“I must write everything down because I was threatened by the man called Barbabu, and if anything should happen to me, I want to leave some word behind. . .'”

 

THE GOLD BOTTLE
Fiction by George Gillespie

June 24   I am finally alone in the bungalow. The cook has gone and I have a chance to write down what happened today. I have never kept a journal before, but this part of the country is very lonely and I have no one to talk to sensibly about these things. People around here are very jungly and uneducated. Or if they are educated they are very narrow minded. And if I were to loan anyone one of the foreign magazines the British couple left here, it would be wasted.

Also, I must write everything down because I was threatened by the man they call Barbabu, and if anything should happen to me, I want to leave some word behind.

It is only two weeks now since the steamer company shifted me to this part of Assam. But the size of the work does not yet compare with the size of this sprawling, forsaken house they have given me. With the early floods and the strong currents nowadays, there have been no boats yet, and when one will finally come, I couldn't guess. Now it is only occasional dull business that brings people by. I have been working mostly alone and living alone except for my cook who lives down the hill close to the river. I need only one more servant for I will be able to live simply here. I may need my wife, but my wife does not need me. She prefers to enjoy herself in Calcutta. I would write her about what happened today if I thought she would care.

This morning I was at my desk in the small room I have fixed up to be my office. The room has an outside door and footpath that leads down to the river where the boats unload. Evidently everyone before me in the bungalow had used this same room for the same purpose, so people from the beginning have known which door to come to, to see me on  business. I had the door pushed open as the weather has been terribly hot and sticky. The ceiling fan was not working. My perspiring arms were wetting all the forms I was examining and I thought I better quit before I smeared the pages of inventory into unreadability. I was wishing the clouds would let down another shower. I wiped my forehead with a cotton towel I kept on the desk for that purpose.

I knew that this man Barbabu had been standing on the small verandah right outside my door for some time, but he hadn't cleared his throat for attention, moved into the room, or done anything to show he wanted to talk. I called him in once and he didn't come. 

He is a neighbour of mine who grows acres of banana trees in the jungle hillside behind his house. He doesn't ship them. He sells them locally. He bought my old jeep as soon as I got here. I had Singh at the shop fix up the jeep and arrange the deal for me. He knows a lot about vehicles. It was this Barbabu who bought it. Other than this much, I know nothing about him or any other of the neighbours. I don't small talk. It was the cook, who has always worked in this bungalow, who told me what I do know.

Barbabu's silence bothered me. My skin itched with prickly heat. I needed to find out where I could buy a tin of prickly heat powder. I thought of it because I didn't want to keep scratching my neck and arms in front of him. The itch was killing me. So I called to him on the verandah and said, "Mr. Barbabu, Sir, if you won't come in, can you at least tell me where I may purchase a tin of prickly heat powder?" He didn't reply; he just looked unpleasant. I understood that he knew English. I felt then that maybe I had been too arrogant and called out to him, "Please come in and talk. It is very hot. It is nice to have some company."

He still didn't answer, but he did come in and sit down in a chair near the desk, not far from my face in fact. I didn't know what to say as nothing seemed to open him up. So quite when I had given up and turned away he spoke softly to me, "You are Mr. Amiya Roy, I believe."

"Yes." I answered, and smiled at having got somewhere with the man. I noticed he looked very distraught. His fingers were playing around on my desk, moving sheets of paper the very slightest and tapping my peneds.

"Hot day, isn't it?" I added. He didn't reply. He looked respectable enough shaved, clean white pants and shirt. I decided he was too nervous to answer properly. I wanted him to go, but I smiled. Then he said, "You are the one who sold me the jeep." It was not a question.

I asked him, "How is it running?" and he did a strange thing. While fingering the desk he slid his finger along to the towel I had been using to wipe my head, and he picked off it a hair. My first reaction was‑how uncouthly neat he is. Then he just got up and left saying, "You will be very sorry. You will be very sorry." He left just like that. I don't know what to make of it.

June 25    I talked to my cook today about Barbabu. The cook is an old man, who in spite of being practically deaf, seems to know everything that is going on in the neighbourhood. He also likes to tell the same. I hardly had to ask him about what kind of man Barbabu is and he told me all he knew. He himself doesn't like Barbabu because the latter lets rain water drain off his compound right into the cook's own, and the drainage has eaten out quite a chunk of the cook's cleared land.

He tells me that Barbabu is sane, but very odd. He takes offence and never lets an offence go unrevenged. He has evil friends, is crooked in business, beats his wife and just about anything else bad that he could think of to say about him, particularly that Barbabu has been very uncooperative on the drainage problem. Otherwise, we both admit, Barbabu looks like a gentleman.

