The Best of Ruskin Bond Part 12

'Then where are you staying? Where have you kept the rest of your things?'

'Nowhere. This is all I brought with me,' she said, indicating the travel-bag.

'Well, you can't sleep on a park bench,' I said. 'Shall I get you a room in a hotel?'

'I don't think so. I have only the money to return to Copenhagen.' She looked crestfallen for a few moments; then she brightened, and slipped her arm through mine. 'I know, I'll stay with you. Don't mind?'

'No, but my landlady-' I began; then stopped; it would have been a lie. My landlady, a generous, broad-minded soul, would not have minded in the least.

'All right,' I said. 'I don't mind.'

When we reached my room in Swiss Cottage, Ulla threw off her coat and opened the window wide. It was a warm summer's night, and the scent of honeysuckle came through the open window. She kicked her shoes off, and walked about the room barefooted. Her toenails were painted a bright pink. She slipped out of her blouse and jeans, and stood before the mirror in her lace pants. A lot of sunbathing had made her quite brown, but her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s were white.

She slipped into bed and said, 'Aren't you coming?'

I crept in beside her and lay very still, while she chattered on about the play and the friends she made in the country. I switched off the bed-lamp and she fell silent. Then she said, 'Well, I'm sleepy. Goodnight!' And turning over, she immediately fell asleep.

I lay awake beside her, conscious of the growing warmth of her body. She was breathing easily and quietly. Her long, golden hair touched my cheek. I kissed her gently on the lobe of the ear, but she was fast asleep. So I counted eight hundred and sixty-two Scandinavian sheep, and managed to fall asleep.

Ulla woke fresh and frolicsome. The sun streamed in through the window, and she stood naked in its warmth, performing calisthenics. I busied myself with the breakfast. Ulla ate three eggs and a lot of bacon, and drank two cups of coffee. I couldn't help admiring her appet.i.te.

'And what shall we do today?' she asked, her blue eyes shining. They were the bright blue eyes of a Siamese kitten.

'I'm supposed to visit the Employment Exchange,' I said.

'But that is bad. Can't you go tomorrow-after I have left?'

'If you like.'

'I like.'

And she gave me a swift, unsettling kiss on the lips.

We climbed Primrose Hill and watched boys flying kites. We lay in the sun and chewed blades of gra.s.s, and then we visited the Zoo, where Ulla fed the monkeys. She consumed innumerable ices. We lunched at a small Greek restaurant, and I forgot to phone Phuong, and in the evening we walked all the way home through scruffy Camden Town, drank beer, ate a fine, greasy dinner of fish and chips, and went to bed early-Ulla had to catch the boat-train next morning.

'It has been a good day,' she said.

'I'd like to do it again tomorrow.'

'But I must go tomorrow.'

'But you must go.'

She turned her head on the pillow and looked wonderingly into my eyes, as though she were searching for something. I don't know if she found what she was looking for; but she smiled, and kissed me softly on the lips.

'Thanks for everything,' she said.

She was fresh and clean, like the earth after spring rain.

I took her fingers and kissed them, one by one. I kissed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her throat, her forehead; and, making her close her eyes, I kissed her eyelids.

We lay in each other's arms for a long time, savouring the warmth and texture of each other's bodies. Though we were both very young and inexperienced, we found ourselves imbued with a tender patience, as though there lay before us not just this one pa.s.sing night, but all the nights of a lifetime, all eternity.

There was a great joy in our loving, and afterwards we fell asleep in each other's arms like two children who have been playing in the open all day.

The sun woke me next morning. I opened my eyes to see Ulla's slim, bare leg dangling over the side of the bed. I smiled at her painted toes. Her hair pressed against my face, and the sunshine fell on it, making each hair a strand of burnished gold.

The station and the train were crowded, and we held hands and grinned at each other, too shy to kiss.

'Give my love to Phuong,' she said.

'I will.'

We made no promises-of writing, or of meeting again. Somehow our relationship seemed complete and whole, as though it had been destined to blossom for those two days. A courting and a marriage and a living together had been compressed, perfectly, into one summer night. . . .

I pa.s.sed the day in a glow of happiness; I thought Ulla was still with me; and it was only at night, when I put my hand out for hers, and did not find it, that I knew she had gone.

But I kept the window open all through the summer, and the scent of the honeysuckle was with me every night.

Tribute To A Dead Friend.

Now that Thanh is dead, I suppose it is not too treacherous of me to write about him. He was only a year older than I. He died in Paris, in his twenty-second year, and Pravin wrote to me from London and told me about it. I will get more details from Pravin when he returns to India next month; just now I only know that Thanh is dead.

