Two Short Novels by Mulk Raj Anand Page B

shake off the straw from his clothes.

    The snow flakes which had obviously fallen during the night seemed to have melted and the land was slushy as he began to trudge in the diminishing pitch dark before twilight. A sharp wind blew and cut through his woollen jacket. He gathered his muffler around his neck and felt like a scarecrow walking along. That was an advantage, because in case he was observed he could just stand and stretch his hands out, though the tribesmen were more sharp-eyed than he gave them credit for.
    Now that he was going along he wanted to make certain where he was going.
    The smoke, which still arose from the middle of the town decided him: It would be futile to plunge into Baramula just like that. He must keep afloat on the sea of existence. And, for this reason, it was best for the while not to yield to the longing for home, but to attend to the bigger anxiety and avoid being caught.
    A shiver went down his spine as he realised that he might walk straight into the arms of a Pakistani sentry or be picked off by a bullet from one of the hawk-eyed ones. And, again, his body and mind were in the grip of the crisis which had occupied him before he had dozed off in the haystack: Did one grow up just to be ready to be shot? What did it all mean? Where was Allah Mian? These were questions arising from fear. He sensed the tremors inside himself.
    And, in this agitation, the choice before him became an obsession. He stopped for a moment, his chin uplifted and his eyes exploring an avenue, chafing at himself for his bad nerves. And then he reasoned, almost audibly: ‘Fear is the natural humility of man before ugly reality!’
    A little way away from the town, he knew, stood the Presentation Convent, where people were perhaps sufficiently near to be in the know of all that had happened in the three days he had been away and sufficiently far to be out of the trouble spots. As Christians and white folk they would be immune. Besides his father’s cousin, Rahti, worked as house mother in the hospital and her husband, Salaama, was the watchman of the convent.
    Skirting around the fields, so that he could keep out of visible distance from the town, he headed towards an uprise from which he could descend on to the convent, without the risk of being observed.
    In spite of the agitation in him, he pretended to be as matter of fact as though he had been to the fields for a walk from the convent.
    As he sighted the group of buildings of the Presentation Convent, he found the main house smoking.
    Footsore and weary from a further trudge after the long walk from Pattan, he felt listless.
    He stopped to see things clearly, imagining that, in the deceptive darkness, he was mistaking the smoke of the chimney for fire. Perhaps it was some other building in the nearby town.
    But as far as his eyes could peer into the distance, and figure things out, it was, indeed, the main convent house which was smouldering slowly, the smoke like a dense morning mist.
    He tried to remain calm and absorb the shock, arguing that he did not really feel any emotion or sentiment about a holy place like a mosque, a temple or a convent. But, all the same, he realised that the raiders had sacked this place. He wondered how the Pakistani officers, who knew of the help given to them by the White generals, had allowed the burning of a missionary centre. The marauders seemed to have engulfed not only the town but also the outskirts, as the weeds in the forest engulf the shrubs and flowers.
    So his plan to seek safety among the Christians had failed.
    He stood for quite a while wondering what to do next, unable to believe that the Muslim brethren could set fire to a holy place. But the truth smouldered into his brain with the smoke. Clearly this incendiarism had been recently committed.
    At last he was encouraged by the view of the standing houses in the convent courtyard, to push on.

    Gingerly, he advanced towards the hospital side of the convent, in the