Chapter 49

Service League lifted him and bore him to a shelter in the verandah of a school, a hundred yards away. Munoo had deliberately closed his eyes in order not to appear undeserving of help. Yet he was aware of every- thing that was happening to him. He wished he were not conscious. He wished he had really been hurt and had died or fainted. For the slow, long drawn-out torture that had spread through the furnace of his brain like an unending song of fire was unbearable. It had gone on and on and on, consuming all the elements of sensation and burning up the meagre resources of nervous energy he had left in him after months of work in the factory, until now he was merely a luminous point in the darkness staring out blankly at the various strata of this hellish night. The volunteers of the Social Service League rested him on a mat in the school verandah, where hurricane lamps illuminated the bodies of a crowd of beggars, paupers and coolies, who had ostensibly been rescued from the streets where they ordinarily slept. A doctor, who looked not unlike the brother of the Sham Nagar Babu, to Munoo, because he wore a hat and suit, asked him where he was hurt. Munoo just moved his head negatively and lay wrapped in complete inertia. The doctor examined his body, wrote something on a paper and moved on. A volunteer applied a cup of hot milk to his lips, and Munoo got up to drink, grateful and humble. The swest, hot liquid rushed the blood to his face. If only he had laid down to sleep he might have arisen 294 soothed and balanced in the morning. But he opened his eyes to his surroundings. The verandah was dark. There was a horrible smell of urine and dung hanging over it. And the whispers of the poor rose like thick flakes of cotton in the closed air. Munoo tried not to breathe through the reck too deeply, his eyes were taking in the disgusting outlook of the diseased, broken men about him, some crouching with their sleek bellies, some bending over their hollow ch noring woodenly as they slept against a wal 296/350 templating their wounds and sores with wea blinked not, some coughing in unending fits of jerky restera- tion.s. The boy was going to open his mouth to breathe a word to himself. A gust of musty damp pepper and the foul reek of excrement assailed him. He shut his mouth and sniffed at the air. He dilated his nostrils. Again there the dirty smell going through him. He decided to bolt f Line place. It was unbearable. He would go and sleep the sea beach. There were booths there which lay emp., all night. He had seen them. He hoped nobody else had thought of the idea, and that the place would be empty. He got up and began to walk. No one seemed to take any notice of him. The door was straight in front of him and people were coming and going. He emerged from the gate.He realised that he would have to run three hundred : yards to the Chaupatti. 'Will I be quite safe?' But he did not wait to receive the answer. He only babbled: 'Let come what may, I shall at least get away from this.' And the pictures of the men he was leaving behind shimmered in his brain against the currents of strange thoughts about himself walking barefoot on the hot sand of the road to Sham Någar, of his aimless wandering in the civil lines at Daulat- pur and in the streets of Bombay. He was running, and the movement of his body transfigured space and time into a blank. It transformed the memory of the mutilations he had seep that evening into a prolonged moment of uncer- tainty, above the confusion of cries, the din of shouts and 295 the cruel impact of brutal hands, above even the hum of innumerable waves which were billowing before his eyes to the edge of the far rocks. He ran as if he were a rocket of fire going to be quenched in the sea. He was not conscious of his body. He shot past, vast buildings across the Chaupatti bridge in a devastating whirl. He sighted a broken wagon which was covered with a jute awning. He knew it was a cocoanut shop during the day. He slowed down, panting, and made for it. The marble. statue of Tilak stood small and insignificant against the vast sheet of water which swished like a snake and spilled the white foam of its poison on the shores of India., He mounted into the wagon and groped around. There was plenty of space. He lay down and rested. The anarchy of the ocean drowned him in sleep. When he awoke late in the morning, he did not know where to go, what to do, and what his soul wanted. The cocoanut stall did not opern till the afternoon, so no one had come to disturb him. He sat staring at the sunshune which flooded the wagon and heard the unending roar of the sea beyond the jute- cloth curtain. The night had been cold and he had shivered at dawn. But now it was quite warm, even hot. And it was so restful, were it not that he felt this emptiness in his soul, and hunger in his belly. He tried to console himself by feeling that this leisure after months of having to get up ea. 297/350 It was like the old days in the village, he felt, when he used to laze round in the afternoon and have a siesta while the cattle grazed. The wild pastures of the green sea had indeed something of the freedom of the open fields. The mere habit of getting to the factory in the morn however, had given him a conscience about work. Anc conscience pricked him now. He felt he ought to get and do something-anything. But what was he to do? Where was he to go? What 296'Marl Mar! Hit and seel' a voice challenged, and was : 292 quietened by the thrust of a dagger, so that it fell instant- aneously into a tottering fall and expired with a cry: 'Killed!' 'Son of an ass! Heathen!' the aggressive shouts of the conqueror tore the warm, tense air. 'This time death is certain,' Munoo said to himself, as he ged away under cover of a tram which had drawn up by the kerh edge of the square. And he felt the hard impact of large knuckles at the back of his neck and then a sudden, -blow on his pine. He was stretched out. As he looked up from where he had fallen he saw a Muhammadan outlined against the tramway. He instinc- tively flosed his eyes and loosened his body to sinmulate the limpness of a corpse. The Pathan kicked him with a con- temptuous whisper of 'Hindu dog!' and walked away to where his companions now stood, after having killed as many Hindus as had not run away. The square was soon deserted, hecause the Pathans walked away, shouting, stamping, fierce and bloody, and for a moment there was utter silence. Then the cries of the half-dead arose with the swish of sea air that came from the Chaupatti beach, and fugitive forms nestled about as they emerged from strange unknown corners and vanished into the air. Munoo opened his eyes to scan a triangular flower garden that stood guarded by regular railings beyond the tramway junction. He felt he would go and hide among the shrubs there. But as he strained to lift his head on his elbow he heard someone writhing in agony, while a stave seemed to strike the earth with a metallic sound. He listened to the convulsed despair of the dying man in extreme nervousness. Escape in that direction seemed impossible. He lay back and held his breath for a minute until he heard the last cry of the wretch. He hesitated between despair and a desire to go to the man. But his body was weighted down by fear, his head 293 294/350 bowed down, his eyes half-closed by the fatigue of waiti in the dark. And he lay resigned. Suddenly he felt the rush of eager feet about him. 'Has my end come now?' he asked himself. But there seemed to be no answer. He lay dumb, ready for his last breath to 1 depart. He had had no time to think of the past,