'Yes, sir. Or rather it appears so. I do not know much about it. In fact, sir, only what this man has told me. He appeared at my place just now—not half an hour ago—and says that he has killed the Arachchi of his village and another man. I brought him straight to you, sir.'
'Oh, damn it! That means I'll have to go out there to-morrow. How far is it? Beddagama? I don't know the place.'
'It's up the north track, in the jungle, sir. It must be between fifty or sixty miles away, sir.'
'Oh, damn! And there are any number of cases fixed for to-morrow. Well—poor devil—he looks pretty done himself! By Jove! I believe he is the man who was before me as an accused in that theft case the other day. I would not charge him, I remember—no evidence against him. It might have been better for him, perhaps, if I had, and convicted him, too.' He turned to Silindu, and said in Sinhalese, 'You were accused of theft before me a few days ago, weren't you?'
'Yes, Hamadoru.'
'Ah, I thought so. Well, Ratemahatmaya, I suppose I had better record your statement first in form. Come on, now.'
The Ratemahatmaya made a short statement of how Silindu had come to him, and what he had said. The magistrate wrote it down, and then turned to Silindu, and explained to him that the offence with which he was charged was murder, and that he was prepared to take down anything he wished to say, and that anything which he did say would be read out at his trial.
Silindu did not quite understand, but he felt vaguely encouraged by the white Hamadoru. He had spoken Sinhalese to him; he had not spoken in an angry voice, and he was the same Hamadoru who had told him to clear out of the court when he was charged before.
'It is as the Dissamahatmaya[48]said. I have killed the Arachchi and the Mudalali. If the Hamadoru sends to the village, he will find that what I say is true. The Hamadoru remembers the previous case; he knew that they brought a false case against me. He told me to clear out. But the whole case was false—against Babun, too. Am I to tell everything? I am very tired, Hamadoru. For three days now I have been walking and no food but the jungle fruit and leaves. If I might rest now a little, and sleep until to-morrow.... What can I do? I have told all. I am almost an old man, very poor. What can I do?'
'I think I had better take down what you have to say now. But you need not stand. You had better begin from the case. What happened after that?'
'Aiyo, Hamadoru, aiyo! I am very tired. After the case——It was a false case. The Arachchi for long had been trying to do me harm. How long I cannot remember, but for many years it seems to me. At that time it was because of my daughter; he wanted to take her from Babun and give her to the Mudalali. Well, after the case I set out for the village with the daughter. And all the way I was thinking—thinking how to end this evil. For I knew well that when they came back to the village it would begin again, all over again. They had put Babun in jail—it was a false case, but how should the Hamadoru know that?—with all the lies they told. And they would get Punchi Menika for the Mudalali. Then, as I went, I thought of the old buffalo who is wounded and charges upon——' Silindu caught sight of the gun and rifle, and stopped. 'Ah! the Hamadoru is a hunter, too? He knows the jungle?' he asked eagerly.
'Yes, I know the jungle.'
'Good; then the Hamadoru will understand. The evil and the killing there——"Yes, it is time," I thought, "to end the evil. I must kill them both." I was a quiet man in the village, all know that. I harmed no one; I wanted to live quietly. I went back to my compound, and sat down and waited. In the evening came the Punchi Arachchi to his house; I saw him go in. Then I took my gun, and went to him, and said: "Ralahami, you may give the woman to the Mudalali, and in return give me back my chena." The Arachchi thought to himself: "Here is a fool." But he said: "Very well, I will give the chena back to you." Then we started for the chena, and as we went on the track I shot him from behind. He is lying dead there now—on the track which leads from the village to the chena. If the Hamadoru sends some one, he can find the body.'
'Yes, and then?'
'Then, Hamadoru, I loaded the gun again, and went back to the village. There was still the Mudalali. I saw him in the Arachchi's garden. He called to me. "Where is the Arachchi?" I went close up to him—he was standing by the stile, and through it I saw his big belly. I shot him too. He must be dead now.'
'Yes, and then?'
'Then? I went to my house, for the women ran out screaming. I put the gun in my house, and went out into the jungle. I was tired. I am a poor man, and I have harmed no one in the village. I am getting old: I wanted to live quietly in my hut. I wanted to rest, Hamadoru. What good, I thought, to fly into the jungle? Only more evil. So I came straight to the Dissamahatmaya. I told him what I had done. That is all.'
The magistrate wrote down what Silindu said, and when he had finished, sat thinking, the pen in his hand, and looking at Silindu. It was very quiet in the room; outside was heard only the drowsy murmur of the sea. Suddenly the quiet was broken by the heavy breathing and snoring of Silindu, who had fallen asleep where he squatted.
'Leave him alone for a bit,' the magistrate said to the Ratemahatmaya. 'There's nothing more to be got from him to-night. We shall have to push on to Beddagama early to-morrow. I suppose it's true what he says.'
'I think so, sir.'
'Damned curious. I thought he wasn't right in the head when I saw him in court before. Well, I'm gladIshan't have to hang him.'
'You think he will be hanged, sir?'
'He'll be sentenced at any rate. Premeditation, on his own showing—clearly. And a good enough motive for murder. A very simple case—so they'll think it. You think so, too?'
'It seems to be a simple case, sir.'
'I see you would make a very good judge, Ratemahatmaya. I don't mind telling you—unofficially of course—that I'm a very bad one. It does not seem at all a simple case to me.Ishouldn't like to hang Silindu of Beddagama for killing your rascally headman. Now then, Ratemahatmaya, here you are; a Sinhalese gentleman; lived your whole life here, among these people. Let's have your opinion of that chap there. He's a human being, isn't he? What sort of a man is he? And how did he come suddenly to murder two people?'
'It's difficult, sir, for me to understand them; about as difficult as for you, sir. They are very different from us. They are very ignorant. They become angry suddenly, and then, they kill like—like—animals, like the leopard, sir.'
'Savages, you mean? Well, I don't know. I rather doubt it. You don't help the psychologist much, Ratemahatmaya. This man, now: I expect he's a quiet sort of man. All he wanted was to be left alone, poor devil. You don't shoot, I believe, Ratemahatmaya, so you don't know the jungle properly. But it's really the same with the other jungle animals, even your leopard, you know. They just want to be left alone, to sleep quietly in the day, and to get their food quietly at night. They won't touch you if you leave them alone. But if you worry 'em enough; follow 'em up and pen 'em up in a corner or a cave, and shoot '450 bullets at them out of an express rifle; well, if a bullet doesn't find the lungs or heart or brain, they get angry as you call it, and go out to kill. I don't blame them either. Isn't that true?'
'I believe it is, sir.'
'And it's the same with these jungle people. They want to be left alone, to reap their miserable chenas and eat their miserable kurakkan, to live quietly, as he said, in their miserable huts. I don't think that you know, any more than I do, Ratemahatmaya, what goes on up there in the jungle. He was a quiet man in the village, I believe that. He only wanted to be left alone. It must take a lot of cornering and torturing and shooting to rouse a man like that. I expect, as he said, they went on at him for years. This not letting one another alone, it's at the bottom of nine-tenths of the crime and trouble; and in nine-tenths of that nine-tenths there's one of your headmen concerned—whom you are supposed to look after.'
'It's very difficult, sir. They live far away in these little villages. Many of them are good men and help the villagers. But they are ignorant, too.'
