Tikkipala (22 page)

As the workers pushed onwards, clearing the land, bringing light to places that had not seen it for a thousand years, colonies of puce-faced monkeys, little marmosets with golden fur, or bigger apes with woolly coats and booming voices went dashing away ahead of them. Yellow and black spotted pigs emerged screaming from the undergrowth and galloped off, tails curled. Porcupines threw up their quills and strode away, clattering. Sometimes wild bees would gush out like black smoke and with a
roar so menacing that the men, who had been instructed to lie flat on their faces when such a thing happened, all the same felt their heart hammering against the ground and were glad they wore thick clothes and helmets. Once the dark and spotted figure of a leopard went leaping away, to be lost in the dappled light of still standing jungle. The men wore hard hats and their boots were toed with steel, but all the same the sight of the leopard briefly chastened them.

In the afternoon they were forced back by a pack of some dark and savage animals that, unlike the other creatures of the jungle they had dislodged so far, did not seem afraid. Even when the timber men shouted and banged their axes together, the animals kept coming on threateningly. They had been told that a creature like this had attacked the original engineers. The animals, thick headed and bow legged with slobbering jaws, came snarling at them and the men had to call upon the marksmen, who were always waiting with their guns at the ready.

One by one the eight menacing animal creatures were shot and their bodies dragged out of the way until at last the timber men could get back to work.

Devi went in the car to see the Collector. ‘This should not be happening,' she said. ‘The jungle is ancient. How can they be cutting?'

‘They have a permit, madam. All is in order,' said the officer smugly. ‘Also you do not own the jungle, only the palace and its surrounds and therefore this is not your problem.'

‘You told me the jungle was protected.'

‘I had misinformation, Madam.'

Devi wrote to the minister, protesting that this might be the last piece of unspoilt jungle in the country. She wrote to the papers, she wrote to the forestry department,
she got in touch with local radio, she wrote a furious letter to Mr Dar of Sita Timbers but, although she got placatory replies, the destruction above continued.

Devi phoned her father.

‘Darling, what can I do? Come home. What are you doing there anyway? Surely you've got all the stones your grandmother wanted by now. And logging is one of the big industries of our country. People have been murdered trying to put a stop to it. Keep your mind off things like that, and keep away from that kind of people.'

The elders came to Maw, their throat sounds shrill and frantic.

‘Lord,' they cried. ‘Worse disaster is come upon us. The Coarseones have killed all the other of our hunting Animals.'

Maw stared at them hardly able to comprehend. The leaf wall started clattering with his body's trembling.

For four days after that Pala remained hunched and silent in his living place, and Maw, whose fault it was that the Animals were dead, did not know how to comfort him.

On the fourth day the elders came to Pala and said, ‘We have no more meat and now that our Animals are dead, we of the tribe will starve to death unless our hunter finds some other way of getting food for us.'

Pala, who had become thin from his days without sleep or food, rose. ‘I will bring you meat without the Animals,' he said. His body shook as though he had a fever. His voice was sorrowful, because his beloved creatures were lost forever. ‘I know how to make traps of ligament and springing sticks and I have taught Maw this art as well. Maw and I will hide out in the jungle and catch game there. We will bring back food
to you in half a moon. Somehow you must manage with tree frogs and lizards until we return.'

But the elders said, ‘Our Maw must stay, for if he goes the Coarseones, who are now all over our jungle, may kill him too.'

Maw felt sad as he agreed, for till this day he and Pala had done everything together. ‘But until you return,' Maw told Pala. ‘I will remain alone and without food or sleep or water. Every moment you are gone I will keep my mind on your success and safe return.'

Pala left the home and swung along the hair and tendril walkway till he reached the trees with foot hold and Maw kept his eyes on Pala all the way, but as the hunter reached the ground, Maw saw Coarseones approaching through the trees.

