, they stood in a large circle around the wolf-girls.

“Look!” Indira said in that overbright voice I had come to distrust. “She’s a leper. Leper, leper!” she cried.

The other children were quick to pick up her words. “Leper, leper,” they aped back.

Only Rama, who stood with a shoulder against the wall, and I were outside the circle and silent. He because he pretended to be above childish things, and I because I hated such games. Eventually Rama made a face and left, but I did not. It was as though I were paralyzed, unable to stop the teasing but equally unable to stop watching.

“No nose, no nose,” Indira called out, and the others echoed her.

Suddenly Indira broke into the circle and pinched the little wolf-girl’s leg, above the bandaged knee.

The wolf-girl, who had been so silent under Mrs. Welles’ painful ministrations, howled. The larger wolf-child rushed at Indira, running on all fours, and clawed her arm badly. Although she drew no blood, there were four streak marks from elbow to wrist that remained red welts for most of the day.

Indira screamed and ran from the courtyard, back into the building, the other children at her heels.

The wolf-girl did not chase after them but crawled slowly over to the door. She raised her head and sniffed the air. Then she swiveled and stared toward me.

I looked around carefully. I was the only one left outside.

I could feel my heart thudding under my cotton shirt, and I put my hands out slowly to show her I meant no harm. Fear drove me to begin speaking in the same quiet tones I had used with her the night before.

“See, see, I will not hurt you. See, see, do not be afraid.”

She stood uncertainly, moving her head back and forth in a peculiar swaying motion, and, emboldened, I edged toward her.

“I—will—not—hurt—you,” I said again, stopping some ten paces away. Then I pointed to myself, my hand shaking slightly. “Mohandas. I am Mohandas. “What is your name?”

She did not answer.

“What is your name?” I asked again.

Her silence was complete. It was as though she had no tongue at all.

“I will call you…Kamala,” I said, my tongue chattering away. “That means lotus. And your sister, Amala, bright yellow flower. Pretty names. Kamala. Amala. Do you like the sound of those names?”

She looked down and turned from me, going back to the little wolf-girl. She nudged Amala with her head, and the two of them made their slow way back to the place where the walls came together in a corner. They crowded into it and sat, huddled. Kamala circled three times on her hands and knees, then lay down, head on hands. Amala sat and picked forlornly at the bandages, slowly shredding them. Soon there was a pile of white cotton pieces by her side. She faced the corner the whole while.

“Kamala,” I whispered. “Amala.”

But if they heard me, if they understood at all, they made no sign.

W
E HAD REACHED A
kind of cautious truce with the wolf-girls. Indira and the others stayed as far away as possible, and when circumstances forced them to cross the wolf-children’s paths, they made a sign with two fingers to ward away evil. Rama walked by them as stiffly as a drill sergeant and as far as his pride would admit. A growl, a lifted lip, or a snarl was enough to send any of the younger children screaming back into the house. Krithi took to carrying a large stick whenever he went out.

A scream or a shout or a gesture with the stick would make the wolf-girls scamper back to their corner. There they would snuggle into a monkey ball, uncurling instantly if one of us violated what they considered their home ground.

It was one step forward and then retreat for the better part of the week, and by week’s end it was difficult to say which of us was ahead. Even Mrs. Welles could not get close to them without threats. She had to resort to throwing buckets of water at them to clean them off.

Eventually Amala picked off all her bandages. It surprised us to see that the wounds underneath had healed.

Only at night, under cover of darkness, could I still manage to maneuver close to them. Not that they were unaware of me then. With their shining night eyes and uncanny hearing, they knew I was on my way as soon as my leg was over the window ledge. Although I could see them only as shadowy figures at night, I was convinced that they could see me as well in the dark as they did in the daylight, and it seemed that nighttime lent permission to our uneasy friendship.

One night Rama saw me climbing over the sill.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Out to Tantigoria? Wait, I will go with you. It has been weeks since I have gone. My mouth aches for rice beer and the talk of men.”

I shook my head but did not answer, only looked away from him.

And then he knew. For a moment he said nothing, then in Bengali he spat out, “They are evil.”

“They are children,” I answered, “even as you and I.”

“No!” he said fiercely.

“Look at them, Rama,” I begged. “They have arms and legs and faces and bodies like ours.”

“Do not compare me with those—those things.”

Things
. Neither beast nor human. In a way it was true. By day they were such a sorry lot, and I think somehow they sensed it. That was why they preferred the darkness. In the direct sun they always breathed harder and sought out the shadowed corners to hide in. Fire of any kind made them whimper with fear. Even a lit match threw them into paroxysms of anxiety. I never, after that first night when they were caged, used my kerosene lamp.

It was in the daytime that their physical differences were obvious. Their arms and hands were longer than ours, reaching almost to their knees. The nails of their fingers were worn on the inside and strangely rounded. Mr. Welles surmised that was due to all their scratching and scrabbling in the dirt.

Their feet were peculiar as well, the big toes longer and somewhat crooked, making an angle when they stood flat-footed on the ground. Almost ape foot, Indira said, not like a proper wolf foot. And when they stood up, their feet rested wholly on the ground with no visible arch, the toes spread out to support their weight.