'Oh, I'm not blaming you, Ratemahatmaya. I'm not blaming any one. And it's late if we are to start early to-morrow. You had better take your friend away with you and put him in the lock-up. Tell them to give him some food if he wants it. Good night.'
The Ratemahatmaya shook Silindu until he woke up. It was some little while before he realised where he was, and then that he had to set out again with the Ratemahatmaya. He turned to the magistrate.
'Where are they taking me to, Hamadoru?'
'You will be taken to the prison. You will have to stay there until you are tried.'
'But I have told the truth to the Hamadoru. Let him give his decision. It is to end it all that I came here.'
'I can't try you. You will have to be tried by the great judge.'
'Aiyo, it is you I wish to judge me. You are a hunter, and know the jungle. If they take me away now, how do I know what will happen? What will they do to me? Let it end now, Hamadoru.'
'I am sorry, but I can't do anything. You will be charged with murder. I can't try you for that. The great judge tries those cases. But no harm will come to you. You will be able to rest in the jail until the trial.'
'And what will they do to me? Will they hang me?'
'I'm afraid I can't tell you even that. You must go with the Dissamahatmaya now.'
Silindu, passive again, followed the Ratemahatmaya out of the room. The latter, grumbling at the late hour and the foolish talk of the magistrate, got into his hackery, and the procession trailed off again into the darkness towards the lock-up. Here a long delay occurred. A sleepy sergeant of police had to be woken up, and the whole story had to be explained to him. Eventually Silindu was led away by him and locked up in a narrow bare cell, which, with its immense door made of massive iron bars, was exactly like a cage for some wild animal. In it at last he found himself allowed to lie down and sleep undisturbed.
The rest, which the magistrate had promised him, seemed however to be still far off; for early next morning he was taken out of his cell and made to start off with the police sergeant for Beddagama. The magistrate, riding on a horse, and the Ratemahatmaya, in his hackery,[49]passed them when they were two or three miles from the town. A little while afterwards a messenger from Beddagama met the party, bringing the news of the murder to the Ratemahatmaya.
Silindu was being taken to Beddagama to be present at the magistrate's inquiry, but he did not understand this. He was weak and tired after the excitement of the trial and the murder, the long days upon the road, and the little food. He began to think that he had been a fool to give himself up; as he walked behind the police sergeant through the jungle, of which he knew every tree and track, a great desire for it and for freedom came upon him again. He thought of the great bars of the cell door through which he had seen the daylight for the first time that morning. Babun was even now lying behind such bars, and would lie there for six months. And he himself? He might never see the daylight except through such bars now for the rest of his life—unless they hanged him. He thought of the great river that cut through the jungle many miles away: it was pleasant there, to bathe in the cool clear water, and to lie on the bank under the great wild fig-trees in the heat of the day. If he had not given himself up, he might have been there by now, watching the elephant sluicing water over its grey sides or the herd of deer coming down the opposite bank to drink. The thought came to him even now to slip into the jungle and disappear; the fool of a police sergeant would never catch him, would go on for a mile or two probably without knowing that his prisoner had escaped. But he still followed the police sergeant and had not the will or the energy for so decisive a step, for breaking away from the circumstances to which he had always yielded, for taking his life in his hands and moulding it for himself. He had tried once to fight against life when he killed the Arachchi and the Mudalali; he was now caught again in the stream; evil might come, but he could struggle no more.
He had forgotten Punchi Menika until he was a mile or two from the village, and he saw her waiting for him by the side of the track. The rumour had reached the village that Silindu was being brought back by the police in chains. Some said that he was going to be hanged there and then in the village. Punchi Menika had started off to meet him. Her first terror when she had been told of what her father had done had given place to bewilderment, but when she saw him in charge of the police sergeant she ran to him with a cry:
'Is it true, Appochchi; is it true, what they say?'
'What do they say? That I killed those two? It is true I killed them. Then I went to Kamburupitiya and told it all to the Dissamahatmaya and the magistrate Hamadoru.'
'Aiyo, and will they hang you now?'
'What? Do they say that?'
'They say that in the village. It isn't true, is it, Appochchi?'
'I don't know; perhaps it is true, perhaps it isn't. But the magistrate Hamadoru said I would be tried by the great judge.'
'Aiyo! you were mad, Appochchi. It would have been better to have given me to the Mudalali.'
'Hold your tongue, hold your tongue!' burst out Silindu angrily, but his anger died down as rapidly as it had sprung up. 'Don't say that, child, don't say that. No, that is not true, is it, daughter? It is not true. It was for you I did it; and now—after all that—surely in a little while all will be well for you.'
'Well? What is to become of me? What am I to do? They will take you away again and hang you, or keep you in the great house over there. And my man, aiyo, is there too. I shall be alone here. What am I to do, Appochchi?'
'Hush! All will be well with you, I tell you. There is no one here to trouble you now. There will be quiet for you again—and for me, perhaps, why not? The killing was for that. Surely, surely, it must be, child. And Babun? Why, in a little while Babun will come back—in a month or two; you will wait in the village, you will sit in the house, in the compound, under the little mustard-tree—so quietly, and the quiet of the great trees, child, round about—nothing to trouble you now. And in a month or two he will come back; he is a good man, Babun, and there will be no evil then—now that the Arachchi is dead and the Mudalali. There will be quiet for you then, and rest.'
'How can I live here alone? There is no food in the house even now.'
'Are not there others in the village? They will help you for a month or two, and they know Babun. He will work hard in the chena and repay them.'
'And you? What will they do to you? Aiyo, aiyo!'
'What does it matter? What have I ever done for you? It was true when they said that I was a useless man in the village. To creep through the leaves like a jackal; yes, I can do that; but what else? Isn't the bad crop in the chena rightly called Silindu's crop. There was never food in my house. The horoscope was true—nothing but trouble and evil and wandering in the jungle. It is a good thing for you that I leave the compound; when I go, good fortune may come.'
'Do not say that, Appochchi; do not say that! To whom did we run in the compound, Hinnihami and I? What father was like you in the village? Must I forget all that now, and sit alone in another's compound begging a little kunji and a handful of kurakkan? No, no! I cannot stay here. Won't they take me away with you to the jail? I cannot live here alone—without you!'
The sergeant looked back and angrily told Punchi Menika to stop making such a noise. They were nearing the village.
'Hush, child,' said Silindu. 'You must stay here. They will not take you, and what could you do in the big town there? You must wait here for Babun.'
The inquiry began as soon as they reached the village. Silindu went with the magistrate, the Ratemahatmaya, the Korala (who had been sent for), and most of the men of the village to the place where the Arachchi had been shot. The body lay where it had fallen; a rough canopy of boughs and leaves had been raised over it to shade it from the sun. A watcher sat near to keep off the pigs and jackals. When the canopy was removed for the magistrate to inspect the body, a swarm of flies rose and hung buzzing in the air above the corpse. The body had not been moved; it lay on its face, the legs half drawn up under the stomach. The blood had dried in great black clots over the wounds on the back. The magistrate looked at it, and then the Korala turned it over. A glaze of grey film was over the eyes. The hot air in the jungle track was heavy with the smell of putrefaction. The crowd of villagers, interested but unmoved, stood watching in the background, while the magistrate, sitting on the stump of a tree, began to write, noting down the position and condition in which he had found the body. Then the doctor arrived and began to cut up the body, where it lay, for post-mortem examination.
