A Horse And Two Goats Full Story By R K Narayan ICSE English Literature (New Syllabus)
Of the seven hundred thousand villages dotting the map of India, Kritam was probably the tiniest, indicated on the district survey map by a microscopic dot. But its size did not prevent its giving itself the grandiose name Kritam, which meant in Tamil “coronet” or “crown” on the brow of this subcontinent. The village consisted of less than thirty houses,
only one of them built with brick and cement. Painted a brilliant yellow and blue all over with gorgeous carvings of gods and gargoyles on its balustrade, it was known as the Big House. The other houses, distributed in four streets, were generally of bamboo thatch, straw, mud and other unspecified material. Muni’s was the last house in the fourth street, beyond which stretched the fields. In his prosperous days Muni had owned a flock of forty sheep and goats and sallied forth every morning driving the flock to the highway a couple of miles away. There he would sit on the pedestal of a clay statue of a horse while his cattle grazed around. He carried a crook at the end of a bamboo pole and snapped foliage from the avenue trees to feed his flock; he also gathered faggots and dry sticks, bundled them, and carried them home for fuel at sunset.
His wife lit the domestic fire at dawn, boiled water in a mud pot, threw into it a handful of millet flour, added salt, and gave him his first nourishment for the day. When he started out, she would put in his hand a packed lunch, once again the same millet cooked into a little ball, which he could swallow with a raw onion at midday. His fortunes had declined
gradually, unnoticed. From a flock of forty which he drove into a pen at night, his stock had now come down to the two goats, which were tethered to the trunk of a drumstick tree which grew in front of his hut and from which occasionally Muni could shake down drumsticks. This morning he got six. He carried them in with a sense of triumph. Although no one could say precisely who owned the tree, it was his because he lived in its shadow.
His wife said,
“If you were content with the drumstick leaves alone, I could boil and salt some for you.”
“Oh, I am tired of eating those leaves. I have a craving to chew the drumstick out of sauce. I tell you.”
You have only four teeth in your jaw, but your craving is for big things. All right, get the stuff for the sauce, and I will prepare it for you. After all, next year you may not be alive to ask for anything. But first get me all the stuff, including a measure of rice or millet, and I will satisfy your unholy craving. Our store is empty today. Dhall, chilly, curry leaves, mustard, coriander, gingelley oil, and one large potato. Go out and get all this.” He repeated the list after her in order not to miss any item and walked off to the shop in the third street.
Muni sat patiently on an upturned packing case below the platform of the shop. The shop man paid no attention to him. Muni kept clearing his throat,. coughing, and sneezing until the shop man could not stand it anymore and demanded, “What ails you? You will fly off that seat into the gutter if you sneeze so hard, young man.” Muni laughed inordinately, in order to please the shop man, at being called “young man.” This completely won the shop man over; he liked his sense of humour to be appreciated.
By thus humouring the shop man, Muni could always ask for one or two items of food, promising repayment later. Some days the shop man was in a good mood and gave in, and sometimes he would lose his temper suddenly and bark at Muni for daring to ask for credit.
The shop man said,
“If you could find five rupees and a quarter, you will have paid off an ancient debt. How much have you got now?”
“I will pay you everything on the first of the next month.”
“As always, and whom do you except to rob by then?”
Muni felt caught and mumbled, “My daughter has sent word that she will be sending me money.”
“Have you a daughter?” sneered the shop man.
“And she is sending you money! For what purpose, may I know?”
“Birthday, fiftieth birthday,” said Muni quietly.” “Birthday! How old are you?”
Muni repeated weakly, not being sure of it himself,
“Fifty.”
He always calculated his age from the time of the great famine when he stood as high as the parapet around the village well, but who could calculate such things accurately nowadays with so many famines occurring? The shop man felt encouraged when other customers stood around to watch and comment.
