29

At the start of the month of Baishakh, Harihar finalized all the arrangements for leaving Nischindipur. Whatever belongings could not be taken with them were sold off to settle various small debts. The great jackfruit-wood taktaposh, the chest, the many pindris that were in the house—hearing the news, buyers came even from the other side of the village and bought them at a low price.

The village elders came and tried to reason with Harihar and dissuade him. They even presented him with a verbal, comparative inventory of how cheap milk and fish were in Nischindipur, of how little it cost to run a household here. Only Rajkrishna Bhattacharya, who had come to extend an invitation for his wife’s Sabitribrata, said after a long conversation—My boy, what is there left in this land that I could ask you to stay for? Besides, to plant your roots in the mud of one place is no way to live; I know this from my own experience—it makes the mind small, it stunts the mind’s growth. Look at me, I myself hope to make a pilgrimage to Chandranath this year, if God grants me the days—

When Rani heard the news, she came to Apu’s house. She said to Apu, ‘Hey, Apu, are you all really leaving this village for good? Is it true?’

Apu said, ‘It’s true, Ranudi, go ask Ma—’

But Rani still would not believe it. Finally, after hearing everything from Sarbajaya’s lips, Rani was stunned. She called Apu out to the yard and said, ‘When are you going?’

‘The Wednesday after next Wednesday—’

‘And you’ll never come back?’

Rani’s eyes filled with tears. She said, ‘You’re the one who always says Nischindipur is such a wonderful village, that there’s no river like this, no fields like these anywhere else—how can you leave a village like that?’

Apu said, ‘What can I do? It wasn’t my idea to go. Baba has his heart set on living there—we can’t manage here, you see? I’ll leave you my writing-book, Ranudi. Maybe when we’re older, we’ll see each other again—’

Rani said, ‘You didn’t even finish the story in my notebook, or sign your name in it. You’re a fine one, you are, Apu!’

Holding back her tears, Rani hurried out of the house. Apu could not understand why Ranudi was angry for no reason. Was it his own wish to leave his home?

At the bathing ghat, Apu had a long talk with Potu. Potu had not known about it either; hearing it all from Apu, his spirits sank terribly. With a crestfallen face, he said, ‘I waded into the water myself and cleared away all that moss with such difficulty to make a fishing spot for you, and now you won’t even fish in it once?’

This year, Ramnabami’s Dol, the Charak Puja, and Goshthabihar all fell one shortly after the other. Every year, this season filled Apu’s heart with an extraordinary, unbridled joy. He and his sister would forsake both food and sleep. From Apu’s side, at least, there was no lack of enthusiasm this time either.

On the day of Charak, the old woman Aturi of the village passed away. Her two-sloped hut stood near the new field where the Charak fair was held these days. Seeing a large crowd gathered there, he went to see what was happening. He remembered the time he had fled in terror of Aturi the witch, crashing through the bamboo grove—he was little then—now the memory made him laugh. Today he felt that Aturi Buri was no witch, no anything. She lived alone on the outskirts of the village, away from the neighbourhood—poor, helpless, with no son, no daughter, no one to look after her. If she had, would she have lain dead inside her house all day long? With no one to see to her last rites? Panchu the fisherman’s son brought out a pot and emptied its contents—a whole pot of dried mango peel. The old woman would gather mangoes felled by storms and prepare amsi and amchur to sell at market after market to get by. Apu knew this, for he had seen her at the Rath fair just last year, selling amsi from a flat basket.

Charak seemed somehow empty this year. Just last year, his sister had been so happy, buying a new pot from the Charak market. He remembered fighting with her that morning. In the afternoon, his sister had said, ‘I’ll give you the money, Apu, see if you can find a pot of the Abduction of Sita at the fair?’ Apu, wanting his revenge, had said, ‘All those insipid, sentimental pictures, that’s what you have to buy! I won’t do it, go on—why not buy one of the War of Ram and Ravan?’ His sister had replied, ‘You and your wars—always war! The things boys think of! Are pictures of gods and goddesses not good enough then?’ …Apu had never held his sister’s artistic sensibilities in high regard.