The magistrate walked back slowly to the village, followed by Silindu and the headman and such of the spectators as were more interested in the inquiry than in the post-mortem. The same procedure of inspection was gone through with Fernando's body, which lay under another little canopy, where he had died by the stile of the Arachchi's compound. After the inspection came the inquiry: a table and chair had been placed under a large tamarind-tree for the magistrate to write at. The witnesses were brought up, examined, and their statements written down. After each had made his statement, Silindu was told that he could ask them any questions which he wanted them to answer. He had none. The afternoon dragged on; there was no wind, but the heat seemed to come in waves across the village, bringing with it the faint smell of decaying human flesh. The dreary procession of witnesses, listless and perspiring, continued to pass before the tired irritable magistrate. One told how he had seen Silindu and the Arachchi leave the village, Silindu walking behind and carrying a gun; another had heard a shot from the direction of the chena; another had seen Silindu return by himself to the village carrying a gun. The Arachchi's wife told of Silindu's early visit to the hut, of how he left with the Arachchi, of how later, hearing the report of a gun followed by screams, she ran out of the house to see Silindu standing with a smoking gun in his hand and Fernando writhing on the ground near the stile.
Late in the afternoon the inquiry was over. As the Ratemahatmaya had said, it was a simple case. Silindu was remanded, and would certainly be tried for murder before a Supreme Court judge. For the present he was handed over to the police sergeant, with whom he slept that night in a hut in the village. Next day he was taken back to Kamburupitiya, where he again spent the night in the lock-up. Then he was handed over to a fiscal's peon, who put handcuffs on him and started with him along the dusty main road which ran towards the west. They walked slowly along the road for two days. The peon was a talkative man, and he tried to make Silindu talk with him, but he soon gave up the attempt. He had to fall back for conversation on any chance traveller going the same way towards Tangalla where the prison was.
'This fellow,' he would explain to them, pointing to Silindu, 'has killed two men. He will be hanged, certainly he will be hanged. But he's mad. Not a word can you get out of him. He walks along like that mile after mile, looking from side to side—never a word. He thinks there are elephants on the main road I suppose. He comes from up there—in the jungle. They are all cattle like that there of course. I would rather drive a bull along the road than him.'
They passed through several villages, where Silindu was an object of great interest. People came out of the houses and boutiques, and discussed him and his crimes with the peon. The first night they slept in a boutique in one of these villages. The boutique was full of people; they gathered round to watch Silindu eat his curry and rice with his handcuffed hands. They too discussed him in loud tones with the peon. There were two traders on their way to Kamburupitiya; the rest, with the exception of one old man, belonged to the village. This old man was one of those wanderers whom one meets from time to time in villages, upon the roads, or even sometimes in the jungle. Very old, very dirty, with long matted hair and wild eyes, he sat mumbling to himself in a corner. A beggar and mad, he had two claims to the charity of the boutique-keeper, who had taken him in for the night and given him a good meal of curry and rice.
The peon had for the twentieth time that day told Silindu's story with many embellishments, and complained bitterly of his silence and stupidity. The others sat round in the reeking atmosphere watching Silindu eat his rice by the dim light of two oil wicks.
'Will they hang him, aiya?' asked the boutique-keeper.
'Yes, he'll be hanged, sure enough,' said the peon. 'He confessed it himself, you see.'
'But they never really hang people, I am told. They send them away to a prison a long way off. They say they hang them just to frighten people.'
The other villagers murmured approval. The peon laughed.
'Of course they hang them. I've known people who were hanged. Why Balappu, who lived next door to me in Kamburupitiya, was hanged. He quarrelled with his brother in the street outside my house—it was about a share in their land—and he stabbed him dead. They hanged him. I took him along this same road to the prison three years ago. A good man he was: wanted to gamble all along the road.'
'But you don't know that he was hanged, aiya. No one saw it, no one ever sees it.'
'Nonsense,' said one of the traders. 'In Maha Nuwara they hang them. I knew a man there whose nephew was hanged, and afterwards they gave him the body to bury. The head hung over like this, and the mark of the rope was round the neck.'
The old beggar had listened to what was going on, squatting in his corner. He did not get up, but shuffled slowly forward into the circle, still in a squatting position. Silindu, who had before shown little interest in the conversation, looked up when the beggar intervened.
'Aiyo! what's that you say?' the old man asked. 'They are going to hang this man? Why's that?'
'He shot two men dead up there in the jungle.'
'Chi! chi! why did he do that?'
'He's mad, father, as mad as you.'
The old man turned and looked hard at Silindu, while Silindu stared at him. The spectators laughed at the curious sight. The old man smiled.
'He's not mad,' he said. 'Not as mad as I am. So he killed twice, did he? Dear, dear. The Lord Buddha said: Kill not at all, kill nothing. It is a sin to kill. If he saw a caterpillar in the path, he put his foot on one side. Man, man, why have you killed twice? Were you mad?'
'I'm not mad,' said Silindu. 'They were hunting me: they would have killed me. Therefore I killed them.'
'The man is not mad, no more mad than you, or you—but I—I am mad. So at least they say. Why do they say that I'm mad? My son, do you see this paper?' (He showed a very dirty English newspaper to Silindu.) 'Well, if you are quite quiet and no gecko[50]cries and the jackals don't howl, I will look at it like this afterwards, for some short time—staring hard—then I shall see things on the paper, not the writing—I have wandered all my life—a wanderer on the path, seeking merit by the Three Gems—I cannot read writing or letters—but I shall see things themselves, a little hut up there in the jungle, if you desire it—your hut, my son—and I'll tell you what is doing there, that the woman is lying in the hut, crying perhaps. This paper was given to me by a white Mahatmaya whom I met out there once, also in the jungle. It is of great power: before I could only see what was doing in this country; but now, by its help, I can see over the sea, to the white Mahatmaya's country. Then they say: this is a mad old man. Well, well, who knows? I am always on the path—to-morrow I shall leave this village—from village to village, from town to town, and from jungle to jungle. I see many different men on the path. Strange men, and they do strange things. Thieving, stabbing, killing, cultivating paddy. I do not cultivate paddy, nor do I thieve or kill. I am mad perhaps. But very often it is they who seem to me to want but a little to be mad. All this doing and doing,—running round and round like the red ants—thieving, stabbing, killing, cultivating this and that. Is there much good or wisdom in such a life? It seems to me full of evil—nothing but evil and trouble. Do they ever sit down and rest, do they ever meditate? Desire and desire again, and no fulfilment ever. Is such a life sane or mad? Did they call you mad in the village even before this, my son?'
'Yes, the mad hunter,' said Silindu, and the others laughed again.
'Ah, you are a hunter too. That also I have not done. But I know the jungle, for I travel through it often on my path. Do the beasts in it speak to you, son hunter?'
'Yes. They used to speak to me.'
'So they called you mad. All the beasts in the jungle speak to me too, except the elephant. The elephant is too sad even to talk. Usually when I see him he is eating; for he is always hungry because of his sins in the previous birth. But sometimes I find him standing alone away among the rocks, swaying from side to side. He is very sad, thinking of his sins in the previous birth. Then I say to him, "Brother, your feet too are upon the path. It is good to think of the sins of the previous birth, but there is no need of such sadness." Then he sways more and more, and his trunk moves from side to side, and he lifts one foot up after the other very slowly, but he never says a word, watching me with his little eye. Once, indeed, I remember, he lifted up his trunk and screamed. I too lifted up my hands and cried out with him, for we were both on the path.'