‘Go, Pala, go,' he shouted and watched, with horror, as the Coarseones started chasing Pala. But Pala was faster and gone in a moment. Maw began laughing inside his mind at the sight of the puzzled expressions on the Coarseones faces as they blundered around and stared in the direction in which Pala had vanished.

Each day, after Pala went, the Coarseones cut more trees. ‘They have cut a hundred,' said the elders. ‘Even Coarseones cannot want more. Perhaps they will stop cutting before they reach our living places.' But the cutting did not stop.

‘You said no one lived up here but we saw a naked savage running through the jungle,' the wood cutters said. The rest laughed and accused their comrades of
drinking too much arrak. ‘You don't know the difference between a man and a monkey,' they teased.

Each day the confidence of the timber men grew. They felt proud because Mr Dar had sent them a personal commendation and felt safe because they had killed or scared away the dangerous wild creatures and also created a large safe clearing, in which nothing could come at them unseen. The ground was so bare that even snakes and scorpions could not hide and the men dared sit down and eat their food and smoke their beedis in the open. They had conquered the jungle, from now on there would be no more surprises.

But when they cut through the trunk of one of the largest trees and it started toppling, creatures like great apes began to rain out of it, bombing off the branches like fleas off a drowning dog, thumping to the ground like ripe mangoes in a wind.

‘You see. We weren't dreaming. We did see that savage,' said the tree cutters as they dodged back. ‘These are human people and not monkeys at all.'

Out of the trees fell men and women who crashed to the ground, scrambled up and started running. People wearing bird feathers in their ears, men with penis covers of coloured stones, young girls and boys wearing necklaces of jungle flowers, men and women carrying babies, all went dashing for the, so far, uncut trees.

‘We were told that no one lived in this impenetrable jungle,' said the surprised wood cutters.

‘Come on, fellows,' cried the boss. ‘Mr Dar doesn't allow his people to just stand around. Get on with the job. Those chaps were probably just foraging up there.' There was no trace, any more, of the half naked people that had come raining down but all the same the men had lost their nerve a little. ‘We'll leave this taller one here, just in case and anyway it's too large to cut down with the equipment we've got.' They had
not liked the sight of so many falling women and bumped about children. Some of the people had laid gasping and whimpering for long moments before limping away.

Maw, who had sworn to keep Pala's life safe by silence, abstinence, concentration and the baring of his hands, had not moved since the hunter left and even when the first tribal tree fell, he did not stir. But soon the screaming and the crashing became so terrible that he was forced to open his eyes and look out. Through the leaves he saw his people falling and running. Three girls in a nearby tree went tumbling, hit the ground, scrambled up and limped wildly away while the Coarseones called things after them that even Maw, who did not speak the Coarseones language, knew must be lewd.

Maw went out of his living place and began to move along the branch towards one of the walk ways, for he knew his duty was to be among his people. But it was not there. It had been ripped away and when he looked down, he could see it far below, a tiny cobweb curl among the shattered fallen branches. Then he moved right round his tree and all the walkways had gone from there as well.

Stranded, a hundred and sixty feet above the ground, he saw his people dashing, dodging, as though the Tikki was after them and he could not get down to help them or do anything about it. At last the only people Maw could see from his isolated tree were the Coarseones. When the last of the tribe had disappeared, the Coarseones picked up their implements again and soon the jungle was filled once more with the roar of wood cutting machinery.

The lumbermen tossed away the branches and foliage among which Maw could even see the tattered mesh and ripped webs of his tribe's home. The men snapped and kicked aside the hangways and the slings that had been there ever since the tribe began. Tangled up with twigs were the torn sleeping hammocks and the sitting
swings that had been made from the hair of a thousand people and a hundred generations.

Even the jungle creatures had all vanished by now. Gone were the butterflies and parrots, the monkeys and the birds of paradise. Gone the lizards, the chameleons and the green tree snakes. Now the only thing surrounding Maw was nothingness. And down there on the ground these dreadful strangers who were now cutting the trunks of his tribal trees into little pieces. Maw's home was broken, his jungle destroyed, his people vanished.

