3

BY morning Ravi had capitulated. He woke Damodar first, shaking him to make sure he was fully awake, and then he slipped out, leaving him to his own devices. There was nothing unusual in this: they worked in partnership only when it suited them: and today it did not suit him at all. 

From the station to George Town was a fair trek, but one he could ordinarily take in his stride. Today, however, his 

steps lagged, and although he tried to put it down to his bat- teredheadhe knew it was because he was hopelessly unsure 

of what to do. Warn the couple to watch out? They would only suspect a trap, and anyway how long could they main- 

tainthisvigilance — days, months? — it was clearly impossible. Offer his services as unpaid nightwatchman? He smiled 

faintly: there was a foreseeable certain end to that: himself in the cells. Well, he would see when he got there. 

Meanwhile getting there was proving difficult, for try as he might he could not remember the location of the street in relation to George Town. George Town itself he knew and 

A HANDFUL OF RICE 

knew well. Itskirted the docks, was itsunproclaimed clearing- house,andinto the maze of streets that penetrated densely in- 

land poured the products of a thriving industry, the world's underground trade. Here he had seen the wine butts coming 

in, from Porto Novo and Pondicherry and round the Cape from as afar off as Mahe and Goa; and hemp, opium, bhang, 

hashish — all the deadly disguises of the beautiful poppy off- loadedunderthe noses of the Customs men from junks that 

had wallowed in from Rangoon and Singapore and even, it was rumored, from the China ports. 

It was the first territory he had got to know, and it was Damodar who had initiated him, who had told him of the 

pickings to be had by those who did. What he had found out for himself was that initiation and novitiate were still not 

enough, for the pickings here glittered, were not for small fry like himself. One day he would take the next step: graduate upward, or was it deeper into the maze . . . and then, ah yes, then he could live, really begin to live. 

Meanwhile they waited in the wings, and sometimes he (more often Damodar) was approached by a remittance man, guarded in speech to the point of incomprehensibility, 

or offered the overspill from a liquor- or drug-peddling job. 

Some things were troublesome, but flogging duty-free spirits was easy. There were handsome profits to be made here, and out of this came a handsome cut for himself. More important were the contacts he made, the middlemen he met, the places 

he discovered — teahouses, lodginghouses, warehouses with irreproachable mercantile fagades from whom a blessed obliv- ion could be bought. It was from one of these that he had reeled, the night the policeman had been watching, and he 

remembered he had clutched at railings— quite suddenly the shutter in his brain slid back, he knew exactly what the railings 

looked like, where they were, the street up which he had run, 

the wall he had leaned against. He laughed to himself. It was easy, once you got your mind moving, only you had to give it a hefty shove or two first. 

He rode his confidence all the way to the house and there 

suddenly it bolted, leaving him on his own to negotiate diffi- cult ground. What next? He stared nervously at the window set high in the wall. It was the same one all right: there were 

the two bars still missing, the brown wooden shutters behind. These were open, but there was no way of seeing in unless he 

stood on something, or jumped up and down. There was noth- ingtostand on. He began to jump, and instantly the busy street 

stopped minding its business. People! He swallowed his anger, walked away, down the street, up another, and came back again. The shutters were still open, the door closed. It was a heavy door, studded with round brass nails that were sunk and rusted into the wood, and it had a brass handle, also rusted 

and black, in the shape of a snake curled nose-tip to tail. He 

didn't remember this handle — the night had been too dark, or his senses too muddled. He put his hand on it and a voice 

said, "What are you doing?"

He leapt back. He felt the shock traveling up his arm, ex- 

actlyasifthe snake had come alive and bitten his hand. 

"It's you," said the woman, "again. Up to no good. Hang- 

ing round just waiting for a chance — "

In a moment, he thought, she would be hollering and if the 

police came — he could be as innocent as a newborn babe, he 

thought, and itwouldn't make one blind bit of difference, they would take her word against his to hang him. 

"No, no, no," he said rapidly, revitalized by hard thinking 

that produced an inspired explanation, "You've got it wrong. 

I wasn't going to— to do anything, I was just wondering if I could put the bars back for you seeing it was I who did the 

damage."  

"You're lying." 

At least she wasn't yet shouting, that was a good sign. He stole a shrewd look at her. Yes, he was right. Her face was un- 

decided, nowhere as harsh as her words. 

"x\h, madam," he said, "if I could lie to you I would lie to 

my own mother."

"I expect you do."

"Madam, believe me . . ." He drooped in her doorway, 

defeated, pathetic. He had, he knew, a soft face— "dolly," 

they called him sometimes, or "softie," or "baby-face." It 

could occasionally be useful, although more usually it engen- deredavast irritation. 