When the red rangchita flowers bloomed against their fence, her face came to his mind; in the call of a bird, in the swaying of a freshly blossomed orkolmi flower—his heart ached for his sister. He felt that the one he could run to, the one who would have been so happy to hear his news—where had she gone? How far away! …And she would never, ever… come back to play among these things again…

Amidst the noise of the fair, someone was playing a flute beautifully. He loved new melodies—he searched and found him: it was Haran Mal from the Malpara, who had brought a bundle of bamboo flutes he had whittled to sell and was playing one himself as an advertisement. Apu asked, ‘How much for one?’ Haran Mal knew him very well. He had thatched their kitchen roof many times. He asked, ‘I heard you folks are leaving the village, little master? So where are you off to, eh?’ Apu paid a pice and a half for a thin bamboo flute. He said, ‘Which holes do you cover, Haran-kaka? Show me once, will you?’

He remembered once waking late at night and lying awake for a while. On the dark river, far away, came the monotonous, rhythmic thak-thak sound of the fishermen’s dip-nets. Just then, he heard, as if from a great distance, from the direction of the path to the Kuthi’s field, someone walking and singing at the top of his voice at that hour of the night. People did not generally walk on the path to the Kuthi’s field so late, and yet, half-asleep, how many times had he heard, on a moonlit night, a stranger’s voice singing a broken verse of Madhukan’s poetry, the notes fading further and further into the distance—but what he had heard that time was something entirely new. He had not been able to grasp the tune—in the haze between waking and sleeping, the graceful goddess of melody had vanished down the path between two slumbers, never to be found again—but would Apu ever forget it?

After the Charak festival, the sons and daughters of farmers from various villages, dressed in colourful shirts and clothes, some in new, unbleached saris, were returning home in rows. The boys walked along, playing their flutes. People had come from four or five krosh away to see the Goshthabihar fair. Shola birds, wooden dolls, colourful paper fans, painted pots, coir—everyone had something or other in their hands. Chinibas Baishnab had opened a stall at the fair selling beguni and phuluri; Apu bought two pice worth of the fried snacks from his stall and walked towards home, holding them in his hand. On the way back, it occurred to him: where they were moving, did they have a Goshthabihar like this? Perhaps he would never see the Charak fair again! He thought to himself—if they don’t have Charak there, I’ll tell Baba, ‘I want to see the fair, Baba, let’s go to Nischindipur—we can just stay at Khurima’s house for a couple of days, can’t we?’

The day after Charak, they began to tie up their belongings. They were to set off tomorrow, after the midday meal.

In the evening, his mother was frying hot parathas for him on the kitchen veranda. The fronds of the coconut tree on Nilmoni Jetha’s old homestead were glistening in the moonlight—gazing at them, Apu’s heart filled with sorrow. The excitement he had felt about going to a new land was fading the closer the day of departure came, and the deep pain of imminent separation was making the music of his soul sound a mournful note.

This home of theirs, that bamboo grove, Salte-khagi’s mango orchard, the riverbank, the spot where he and his sister used to have their picnics—how he loved them all! Would they have such a coconut tree where they were going? He had seen this coconut tree here for as long as he could remember; how beautiful its fronds looked on a moonlit night! On so many moonlit nights, sitting on this very veranda, gazing at those moon-drenched coconut fronds, he had played dosh-ponchish with his sister. How many times had he thought what a beautiful village their Nischindipur was! Where they were going, would there be a coconut tree like this by the woods, next to the kitchen veranda? Would he be able to fish there, to gather mangoes, to row a boat, to play ‘rail-rail’? Was there a ghat in that land like the Kadam-tala Sahib’s ghat? They were perfectly fine here; why this pointless leaving?

In the afternoon, something happened.

