“Oh, all right,” said Maneck, and put his arms around his father.
The Frontier Mail was in the station when the shuddering auto-rickshaw drew up at the gate. Maneck paid, then followed the coolie over the footbridge to reach the southbound platform. He paused for a moment at the top, the train stretched long and thin underneath him with people scurrying around it. Like ants trying to carry off a dead worm, he thought.
The coolie had walked on, and he ran to catch up. Near the waiting room a vendor was roasting maize, fanning the crepitating coals. Maneck decided to come back for some after finding his seat.
“Fifty rupees from now on,” he overheard the Stationmaster, who was collecting his weekly tribute of maize and money. “You have the best location. That’s what others are willing to pay for it.”
“All day the burning smoke blinds my eyes and throttles my lungs,” said the vendor. “And just look at my fingers — charred black. Have some pity, sahab.” He turned the corncobs deftly to keep them from scorching. “How to afford fifty rupees? Police also have to be kept happy.”
“Don’t pretend,” said the Stationmaster, tucking the money into a pocket of his starched white uniform. “I know how much you earn.”
Now and again a kernel exploded with a sharp burst. The sound and aroma faithfully nudged Maneck’s memory of his first train journey: his mother and he, going to visit their relations.
Daddy had come to see them off. “You’re getting too heavy,” he had groaned playfully, lifting Maneck to give him a good view of the steam engine. How huge it was, and the train, like a string of bungalows, stretched so far, in a long, long line. Daddy carried him down to the end of the platform, close to the hissing, clanking monster, while Maneck busily tackled his corncob. He bit into it, and milk-white juice spotted Daddy’s spectacles.
Daddy made a yanking gesture, which the engine driver understood; he gave a smart tap to his cap visor and sounded the whistle for Maneck. The piercing shriek, so close it seemed to spring from his own heart, startled him into dropping the cob. “Never mind,” said Daddy. “Mummy will buy you another.”
He bundled Maneck through the window into his seat, next to Mummy, as the final announcement was made. The train moved, and the station began to float past them. Daddy waved his hand, smiling, blowing kisses. He walked beside the compartment, then ran a bit, but was soon left behind to disappear like the fallen corncob lying on the station platform. Everything familiar swept out of sight…
Maneck found his compartment and paid the coolie after the luggage was stowed away. The bungalow on wheels from his childhood had shrunk. Time had turned the magical to mundane. The whistle sounded. No time to buy the maize. He sank into the seat beside his fellow passenger.
The man did not encourage Maneck’s efforts at conversation, answering with nods and grunts, or vague hand movements. He was neatly dressed, his hair parted on the left. His shirt pocket bristled with pens and markers in a special clip-on plastic case. The two seats facing them were occupied by a young woman and her father. She was busy knitting. By the fragment hanging from the needles, Maneck tried to decipher what it might be — scarf, pullover sleeve, sock?
The father rose to go to the lavatory. “Wait, Papaji, I’ll help you,” said the daughter, as he limped into the aisle on one crutch. Good, thought Maneck, she would have to take the upper berth. The view would be better, from his own upper berth.
In the evening, Maneck offered his neatly dressed neighbour a Gluco biscuit. He whispered thank you. “You’re welcome,” Maneck whispered back, assuming the man had a preference for speaking softly. In return for the biscuit he received a banana. Its skin was blackened in the heat, but he ate it all the same.
The attendant began making the rounds with blankets and sheets, readying the berths for sleep. After he left, the neatly dressed man took a chain and padlock from the bag that held his bananas and shackled his trunk to a bracket under the seat. Leaning towards Maneck’s ear, he explained confidentially, “Because of thieves — they enter the compartments when passengers fall asleep.”
“Oh,” said Maneck, a little perturbed. No one had warned him about this. But maybe the chap was just a nervous type. “You know, some years ago my mother and I took this same train, and nothing was stolen.”
“Sadly, now the world is much changed.” The man took off his shirt and hung it neatly on a hook by the window. Then he removed the plastic case from the pocket and clipped it to his vest, careful not to snare his chest hair in the formidable spring. Seeing Maneck watching, he whispered with a smile, “I am very fond of my pens. I don’t like separating from them, not even in sleep.”
Maneck smiled back, whispering, “Yes, I also have a favourite pen. I don’t lend it to anyone — it spoils the angle of the nib.”
The father and daughter did not take kindly to these whispers which excluded them. “What can we do, Papaji, some people are just born rude,” she said, handing him his crutch. They went off again to the bathroom, hurling a frosty glance at the opposite seats.
It went unnoticed, for Maneck had begun to worry about his suitcase. The pen-lover’s soft words about thieves ruined his night, and he forgot all about the woman in the upper berth. By the time he remembered, she was under cover from prying eyes, Papaji having tucked in the sheet around her neck.
Before climbing into his own berth, Maneck positioned his suitcase so that one corner would be visible from above. He lay awake, peering at it every now and then. The young woman’s father caught him looking a few times, and eyed him suspiciously. Towards dawn, slumber overpowered Maneck’s vigilance. The last thing he saw while surrendering to sleep was Papaji balanced on one crutch, curtaining off his daughter with a bedsheet as she descended without exposing so much as a calf or an ankle.
He did not awake till the attendant came to collect the bedclothes. The young woman was already busy with her knitting, the inscrutable woollen segment dancing below her fingers. Tea was served. Now the neatly dressed pen-lover was more talkative. The cluster of pens was back in his shirt pocket. Maneck learned that yesterday’s reticence had been due to a throat ailment.
“Thankfully, it has eased a little this morning,” said the man, as he coughed and threatened to hawk.
Remembering how he had returned the man’s hoarse whispers by whispering back dramatically, Maneck felt a little embarrassed. He wondered if he should apologize or explain, but the pen-lover did not appear to bear any resentment.
“It’s a very serious condition,” he explained. “And I am travelling to seek specialist treatment.” He cleared his throat again. “I could never have imagined, long, long ago, when I started my career, that this was what it would do to me. But how can you fight your destiny?”
Maneck shook his head in sympathy. “Was it a factory job? Toxic fumes?”
The man laughed scornfully at the suggestion. “I’m an LL.B., a fully qualified lawyer.”
“Oh, I see. So the lengthy speeches in dusty courtrooms strained and ruined your vocal cords.”
“Not at all — quite the contrary.” He hesitated, “It’s such a long story.”
“But we have lots of time,” encouraged Maneck. “It’s such a long journey.”
Papaji and daughter had had enough of them exchanging comments in low voices. Papaji was certain that their soft laughter contained a leering note, aimed directly at his innocent daughter. He scowled, picked up his crutch, took his daughter by the hand and stomped one-leggedly down the aisle. “What to do, Papaji,” she said. “Some people just have no manners.”
“I wonder what’s wrong with those two,” said the pen-lover, watching the precise, machinelike movement of the crutch. He uncorked a small green bottle, sipped, and put it aside. Fingering his pens affectionately, he tried out the freshly medicated larynx with the opening sentence of the story of his throat.