(A Short Story)

BY MANJERI S. ISVARAN

I was then a clerk in the Statistical section of the Customs Office with the high hope of becoming one day the Superintendent of the section. Being young and fresh from college I attended to my work with flaming zeal, but I was soon to know that my superiors were a set of crusted philistines who crystallised all warm blood. Years passed on, but no promotion; the asymptote of hope quivered a sickening quiver, then coiled itself into sullen reconciliation.

It was a Sunday afternoon in June–I attended to "urgent" papers on holidays–and escaping from the musty files and the mustier air of the office, mooned about the Harbour for an hour or so, looking at the coolies and the cranes at work. The sea breeze blew with a hushing tenderness; the lapping of waves and the chuff-chuffing of motor-boats as they cut the waves came in as melodious sea-sounds. The influence all around breathed balsamic sleepiness; in fact its warmth was getting on me; but there was the wife at home waiting for me, and remembering my promise to her of a speedy return I walked out of the Harbour.

The Barbers Bridge tram was ready on the track to start. It was empty, and the conductor who was a familiar fellow, yawned. I jumped in; he blew the whistle and the car began a-rattling. The conductor knew me for a season-pass holder, rising as the sun and setting as the sun through that tram orbit, and he advanced towards me smiling. I was in the mood for a chat and to his query: "Have to go to office even on Sundays?" I nodded Yes. Interestedly he regarded my fingers stained with ink and asked, "Writing and writing heaps?"

"We have to write," I answered simply, thinking the while of the dignity of the plural usage.

"And we have to whistle, and whistle our life," he rejoined. The conductor knew how to talk.

The car was gathering speed with moans and creaks and more moans and oscillating up to Parrys Corner when a cry to stop was heard. The conductor whistled, but the motorman was in the moonland; he whistled shrilly, the dreamer in khaki turned back with a wry face, drew a curve with his foot, stooped, and the car lurched to a stop at the bend. And it had to for upward three minutes; in three strides the conductor had reached the tail-end and was waiting to receive the passenger.

"O, Yella, don't curse me. It's not my fault." I heard him cry with deep concern. And immediately I saw a man of thirty-five or thereabouts buoying up along the footboard, and tap-tapping slowly in to sit. His right leg below the knee was wooden and its iron-ringed end was painfully visible. He sat wiping off the sweat on his brow and complimented the motorman in affectionate tones by calling him a dhoby's ass. The ass did not bray; it grinned foolishly; perhaps it was stone-deaf.

The tram resumed rattling. The conductor and Mr. Woodenleg chatted, nodding heads, winking eyes, and smile chasing smile in their faces. I thought them thick friends. Another stage was reached with a couple of passengers boarding in, and at the next "cars-stop-here-if-required" I saw Yellan tapping out and the conductor looking after him wistfully, his forehead wrinkling, so it seemed to me, into many memories.

I was interested–Mr. Woodenleg had not paid the fare: he was too ill-clad and lean to possess a season-pass, and his friend had not demanded the fare of him–and was thinking of calling the conductor to my side, when he himself, turning back, approached me.

"A wonderful fellow," he said, "he was one of us, the Company's servants, one of the smartest motormen that kept his uniform clean and his brass-buttons like so many little moons. But he lost his leg (this he accompanied with a click-click-click of his tongue) and lost his job."

"In an accident, in a collision," I asked.

" No, he alone is responsible for it."

"How do you mean.?"

" It all happened ten years ago, (he continued), but I remember everything with astonishing clearness. Yellan had more blood in him than a young man should have, and God drained the superfluous part in due time. He was given too much that way." Here he lowered his tone.

"Was he not a married man then? You people marry early."