“More likely you are seventy,” he said to Muni. “You also forget that you mentioned a birthday five weeks ago when you wanted castor oil for your holy bath.” At this Muni
unobtrusively rose and moved off. He later told his wife, “That scoundrel would not give me anything. So go out and sell the drumsticks for what they are worth.”
He flung himself down in a corner to recoup from the fatigue of his visit to the shop.
His wife said, “You are getting no sauce today, nor anything else. I can’t find anything to give you to eat. Fast till the evening, it’ll do you good. Take the goats and be gone now,” she cried and added, “Don’t come back before the sun is down.”
He knew that if he obeyed her she would somehow conjure up some food for him in the evening, only he must be careful not to argue and irritate her. Her temper was undependable in the morning but improved by evening time. She was sure to go out and work— grind com in the Big House, sweep or scrub somewhere, and earn enough to buy foodstuff and keep a dinner ready for him in the evening. Unleashing the goats from the drumstick tree, Muni started out, driving them ahead and uttering weird cries from time to time in order to urge them on. He passed through the village with his head bowed in thought. He did not want to look at anyone or be accosted. A couple of cronies lounging in the temple corridor hailed him, but he ignored their call. The shop man had said that he was seventy. At seventy, one only waited to be summoned by God.
When he was dead what would his wife do? They had lived in each other’s company since they were children. He had been told on their day of wedding that he was ten years old and she was eight. Progeny, none. Perhaps a large progeny would have brought him the blessing of the gods. Only on the outskirts did he lift his head and look up. He urged and bullied the goats until they meandered along to the foot of the horse statue on the edge of the village. He sat on its pedestal for the rest of the day. The advantage of this was that he could watch the highway and see the lorries and buses pass through to the hills, and it gave him a sense of belonging to a larger world.
The pedestal of the statue was broad enough for him to move around as the sun travelled up answered, “Yes, no.” Whereupon the red-faced man took a cigarette and gave it to Muni, who received it with surprise, having had no offer of a smoke from anyone for years now. He had always wanted to smoke a cigarette; only once did the shop man give him one on credit, and he remembered how good it had tasted.
The other flicked the lighter open and offered a light to Muni. Muni felt so confused about how to act that he blew on it and put it out. The other, puzzled but undaunted, flourished his lighter, presented it again, and lit Muni’s cigarette. Muni drew a deep puff and started coughing; it was racking, no doubt, but extremely pleasant. When his cough subsided he wiped his eyes and took stock of the situation, understanding that the other man was not an Inquisitor of any kind. Yet, in order to make sure, he remained wary. No need to run away from a man who gave him such a potent smoke. His head was reeling from the effect of one of those strong American cigarettes made with roasted tobacco. The man said, “I come from New York,” took out a wallet from his hip pocket, and presented his card. Muni shrank away from the card. Perhaps he was trying to present a warrant and arrest him. Beware of khaki, one part of his mind warned.
Take all the cigarettes or whatever is offered, but don’t get caught. Beware of khaki. He wished he weren’t seventy as the shop man had said. At seventy one didn’t run, but surrendered to whatever came. He could only ward off trouble by talk. So he went on, all in the chaste Tamil for which Kritam was famous.
He said,
“Before God, sir, Bhagwan, who sees everything, I tell you, sir, that we known nothing of the case. If the murder was committed, whoever did it will not escape. Bhagwan is all-seeing. Don’t ask me about it.
I know nothing.” A body had been found mutilated and thrown under a tamarind tree at the border between Kritam and Kuppam a few weeks before, giving rise to much gossip and speculation.
Muni added an explanation. “Anything is possible there. People over there will stop at nothing.” The foreigner nodded his head and listened courteously though he understood nothing.
“I am sure you know when this horse was made,” said the red man and smiled ingratiatingly.
Muni reacted to the relaxed atmosphere by smiling himself, and pleaded, “Please go away, sir, I know nothing. I promise we will hold him for you if we see any bad character around, and we will bury him up to his neck in a coconut pit if he tries to escape; but our village has always had a clean record.
