The Moneylenders of Shahpur (18 page)

On a littered desk, lay Mahadev’s money belt like a pallid, dead snake. Seated before it was a man leaning his head on his clenched fists. He had not moved for twenty minutes.

An increasing ruckus outside the window reminded him that patients were gathering there for morning surgery. He lifted his bald head wearily and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, to look around his cluttered little office, where the few pieces of furniture were all piled high with dusty records. The corners of the room were festooned with cobwebs, and the uncurtained windows were opaque with dust, a myriad of smears and finger-marks. One window was open and, through it, he could see the dreary, flat, semi-desert landscape shimmering in remorseless heat.

The chatter outside the window increased; the Mission of Holiness was a very busy place, and the missionary himself felt tired to death.

He opened one fist.

On his soft, white palm glittered a beautifully cut ruby, its perfection undimmed by the gloom of the office.

It must be worth thousands, he thought, and glanced at the money belt in front of him. There must be a fortune in that!

The money belt was a plain strip of grubby white cotton, which had been folded and stitched down one side. Along the whole length of the belt, at about one and a half inch distance from each other, lines of stitching divided the belt into small compartments. Judging by the feel of it, each compartment held a stone at least as big as the ruby.

‘’Strewth, I wonder what it’s all worth?’ he muttered. ‘I bet it’d buy a hundred new hospital beds, the salary of another doctor, two nurses and an operating room – and a stack of penicillin ceiling high. And bibles – dozens of them in Gujerati.’

He again looked at the ruby and smiled grimly.

‘I could sell a gem like that in the jewellery market of Bombay or Delhi as easily as falling off a log – and who would know? I can simply say that he had no belt on him when he arrived here.’

As he ruminated, the waiting patients outside were being marshalled into a queue by a middle-aged Indian. The missionary had found him in a ditch, the sole survivor of a family of refugees from Pakistan who had died of starvation.

The whole queue would be suffering from malnutrition, thought the missionary despondently, apart from their heat boils, their venereal diseases, their tuberculosis and heaven only knew what else.

There was a knock on the door, and he hastily swept the belt into his desk drawer, and stood up.

It was only the woman sweeper coming to do the floor, and he walked up and down one side of the room while she swept the other side. The ruby was still clutched in his hand. What was he to do? And who was this man, anyway?

In the waist of his homespun dhoti had been knotted a return Interclass train ticket to Delhi. A small purse, pinned in the same place by a large safety-pin, had yielded twenty-three rupees and some change. His linen had, at one time or other, been marked with a D in Western script. Having found the money belt, the missionary could well understand why his patient had made such a frantic effort to escape from the train.

The sweeper opened the door to the passage and swept through it the dust she had collected. She began to sweep her way slowly and ineffectually towards the front door.

From beyond the door she faced, came the sound of loud, authoritative voices. A rifle butt was banged on the woodwork.

With lightning speed, the missionary shut the door of his office, snatched the money belt out of the drawer and bundled it and the ruby into the wall safe.

The sweeper opened the door and came flying into the room, at the same time trying to touch the feet of the police officers accompanying her. After them came the Mission’s head nurse, protesting in Gujerati that the Doctor Sahib was very busy. It seemed suddenly that the room was filled with armed men, though, in fact, there were two police constables with rifles and one officer with a pistol in his holster.

Calmly and benignly, the missionary rose from his desk chair, one hand raised as if to bless. On the desk lay his bible, open as if he had been studying. ‘Good morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you?’

The belligerent attitude of the police gave way to faint respect. The small man with the pistol stepped forward and answered him in good English. He said that they were looking for a missing Bania and that they had heard that he had recently had a Bania as patient. Before he could be answered, he turned to the constables and told them to wait outside.

The missionary answered calmly, ‘Please sit down,’ and motioned his unwelcome visitor to a chair. With his eyes on the doctor, he sat down with a rattle of accoutrement.

On his part, the missionary weighed up his visitor. A Bengali by the accent, supremely shrewd, a very senior police officer judging by the good cut of his khaki uniform.
From a corner, the head nurse watched them both, and tried to stop his teeth chattering.

‘We do have a man here, who by his dress appears to be a Gujerati Bania,’ agreed the missionary.

‘I believe he arrived here under unusual circumstances and that he had a bullet in him.’

‘Yes. He has had high fever for three days, so we have no idea who he is. Had his temperature not gone down during the night, you would have heard from us today. He is now under sedation. He is obviously exhausted and needs to sleep.’

‘I’d like to see him,’ said the officer, still watching the missionary.

‘He won’t wake for at least two more hours. You could try waking him now, of course, but I doubt whether you would get any coherent response from him.’

‘You should know that in circumstances such as these, the police should be informed immediately.’

