The Village by the Sea (12 page)

‘Have you heard?' she called to them. ‘All the men have set off for Bombay with a petition
to the government. Someone told me Hari has gone, too.'

‘Hari?' they asked, stopping to stare at her. ‘Hari gone to Bombay? Oh no, of course not – he must be here somewhere.'

‘Where? I haven't seen him. You can ask Raju – he's the one who told me.'

‘No, we have to buy ice for Ma. We have to run, she has fever,' they cried, and hurried on.

When they got home they found Lila had just finished burying Pinto in a shallow ditch she had dug behind the frangipani tree. She was smoothing the earth and tramping it down. When she heard them come running up the path, she got up from her knees and dusted her hands and her sari. The girls stopped and watched silently as she walked back to the veranda and sat down slowly on the steps. They could see she had been crying and did not know what to say to console her. They felt their eyes swim with tears as well.

Then Bela gulped and said, ‘Lila, Mina says Hari has gone to Bombay with the other men. Raju told her.'

Lila frowned as if she could not understand. Could Hari have been so angry and so upset as to leave home and run away? She could not
understand that; she would never have run away herself. She shook her head. It was all very frightening and difficult but she was here, her sisters and her mother were in her care, and somehow she would have to manage. Without saying a word, she got up and went into the house. If Hari was not here, she would go herself to Alibagh to see a doctor and fetch medicine for her mother. Her mother could not get into a bus and go so she would describe everything to the doctor and ask for help. She sighed, thinking how much easier it would have made things if Hari had been here and could be sent to Alibagh instead.

As she was getting ready to go, there was a commotion outside – the unfamiliar sound of a motor roaring up the narrow lane and then the astonishing sight of a car bumping over the grass to the white bungalow,
Mon Repos.

‘Oh, Bela, Kamal, look!' cried Lila. ‘The de Silvas have come from Bombay!'

For several hours Hari wandered around the Black Horse, not daring to leave it since this was the only place he had come to know. The villagers had melted away down the many roads that led back to the docks. No one had asked him to come with them, no one had noticed him at all. He was left behind.

Now that he was alone he became aware that he was dreadfully thirsty. He saw a man sitting beside a barrow heaped with coconuts in front of one of the large buildings around the square, and he went towards him, feeling in his pocket for the few coins he had brought with him. ‘How much?' he asked. Never having bought a coconut before – at home he could climb a tree and bring down a
whole bunch whenever he wanted – he had no idea of the price and nearly fainted when the man said, ‘Two rupees.' The man had a sharp, blackened face and spoke from around a cigarette, but when he saw Hari's face, he laughed in quite a kind way. ‘What's the matter? Don't you know how much these things cost in a city? No, I can see you don't. Here, I'll find you a cheaper one,' and he searched in the pile for a small coconut and cut off the top with one blow of his curved knife and handed it to Hari. While Hari drank, he watched, amused, and said, ‘You look as if you haven't eaten or drunk all day.'

‘I haven't,' Hari admitted, wiping his mouth and reaching for the top of the coconut with which to scoop out the sweet white flesh and eat it. ‘I am hungry and thirsty.'

‘I can see that,' nodded the coconut man. He had no other customers at that time of day and could chat a little with the youngster. ‘Run away from your village, have you?'

‘I came with the procession,' Hari said proudly. ‘You saw the procession that was here just now? We came from Alibagh this morning.'

‘Oh? To ask the government for what – food, palaces, jewels?'

Hari tried to explain what their demands were but the coconut seller did not seem to be very interested. Lighting another cigarette, he only said, ‘Ask, ask, ask the government all you like. Do you think the government has ears and can hear? Do you think the government has eyes and can see? I tell you, the government has only a mouth with which it eats – eats our taxes, eats our land, eats the poor. Take my advice and keep clear of the government. Don't ask it for anything, don't depend on it for anything. They tell you the government is your father and your mother. I tell you my father and my mother threw me out when I was six years old to go and earn my own living. I don't need them – I fend for myself – I'm a man and depend on myself. That is the best way to be, boy – free and independent. Don't say please and don't say thank you – take what you want. Be a man, be independent.'