Must definitely be the other village.”Now the red man implored, “Please, please, I will speak slowly, please try to understand me. Can’t you understand even a simple word of English? Everyone in this country seems to know English. I have gotten along with English everywhere in this country, but you don’t speak it. Have you any religious or spiritual scruples against English speech?”
Muni made some indistinct sounds in his throat and shook his head. Encouraged, the other went on to explain at length, uttering each syllable with care and deliberation.
Presently he sidled over and took a seat beside the old man, explaining, “You see, last August, we probably had the hottest summer in history, and I was working in shirt-sleeves in my office on the fortieth floor of the Empire State Building. We had a power failure one day, you know, and there I was stuck for four hours, no elevator, no air conditioning. All the way in the train I kept thinking, and the minute I reached home in Connecticut, I told my wife Ruth, ‘We will visit India this winter, it’s time to look at other civilizations/ Next day she called the travel agent first thing and told him to fix it, and so here I am. Ruth came with me but is staying back,at Srinagar, and I am the one doing the rounds and joining her later.”
Muni looked reflective at the end of this long oration and said, rather feebly, “Yes, no,” as a concession to the other’s language, and went on in Tamil, “When I was this high”—he indicated a foot high—”I had heard my uncle say…” No one can tell what he was planning to say, as the other interrupted him at this stage to ask, “Boy, what is the secret of your teeth? How old are you?” Muni forgot what he had started to say and remarked, “Sometimes we too lose our cattle. Jackals or cheetahs may sometimes carry them off, but sometimes it is just theft from over in the next village, and then we will know who has done it.
Our priest at the temple can see in the camphor flame the face of the thief, and when he is caught…” He gestured with his hands a perfect mincing of meat. The American watched his hands intently and said, “I know what you mean. Chop something? Maybe I am holding you up and you want to chop wood ? Where is your axe ? Hand it to me and show me what to chop.
I do enjoy it, you know, just a hobby, We get a lot of driftwood along the backwater near my house, and on Sundays I do nothing but chop wood for the fireplace. I really feel different when I watch the fire in the fireplace, although it may take all the sections of the Sunday New York Times to get a fire started.” And he smiled at this reference. Muni felt totally confused but decided the best thing would be to make an attempt to get away from this place. He tried to edge out, Saying, “Must go home,” and turned to go.
The other seized his shoulder and said desperarely, “Is there no one, absolutely no one here, to translate for me?” He looked up and down the road, which was deserted in this hot afternoon. The stranger almost pinioned Muni’s back to the statue and asked, “Isn’t this statue yours? Why don’t you sell it to me ?” The old man now understood the reference to the horse, thought for a second, and said in his own language, “I was an urchin this high when I heard my grandfather explain this horse and warrior, and my grandfather himself was this high when he heard his grandfather, whose grandfather…” The other man interrupted him. “I don’t want to seem to have stopped here for nothing. I will offer you a good price for this,” he said, indicating the horse. He had concluded without the least doubt that Muni owned this mud horse. Perhaps he guessed by the way he sat on its pedestal; like other souvenir sellers in this country presiding over their wares.
Muni followed the man’s eyes and pointing fingers and dimly understood the subject matter and, feeling relieved that the theme of the mutilated body had been abandoned at
least for the time being, said again, enthusiastically, “I was this high when my grandfather told me about this horse and the warrior, and my grandfather was this high when he himself…” The Tamil that Muni spoke was stimulating even as pure sound, and the foreigner listened with fascination. “I wish I had my tape-recorder here.” He said, assuming the pleasantest expression, “Your language sounds wonderful. I get a kick out of every word you utter, here”—he indicated his ears — “but you don’t have to waste your breath in sales talk. 1 appreciate the article. You don’t have to explain its points.” “I never went to a school, in those days only Brahmin went to schools, but we had to go out and work in the fields morning till night, from sowing to harvest time … and when Pongal came and we had cut the harvest, my father allowed me to go out and play with others at the tank, and so I don’t know the Parangi language you speak, even little fellows in your country probably speak the Parangi language, but here only learned men and officers know it.”