It is supposed to be in very bad taste to discuss a person behind his back; and to discuss a dead person behind his back is most unfair, for he cannot even retaliate. But Thanh had this very weakness of criticizing absent people, and it cannot hurt him now if I do a little to expose his colossal Ego.

Thanh was a fraud all right, but no one knew it. He had beautiful round eyes, a flashing smile, and a sweet voice, and everyone said he was a charming person. He was certainly charming, but I have found that charming people are seldom sincere. I think I was the only person who came anywhere near to being his friend, for he had cultivated a special loneliness of his own, and it was difficult to intrude on it.

I met him in London in the summer of '54. I was trying to become a writer, while I worked part-time at a number of different jobs. I had been two years in London, and was longing for the hills and rivers of India. Thanh was Vietnamese. His family was well-to-do, and though the Communists had taken their home-town of Hanoi, most of the family was in France, well-established in the restaurant business. Thanh did not suffer from the same financial distress as other students whose homes were in Northern Vietnam. He wasn't studying anything in particular, but practised a.s.siduously on the piano, though the only thing he could play fairly well was Chopin's Funeral March.

My friend Pravin, a happy-go-lucky, very friendly Gujarati boy, introduced me to Thanh. Pravin, like a good Indian, thought all Asians were superior people, but he didn't know Thanh well enough to know that Thanh didn't like being an Asian.

At first, Thanh was glad to meet me. He said he had for a long time been wanting to make friends with an Englishman, a real Englishman, not one who was a Pole or a c.o.c.kney or a Jew; he was most anxious to improve his English and talk like Mr Glendenning of the BBC. Pravin, knowing that I had been born and bred in India, that my parents had been born and bred in India, suppressed his laughter with some difficulty. But Thanh was soon disillusioned. My accent was anything but English. It was a p.r.o.nounced chi-chi accent.

'You speak like an Indian!' exclaimed Thanh, horrified. 'Are you an Indian?'

'He's Welsh,' said Pravin with a wink.

Thanh was slightly mollified. Being Welsh was the next best thing to being English. Only he disapproved of the Welsh for speaking with an Indian accent.

Later, when Pravin had gone, and I was sitting in Thanh's room, drinking Chinese tea, he confided in me that he disliked Indians.

'Isn't Pravin your friend?' I asked.

'I don't trust him,' he said. 'I have to be friendly, but I don't trust him at all. I don't trust any Indians.'

'What's wrong with them?'

'They are too inquisitive,' complained Thanh. 'No sooner have you met one of them than he is asking you who your father is, and what your job is, and how much money have you got in the Bank?'

I laughed, and tried to explain that in India inquisitiveness is a sign of a desire for friendship, and that he should feel flattered when asked such personal questions. I protested that I was an Indian myself, and he said if that was so, he wouldn't trust me either.

But he seemed to like me, and often invited me to his rooms. He could make some wonderful Chinese and French dishes. When we had eaten, he would sit down at his second-hand piano and play Chopin. He always complained that I didn't listen properly.

He complained of my untidiness and my unwarranted self-confidence. It was true that I appeared most confident when I was not very sure of myself. I boasted of an intimate knowledge of London's geography, but I was an expert at losing my way and then blaming it on someone else.

'You are a useless person,' said Thanh, while with chopsticks I stuffed my mouth with delicious pork and fried rice. 'You cannot find your way anywhere. You cannot speak English properly. You do not know any people except Indians. How are you going to be a writer?'

'If I am as bad as all that,' I said, 'why do you remain my friend?'

'I want to study your stupidity,' he said.

That was why he never made any real friends. He loved to work out your faults and examine your imperfections. There was no such thing as a real friend, he said. He had looked everywhere, but he could not find the perfect friend.

'What is your idea of a perfect friend?' I asked him. 'Does he have to speak perfect English?'

But sarcasm was only wasted on Thanh-he admitted that perfect English was one of the requisites of a perfect friend!

Sometimes, in moments of deep gloom, he would tell me that he did not have long to live.

'There is a pain in my chest,' he complained. 'There is something ticking there all the time. Can you hear it?'

He would bare his bony chest for me, and I would put my ear to the offending spot; but I could never hear any ticking.

'Visit the hospital,' I advised. 'They'll give you an X-ray and a proper check-up.'

'I have had X-rays,' he lied. 'They never show anything.'