Dusk fell. The machines stopped, the lumberjacks gathered up their things and began to go away. When the last one had gone and only the sounds of the jungle were left, Maw listened for the music of the tribal throats and bones and heard only silence.

Then at last, at midnight, two tribe elders came slowly creeping over damaged earth. They stood, hunched and fearful, beneath Maw's high tree and called him fluting with the voice of owl and peacock.

‘You must come down from there, our Maw,' the elders told him. ‘Otherwise they will chop down this tree too and because you are so high you may be killed.' But Maw could not come down.

Next day, the timber men returned with an expert on the felling of very high trees. Maw's tree went roaring to the ground in a cloud of leaves and insects. He was like a bird caught in a swinging net. As he hit the ground, a furious pain surged through his leg. He tried to struggle out from among the branches but the leg would not move at all. Through the foliage he could see the Coarseones hacking into the flesh and sap of his holy tree and every stroke sent agony screaming through his leg. The axes were
coming very near to him. He could see the glint of metal through the branches. The last stroke caught him on the forehead and he knew no more.

In the days before Khan's wife arrived, Khan went from joyous anticipation to anxiety. He longed to have his little dholi here, craved to put his arms round her, was filled with desire to make a baby in her. But during all the days of the wedding she had been muffled up with silk and jewels and garlands. A worry was starting to grow in him, that his father-in-law had done a dirty trick and fobbed him off with the bad tempered older sister. What would he do if his bride arrived and turned out to be Rehnu? The two girls were very alike and he would not put anything past his father-in-law, who was a crook of the worst kind. The fellow might even exchange girls after the wedding was over.

So when the taxi came grinding up from the village, bringing the bride, at first Khan dared hardly look in case the wrong girl stepped from it. And he had to blink several times before he felt quite sure that the staggering pale faced person that emerged among a welter of wedding luggage, was his Rehan. But it was her. He took her hands to help her out and saw that her wrists were still bruised from the heavy gold bangles she had worn throughout the ten days of the wedding.

‘Welcome. Are you well?' Khan asked.

‘I feel sick,' whispered Rehnu. Khan wanted to embrace her, but that was impossible with all the thags looking.

The Parwal palace looked quite good, Devi thought. Of course it had none of its original glory but all the same it was now free of weed and bird nests and there was a limited amount of furniture. She decided to have a party and invited the thags and their families to come and celebrate.

‘I suppose they will need some kind of alcohol, as well as food,' she said to Khan. ‘Please go to the village and buy what you think we will need.'

Khan, being a Muslim, did not know very much about alcohol, but did his best, buying several bottles of brandy from the Foreign Liquor shop as well as a quantity of rice, mutton and vegetables for the feast.

The thags were delighted and felt more forgiven than ever when they got the invitation. Their wives and children put on their best and brightest clothes and the women wore every piece of jewellery they possessed. There came cries of joy, as they arrived and tumbled in a gleam on silk saris and frilled frocks from their assorted vehicles, for Devi had had oil lights arranged in the trees and dotted round the roof. The place looked so festive that it might have been diwali.

‘Please behave in orderly manner,' instructed Khan. ‘Please take up a place on the garden and the drinking will be given.' Gradually the men arranged themselves into a line across the lawn and the women and children sat down behind them. Then a thag carried a tray of brandy filled glass tumblers and walked down the line of men, with Khan following and handing them out. ‘Very nice,' cried the thag men, tossing the alcohol down in a single gulp.

The drink was finished in an hour and Devi ordered Khan to return to the village and purchase more.

‘Why cannot these fellows continue with the orange drink you are serving to the females?' he grumbled.

The thag men were shocked. ‘Such a thing as the juice of fruit has not gone into our bellies since we were children.'

‘Also there is no purpose in my going,' persisted Khan. ‘Because it will take me so long that I may not be back before midnight, by which time I hope all these fellows will be gone.'

But Devi was firm. ‘You must driver faster, that's all.'