The foreigner laughed heartily, took out another cigarette, and offered it to Muni, who now smoked with ease, deciding to stay on if the fellow was going to be so good as to keep up his cigarette supply. The American now stood up on the pedestal in the attitude of a demonstrative lecturer and said, running his finger along some of the carved decorations around the horse’s neck, speaking slowly and uttering his words syllable by syllable, “I could give a sales talk for this better than anyone else. This is a marvellous combination of yellow and indigo, though faded now… How do you people of this country achieve these flaming colours?” Muni, now assured that the subject was still the horse and not the dead body, said, “This is our guardian, it means death to our adversaries.
At the end of Kali Yuga, this world and all other worlds will be destroyed, and the Redeemer will come in the shape of a horse called ‘Kalki’; this horse will come to life and gallop and trample down all bad men.” While he was brooding on this pleasant vision, the foreigner utilized the pause to say, “I assure you that this will have the best home in the U.S.A. I’ll push away the book case, you know I love books and am a member of five book clubs, and the choice and bonus volumes mount up to a pile really in our living room, as high as this horse itself. But they’ll have to go. Ruth may disapprove, but I will convince Muni continued his description of the end of the world. “Our pundit discoursed at the temple once how the oceans are going to close over the earth in a huge wave and swallow us—this horse will grow bigger than the biggest wave and carry on its back only the good people and kick into the floods the evil ones—plenty of them about—” he said reflectively. “Do you know when it is going to happen?” he asked.
The foreigner now understood by the tone of the other that a question was being asked and said, “I am not a millionaire, but a modest businessman. My trade is coffee.” Amidst all this wilderness of obscure sound Muni caught the word “coffee” and said, “If you want to drink ‘kapi’, drive further up, in the next town, they have Friday market, and there they open ‘kapi-otels’— so I, learn from passers-by.
The foreigner said, “I repeat I am not a millionaire. Ours is a modest business; after all, we can’t afford to buy more than sixty minutes of T.V. Time in a month, which works out to two minutes a day, that’s all, although in the course of time we’ll maybe sponsor a one-hour show regularly if our sales graph continues to go up…” Then the visitor, feeling that he had spent too much time already, said, “Tell me, will you accept a hundred rupees or not for the horse? I’d love to take the whiskered soldier also but no space for him this year. I’ll have to cancel my air ticket and take a boat home, I suppose.
Ruth can go by air if she likes, but I will go with the horse and keep him in my cabin all the way if necessary.” And he smiled at the picture of himself voyaging across the seas hugging this horse. He added, “I will have to pad it with straw so that it doesn’t break…”.
“I have my station wagon as you see. I can push the seat back and take the horse in if you will just lend me a hand with it.” “Lend me a hand and I can lift off the horse from its
pedestal after picking out the cement at the joints. We can do anything if we have a basis of understanding.” At this state the mutual mystification was complete, and there was no need even to carry on a guessing game at the meaning of words.
The old man chattered away in a spirit of balancing off the credits and debits of conversational exchange, and said in order to be on the credit side, “Oh, honourable one, I hope God has blessed you with numerous progeny. I say this because you seem to be a good man, willing to stay beside an old man and talk to him, while all day I have none to talk to except when somebody stops by to ask for a piece of tobacco. But I seldom have it, tobacco is not what it used to be at one time, and I have given up chewing. I cannot afford it nowadays.” Noting the other’s interest in his speech, Muni felt encouraged to ask, “How many children have you?” With appropriate gestures with his hands. Realizing that a question was being asked, the red man replied, “I said a hundred,” which encouraged Muni to go into details. “How many of your children are boys and how many girls? Where are they? Is your daughter married? Is it difficult to find a son-in-law in your country also?”