Hari listened and nodded. He thought the coconut seller was wise, strong and admirable. He was ready to sit at his feet and learn more but the man did not seem to be interested in teaching Hari: he did not want a pupil or a follower any more than he wanted a father or a mother. He had turned to cut open coconuts for a young man
and a woman who came laughing down the steps from the big building and stopped before his barrow, feeling for money in the bags they wore slung from their shoulders. Hari knew he ought to move his rags and his starved face out of the way.

As he moved on down the pavement, walking slowly and carefully to avoid all the filth that was scattered on it in piles and puddles, he heard a voice say, ‘Don't listen to that Billu. Keep away from him; he is dangerous. By day he uses his knife on coconuts but by night he uses it on –' and turning around, Hari saw the speaker, a beggar seated on a tattered mat, draw his finger across his throat and stick out a betel-stained tongue to show Hari what he meant. Hari was so startled that the beggar laughed, opening his mouth wide and showing that all of it was stained red with betel juice.

‘Are you surprised? Don't you know that is how the people of the pavements live? A safe job as a front to fool the police, and a dangerous one behind it with which to make a living? Do you think a man can keep body and soul together by selling coconuts or by begging? I tell you, he can't. If you want some tips on how to make your way in the city, ask me and I'll tell you – for a small
fee,' he added, winking and moving to one side of the mat to make room for Hari.

But Hari had no wish to learn such dangerous tricks from anyone and walked on hurriedly, shaking his head. He did not see the beggar laugh and take out a bottle from under his rags and lift it to his mouth to drink. He had not come to the city to be a beggar, crook or murderer. He did not really know what he had come for except to run away from home and find out what the future held for him. Now he was in Bombay at last and he would find out.

He began to feel afraid of this huge square with its dangerous characters lurking in every shadow, as it seemed. Even the empty pedestal began to look ominous, the absence of the emperor's statue a kind of message for Hari. His fear gave him the courage to turn down a side street and hurry away from it. He saw a long, broad park lined with palm trees and thought he would go and sit on the grass in their shade to rest, watching the footballers and cricketers play, but when he got close, he saw ahead of him, at the end of the road, the bright glitter that he recognized as coming off the sea. He could smell the sea, too, and a powerful whiff of fish.

Suddenly very homesick and longing for something familiar, he forgot about the park and hurried on. When he got to the sea he found that the road curved around the bay in a great swoop. It was the grandest sight Hari had ever seen and he stood staring at the large buildings that lined one side of the road, side by side and taller than trees, and at the sea that lay across the road from them, calm and shining and bright as polished metal. There were no boats and no fishermen here, though, only the traffic pouring down the road and along the sea with a continuous roar.

He walked along between the sea and the buildings till he came to a small sandy beach so crowded with people and stalls of coloured drinks, coconut and food that it was more like a fairground than a beach. In fact it looked as if a fair were on right then – there were balloons held up on bamboo poles, pavement stalls selling flower garlands, plastic toys and magazines, excited children running across the sand to the sea, and people crowding around the stalls and eating strange food that Hari had never seen at home. As he stood on the edge, staring, a car stopped behind him and a large family burst out with cries and shouts of delight – children in
bright clothes, women in lovely saris and men who laughed and led them to the stalls to buy snacks and toys.

Seeing them, Hari suddenly remembered that he had in his pocket a piece of paper with the Bombay address of the de Silvas who had offered him a job once. The relief of remembering that he had an address in Bombay and knew people who might help him flooded him like a wave from the sea, cool and friendly and refreshing.

Turning to the nearest stall-owner, a man who was selling balls of ice on which he sprinkled colour and essence – rose, banana, orange and lime – before handing it to excitedly clamouring children, Hari asked him if he knew the address on the piece of paper.