'You do not know the jungle, father,' said Silindu. 'It is of food and killing and hunting that the beasts talk to me. They know nothing of your path, nor do I.'
'Aiyo, it is not only in the jungle that they say that. They say the same in the small villages and the great towns. What do you say, sir?' he said, turning to one of the traders.
'I do not go into the jungle or talk to elephants, old man,' said the trader. 'I know the bazaar, and there they think of fanams[51]first and the path last.'
'A man must live,' said the other trader. 'It is only priests and beggars who have full bellies and idle hands.'
'The Lord Buddha was a beggar and a priest too,' said the old man, and began to mumble to himself. The laugh was against the trader.
'Aiya,' said the old man to the peon, 'who is going to hang this hunter?'
'The Government of course. He will be tried by the judge, and then they will hang him.'
'This is another thing which I do not understand. To the madman this seems foolish to kill a man because he has killed. If it is a sin, will he not be punished in the next birth?'
The old beggar had a strange influence on Silindu, who watched him the whole time, fascinated. The mumbled words seemed to excite him greatly.
'What do you mean, father?' he said, his voice rising. 'How punished in the next birth? They will punish me here—the judge—they do that—they will hang me—you hear what these have said.'
'I do not know about that. I only know of the path. On my way through the villages I hear them say this or that, but I do not understand. To-morrow I shall be gone, to the east, and you to the west. Do you know, my son, where you will sleep to-morrow night? No, no. Nor I either. But we go on the path each of us, because of the sins in our previous births. As the Lord Buddha said to the she-devil, "O fool! fool! Because of your sins in the former birth, you have been born a she-devil: and yet you go on committing sins even now. What folly!" Is not that clear? Of these punishments of the Government I know nothing. If they are punishments they are because of sins committed in your previous birth; but be sure that for the sins which you commit in this birth—for the killing—for that is a sin, a great sin—you will be punished in the next birth. How many will hell await there! Surely, son, it is better to wander on and on from village to village, always, begging a little rice and avoiding sin.'
'But surely I have committed no sin. All these years they plagued me, and did evil to me. Was I to be starved by them, and my daughter starved? Was I to allow them to take her from me and from Babun?'
'The Lord Buddha said, "It is a sin to kill, even the louse in the hair must not be cracked between the nails." The other things I do not understand. I have no daughter and no wife and no hut. It is better to be without. They stand in one's way on the path. And to starve? What need to starve, my son? In every village is a handful of rice for the wanderer. As for the hanging, that is very foolish; the judge must be a foolish man, but I do not think it will hurt you. Remember it is not for the killing of the two men, but for the previous birth. Then there comes hell. You must have killed many deer and pig.'
'Yes, yes, I am a hunter, but what of that, father, what of that?'
'Each is a sin, for I told you, didn't I, that the Lord Buddha said, "It is a sin to kill." My son, you are a hunter, you know the jungle; surely you have seen the evil there, and the pain—always desire and killing. No peace or rest there either for the deer or the pig, or the little grey mongoose. They have sinned, and are far from Nirvana and happiness; and, like the she-devil, they sin again only to bring more evil on themselves by their blindness. What happiness is there in it, my son? The deer and the pig, they too are upon the path. It was greater sin to kill them than the other two. For those two, you say, were bringing evil upon you; but what did the deer and pig do to you? eh, hunter? tell me that.'
'Do? Nothing, of course. But there is no food up there. One must have food to live.'
'No food up there? There is always food upon the path, a handful of rice in every village, for the beggar. I have been forty years now on the path. Have I starved?'
'What was your village, father?'
'The name—I have forgotten—but it lay up there in the hills—a pleasant place—rain in plenty, and the little streams always running into the rice-fields, and cocoa-nut and areca-nut trees all around.'
'Ohé!' murmured one of the villagers, 'it is easy to avoid killing in a place like that.'
'Have you ever worked, old man?' said the peon. 'Have you ever earned a fanam by work? In this part of the country rupees don't grow on wara[52]bushes.'
'No,' said the old man; 'I have never done anything like that. I am mad, you know'. I remember once they took me to the field to watch—I was a boy—I had to scare the birds away. I was there alone, sitting under a small tree beside the field. The little birds came in crowds to feed on the young paddy. They were very hungry. What harm, I thought, if they eat a little? Plenty will remain for the house. So I sat there thinking of other things, and I forgot about the paddy and the birds until my father came and beat me. After that they took me no more to the fields; and I sat in the compound all day, thinking foolish things, until at last an old priest came by, and he told me of the path, and how to meditate, and I followed him. He died many years ago, many years. I have been no more to my village, it is forgotten; but I think it was up there in the hills; it is very long ago, and I have seen many villages since then. They are all the same; even the names I never know; always some huts, and men and women and children, suffering punishment for their sins and sinning again.'
'This is fool's talk,' said the peon impatiently. 'We cannot all beg upon the road. I have heard the priests themselves say that every one cannot reach Nirvana. Nor are we all mad. There are the women and the children. Are they too to become holy men? It is hard enough to live on the eleven rupees which the Government gives us. I don't kill deer, but I eat it when I can get it. Is that too a sin, old man?'
But before the old beggar could answer, Silindu threw himself down on the ground in front of him, and touching his feet with his hands burst out:
'It is true, father, it is true what you say. I did not understand before, though I knew; yes, I knew it well. I have seen it all so long in the jungle. But I did not understand. How many times have I told the little ones—not understanding—about it all. Always the killing, killing, killing; everything afraid: the deer and the pig and the jackal after them, and the leopard himself. Always evil there. No peace, no rest—it was rest I wanted. It is true, father, I have seen it, it is the punishment for their sins. And always evil for me too, there; hunger always and trouble always. You should have shown me this path of yours before, father; even now I do not understand that, and it would be useless now. Through all the evil I have but sinned more, killing the deer and the pig, and now these two men. It is too late. They will hang me, they will hang me, and what then, old man, what then?'
The old man began to shake with laughter. He mumbled incoherently, pulling at his beard and long hair with his hands. The scene caused great pleasure and amusement to all the others, except the peon, who was annoyed at finding that he was no longer playing the most important part. After a while the old man's laughter began to subside, and he regained sufficient control to make himself intelligible.
'Well, well,' he said, 'well, well, I'm not the Lord Buddha, my son. Well, well. D'you see that? He touches my feet as though I were the Lord Buddha himself. I have never seen that before, and I have seen many strange things. I am become a holy man; well, well.' Here again he was overcome with silent laughter.
'Do not laugh, father,' said Silindu. 'Why do you laugh? Is it lies that you told me just now?'
The other became serious again at once.
'Lies? No, no. I do not tell lies. Aiyo, it is all true. But what was it you were saying just then? Ah, yes. You were afraid, afraid of the hanging and the punishment, and of the next birth. Too late, you said, too late for the path. My son, it is never too late to acquire merit. Perhaps they will hang you, perhaps not. Who can say? It matters little, for it will be as it will be. I do not think it will hurt very much. And before that, it is possible for you to acquire much merit. It will help you much in the next birth. You must meditate: you must think of holy things. Here are holy words for you to learn.' He repeated a Pali stanza, and tried to make Silindu learn it. It was a difficult task, and it was only after innumerable repetitions that Silindu at last got it by heart. When he had at last done so, he sat mumbling it over to himself again and again, so as not to forget it.