"Are you sure you can make a good job of it? It'll save me 

having to send for someone."

Bitches, he thought, all of them: greedy for free labor, 

grudging a rupee to some poor devil in the bazaar who would have been glad of the money. He made his face brighten. 

"Yes, easy. Make you sleep sounder in the night when I've 

done."

The point was, he could relax too. He almost laughed: tell 

her that, and she would be instantly, unshakably convinced he was a liar. 

"Well, come in then." She moved her bulk at last. "I sup- 

pose you'll need some tools."

She went away, shouting to some girl to bring something. 

God, he thought, what lungs, what a voice. He looked about him. It was a small house, but not so small that he would have 

minded owning it. The room he was in was small too — per- hapssixfeet square. This was where he had broken in, where 

he had been battered ... it looked very different at this time of day. In one corner, bedding rolls were neatly stacked, one 

on top of the other — Eight of them, he thought incredulously, where had these other people been buried that night? He had 

been luckier than he realized to escape further injury. Against a further wall, where most light fell, stood a treadle sewing 

machine, surrounded by bobbins and reels, ribbons and tape, festoons of material. So the old man was a tailor— a craft that 

was neither exciting nor lucrative. His interest dwindled. From within he could hear women's voices, two, three, then a man's voice joined in. Really, the place was swarming. . . . 

"Here you are." A girl came in with a box of tools. "My 

mother said to give you these."

Her mother! He was astounded. She was young, pretty. Her 

hair hung down in a thick glossy plait to below her narrow waist. How could such mothers have such daughters? 

"And don't be allday about it,do you hear?" Mother had come in behind daughter. "I want it finished before my hus- 

band returns, he can't work if there's dust flying about — " 

"At once," he said. "I'd best take these out first, they're no 

good to you . . . see?" The old rusty bars came out with ease. He crumbled one for effect, then cleared up the dust and brushed out the sockets. 

"I think six bars should be enough," he said, "I'll measure up . . . yes, six bars, two-foot lengths — " 

He waited. She took no notice. What was she waiting for— for him to ask for money? crawl on his belly simply because 

she had itand he hadn't? Well, she could think again. "What are you waiting for?" 

"It'll cost four-five rupees," he said weakly. "If you could—" 

"If I did, that would be the last I saw of your face and my 

money," she said. She was glaring at him.

No feelings, he thought, as if you had no feelings either. 

They'd shred you to pieces right in front of you as if you 

weren't there, the feeling part of you. And that went for all of them, the big memsahibs down to the would-be memsahibs, 

petty little squirts like this one who was a petty tailor's wife: all of them, who called themselves respectable and bamboozled 

you into falling down in worship. He turned away abruptly. 

"Don't go."

He wrenched at the snake handle, was out on the street. 

"Come back!" 

She ran after him and grabbed his shirttails. He stood still, terribly afraid they would tear. It was his only shirt. 

"Well? " They were both back in the house.

"Here you are."

She thrust a five-rupee note into his hand. The purse was 

close to her person, a cloth affair tucked in at her waist. He wanted to thrust it back, but he conquered the impulse: he could not afford to be all that high and mighty. One day: not now. Besides, there was the girl, she was of the gentle voice 

and beautiful hair who had not said anything, who was obvi- 

ouslytocowed by her mother to do so. But she had stood 

apart, apart from her mother, and she had the grace to look ashamed. 

By the time he reached the blacksmith the money had begun to burn a hole in his pocket. There was a lot he could buy for five rupees, things that he needed over and above basic props like food, which was all that his earnings ever ran to before his energies expired. Besides, people like that old sow deserved to be bilked: it was what they expected of you so you gave it to them. Why deny them the satisfaction of having been right? Then he thought again. After all,she had changed her mind, she had given him the money. Moreover there was Damodar, 

his eye on easy money — Damodar, who made him vaguely uneasy although they were partners. Not that even Damodar could do much, with that horde that seemed to be encamped 

in the house — but suppose they were asleep? At night most ordinary people were asleep, and Damodar moved like a cat, 

he could pick Ravi's pocket without waking him. Well then, would bars restrain him? He tried to say no; but in his heart he 

knew they would. Noise, the thought of a hue and cry, put them off many an enterprise . . . and not even Damodar could remove the stout bars he intended putting up without a good deal of noise, enough to wake the whole street. Well, he thought, the thing had more or less decided itself for him. 

At the threshold of the smithy he hesitated again, fingering the note in his pocket. There was so much that he needed, that he went without day after bloody day. 

