wrappings in this room, the old man and the woman between them, and here she had been ever since, watched and guarded.
The old man she saw seldom, he came only now and again to make sure that his catch was still safe. During his few visits she had studied him closely, because she had now no resources but her own ingenuity, and the only food she had for that was observation. The more she recorded, the more chance that some day she might find a weak place in the fortress and its garrison. But she felt from the beginning that it would not be in the old man. Now that she came to study him at close quarters she saw that he was not at all like Arjun Baba, and certainly not nearly so old and frail. This one, grizzled and bent though he might be, and tangled in a wealth of beard, would have made two of Satyavan’s pensioner. He was broad-shouldered, sturdy and muscular, and she had already experienced the strength of his arms and hands. He had a harsh, querulous, irascible old voice that grated unpleasantly on the air and even more unpleasantly on the mind, suggesting as it did a short temper, and a nature subject to malice and panic. He spoke to her not at all, not even one word. It was to the woman he talked, hectoring, bullying and demanding, in Hindi. And the woman did everything he ordered, in cringing haste and for the best of reasons, because she was afraid of him.
It seemed to be the woman who lived here. She was much younger than the man. She looked, perhaps, fifty, but there were factors which caused Anjli to reason that in reality she must be considerably younger still; notably there was the girl, who seemed to be about Anjli’s own age, give or take a year, and yet was almost certainly this woman’s daughter. So it wasn’t time, it was circumstances that had aged the mother. She was painfully thin and worn, her features blurred by timidity and hopelessness, the only rich thing about her her great coil of dark brown hair. She wore blouses and saris of plain cotton dyed in single colours, and so faded with washing that the once brilliant red had ebbed to a streaked and withered rose. When the old man was there she was a quivering, wary creature obsequious to his every gesture and word, and yet in some insinuating way she seemed to place herself between his possible animosity and Anjli. And when he was not there she was timid and gentle, she offered food with consideration, she left the bed to the children; but she was too cowed ever to be an ally, and too much afraid of the old man ever to forget to lock a door.
Her cooking was done somewhere outside. Anjli pictured a lean-to shed in a corner of a small compound, with pots hissing gently over the inevitable charcoal braziers, such as she had seen in the modest residential areas of Rabindar Nagar. Altogether, there was something about this woman’s living quarters which did not suggest the most primitive poverty, by any means, poor though she undoubtedly was. A certain respectability and security existed here. Somebody’s housekeeper, perhaps? The old man’s? But no, he did not live here, she was almost certain of that. And what sort of place was it, in any case? These rooms were so enclosed that traffic noises did not penetrate. She could not even guess at the kind of road or street that lay outside her prison.
And then there was the girl. Late in the afternoon of the first day she had manifested herself, first as a young, curious voice plying the woman with questions, somewhere beyond the locked door. And surely there had been a low, continuous hum as background to their exchanges, a sound which made itself known in retrospect as the purr of a vacuum cleaner? Anjli could never be quite sure about that, but perhaps only because the idea seemed to her so fantastic. She forgot about it, in any case, when the woman unlocked the door and the girl came sliding through it, and stood staring, mute with shyness, at her mysterious contemporary.
Her name was Shantila, for Anjli had heard her mother call her so. She was learning English at school; but as yet she spoke it very haltingly, and indeed for the most part, even in her own language, was a very taciturn child. Life had not encouraged her to be voluble. She was a couple of inches shorter than Anjli, but otherwise they were well-matched in size, as was soon demonstrated; for on his next visit the old man had issued his orders, and Anjli had forthwith been given some of Shantila’s school clothes to wear instead of her own jersey suit. White shalwar and deep blue kameez, and the inevitable gauze scarf in white. Would a country school make use of such a uniform, or could she rely on it that she was still in Delhi? No use asking Shantila, she had all too clearly been told to avoid such subjects. Probably she had even been told to keep away from the prisoner. She vanished whenever the old man was there. But in his absence the attraction was too great. Shantila was free to pass through the locked doors if she wished; but after a day Anjli began to understand how barren a freedom this was to her. The most fascinating and wonderful thing in her world drew her inward into Anjli’s captivity.
At first she simply sat and stared, devouring with her eyes every facet of the strange girl’s strangeness, the supple leather shoes in their antique leather shades melting from deep red to mouse-brown, the delicate silvery- pink colouring of the woollen jacket and skirt, the finger-nails shaped and tinted like rose petals, all the exotic accoutrements of Anjli’s westernness. On the second day, approaching with daring shyness, she began to touch, to stroke the kitten-softness of the angora and lambswool jersey, and even the smooth texture of Anjli’s lacquered nails.
They arrived at a kind of understanding almost without words. Shantila shook her head nervously when she was questioned, so why question her? What she let fall unwittingly might be worth much more. Moreover, Anjli found that she could not pursue a creature so wary, and with such evident reasons for her fears. This was not and never could be an enemy, and there are measures which are inadmissible except with enemies. Even her own desperate need to act in her own defence did not alter that.
She knew, of course, what must be the reason for her abduction. There could be only one. She was the child of money, and someone intended to get money in exchange for her. The trouble was that she was too sophisticated to conclude that that in any way guaranteed her safety; she knew of too many cases to the contrary. But so far, at least, she was hoarded like treasure, and with luck she might yet have time to find a means to help herself. But preferably not at Shantila’s expense.
They slept together on the sagging bed at night, and drew delicately apart when they inadvertently touched, with a kind of mutual respect that could have arisen in no other circumstances; and then, when they touched of intent, in search of a mysterious measure of comfort, they did not withdraw.
And this was the fourth morning. The sun was already high, for the leaves that whirled and span just within view from the lavatory window were gilded through. Shantila had come home from school, and had no more classes that day. They ate their mid-day food together, and Shantila sat content as on the first day to watch and wonder. For her Anjli was inexhaustible. Even now that the fabulous clothes were gone, the glamour had not departed. And there was still her necklace and polished round beads, in a dozen melting shades of brown and grey and green. Shantila had no jewellery; even her mother had only two or three thin glass bangles to her name.
Anjli saw how the huge, hungry brown eyes dwelt on her necklace, not coveting, only marvelling, satisfied with contemplation because there was no further possibility. Dorette had brought the beads back for her once from Scotland, they were only the subtle semi-precious pebbles of the Scottish hills, rounded and polished and strung into a neat little choker, eminently suitable for a young girl. What they were to Shantila she saw suddenly in a wonderful, inverted vision, the jewels from the ends of the earth. They had no value until you realised they had a transferable value, and then they were beyond price. How stupid, then, that they should stay where they were worthless, when they could so easily go where they were treasure.
Anjli put up her hands to the back of her neck, and undid the silver clasp.
‘Turn round, let me put it on for you.’
She lowered the chain of stones to Shantila’s neck, and Shantila drew back from it instinctively, shaking her head in fright and putting up a hand to fend off the gift.