It also came out in talking to him that Barbabu's brother, whose house is about three miles away, was driving my old jeep more than anybody as he needed transportation between his home and here. But within five days of getting the jeep, this brother was driving and the jeep slipped over the side of the wet dirt road on the slope coming down from his house. The jeep turned completely over and landed on him. Those, living nearby tried to pry him out, but couldn't before several hours were up and he died before being rescued. The cook magnified the details of this story, I'm sure, but it does sound rather gruesome. Of course I'm not really involved in this, but I wish I had known this when Barbabu had visited me. I could have given him my condolences. Life and death just seem to go on outside and around this house without me. But maybe that is best. I have nothing in common with these people.

I want to tell about a short dream I had last night. Actually I slept very well as the large ceiling fan in the bedroom was working and I was exhausted by the long hot day. I always have a number of dreams. I half awakened when the sun was just starting to come up (I remember hearing the crows already) and fell back asleep what must have been immediately. I then had a clear short dream. I had the impression of a Mughal painting, with the Emperor Akbar clothed in green, gold and red, surrounded by all kinds of musicians, dancers and servants. Someone was pouring red wine from a gold bottle into a gold cup and was offering it to me. I could hear the music of stringed instruments and drums. It was an enchanting dream, delicate like a painting and very short. I woke up right after, And the morning had progressed little from the last time I had awakened. What a pleasant dream.

June 26    It is now 11:30 pm and I should let myself fall asleep. I have been trying to read an Agatha Christie, but I have not been able to keep my mind on it. It's been a very troublesome day, and if I believed in the kind of nonsense the cook has been telling me I would surely leave this place.

First thing this morning I went to the front verandah to see whether the newspaper had come. It was there and I brought it in. As I opened it, out from between two sections slid a large leaf of the pipal tree, with some very fancy looking design scratched into it. I first wondered what new kind of advertising scheme it was. But as I sat down to look at it, I saw that it was not something mass produced‑it was something made just for me, a mystical diagram scratched into the leaf with yellow ink. There was a lot of intricate detail in it a large rectangle with triangles around the edges, a dot in each triangle and in the centre, written in Assamese or Bengali script the words "hring, hring, om om om om, debdutta om om om om." I knew what it was. Someone was trying to scare me with a bit of black magic, the ignorant fools. I thought of Barbabu, and was at least thankful he was relying on magic, rather than a knife or gun. I wasn't sure yet why he would want to hurt me.

I wasn't going to tell the cook because I knew he was superstitious. As it happened he had seen me looking at the leaf and  was very nervous when he brought me my eggs and toast. He stayed around in the cookhouse a long time after serving me and I knew he had something he wanted to say, so I gave him a chance. After I ate and read the paper I asked him what was new.

Well, this is what is new and I should have guessed it. Barbabu has been telling people I sold him a faulty car. It was the brakes or steering wheel, he hasn't decided yet. People believe him because everyone just knows that we outsiders, so they say, don't respect them and we take advantage of them. So what they think about me is that for a good sum of money I sold them a car which I knew was in bad condition and ready to kill someone. In fact, he is saying that I killed his brother. Of course that's ridiculous. The jeep was working well enough until the last moment.

But the thing that worries the cook so, is that he has heard about the magic. He is deathly afraid of it for my sake. I told him I don't believe in such nonsense, and for him to take the words of an educated man that there is no such thing as magic. He was only more bothered by my saying such, and he went into the details of what he had heard from Barbabu's servants, and what he himself knew had been done in the past by Barbabu's friends, and what he happened to know about black magic.

All put together, what seems to be going on is this: Barbabu does not want to kill me. He would prefer that I just go insane. The man who is going to perform this for Barbabu will charge him one hundred rupees. (Killing me much more.) First he will need a piece of finger nail or hair to work on, so I am to be careful about leaving any such thing available. I didn't tell him it was too late for that. The mystical diagram he had already seen and he was afraid it may already be too late for me as I had seen and touched it. I thanked the fool for the information and told him I didn't intend to go mad, and that as long as Barbabu was not walking over here with a gun I had nothing to fear.

Perhaps, though, Barbabu himself is mad. This may be the only thing that I need worry about now. However, with Barbabu's threats turning out to be so insubstantial as they have, I don't have much to worry about. I don't think he has come near the house since that afternoon. I have more worthwhile things to think about than black magic. I'm not really worried anyway. It certainly doesn't keep me awake or give me bad dreams. In fact I had that pleasant dream again last night. It was so real and satisfying.

In the dream I had been sleeping on a blue flowered mattress and the Emperor called to me to join in watching some performing birds. This I did. Musicians were playing some classical music, though I couldn't see where they were. The birds per formed on a marble stage by dancing and flying with the music. There were two peacocks, two peahens, and more white doves than I could count. The back of the stage was also marble, black and white with recessed alcoves up and down the whole wall, each alcove shaped like a Mughal arch. Many of the white birds sat in these alcoves to wait their turn. The Emperor, or so I took him to be, was very pleased and asked me how I enjoyed the show. I told him I had never seen anything like it.