'That is good,' went on the old man. 'Along the road as you go—wherever you are going—to the prison or to the hanging—repeat the holy words many times. In that way you will acquire merit. Also meditate on your sins, the sin of killing, the deer and pig which you have killed. So you will acquire merit too. And avoid killing. Remember, if there were a caterpillar in the path, he put his foot on one side. So too you will acquire merit. It will help you in the next birth. I think you are already on the path, my son. And perhaps if my path too leads me to the west, who knows? I shall see you there again, and we shall talk together. Now, however, I grow tired.'
So saying the old man shuffled back into a corner, and covering his head and face with a dirty cloth, soon fell asleep. Silindu continued to mumble the Pali stanza, which he did not understand. The villagers, seeing that no more amusement was to be obtained from the strangers, left the boutique; and the boutique-keeper and the other travellers soon after spread out their mats on the ground, and lay down to sleep.
The next day the peon and Silindu started off very early in the morning. All along the road Silindu repeated the holy words to the great annoyance of the peon. They reached the prison at Tangalla late in the evening. It was dark when they arrived, and Silindu was at once locked up in a cell. He fell asleep, still repeating the Pali stanza.
Silindu remained three weeks in the prison. It seemed to him an immense building. It was a large and ancient Dutch fort, with high battlemented grey walls of great thickness. The inside formed a square paved courtyard in which the prisoners worked at breaking stones and preparing coir[53]by hammering cocoa-nut husks with wooden mallets. Round the courtyard were built the cells, oblong bare rooms with immense windows and gates, iron barred, which looked out upon the yard. Silindu, not being a convicted person, was not made to do any work. He squatted in his cell, watching the prisoners working in the yard, and thinking of what the old beggar had told him. He tried to meditate upon his sins, but soon found that to be impossible. He began, however, to forget the village and Punchi Menika, and all the trouble that had gone before. He repeated the Pali stanza many times during the day. He was very happy; he grew fat upon the good prison food.
Only once was the monotony of the days broken for him. He was watching a group of prisoners, in their blue and white striped prison clothes; they all looked almost exactly alike. They were quite near the gate of his cell, filling the bathing-trough with water. Suddenly in one of them he recognised Babun. He jumped up and ran to the bars of the gate, crying out:
'Ohé! Babun! Babun!'
Babun looked round. There was no surprise or interest in his face, when he saw that it was Silindu. A great change had come over him in the short time during which he had been in prison. His skin, a sickly yellow colour, seemed to have shrunk with the flesh and muscle, which had wasted; he was bent and stooping; his eyes were sunken; a look of dullness and hopelessness was in his face. He looked at Silindu frowning. Silindu danced about with excitement behind the bars.
'You know me, Babun?' he shouted. 'You know me? Why do you look like that? All is well, all is well. I shot the Arachchi and Fernando: they are dead. But all is well. They'll hang me. That's why I'm here. But I have my feet on the path. I've acquired merit. The old man was right.'
A jail guard shouted across the courtyard to Silindu to 'shut his mouth.'
'And the woman,' said Babun, in a low, dull voice. 'Where is the woman?'
'She is there in the village waiting for you. All is well, I tell you. They are dead: I killed them. It was the only way, though a sin, a great sin, the old man said. They will hang me, every one says so; but all is well, I've found the path. And you—you'll go back to the village. Punchi Menika is there, waiting. The evil is over.'
Babun stared at him, frowning. His face had lost completely the open cheerful look which it had once had. At last he said slowly:
'You are mad. I don't understand you. If you have killed those two, you are a fool, madman. What's the good? I shall never go back there. I shall die here. And you? Yes, they'll hang you, as you say. What's the good? You are mad, mad—you always were.'
He turned away, and slowly lifting the pail of water emptied it into the trough.
Silindu often saw Babun again in the yard, but never spoke to him. Babun seemed purposely to avoid passing near his cell, and if he had to do so, he kept his eyes fixed on the ground. The day of Silindu's trial arrived. In the morning he was taken out of his cell, and handed over with four other prisoners to an escort of police. They put handcuffs on his hands, and led him through the streets to the court.
Silindu's case was the first case for trial. He did not pay much attention to the proceedings—he continued to mumble the Pali stanza—but he felt the greater pomp and solemnity of this court compared with the police court. The judge was a grey-haired man in a dull scarlet gown. There was a jury, among which were several white Mahatmayas; there were a great many lawyers sitting round the table in the centre of the court; and there was a crowd of officials and policemen standing about.
Silindu had an advocate assigned to him by the court to defend him. The lawyer soon found it useless to discuss the case with the prisoner: the line of defence was clear, however; he would admit the killing, and plead insanity and provocation. The indictment for murder was read, and the witnesses for the prosecution then gave their evidence. They were cross-examined by Silindu's advocate, only with a view to showing that it had been well known in the village that Silindu was mad: they admitted that he had always been 'tikak pissu.' They none of them knew anything about a quarrel with the Arachchi before the theft and the conviction of Babun.
Silindu's advocate then put him in the witness-box. He repeated the statement which he had made to the magistrate. He was asked very few questions in cross-examination, but the judge examined him at some length. The judge's object was to make it clear, when the idea of killing the two men first came to Silindu, and what was in Silindu's mind during his walk to the chena with the Arachchi. Silindu understood nothing of what was going on; he did not know, and could not have been made to understand the law; he understood the point and reason for no single question asked him. He knew he would be hanged; he was tired of this continual slow torture of questions which he had to answer; he wanted only to be left in peace to repeat the holy words again and again: he had told them of the killing so many times; why should they continue to bother him with these perpetual questions? He answered the questions indifferently, baldly. Most of those in the court listening to his bare passionless sentences describing how he determined to kill the two men, how he watched for their return to the village, sitting all day long in his compound, and how he finally killed them on the next day, were left with the conviction that they had before them a brutal and cold murderer.
The summing up of the judge, however, showed that he was not one of those who regarded it as a simple case. He laid stress on the fact that the prisoner had never been considered in the village to be completely sane, and he directed the notice of the jury to the 'queer' ideas which the prisoner seemed to have had in his mind about the hunting and his own identification with the buffalo. It was right for them also to consider the demeanour of the prisoner while in court, his apparent listlessness and lack of interest in what was going on. They must, however, remember that if the defence of insanity was to succeed, they must be satisfied that the prisoner was actually incapable, owing to unsoundness of mind, of knowing the nature of his act, or of knowing that he was doing what was wrong or contrary to law.
After the judge had summed up, the jury were told they could retire to consider their verdict, but after consulting with them, the foreman stated they were all agreed that the prisoner was guilty of murder. Silindu was still muttering his stanza; he had not tried to understand what was going on around him. The court interpreter went close up to the dock and told him that the jury had found him guilty of murder. Was there anything which he had to say why sentence of death should not be passed on him? A curious stillness had fallen on the place. Silindu suddenly became conscious of where he was: he looked round and saw that every one was looking at him; he saw the faces of the crowd outside staring through the windows and craning round the pillars on the verandah; all the eyes were staring at him as if something was expected from him. For a moment the new sense of comfort and peace left him; he felt afraid again, hunted; he looked up and down the court as if in search of some path of escape.