Then he would talk of killing himself. This was his theme song: he had no friends, he was a failure as a musician, there was no other career open to him, he hadn't seen his family for five years, and he couldn't go back to Indo-China because of the Communists. He magnified his own troubles and minimized other people's troubles. When I was in hospital with an old acquaintance, amoebic dysentery, Pravin came to see me every day. Thanh, who was not very busy, came only once and never again. He said the hospital ward depressed him.

'You need a holiday,' I told him when I was out of hospital. 'Why don't you join the students' union and work on a farm for a week or two? That should toughen you up.'

To my surprise, the idea appealed to him, and he got ready for the trip. Suddenly, he became suffused with goodwill towards all mankind. As evidence of his trust in me, he gave me the key of his room to keep (though he would have been secretly delighted if I had stolen his piano and chopsticks, giving him the excuse to say 'never trust an Indian or an Anglo-Indian'), and introduced me to a girl called Vu-Phuong, a small, very pretty Annamite girl, who was studying at the Polytechnic. Miss Vu, Thanh told me, had to leave her lodgings next week, and would I find somewhere else for her to stay? I was an experienced hand at finding bed-sitting rooms, having changed my own abode five times in six months (that sweet, nomadic London life!). As I found Miss Vu very attractive, I told her I would get her a room, one not far from my own, in case she needed any further a.s.sistance.

Later, in confidence, Thanh asked me not to be too friendly with Vu-Phuong, as she was not to be trusted.

But as soon as he left for the farm, I went round to see Vu in her new lodgings, which were one tube-station away from my own. She seemed glad to see me, and as she too could make French and Chinese dishes, I accepted her invitation to lunch. We had chicken noodles, soya sauce, and fried rice. I did the washing-up. Vu said: 'Do you play cards, Ruskin?' She had a sweet, gentle voice, that brought out all the gallantry in a man. I began to feel protective, and hovered about her like a devoted c.o.c.ker spaniel.

'I'm not much of a card-player,' I said.

'Never mind, I'll tell your fortune with them.'

She made me shuffle the cards; then scattered them about on the bed in different patterns. I would be very rich, she said; I would travel a lot, and I would reach the age of forty. I told her I was comforted to know it.

The month was June, and Hampstead Heath was only ten minutes walk from the house. Boys flew kites from the hill, and little painted boats scurried about on the ponds. We sat down on the gra.s.s, on the slope of the hill, and I held Vu's hand.

For three days I ate with Vu, and we told each other our fortunes, and lay on the gra.s.s on Hampstead Heath, and on the fourth day I said, 'Vu, I would like to marry you.'

'I will think about it,' she said.

Thanh came back on the sixth day and said, 'You know, Ruskin, I have been doing some thinking, and Vu is not such a bad girl after all. I will ask her to marry me. That is what I need-a wife!'

'Why didn't you think of it before?' I said. 'When will you ask her?'

'Tonight,' he said. 'I will corne to see you afterwards, and tell you if I have been successful.'

I shrugged my shoulders resignedly, and waited. Thanh left me at six in the evening, and I waited for him till ten o'clock, all the time feeling a little sorry for him. More disillusionment for Thanh! Poor Thanh. . . .

He came in at ten o'clock, his face beaming. He slapped me on the back and said I was his best friend.

'Did you ask her?' I said.

'Yes. She said she would think about it. That is the same as "yes".'

'It isn't,' I said, unfortunately for both of us. 'She told me the same thing.'

Thanh looked at me as though I had just stabbed him in the back. Et tu Ruskin, was what his expression said.

We took a taxi and sped across to Vu's rooms. The uncertain nature of her replies was too much for both of us; without a definite answer, neither of us would have been able to sleep that night.

Vu was not at home. The landlady met us at the door, and told us that Vu had gone to the theatre with an Indian gentleman.

Thanh gave me a long, contemptuous look.

'Never trust an Indian,' he said.

'Never trust a woman,' I replied.

At twelve o'clock I woke Pravin. Whenever I could not sleep, I went to Pravin. He knew the remedy for all ailments. As on previous occasions, he went to the cupboard and produced a bottle of Cognac. We got drunk. He was seventeen and I was nineteen, and we were both quite decadent.

Three weeks later I returned to India. Thanh went to Paris, to help in his sister's restaurant. I did not hear of Vu-Phuong again.

And now, a year later, there is the letter from Pravin. All he can tell me is that Thanh died of some unknown disease. I wonder if it had anything to do with the ticking in his chest, or with his vague threats of suicide. I doubt if I will ever know. And I will never know how much I hated Thanh, and how much I loved him, or if there was any difference between hating and loving him.

TALES OF THE MACABRE.

A Job Well Done.