"He was a married man and Thaiyanayaki was a trusting and confiding girl. That's the bitterest part of it. But Vallachi knew how to noose a young fellow. She was a fruit-seller and sat on the kerb near Round Tana with her basketful of fruits, particular to the season, for sale. Twenty, fleshy, of the colour of coffee, full-bosomed and dusky-eyed, she was a perfect she-animal that raises the animal spirits in man. I don't know when the pair had met for the first time, and where; but here was Yellan stopping the car near the kerb though it was not a stopping stage, sprinting to Vallachi, his face wreathed with smiles, and she receiving him her face wreathed with smiles, and he snatching a couple of oranges out of her basket, sprinting back and driving the car! And every day regularly! Obviously they had known each other for a pretty long time. Somehow Inspector Shamsuddin, we call him the Tiger, came to know of this, warned Yellan three or four times, and finally even threatened him that he would get him fired. Whether he was off duty or on duty Yellan's young blood was coursing, drumming, and simmering, and his flesh twisting, wriggling, and creeping to Vallachi's. Straightway the Inspector's back was turned upon him he would thrust out his tongue and emit through his nose a noise as if proceeding from an application of the air brake. He had turned out such a devil-may-care fellow.

"But things began to go wrong. Yellan, a good friend to all of us, was growing fretful. Often he drove the car at top-speed indifferent to the speed-zones and said he was driving the Punjab Express or the Tufan Mail. But he had such a perfect control over the brakes that we were sure he would not run into an accident. The accident, however, did happen.

"It was about 11 o'clock morning of a Monday. Yellan ran No. 52, the Washermanpet-Barbers Bridge car. I was on duty as conductor and that's why I am able to give you these details. Early morning I had noted his gloomy expression, but in his talk I could not detect any trace of excitement No. 52 with an almost full load of passengers was on its fourth down-trip. Yellan was doing ten miles uniformly; the car neared the point at the kerb where Vallachi sold fruits when all on a sudden I saw Yellan loosing hold of the handle and flying out a regular swallow-flight. In a moment I raced to the handle, applied the brake, and prevented the car from running off the rails. Almost simultaneously I heard an automobile bumping to a stop with a creak and a smell of burnt tyres and what I saw the next moment horrified me. A battered and bleeding leg was protruding from beneath it!

"Poor Yellan came to himself midst shudders and groans, reeling, racked, and wrestling with pain, midst a thousand ghostly noises–the clanking of myriad bells, the sighing of many winds, and the rush of multitudinous waters–in the Elphinstone Ward, General Hospital. He lost his name: like the tram he drove he was No. 14. The next day morning, mysterious chloroform, dark, delicious, subtle, drew his being into its numbing depths, and his right leg was amputated at the knee. He stayed in the hospital for four months for the wound to heal; I visited him weekly; his poor wife too; but the rascal was hoping and hoping that Vallachi would come to see him, would come with oranges. Twice or thrice he hinted about that to me but I silenced him curtly. As yet I was ignorant of the cause of his mad jump from the tram; he was very reticent to tell but at last when he could no longer stand my importunity, said: ‘She was turning rather cold towards me and that morning I saw her saree trailing negligently down her shoulder exposing her naked arm and a part of her naked bosom and she was laughing and chatting with a young man. And the harlot, she was peeling an orange for him. I've given her half of my earnings and the sight was too much for my nerves.’

"I offered no comment. It was positively useless to offer.

" With haggard eyes, sunken cheeks, and a goatee Yellan emerged out of the hospital limping on an wooden leg. He saw the freedom, the colour and the rush of life outside; he looked at the lopped limb and his eyes were humid. His wife tenderness towards him and worked in three houses as servant, sweeping floors and scouring pots to maintain him. Yellan put on strength but Vallachi was always in his thoughts. He visited her twice; Vallachi laughed heartlessly at the wreck of him and threw orange peels at him. His wife came to know of these amorous excursions and shrewd woman that she was, when she knew he was preparing for another visit, she made use of his wooden leg as fuel for the oven to keep him at home. Thrice she did like this; Yellan hopped and raved and raged in impotence. In the third burning, however, he saw a gleam of light; it seemed to illumine his suffering and virtuous wife with a radiance he understood, yet not understood fully. He cast out Vallachi out of him as he would a devil. Yellan is now a devoted husband and a fond father."

"He must be," I affirmed, and the tram jerked to a stop at the Ice House terminus.

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