'Aiyo!' he said to the interpreter, 'does that mean I am to be hanged?'
'Have you anything to say why you should not be sentenced to be hanged?'
'What is there to say? I have known that a long time. They told me that I should be hanged—all the people—along the road. What is there to say now, aiya?'
Silindu's words were interpreted to the judge, who took up a black cloth and placed it on his head. Silindu was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until he should be dead. The words were translated to him in Sinhalese by the interpreter. He began again to repeat the stanza. He was taken out of the court, handcuffed, and escorted back to his cell in the prison by five policemen armed with rifles.
He was to be hanged in two weeks' time, and the days passed for him peacefully as the days had passed before the trial. He had no fear of the hanging now. If he had any feeling towards it, it was one of expectancy, even hope. Vaguely he looked forward to the day as the end of some long period of evil, as the beginning of something happier and better. He scarcely thought of the actual hanging, but when he did, he thought of it in the words of the old beggar, 'I do not think it will hurt much.'
Four days before the day fixed for the execution, the jailer came to Silindu's cell accompanied by a Sinhalese gentleman dressed very beautifully in European clothes and a light grey sun-helmet. Silindu was told to get up and come forward to the window of the cell. The Sinhalese gentleman then took a document out of his pocket and began reading it aloud in a high pompous voice. It informed Silindu that the sentence of death passed on him had been commuted to one of twenty years' rigorous imprisonment. When the reading stopped, Silindu continued to stare vacantly at the gentleman.
'Do you understand, fellow?' said the latter.
'I don't understand, Hamadoru.'
'Explain to him, jailer.'
'You are not going to be hanged, d'you understand that? You'll be kept in prison instead—twenty years.'
'Twenty years?'
'Yes, twenty years. D'you understand that?'
Silindu did not understand it. He could understand a week or two weeks, or a month, or even six months, but twenty years meant nothing to him. It was just a long time. At any rate he was not, after all, to be hanged. For the moment a slight sense of uneasiness and disappointment came over him. In the last four days he had grown to look forward to the end, and now the end was put off for twenty years, for ever, it seemed to him. He squatted down by the gate of his cell, holding the great iron bars in his hands and staring out into the courtyard. He thought of the past three weeks which he had spent in the cell; after all, they had been very peaceful and happy. He had been acquiring merit, as the old man told him to do. Now he would have more time still for acquiring it. He would be left in peace here for twenty years—for a lifetime—to acquire merit, and at the end he might make his way back to the village and find Babun and Punchi Menika there, and sit in their compound again watching the shadows of the jungle. It was very peaceful in the cell.
A jail guard came and unlocked the cell gate. Silindu was taken out and made to squat down in the long shed which ran down the centre of the courtyard. A wooden mallet was put into his hand and a pile of cocoanut husk thrown down in front of him. For the remainder of that day, and daily for the remainder of twenty years, he had to make coir by beating cocoanut husks with the wooden mallet.
Punchi Menika had been present at the inquiry of the magistrate in the village, but she had not spoken to Silindu after her meeting with him when he was being brought to Beddagama by the police sergeant. The magistrate and the headman and the prisoner had left for Kamburupitiya very early in the morning following the day of the inquiry. She and the other villagers woke up to find that the village had already been left to its usual sleepy life. There was nothing for her to do but to obey Silindu's instructions, to wait for Babun's release, living as best she might in the hut with Karlinahami. Her present misfortunes, the imprisonment of Babun, the loss of her father, and the fate (and the uncertainty of it) which hung over him, weighed numbly upon her. And the future filled her with vague fears; she did not, could not plan about it, or calculate about it, or visualise it, or anything in it. She did not even think definitely of how she was going to live for six months, until Babun should return. There was scarcely food in the house for her and Karlinahami to exist in semi-starvation through those six months. Yet the future loomed somehow upon her, filling her with a horrible sense of uneasiness, uncertainty. It was a new feeling. She sat in the hut silent and frightened the greater part of the day. She thought of Silindu stories of hunters who had lost their way in the jungle. Their terror must have been very like hers; she was alone, terribly alone and deserted; she too had lost her way, and like them one path was as good or as bad to her as another.
Karlinahami was nearly fifty years old now, and in a jungle village a woman—and especially a woman without a husband—is very old, very near the grave at fifty. The sun and the wind, the toil, the hunger, and the disease sap the strength of body and mind, bring folds and lines into the skin, and dry up the breasts. A woman is old at forty or even thirty. No one, man or woman, in the jungle, lives to the term of years allotted to man. It would have been difficult to say whether Karlinahami looked nearer eighty than ninety, nearer ninety than a hundred. The jungle had left its mark on her. Her body was bent and twisted, like the stunted trees, which the south-west wind had tortured into grotesque shapes. The skin, too, on her face and thin limbs reminded one of the bark of the jungle trees; it was shrunken against the bones, and wrinkled, and here and there flaking off into whitish brown scales, as the bark flakes off the kumbuk-trees. The flesh of the cheeks had dried and shrunk; the lips seemed to have sunk into the toothless mouth, leaving a long line damp with saliva under the nose. And under the lined forehead were the eyes, lifeless and filmy, peering out of innumerable wrinkles. The eyes were not blind, but they seemed to be sightless—the pupil, the iris, and even the white had merged—because the mind was dying. It is what usually happens in the jungle—to women especially—the mind dies before the body. Imperceptibly the power of initiative, of thought, of feeling, dies out before the monotony of life, the monotony of the tearing hot wind, the monotony of endless trees, the monotony of perpetual hardship. It will happen at an age when in other climates a man is in his prime, and a woman still bears children. The man will still help at the work in the chena, cutting down the undergrowth and sowing the crop; but he will do so unthinking, without feeling, like a machine or an animal; and when it is done he will sit hour after hour in his compound staring with his filmy eyes into nothing, motionless, except when he winds one long thin arm round himself, like a grey monkey, and scratches himself on the back. And the woman still carries the waterpot to the muddy pool to fetch water; still cooks the meal in the house. While they still stand upright, they must do their work; they eat and they sleep; they mutter frequently to themselves; but they do not speak to others, and no one speaks to them. They live in a twilight, where even pain is scarcely felt.
Karlinahami was sinking rapidly into this twilight. In the jungle decay and growth are equally swift. The trial of Silindu and Babun, the murder of the Arachchi and Fernando, and now the loss of Silindu had meant very little to her. She had felt vaguely that many evils were happening, but facts no longer had meaning for her clouded mind. She fetched the water as usual for the cooking, muttering to herself; but she did not speak to Punchi Menika, and Punchi Menika knew that to talk to her or consult with her would be useless.