‘Ah, yes, of course, quite,’ the missionary was at his vaguest, with a gentle smile. ‘We have no telephone – and we are so busy – you have seen the queue outside. I could not spare anyone to go to town. I knew he would recover. It was not a question of murder.’

‘It’s a question of attempted murder,’ replied the Bengali tartly. ‘I’ll leave a constable to sit by his bed, and I’ll return in about two hours; I’ve other business in the neighbourhood.’ He stood up, ready to leave. ‘Exactly how did this man come to you?’ He had already heard the story from the Mission’s lorry driver, who had been roughly questioned a few minutes before, but he wanted to hear the American’s version.

Now, he found that it tallied quite well with what he already knew.

‘The Pandipura villagers saved his life, of that there is no doubt,’ the missionary told him. ‘They are to be commended.’

‘It would seem so,’ grunted the officer.

After the officer had gone, the American took out the money belt and carefully eased the ruby back into it. Then he went to see his patient.

Mahadev was sleeping quite relaxedly and his colour was good. By the bed, sat a police constable, his rifle across his hairy knees. He was already dozing.

‘Are you ready, Doctor Sahib?’ his nurse inquired. ‘There’s a long queue.’ He had his hand on the door latch of the dispensary.

The American sighed and said he was ready. How much penicillin would a ruby buy, he wondered?

That morning, old Desai was so anxious that, for the first time in his life, he missed reading his morning mail. After drinking a glass of milk, he set out at daybreak for the Mission of Holiness. A servant drove the carriage, and Desai snarled at him unceasingly to hurry.

The old man had a brass box of lunch on his knee and a full water-jar on the seat beside him. Next to the water-jar, sat Baroda Brother. He was placidly polishing his spectacles on his shirt end; the morning was relatively cool, and he was enjoying the drive through the half-awakened city. By the driver sat his son, thrilled at the adventure.

The narrow city streets gave way to wide gravel boulevards, lined with trees shading the graceful houses and bungalows of the city’s well-to-do millowners. These petered out to become a rough track; and the last mile was little more than lorry wheelmarks in the sand, through
which the horse could hardly drag the carriage. Finally, the passengers got down and walked along beside the vehicle and made better progress.

Meanwhile, Mahadev lay in his hospital bed, under a mosquito net, and listened. His head ached so intolerably that he could not bear to open his eyes. When he tried to shift himself slightly, the pain in his back made his senses reel. One of his arms seemed to be tied to his chest. A short distance from him a number of voices made a steady hum – he wondered if it were the dacoits and lay very still, so as not to betray his presence.

Then he realized that he was in a bed of sorts, and made himself open his eyes for a second. He caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned English screen making a wall around him. Above the wall, he could see a shelf with glass containers sitting on it; over them a squirrel scampered.

He tried to think.

That was it! The trip to Delhi, to return the Maharaja’s jewels. He had borrowed against them to set up a radio factory and now he wished to pay his debt.

The jewels!

With his unconfined hand, Mahadev felt round his waist. The belt was gone.

The shock was so alarming that he tried to sit up, only to fall back as rivets of pain went through him.

‘Doctor Sahib,’ called a voice beside him, and he forced himself to open his eyes again.

He did not know what he had expected, but the sight of a constable gaping down at him was a further shock. Apprehension about the loss of the stones gave way to fear for his personal safety. What had he done that he should be under arrest? In a split second, Mahadev saw himself flung into a filthy prison or, at best, reduced to utter poverty, a lender of single rupees.

In response to the call, a man came round the screen. An Englishman! The sense of lunatic nightmare increased.

‘Ah, I see we are better,’ the missionary said, his professional smile covering his own despair. ‘I’m probably damned if I steal that belt,’ his thoughts ran, ‘and, if I don’t, I’m condemned to this unmerciful round of watching patients suffer for the lack of simple drugs. Why, O Lord, why?’

He took the patient’s wrist in pudgy, capable fingers, and added to himself, ‘And if this guy pays his bill, I’ll be lucky.’

‘How’s the head?’

Mahadev ignored the question. ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘You’re in the Mission of Holiness Hospital. I brought you in from Pandipura, near Ambawadi.’

‘How badly am I hurt?’

‘Bullet lodged in your shoulder – I’ve got it out, and a neat furrow across your skull where another one hit you – that was a near thing.’ He turned and asked the constable to help him prop up Mahadev, while he looked at the head wound. The constable, who had never been in a hospital before, was fascinated, and did what the doctor ordered very carefully. Mahadev cried out with pain, however.

The doctor was undoing the bandages round his head. ‘You’ll be OK,’ he assured the shattered moneylender, who was certain nothing would ever be OK again. The conversation was in Gujerati and the police constable watched and listened attentively. ‘What happened? Do you know?’ the doctor asked.

