Two Short Novels by Mulk Raj Anand Page B

taken before he left. Did this mean that Pattan had been occupied? But there would have been Pakistani sentries all over the place, and certainly on the main road, if they had already reached here.
    ‘Mahmdoo!’ he called again.
    Not from inside the shops, but, from behind him, across the road, came a whisper: ‘Come this side.’
    Maqbool turned round and saw Gula, the young son and assistant of Mahmdoo, in his own tunic and salwar, standing by his motorcycle.
    ‘Father is in the sitting room of Pandit Janki Nath,’ Gula said. ‘He would like you to come there. But, he says, hide the motorcycle somewhere before you come. Shall I take it to the back of the shop?’
    ‘No, it is heavy and you will fall with it,’ Maqbool said. ‘I shall wheel it there and hide it, if you show me the way.’
    Gula, excited at the prospect of being able to handle the motorcycle after Maqbool would go up to see his father, went ahead into the alleyway eagerly enough.
    The alley was narrow and the energy and the concentration required to manouevre the heavy machine up to the doorway of the courtyard brought sweat to his face. Fortunately, the space outside the backdoor was wider. And he negotiated the cycle into the small courtyard, full of pitchers and dirty utensils and fuel and all the other muck of the cookshop.
    ‘Don’t you tinker with the machine!’ he said to Gula with an affectionate smile. ‘The motor has a habit of running away.’
    The boy who had been itching to handle the machine, docilely followed Maqbool to where his father sat in Pandit Janki Nath Kaul’s room.
    Mahmdoo got up cordially and shook the right hand of Maqbool with both his puffy hands.
    ‘Hatto, you have grown fatter with doing nothing!’ Maqbool greeted him. ‘And you are beaming with happiness! Have you been eating up all the food in your cookshop yourself?’
    ‘Maqbool!’ Mahmdoo protested at the banter and apologised: ‘I can’t help my fat body. You know — the oil and butter get into one’s skin when one’s cooking!’
    ‘What is the news?’
    ‘Please do sit down, sire.’
    ‘A wonderful carpet and cushions! How did the Pandit trust you not to make them greasy?’
    ‘Sire, when it is a question of life and death, even a money-lender like Pandit Janki Nath can forge about his property. You are a learned man and don’t know much about the ways of men. They fled to Srinagar three days ago after they received news of the death of three relations in Baramula, a little while after you left.’
    Maqbool searched Mahmdoo’s face. The cookshop keeper obviously thought him to be a useless, unpractical fellow. Perhaps that was true, Maqbool admitted, because he had always seemed so unsure about everything to people. But was there also the insinuation that he was weak like Janki Nath?
    ‘You had your own reasons for going to Srinagar, Maqbool Sahib, but they were protecting their skins!’ Mahmdoo said to confirm Maqbool’s prognostications.
    ‘Mahmdoo, no one is better than another in the face of
death . . . . If I am to confess the truth, I also ran away. And it needed some persuasion to bring me back.’
    Against such truthfulness, Mahmdoo could only be silent. And, after a while, he also mustered the necessary courage to speak of his own fears:
    ‘I have closed the shop because the Pakistanis may be here any moment. And they will be hungry and will not spare me. Some half a dozen of them have already arrived at the Baramula end of this town and are staying at the Pattan house of Sardar Muhammad Jilani of Baramula. Now, when will they send us help from Srinagar?’
    Maqbool stared vacantly in front of him for a moment. He was unnerved by the news of the nearness of the raiders. And he wondered how to explain the position to Mahmdoo without causing him to panic.
    ‘Our people are busy . . . strange . . . I have never seen a Sarkar run like this. They work from a room on top of the Palladium cinema. There they sit and talk, old and