Fire On the Mountain Read Free

disapproval of his carefree, clattering ways, grunted in unison and began the climb. The pony man went whistling on, waving a wand he had cut from a bush of Spanish broom. The blonde child nodded involuntarily, sun-struck.
    Together, bent-backed, they toiled up the steep path, stones slipping from under their feet, in a way that wildly irritated Nanda Kaul who had come down from the knoll to wait for the postman at the gate, for she always made a point of keeping her back as straight as a rod when walking up that path.
    Sighting her, grey and only faintly stirring under the three pine trees that stood by the gate in their exaggerated attitudes as of men going up in flames with their arms outstretched, charred, too, about the trunks, the postman felt something ominous hover in the heavy summer light and mumbled to Ram Lal, ‘No visitors yet?’
    Ram Lal merely shook his head.
    The postman gave a snorting laugh. Ram Lal turned to stare at him with his small, red-streaked eyes. The postman immediately looked apologetic. ‘Every house in Kasauli is bursting now,’ he explained. ‘It is the season.’
    â€˜We have none,’ said Ram Lal, firmly.
    At the gate, they parted. The postman stood shuffling through his letters and Ram Lal, slightly ducking his capped head to Nanda Kaul, went past her to the kitchen where great, bony, dusty chickens sprang down from the stack of wood by the door to greet him. He flapped at them with his market bag and they croaked back in alarm but crowded closer. They were said to be the descendants of Miss Jane Shrewsbury’s original poultry and certainly looked antique, hardy. When he had disappeared into the smoky gloom of the kitchen, they crowded about the door, scraping the floor with their crooked toes in an excited scrabble for attention. In a while he started flinging chopped vegetable heads at them, each one accompanied by a word of filthy abuse.
    In the meantime, the postman had detached one letter from the rest and silently handed it over to Nanda Kaul who said clearly but in a voice of suffering, ‘Thank you.’ Holding it with her fingers, at a little distance from her side, she walked slowly up the flagstone path along which day lilies bloomed desultorily, under the apricot trees to the veranda where she had her old cane chair.
    Here was a letter and she would have to open it. Sheresolved to say ‘No’ to whatever demand or request it contained. No, no, no.

Chapter 4
    THE VERANDA LAY deep in shade. The tiles of its uneven floor were cool. Along the stone steps were pots of geraniums and fuchsias that bloomed unimpaired by the sun as they stood in the shade cast by the low, leafy apricot trees. Here was her old cane chair and she sat down on it, putting the letter down on her lap and gazing instead at the ripening apricots and the pair of bul-buls that quarrelled over them till they fell in a flurry of feathers to the ground, stirred up a small frenzy of dust, then shot off in opposite directions, scolding and abusing till a twist of a worm distracted them. Then there were only the cicadas to be heard, a sound so even and so insubstantial that it seemed to emerge from the earth itself, or from the season – a scent of pine-needles made audible, a spinning of sunlight or of the globe on its axis.
    Looking past the leafy branches of those trees and the silvery needles of the pines at the gate, she could see the red rooftops of Lawrence School on the hilltop across the valley, and the fine spire of its church emerging from the seclusion of Sanawar’s greenery. It was a comfortable view to have from one’s veranda – more comfortable than the one from the back windows of the cliff plunging seven thousand feet down to the Punjab plains – but she was not comforted.
    She looked at the scene with her accustomed intensity till a large white and yellow butterfly crossed over, disturbing her concentration, and made her look down at the