‘Oh ho,' laughed the man, rolling his eyes at him comically from under a small white cap. ‘Very good address you have there, boy. You must be a prince in disguise.' He held out a bright green ice ball to a child, pocketed some coins and then told Hari, ‘Go straight on up the road. It will take you to the top of Malabar Hill and there you will find your palace, just short of the Hanging Gardens. Perhaps there is a princess waiting for you with a garland,' he laughed, and winked.

Hari did not like his laughter or his joke and walked off with as much dignity as he could, his face as serious as always but his heart pounding with excitement.

The road swooped uphill as the man had said it would, with great houses crowding either side of it, beyond which he could see the trees and terraced gardens of a park. The city was bigger and grander than anything he had ever imagined, and he could hardly believe that in it there was a house where people lived who knew him.

His hopes did not last very long. It was evening: the sun sank rose-red into the bay, darkness fell upon the city that was built on an island in the sea. The lights came on as he climbed and the whole hill glittered like a great mound of jewels against the sky, quite outshining the stars. Looking back, he could see the road swooping down and around the bay, lined with a double row of electric lights. Was this the famous Queen's Necklace of which he had heard? He supposed it must be. As he gazed, the neon advertisements
above him winked on and off and flared green and blue and orange. His heart beat with excitement and dread.

It was night when he at last found the building he was looking for, but it was not really dark: all the lights along the streets and the hundreds of lights that shone out of the windows of every building made it as light as day, almost. He had never seen so many lights in all his life. It was not like any night he had known and he wished it were darker so that he could hide and not be seen as he walked into the entrance hall of the tall white building called Seabird.

He had of course thought that the family he knew lived in it alone but it was as crowded with strangers as a bus depot or a wharf. A man stood at an inner door letting people in and then shutting it so that they disappeared abruptly. Then, as suddenly, the door was flung open again and quite a different crowd poured out. Hari could not understand it but when he asked the man if the family he knew lived there, the man said, ‘Get in – tenth floor,' and he was pushed into a tiny cell along with a dozen other people. The door was shut on them, the man pressed a button in the wall and the little wooden cell shot upwards
with a sickening lurch. Before Hari could get over the shock, it had come to a stop, the door was flung open and the man waved him out. ‘Number one hundred and two,' he said, shut the door and disappeared.

Now Hari was in the heart of the building. He looked about him and saw nothing but shut doors. He went up close to them to study the numbers and finally found one that had 102 on it in brass letters. He banged and hammered on it for quite a while before it was opened by a tall man in white trousers and a high-collared white coat. ‘Why are you banging, idiot – don't you see the bell?' he shouted.

Hari looked up to see if there were a bell hanging from the lintel but there was nothing there. ‘No,' he said in a low voice, ‘where is it?'

‘Here, fool,' said the man angrily and, putting his finger on a white button beside the door frame, made it scream suddenly and shrilly. ‘Who are you and what do you want?'

‘I want to meet the Sahib,' Hari whispered, staring past the man into the brightly lit room with its carpeted floor, large pieces of furniture and bright pictures and mirrors and flowers. He became conscious of his dirty feet in their dusty
sandals and wondered how he could ever step into that room in such a condition.

The man at the door had no intention of letting him do so. ‘The Sahib? Who sent you to meet him? Have you a letter?'

Hari felt in his pocket for the bit of paper. ‘Here, I have his name and address.'

‘Who gave it to you?'

‘He gave it to me.'

‘Don't tell lies.'

‘It is true. When he came to Thul, I washed and cleaned his car for him, and he told me to come and see him when I came to Bombay.'

‘Thul?' The man frowned: the name seemed to mean something to him. Hari watched his face hopefully but what he said was another blow.

‘The Sahib is not here. He has gone to Thul, where you come from – he left this morning. They have all gone – for their summer vacation. When they come back, the Sahib will go abroad. He is a big businessman, don't you know? He has business in England, in America. He will not come back for another month.' He studied Hari closely. ‘So you come from Thul, do you? The cook and ayah have told me about it – a jungly place, they say. What are you doing here?'