His mother had gone to the Sabitribrata invitation; Harihar, having finished his meal, was sleeping in the next room. Apu was in the house, going through the things on the shelves to see what could be taken and what could not. As he moved an earthen pot on a high shelf, something rolled out from inside it and fell to the floor. He picked it up from the floor, turned it over in his hands, and was stunned. Though it was covered in dust and cobwebs, he had no trouble recognizing what it was, or its history.

It was that little gold casket, the one that had been stolen from Sejthakrun’s house last year.

No one was home in the afternoon. He stood for a long time, holding the casket, lost in thought. In the hot, silent desolation of the Baishakh afternoon, the shon-shon sound of the bamboo grove reached his ears like a message from far away. He muttered to himself, ‘The wretched girl… she stole it and hid it inside that pot.’

He thought for a moment, then slowly went and stood by the back door—the bamboo grove stretched far into the distance, seeming to doze in the afternoon sun. That same kite was calling plaintively from the top of some tree—the sorrowful midday of that defeated, ill-fated prince of an ancient age, hiding in Lake Dwaipayan! He stood for a moment, then flung the casket with all his might deep into the bamboo grove. It rolled and came to rest somewhere near a beichi bush, amidst a heap of dry bamboo stalks and leaves, right beside the dense thicket through which Bhulo the dog would come panting and running whenever his sister called him.

He thought to himself, ‘It will stay there. No one will ever know a thing. Who would ever go there?’

Apu told no one about the gold casket, not ever, not even his mother.

A little after midday, Hiru the carter’s bullock cart set off. There had been a few clouds in the sky that morning, but they had cleared before ten o’clock, and now the full, intense Baishakh sun was raining fire on the trees, paths, and fields. Potu followed the cart for a long way, saying, ‘Apu-da, they’ve hired a good jatra troupe for the Baroari this year. You won’t get to hear it this time—’

Apu said, ‘Get an extra copy of the playbill and send it to me—’

Again, the road led past the edge of the Charak field. As a sign of the fair, empty coconut shells lay scattered all over the field. Someone had cooked and eaten on one side; there were blackened clods of earth and, to one side, a new, soot-stained pot. Harihar sat in silence; he was feeling a strange sense of unease. Was this the right thing to do? The ancestral home of so many generations… on the adjacent ruined plot, all that pomp and ceremony had already come to an end, but the little earthen lamp that had still flickered would, from this evening on, be extinguished for ever. What would his father, Ramchand Tarkabagish, think, watching from heaven?

The last house in the village was Aturi Buri’s two-sloped hut. Apu stared at it with parted lips for as long as it remained in sight. Immediately after, the cart passed by a large date palm grove and came out onto the main road to Asharhu. As the village came to an end, Sarbajaya felt that all the poverty, all the meanness, all the humiliation remained behind—now, ahead, lay only a new household, a new way of life, a new prosperity!…

Gradually the sun began to set—the cart was then crossing the Sonadanga field. Harihar pointed to a large banyan tree in the middle of the field and said, ‘Look, there’s the Thangare banyan tree by Thakurjhi’s pond.’ Sarbajaya quickly put her head out to look. Not far from the road, a huge banyan tree sat on the edge of a low-lying piece of land, its aerial roots spreading in all directions. She had heard the story of the old Brahmin and his young son so many times. Fifty years ago, an ancestor of her father-in-law, on an evening just like this, had brutally murdered the innocent Brahmin and his unwitting son for their money under that very tree and buried them in the adjacent low ground, which in those days was Thakurjhi’s pond. The boy’s mother must have waited in vain for months, for years, for her son to return home. That son never returned—Oh, Mother! Sarbajaya’s eyes suddenly blurred with tears; something caught in her throat.

The Sonadanga field was the largest in the region. Here and there were thickets, simul and babul trees, bunches of dates hanging from palm trees, clusters of sondali flowers swaying, and everywhere the call of the bou-kotha-kao cuckoo. The deep blue sky, the colour of linseed flowers, lay face down upon the vast field; the eye met no obstruction. In the undulating field covered in thick green grass, there was no cultivation, only an abundance of trees and thickets and the green expanse of the massive field. Ahead, the wide dirt road, like a homeless, wandering Baul, wound its own way into the distance. A little further on lay the Barase-Madhukhali bil. A river from some ancient time had dried up, leaving behind the footprint of its life’s journey; the vast bed of the vanished river was now a bil filled with lotus flowers.