‘The dacoits must’ve been short of men, because none of them caught hold of my carriage door, so I opened it and slipped down on to the track and ran for the embankment. A huge dust storm was raging – confusion – horses – screams. I started to climb further up the embankment
where there were trees and bushes. They must have seen the movement.’ He sighed and winced. ‘When I came round, the train had gone.’ He stopped; the effort of talking was too great. The missionary removed the dressing, and when the pain of it subsided, he went on, ‘I remember trying to crawl to the new main road – and a woman washing me.’

The constable spoke. ‘It’s better to stay in the train in a raid by dacoits. If you hand everything over quickly, you’re usually all right. Not so with Muslims, of course.’

Mahadev looked at him sourly and nearly shrieked when the missionary muttered, ‘Ah, healing nicely,’ and clapped a new dressing on to his head. When he had replaced the bandages, he said, ‘Well, sir, you’ve had a lucky escape. Later on today, you could try moving around a little. But, first, I want to look at your shoulder. And I want to know who you are, so that I can inform your family.’

Sulkily, Mahadev told him. He wanted to ask where his money belt was, but was frustrated by the presence of the constable. Never tell the police anything, had been drilled into him from childhood. Of course, he thought miserably, the police themselves might have the belt, in which case he would leave to his father the delicate negotiations to get it back.

‘What day is it?’ he asked, and was thoroughly perturbed to hear that it was Friday morning. The raid had taken place on Monday evening.

As the doctor worked, he chatted, partly to cover his own worries and partly to reassure his patient. ‘A police bigwig will be here in about half an hour, to question you,’ he informed his patient.

‘A
Delhi
police chief,’ interjected the constable reverently. He had parked his rifle against the bed, so that he could see better what the doctor was doing.

Mahadev closed his eyes and tried not to feel too bitter. A Jain gentleman was forgiving, patient under affliction. He did not feel like that – only cross and petulant and dreadfully weak.

He realized that the glass bottles ranged around the wall contained pickled specimens of foetuses, and his empty stomach began to heave. Fortunately, a woman in a white sari brought him some water to drink and distracted his attention. She was followed rapidly by the tramp of boots across the floor, heralding the return of the tiny police chief.

A little later, a triumphant and much relieved old Desai was shown into the dispensary. He stumped across the room, muttering that private initiative had been better than the perfidious police force. Had he not found his son himself?

He was much chagrined when, rounding the screen, he saw a very yellow and shrunken Mahadev lying on a bed and an obviously frustrated and fuming police chief sitting cross-legged on the chair beside him; Mahadev was not going to be much use as a witness.

The police chief looked up, as the old man entered, followed by his brother-in-law and nephew. He understood something of what was passing through old Desai’s mind. The police had, in finding Mahadev first, scored over him. He immediately felt better and rose politely to salute him. ‘Here is your son, sir. You may take him home as soon as you wish.’

Driving back from the Mission of Holiness in the early afternoon, old Desai was very quiet. It had been agreed that Mahadev should remain in the hospital for two more days. Baroda Brother-in-law asked him, ‘Are you worrying about Mahadev?’

‘No, the boy is obviously recovering. That English
doctor knows what he is doing.’ Old Desai could never remember that Americans were not English.

‘It’s what he was carrying?’

‘Yes. We couldn’t ask him with the police all round him.’

‘Where do you think it is?’

‘It’s not with Mahadev. He touched his waist and made a tiny gesture to indicate that.’

‘It’ll be a frightful loss.’

‘We shall have to pay. It’s our reputation which is at stake. We’ve never failed to return securities lodged with us.’

‘Do you think the train robbers took it?’ asked Baroda Brother, thankful he did not have any share in Desai’s business.

Desai replied slowly, ‘I suspect that the English doctor has it.’

‘What? He would’ve told us.’

‘Not all English people are so honest.’

‘It couldn’t be. Anybody could’ve taken it when he was unconscious.’

Old Desai did not agree. He had not built up his enormous business without acquiring a profound knowledge of human nature. Like the Bengali detective, he sensed that the Mission doctor was hiding something. The man was disturbed in some way, and such a fortune would tempt the holiest of men.

‘Have you told the Maharaja anything yet?’

‘I sent a telegram saying that our representative would be with him in a few days’ time.’ He chewed his lower lip. ‘I don’t know yet
what
we send him, however.’

Their gate was opened by the chowkidar, who had been watching for them, and the whole family and staff swooped upon them.

Old Desai creaked slowly down from the carriage. He
picked up his silent, wide-eyed, little granddaughter. ‘Papa is coming home in two days’ time,’ he announced to her, ‘and I think Aunt should get the tailor to stitch you a new dress for the occasion.’

The child smiled and relaxed, her head on his shoulder. Dear Grandpapa.