"Ah Ravi!" The blacksmith turned, momentarily putting 

aside his bellows. "Changed your mind and come to work for 

me, have you?"

"I'll let you know," said Ravi, "when I decide I want to die 

at forty."

Kannan chuckled. He was ashort thickset man with abarrel 

chest and muscles that bulged, who did not look like dying at forty, which was five years off. But they were reputed to, thought Ravi, and no wonder with all the heat and coal dust in your lungs, and those deadly filings flying about getting in 

your hair and eyes. Kannan had lost an eye that way — at least itwas stillthere but itlooked grayish and putrid somehow, like a decayed shellfish, and it had shrunk, so that the lids around 

itwere horribly puckered. He should have been wearing gog- glesofcourse, as they did compulsorily in factories nowadays 

. . . but Kannan said these things were expensive, and any- howithad all happened years ago. 

He, Ravi, did not mind: but there were some lilies, sahibs and memsahibs mainly, who could not bear to look at that 

sightless eye— as if a man could help these accidents that twisted and warped him. Kannan agreed. He had a quickened, extended understanding so that not only did he not bawl out cripples and beggars, but he was not too hard on people, like 

Ravi for instance, whom the well-ordered, well-heeled sectors of the world called drifters, loafers or delinquents. Ravi liked Kannan, worked for him off and on, would have worked for 

him on a regular basis but for the fact that the smithy simply 

would not support two. The repeated offer of a job, the con- tinuedrefusal,was in the nature of a joke between them, a 

secret tilt at crooked attitudes under virtuous cloaks that found unemployment and idleness indistinguishable. 

"Now you haven't," said Kannan, between clangs of his hammer, "just come to keep me company, have you?" 

"No," said Ravi, who never indulged in circumlocution with Kannan. "I came to see if you had any rods — iron rods to bar awindow, two-foot lengths." 

"Expect Ihave— I'llhave alook inaminute." 

"No hurry," said Ravi courteously. "When you're ready." He squatted down comfortably, a safe distance from anvil 

and hammer. He liked being in the smithy, the look of bright 

coal, the smell of horse and hay that the little jutka-ponies left behind them. He liked the horseshoes hanging on the wall, he 

admired the skill and precision that went into their making, and if he could have ordered the world to his will he would 

have ensured that a value was set upon them less despicable in terms of money than the prevailing one. 

"Ravi, give itablow, will you, there's agood chap?"

Ravi took up the bellows and began to work it. The coal 

glowed like a small inferno. It was special high-grade stuff, Kannan said, it had to be to produce this smelting heat, a heat in which iron could be bent and flattened and fashioned at 

will. 

"Ready now."

Kannan advanced, bearing in tongs the short heavy strip of 

metal that he held to the fire, playing it over the surface until the gray grew radiant. A quick twist into shape and on to the 

anvil ... ah, what skill, Ravi thought, what a skilled deploy- mentofstrength! He leaned forward in admiration as the 

hammer blows fell, swift, disciplined, exactly where Kannan intended. 

"Finish off, will you, Ravi?"

Ravi began filing the rough edges, obscurely soothed by the 

rasp, the smooth powdery feel of the metal when he had fin- ished.Fourhorseshoes, a set of four finely fashioned shoes 

with the four square holes for the nails that would bolt them on to the living hoof ... it was with a sense of satisfaction that he strung them together and hung them up. 

By now he had forgotten for what he had come. 

"Here, will these do?" "What for?" 

"A window, you said" 

"That's right." Ravi returned to himself. "You don't sup- poseIwant to batter someone over the head with them, do 

you?"

"Who knows?" Kannan considered him judicially. "On the 

whole, no— although someone's taken abash atyou."

"Oh that," said Ravi, "that just happened. Bit of a mistake 

really." He began to examine the bars— he did not want to talk about that affair. 

"All right?"

"Yes, fine. I'llneed six . . ."He picked out the rods. "What 

do you want for them? " 

"Nothing, lad. They're spare, don't even know where they came from." 

"You must," Ravi urged. "It isn't my money. The old sow paid up — had to, in a way. Here, look! " 

"You keep it." Kannan waved the note away. "It'll keep you out of mischief."

Ravi bound the rods together and hoisted the bundle onto 

his shoulder. "Well, thanks." 

"It's nothing." Kannan turned again to his forge. He banged away, hoping, although it was not his business, that Ravi 

would not use the bars on human beings. On the whole he thought not; but you could never be sure about youngsters nowadays, they seemed to be driven by devils sterner than those his generation had known.