In answer to these questions the red man dashed his hand into his pocket and brought forth his wallet in order to take immediate advantage of the bearish trend in the market. He flourished a hundred-rupee currency note and said, “Well, this is what I meant.” The old man now realized that some financial element was entering their talk. He peered closely at the currency note, the like of which he had never seen in his life; he knew the five and ten by their colours although always in other people’s hands, while his own earning at any time was in coppers and nickels. What was this man flourishing the note for? Perhaps asking for change. He laughed to himself at the notion of anyone coming to him for changing a thousand or ten-thousand-rupee note. He said with a grin, “Ask our village headman, who is also a moneylender; he can change even a lakh of rupees in gold sovereigns if you prefer it that way; he thinks nobody knows, but dig the floor of his puja room and your head will reel at the sight of the hoard. The man disguises himself in rags just to mislead the public. Talk to the headman yourself because he goes mad at the sight of me. Someone took away his pumpkins with the creeper and he, for some reason, thinks it was me and my goats… that’s why I never let my goats be seen anywhere near the farms.” His eyes travelled to his goats nosing about, attempting to wrest nutrition from minute greenery peeping out of rock and dry earth.
The foreigner followed his look and decided that it would be a sound policy to show an interest in the old man’s pets. He went up casually to them and stroked their backs with every show of courteous attention. Now the truth dawned on the old man. His dream of a lifetime was about to be realized. He understood that the red man was actually making an offer for the goats. He had reared them up in the hope of selling them some day and, with the capital, opening a small shop on this very spot. Sitting here, watching towards the hills, he had often dreamt how he would put up a thatched roof here, spread a gunny sack out on the ground, and display on it fried nuts, coloured sweets, and green coconut for the thirsty and famished wayfarers on the highway, which was sometimes very busy.
The animals were not prize ones for a cattle show, but he had spent his occasional savings to provide them some fancy diet now and then, and they did not look too bad. While he was reflecting thus, the red man shook his hand and left on his palm one hundred rupees in tens now, suddenly realizing that this was what the old man was asking. “It is all for you or you may share it if you have a partner.”
The old man pointed at the station wagon and asked, “Are you carrying them off in that?” “Yes, of course,” said the other, understanding the transportation part of it. The old man said, “This will be their first ride in a motor car. Carry them off after I get out of sight, otherwise, they will never follow you, but only me even if I am travelling on the path to Yama Loka ” He laughed at his own joke, brought his palms together in a salute, turned round and went off, and was soon out of sight beyond a clump of thicket. The red man looked at the goats grazing peacefully.
Perched on the pedestal of the horse, as the westerly sun touched off the ancient faded colours of the statue with a fresh splendour, he ruminated, “He must be gone to fetch some help, I suppose!” and settled down to wait. When a truck came downhill, he stopped it and got the help of a couple of men to detach the horse from its pedestal and place it in his station wagon. He gave them five rupees each, and for a further payment they siphoned off gas from the truck, and helped him to start his engine. Muni hurried homeward with the cash securely tucked away at his waist in his dhoti. He shut the street door and stole up softly to his wife as she squatted before the lit oven wondering if by a miracle food would drop from the sky. Muni displayed his fortune for the day. She snatched the notes from him, counted them by the glow of the fire, and cried, “One hundred rupees! How did you come by it? Have you been stealing?”
“I have sold our goats to a red-faced man. He was absolutely crazy to have them, gave me all this money and carried them off in his motor car!” Hardly had these words left his lips when they heard bleating outside. She opened the door and saw the two goats at her door. “Here they are!” she said. “What’s the meaning of all this?” He muttered a great curse and seized one of the goats by its ears and shouted, “Where is that man? Don’t you know you are his? Why did you come back ?” The goat only wriggled in his grip. He asked the same question of the other too. The goat shook itself off. His wife glared at him and declared, “If you have thieved, the police will come tonight and break your bones. Don’t involve me. I will go away to my parents…”