I must have said something to the effect that I thought him to be Akbar. He laughed and said, "Oh, no. I am just the Raja of West Tinpur, just a small place you know. Don't flatter me so. I'm glad you can stay here a while." Then I remembered that in college one of my classmates was cousin to a prince of West Tiupur, and that had impressed me at the time. So I was happy now to be in his palace. The dancing birds all screeched together when the show was over. As it really was, the crows outside my room were screeching, and that woke me up. Too bad to have to wake up from such a pleasant dream to deal with a man like Barbabu.

June 27  It has been raining so hard all day, no one has come to see me. I have had a chance to catch up on the inventory of the repairs shed and to make more livable the dining room and sitting room. The cook had cleaned up the cookhouse at my insistence. He has no more news on Barbabu.  Barbabu, apparently, is staying at home and keeping out of mischief. 

The exhaustion of shifting here and trying to adjust to a new life and new house has finally caught up with me. I didn't realize I had been working so much. When I finally gave up reading last night, I was dead tired, yet I wanted to record everything from yesterday in the journal. So when I finally gave in I went immediately to sleep.

I had no sooner fallen asleep when I heard the singing of girls and then their ankle bells, and I didn't have to open my eyes to know that I was in the dream palace of the Raja of West Tinpur again. I did want to see the dance so I opened my eyes thinking what a raja, all he does is be entertained. Maybe he guessed what I was thinking for he said to me, "I have business to attend to tonight Government of India forest officers are here. They want to make an animal preserve out of the jungle east of the stream. Of course they don't have to ask me about it. The whole land belongs to the Government of India now, but through some quirk of the law the animals in it still seem to be mine. Please excuse me."

I excused him and spent the rest of the night watching dances of the north and dances of the south, the Manipur dance and a few of Tagore's. Plus many kinds of dances that I had never seen in my waking stage. It was no small‑town culture show. The costumes were magnificent and the music much better than listening to my longplay records.

Towards morning the Raja came back and asked me whether I approved of the dancing. I complimented him and he explained that he had given dance scholarships to many of the girls of the kingdom, former kingdom that is, so that much of the glory of the past could live on here. He thought the Government of India being so large, would not take the interest in the dancing careers of these girls that he would. I agreed with him. The show had been over for some time and he said he was glad to have me stay the night, and if I even needed to I could stay longer. I thanked him and felt sorry that morning had come.

June 28    The rains have stopped for a  while. It is hot again and I feel so sleepy all the time. I hope I'm not ill. We have quite forgotten about Barbabu as nothing more has happened. No one came to the house today.

I must tell about what happened last night. I was falling asleep with the fan on when one of  the servant girls suggested I turn it off and let her fan me with a large peacock feather fan. At first I couldn't think of what she would be doing in my house, but then I remembered the dreams I had been having, so knew it was all right. Now it's fine to be fanned with peacock feathers if they don't drag across your face. But this girl, attractively wrapped in a red silk sari though she was, was not very experienced at fanning or else she was teasing me. She kept tickling me with the fan and waking me up. Once I heard the Raja step into my room and laugh about it. I was embarrassed, but he has always been good to me, so I pretended I didn't hear. It was good I slept all night instead of watching the Raja's dancers. What a way to live. Anyway, I finally slept well after the Raja left.

June  29   It was another hot but pleasing day. The Raja gave me some work to do so I wouldn't feel I was wasting my time. Because of my experience with accounts, inventories, and such he took me to the huge storage room next to the entertainment hall where they keep all the props for stage productions, the musical instruments, spare strings and knobs for the instruments, costumes, background scenery, vases and the most beautiful selection of miniature paintings I have seen. There is just not enough room in the palace to display all the paintings, so many are kept there.

First he asked me to inventory the whole room. As for the paintings, some have notations on the back as to painter and place of painting. Some are unidentifiable at least to my eyes. I thought if I read some of his books on Mughal art I could identify them and catalogue them for him. However, when he saw grease on my fingers he asked me to start with the stage equipment and instruments and handle the paintings later.

I was persistently interrupted in this work this afternoon by the cook here. I had been  counting all the bamboo flutes in a certain box  and the cook made me totally lose count. He  kept trying to tell me something about a steam­  boat, but steamboats don't come here and he  made no sense. Then he was wailing and wailing about what Barbabu had done. What a nuisance.  I chased him away and told him not to bother me. I am very happy here and Barbabu cannot touch me. The Raja has told me I can stay here as long as I need to for protection. Barbabu won't be able to harm me at all. There are many guards about the palace. 

THE END

"The Gold Bottle" was first published in the August, 1978 issue (Vol. XVIII No.5) of IMPRINT (India) and is presented here www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org  with permission of the author.