A month after the conviction of Silindu the life of the village would at first sight have appeared to have regained its ordinary course. But in reality a great change had come over it. It had been a small village, a dwindling village before; one of those villages doomed to slow decay, to fade out at last into the surrounding jungle. Now at a blow, in a day, it lost one out of its six houses, and seven out of its twenty-five inhabitants. For after the death of the Arachchi, Nanchohami, his wife, decided to leave the village. Her children were too young to do chena work; so that it was not possible any longer to support herself in Beddagama. In Kotegoda, where the Arachchi's relations lived, there was paddy land and cocoanuts, and rain fell in plenty every year. They would give her a hut, and a little land; she would marry her children there; she had always said that Beddagama was an unholy place, full of evil and evil omens. She packed up her few possessions in a bullock hackery, which she borrowed from the Korala, and set out for Kotegoda. The Arachchi's house was abandoned to the jungle. There was no one to inhabit it; and indeed no one would have been foolhardy enough to go and live in it. It was ill-omened, accursed, and very soon came to be known as the haunt of devils. It seemed to make a long fight against the jungle. The fence itself merged into the low scrub which surrounded it, growing into a thick line of small trees. The wara bushes, with their pale grey thick leaves and purple flowers the rank grass, the great spined slabs of prickly pear, crawled out from under the shadow of the fence over the compound up to the walls and the very door. But the walls were thicker and better made than those of most huts: the roof was of tiles; there was no cadjan thatch to be torn and scattered by the south-west wind. The rains of the north-east monsoon beat against the mud walls for two years in vain; they washed out great holes in them, through which you could see the jungle sticks upon which the mud had been plastered. The sticks exposed to the damp air took root and burst into leaf. Great weeds, and even bushes, began to grow up between the tiles, from seeds dropped by birds or scattered by the wind. An immense twisted cactus towered over the roof. The tiles were dislodged and pushed aside by the roots. The jungle was bursting through the walls, overwhelming the house from above. The jungle moved within the walls: at last they crumbled; the tiled roof fell in. The grass and the weeds grew up over the little mound of broken red pottery; the jungle sticks of the walls spread out into thick bushes. Tall saplings of larger trees began to show themselves. By the end of the third rains the compound and the house had been blotted out.
It was as if the jungle had broken into the village. Other huts had been abandoned, overwhelmed, blotted out before, but they had always lain on the outside of the village. The jungle had only drawn its ring closer round the remaining huts; it had not broken into the village—the village had remained a whole, intact. But now the jungle cut across the village, separating Silindu's and Bastian Appu's hut from the rest. The villagers themselves noted it: they felt that they were living in a doomed place. 'The village is dying,' Nanchohami had said before she left. 'An evil place, devil-haunted. It is dying, as its young die with the old. No children are born in it now. An evil place. In ten years it will have gone, trampled by the elephants.'
It was, however, only very gradually that this feeling of doom came to be felt by the village and the villagers. At first, after the excitement of the trials and the murder, they seemed to have settled down to the old monotonous life, as it had been before. The vederala was appointed Arachchi. Punchi Menika waited for Babun. She did not and could not count the passing of time: a week was only some days to her, and six months only many months; but she waited, watching the passage of time, vaguely but continuously, for the day when Babun should return. She heard the rumour which eventually reached the village that after all Silindu was not to be hanged; he was to be kept in prison, they said, for ever, for the remainder of his life. It brought no comfort to her; he had been taken out of her life, she would never see him again; did it matter whether he was dead or in prison?
She waited month after month. Her first feelings of fear were lost in the perpetual sense of expectancy as the time slipped away. And she had to work, to labour hard in order to keep herself and Karlinahami alive. The little store of kurakkan in the house dwindled rapidly. She had to search the jungle for edible leaves and wild fruit and roots, like the wild onions which the pig feed upon. When the chena season came she worked in the others' chenas, Balappu's and Bastian Appu's, and even Punchirala's. She worked hard like a man for a few handfuls of kurakkan, given to her as a charity. The others liked her, and were in their way kind to her; they liked her quietness, her gentleness and submission. Even Punchirala said of her: 'She goes about like a doe. They used to call the mad vedda a leopard. The leopard's cub has turned into a deer.'
As the months passed, she gradually began to feel as if each day might be the one on which Babun would return. And as each day passed without bringing him, she tried to reckon whether the six months had really gone. She talked it over with the other villagers. Some said it was five months, others seven months since the conviction. They discussed it for hours, wrangling, quarrelling, shouting at one another. He had been convicted two months—about two months—before the Sinhalese New Year. 'No, it was one month before the New Year. It couldn't be one month before, because the chena crop was not reaped yet. Reaped? Why it had only just been sown. It must have been three months before. Three months, you fool? Isa chena crop like ninety days' rice? Fool? Who is a fool? Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue! At any rate, it was before the New Year, and it's already six months since the New Year. Aiyo! Six months since the New Year. It is only a month since I sowed my chena. Who ever heard of sowing a chena five months after the New Year? It is not three months since the New Year.'
Punchi Menika would stand listening to them going over it again and again, hour after hour. She listened in silence, and would then slip quietly away to wander in the evening down the track towards Kamburupitiya. It was on the track that she hoped, that she was certain that she would meet him. Then all would be well; the evil would end, as Silindu had said. But as the days went by, the certainty left her; even hope began to tremble, to give place to forebodings, fears. The time came when all were agreed that the six months had passed; something must have happened to him; he was ill, perhaps, or he had just been forgotten there; one can never tell, anything may happen when a man gets into prison; 'they' simply have forgotten to let him out.
Punchirala, the new headman, was consulted.
'The man,' he said, 'is probably dead.' Punchi Menika shuddered. Her great eyes, in which the look of suffering had already grown profound and steady, did not leave the vederala's face. 'Yes, I expect the man's dead. They die quickly over there in prison. Especially strong men like Babun. They lie down in a corner and die. There is medicine for diseases, but is there any medicine for fate? So they say, and lie down in the corner and die. There is nothing for you to do. No. I can give you no medicine for fate either. You must sit down here in the village and marry a young man—if you can find one, and if not, perhaps, an old one. Eh? Why not? Though the jackals are picking the bones of the elephant on the river bank, there are other elephants bathing in the river. Nor are they all cows. Well, well.'
'Ralahami, do you really know anything? Have you heard that he is dead?'
'I have heard nothing. From whom could I hear? If you want to hear anything you must go to the prison. It will take you many days—first to Kamburupitiya, and then west along the great road, three days to Tangalla, where the prison is. You must ask at the prison. They can tell you.'
Punchi Menika left the vederala in silence. She walked away very slowly to the hut; the conviction had come to her at once that she must go to the prison. The thought of the journey alone into an unknown world frightened her; but she felt that she must go, that she could not bear any longer this waiting in doubt in the village. She made some cakes of kurakkan, tied them up in a handkerchief, together with some uncooked grain which the villagers gave her when they heard of her intended journey, and started next day for Kamburupitiya.
The first part of her journey, the track to Kamburupitiya, she knew well. She had, too, no fear, as other women have, of being alone in the jungle. It was when she turned west along the main road to Tangalla that her real troubles began. She felt lost and terribly alone on the straight, white, dusty road. The great clumsy bullock carts, laden with salt or paddy, perpetually rumbled by her; the carters she knew were bad men, terrible tales were told about them in the villages. The life of the road frightened her far more than the silence and solitude of the jungle. That she understood: she belonged to it. But the stream of passers-by upon the road, the unknown faces and the eyes that always stared strangely, inquiringly at her for a moment, and had then passed on for ever, made her feel vaguely how utterly alone she was in the world. And nowhere was this feeling so strong for her as in the villages which she slunk through like a frightened jackal. Everywhere it was the same; the crowd of villagers and travellers staring at her from in front of the village boutique, the group of women gossiping and laughing round the well in the paddy field—not a known face among them all. She had not the courage even to ask to be allowed to sleep at night in a boutique or hut. She preferred to creep into some small piece of jungle by the roadside, when darkness found her tired and hungry.