Sitting in the cart, Apu watched the field and the extraordinary colour of the sky all around him. On the dream-canvas of day’s end, so many childhood fantasies came and went! Here he was, leaving his village! Now he would travel who knows how far; his journey had only just begun. Now, perhaps, would come all those other lands, that extraordinary life of his dreams!

Harihar pointed a finger towards a distant village and said, ‘That’s Dhanche-Palashgachhi, and just beyond it is Natabere—there’s a big fair there in the month of Shraban at the shrine of Bonbibi. You can’t get pumpkins cheaper anywhere else.’

The moon rose as they crossed the Betrabati by ferry below the Asharhu market; the water glittered in the moonlight. Today was market day in Asharhu; a few market-goers were chattering as they came across from the other bank in the ferryboat. The cart and its passengers were ferried across and climbed the opposite bank. After getting his father’s permission, Apu got down to see the Asharhu market. It was a small market, with rows of shops with their shutters raised. The thuk-thak sound of a silversmith’s shop could be heard. A crowd of bullock carts was gathered in front of a date-jaggery depot. Majherpara station was still nearly four krosh away. The road, though unpaved, was quite wide, lined on both sides with banyan, pipal, and mulberry trees planted in the era of the indigo planters. In the first days of Baishakh, somewhere in the branches of the banyan and pipal trees beside the path, cuckoos were calling themselves hoarse. The entire path was shaded by a row of ancient banyans with their dangling aerial roots. The tender new leaves looked translucent in the moonlight.

The spring of Bengal, in the fields, forests, and gardens of Chaitra and Baishakh, had begun its joyous dance of delight—in the random calls of the cuckoo, under the weight of countless blossoms on the bent boughs of the nagkeshar tree, in the southern breeze, cool with moonlight and filled with the scent of wildflowers. This was the first time in his life Apu had seen such an exquisite spring scene. The magical image of Bengal’s fields, rivers, and lonely forest edges on a bright moonlit night, which had already been imprinted on his mind at this young age, would be the greatest source of sweetness and inspiration for the moments of imagination in his future life as an artist.

The cart reached the station around ten o’clock at night. Apu had been waiting eagerly for a long time for the cart to arrive; the moment it stopped, he jumped down and in one bound was on the station platform. The eight-thirty evening train had long since departed. Asking his father, he learned that there were no more trains for the rest of the night. It was all because of Hiru the carter’s two bullocks; otherwise, he would have been able to see a train right now. A pile of tobacco bales was stacked on the platform. Two railwaymen were pressing the bales in a machine that looked like an iron box but had a very long handle. The moonlight glinted on the railway tracks. Over there, by the tracks, were two red lights on a tall post; over here, two more just like them. In the station office, a four-legged oil lantern burned on a table. A pile of bound ledgers. Apu went to the door and stood watching for a while. The station master was making a khat-khat sound by pressing a little thing that looked like the knob on a wooden sandal.

The station! The station! It would not be long now. Tomorrow morning he would not only see a train, he would ride one!…

His heart was not willing to move from the platform, but his father came to call him. That little thing like the knob on a wooden sandal was the telegraph machine, his father said.

Apu turned to see that they were getting ready to cook by the station pond. Another cart had already been standing there. Its passengers were a young wife of about eighteen or nineteen and a young man. Apu heard that the young woman was from the Biswas family of Habibpur, and was going to her father’s house with her brother.

His mother had become quite friendly with the young wife. His mother was washing the rice and lentils for khichuri; the young woman was peeling potatoes. They would cook together.

At half past seven in the morning, the train arrived. Apu, mouth agape, had been leaning over the edge of the platform for a long time to see the train. His father said, ‘Khoka, don’t lean over so far, come back over here.’ A porter was also shooing people away.

How huge the train was! What a terrifying noise! So that thing at the front is called an engine? Oh, what a spectacle!

The young wife from Habibpur had lifted her veil and was gazing with curiosity at the approaching train.

Amid a great clamour and bustle, all their bags and bundles were hoisted onto the train. Wooden benches were arranged facing one another. The floor of the carriage seemed to be made of cement. It was just like a room; the windows, the doors, everything was exactly the same! Apu found it hard to believe that this massive carriage, now standing still, would ever move again. Who knew, perhaps it wouldn’t move at all. Perhaps they would announce at any moment, ‘Right, everyone off, the train isn’t going today!’ On this side of the wire fence, a man with a bundle of ulu grass on his head stood waiting for the train to depart. To Apu, the man seemed a pitiable creature. How could anyone who didn’t get to ride the train today even go on living? Outside the gate, Hiru the cart-driver stood staring at the train.

The train began to move. What a strange, marvellous lurching! In an instant, they had left it all behind: Majherpara station, the crowds, the bundles of tobacco, Hiru the cart-driver staring with his mouth agape. The train emerged into the open fields of ulu grass. The trees and plants were streaking past the windows on both sides, fleeing in a flash—what speed! So this was a train! Uff, it was making the whole field spin! Bushes, trees, roofs thatched with ulu grass, the small huts of peasants—it was blurring them all into one! From beneath the carriage came a continuous sound, like a millstone grinding away. And up ahead, that noise from the engine!

Even the distant signal of Majherpara station was gradually fading from sight…

That day, so long ago!

The day he and his sister, searching for the calf, had crashed through fields and marshes, running breathlessly to see the railway line. That day—and now today?

Over there, where the line of trees along the main road to Asharhu-Durgapur was receding farther and farther into the distance, and beyond, where the path from their village curved up into Sonadanga field—there, at that very bend in the path, by the old jamun tree at the village edge, it was as if his sister was standing with a pale, sad face, gazing after their train… No one had brought her along; everyone had left her behind. Even after she had died, he had always felt his sister close by—on the paths where they used to play, in the bamboo grove, under the mango trees. Her invisible, loving touch had lingered in every corner of their ruined brick house in Nischindipur. But today, the separation from his sister was truly, finally, for ever…

It seemed to him that no one else had loved his sister, not his mother, not anyone! No one was sorry to be leaving her. Suddenly, Apu’s mind was filled with a strange and bewildering emotion. It was not sorrow, not grief, not the pain of parting—he did not know what it was. So many things flooded his mind in that brief moment… Aturi the crone… the river ghat… their brick house… the path by the chalta trees… Ranu-di… so many afternoons, so many noondays… so many days of laughter and games… Potu… his sister’s face… his sister’s many unfulfilled wishes… His sister, still gazing after them with unblinking eyes—

The very next moment, the wordless language of his heart found its voice in tears, as if wanting to say over and over again—I didn’t want this, Didi, I haven’t forgotten you, I didn’t mean to leave you behind—they’re the ones taking me away—

And truly, he never did forget. In his later life, he would come to know the world intimately—this Earth, with her girdle of oceans and tresses of blue. But whenever a thrill of motion sent shivers through his entire body, whenever, from the deck of an ocean-bound ship, his eyes fell upon the ever-new, magical forms of the blue sky, or when a blue mountain slope, wreathed in vineyards, grew faint and fainter upon the sea’s dissolving horizon, or a distant, hazy shoreline, barely glimpsed, created in his thoughtful mind a spell of sublime sweetness, like a gift from the genius of a great composer—it was then, at all such moments, that he would remember the words of a poor village girl, lying sick in the dark room of an old house amidst the relentless drumming of rain on a deep monsoon night:

—Opu, when I get well, will you take me to see a train one day?

The distant signal of Majherpara station, as he watched, grew indistinct, and then more distant still, until at last it vanished completely.