She was very tired and very hungry before she reached Tangalla. Her bewilderment was increased by the network of narrow streets. She wandered about until she suddenly found herself in the market. It was market-day, and a crowd of four or five hundred people were packed together into the narrow space, which was littered with the goods and produce which they were buying and selling: fruit and vegetables and grain and salt and clothes and pots. Every one was talking, shouting, gesticulating at the same time. The noise terrified her, and she fled away. She hurried down another narrow street, and found herself at the foot of a hill which rose from the middle of the town. There were no houses upon its sides, but there was an immense building on the top of it. There was no crowd there, only an old man sitting on the bare hillside watching five lean cows which were trying to find some stray blades of parched brown grass on the stony soil.
She squatted down, happy in the silence and solitude of the place after the noise of the streets and market. Nothing was to be heard except the cough of one of the cows from time to time, and from far off the faint, confused murmur from the market-place. She looked up at the great white building; it was very glaring and dazzling in the blaze of the sun. She wondered whether it was the prison in which Babun lay. She looked at the old man sitting among the five starved cows. He reminded her a little of Silindu; he sat so motionless, staring at a group of cocoanut-trees that lay around the bottom of the hill. He was as thin as the cattle which he watched: as their flanks heaved in the heat you saw the ribs sticking out under their mangy coats, and you could see, too, every bone of his chest and sides panting up and down under his dry, wrinkled skin. The insolent noisy towns-people had terrified her; this withered old man seemed familiar to her, like a friend. He might very easily have come out of the jungle.
She went over to where he sat, and stood in front of him. For a moment he turned on her his eyes, which were covered with a film the colour of the film which forms on stagnant water; then he began again to stare at the palms in silence.
'Father,' she said, 'is that the prison?'
The old man looked up slowly at the great glaring building as if he had seen it for the first time, and then looked from it to Punchi Menika.
'Yes,' he said in a dry husky voice. 'Why?'
'My man must be there,' said Punchi Menika gazing at the white walls. 'He was sent there many months ago. They sent him there for six months. It was a false case. The six months have passed now, but he has not returned to the village. I have come to ask about him here—a long way. I am tired, father, tired of all this. But he must be there.'
The old man's eyes remained fixed upon the cocoanut-palms; he did not move.
'What is your village, woman?' he asked.
'I come from Beddagama.'
'Beddagama, I know it. I knew it long ago. I, too, come from over there, from Mahawelagama, beyond Beddagama. You should go back to your village, woman.'
'But my man, father, what about my man?'
The old man turned his head very slowly and looked up at the prison. The sun beat down upon his face, which seemed to have been battered and pinched and folded and lined by age and misery. His eyes wandered from the prison to one of the cows. She stood still, stretching out her head in front of her, her great eyes bulging; she coughed in great spasms which strained her flanks. He waited until the coughing had stopped, and she began again to search the earth for something to eat. Then he said, speaking as if to himself:
'They never come out from there—not if they are from the jungle. How can they live in there, always shut in between walls? These town people—they do not mind, but we——Surely I should know—I am from Mahawelagama, a village in the jungle over there. I would go back now, but I am too old. When one is old, it is useless; but you——Go back to your village, woman. It is folly to leave the village. There is hunger there, I know, I remember that; but there is the hut and the compound all by themselves, and the jungle beyond. Here there is nothing but noise and trouble, and one house upon the other.'
'But I must ask at the prison first for my man. Why are they keeping him there?'
'They never come out. Surely I should know. My son was sent there. He never came out. The case was in this town, and I came here and spent all I had for him. Then I thought I will wait here until they let him out; but he never came. It will be the same with your man. Go back to the village.'
Punchi Menika wept quietly from weariness and hunger and misery at the old man's words:
'It is no good crying,' he said; 'I am old, and who should know better than I? They never come out. It is better to go back to the village.'
Punchi Menika got up and walked slowly up the hill, and then round the prison. There was only one entrance to it, an immense solid wooden gate studded with iron nails. She knocked timidly, so timidly that the sound was not heard within. Then she sat down against the wall and waited. Hours passed, and nothing happened; the gate remained closed; no sound could be heard from within the prison; the hill was deserted except for the five cows whose coughing she could hear from time to time below her. But she waited patiently for something to happen, only moving now and again into the shadow of the wall, when the sun in its course beat down upon her.
At last the door opened, and a man in a khaki uniform and helmet, carrying a club in his hand, came out. He looked at Punchi Menika, and said sharply:
'What do you want here?'
'I have come about my man, aiya. A long time ago he was sent here for six months. The time has passed, but he has not returned to the village. They say he is dead. Is it true, aiya?'
'What was his name and village?'
'He was from Beddagama.'
'His name?'
'Aiya, how can I tell his name?'
'What was his name, fool?'
'They called him Babun.'
'What was he convicted for?'
'It was a false case. They said he had robbed the Arachchi.'
'Oh, that man, yes. The Arachchi was killed afterwards, wasn't he?'
'Yes, yes, my father did that.'
'Well, he was here, too. Have you any money, woman?'
'No, aiya, none; we are very poor.'
'Ah! well. We can't tell you anything here. You must go to Kamburupitiya, and send a petition to the Agent Hamadoru.'
'But you know my man, aiya; you said you did. What harm to tell me? Is he here now? What has happened to him? I have come many days' journey to ask about him, and now you send me away to more trouble.'
The jail guard looked at Punchi Menika for a minute or two.
'Well,' he said, 'charity they say is like rain to a parched crop. You are asking for drought in a parched field. I knew the man; he was here, but he is dead. He died two months back.'
The jail guard expected to hear the shrill cry and the beating of the breast, the signs of a woman's mourning. Punchi Menika astonished him by walking slowly away to the shade, and sitting down again by the prison wall. The blow was too heavy for the conventional signs of grief. She sat dry-eyed; she felt little, but the intense desire to get away to the village, to get away out of this world, where she was lost and alone, to the compound, where she could sit and watch the sun set behind the jungle. She did not wait long; she set out at once down the hill. The old man still sat among his cows looking at the cocoanut-trees.
'Ah,' he said, as she passed him, 'they never come out. I told you so.'
'He is dead, father.'
'Yes, they never come out. Go back to the village, child.'
'I am going, father.'
Two years later, Punchi Menika was still living in the hut which had belonged to Silindu, but she lived alone. Karlinahami had died slowly and almost painlessly, like the trees around her. Her death had brought no difference into Punchi Menika's life, except that now she had to find food for herself alone.
The years had brought more evil, death, and decay upon the village. Of the five houses which stood when Punchi Menika returned from her journey to the prison, only two remained, her own, and that of the headman Vederala Punchirala. Disease and hunger visited it year after year. It seemed, as the headman said, to have been forgotten by gods and men. Year after year, the rains from the north-east passed it by; only the sun beat down more pitilessly, and the wind roared over it across the jungle; the little patches of chena crop which the villagers tried to cultivate withered as soon as the young shoots showed above the ground. No man, traveller or headman or trader, ever came to the village now. No one troubled any longer to clear the track which led to it; the jungle covered it and cut the village off.