The Very Best of Ruskin Bond, the Writer on the Hill: Selected Fiction and Non-Fiction Read Free Page B

house in such a condition? In what gutter, in what brothel have you been! Have you seen yourself? Do you know what you look like?’
    ‘No,’ said Rusty, and for the first time he did not address his guardian as ‘sir’. ‘I don’t care what I look like.’
    ‘You don’t...well, I’ll tell you what you look like! You look like the mongrel that you are!’
    ‘That’s a lie!’ exclaimed Rusty.
    ‘It’s the truth. I’ve tried to bring you up as an Englishman, as your father would have wished. But, as you won’t have it our way, I’m telling you that he was about the only thing English about you. You’re no better than the sweeper boy!’
    Rusty flared into a temper, showing some spirit for the first time in his life. ‘I’m no better than the sweeper boy, but I am as good as him! I’m as good as you! I’m as good as anyone!’ And, instead of cringing to take the cut from the cane, he flung himself at his guardian’s legs. The cane swished through the air, grazing the boy’s back. Rusty wrapped his arms round his guardian’s legs and pulled on them with all his strength.
    Mr Harrison went over, falling flat on his back.
    The suddenness of the fall must have knocked the breath from his body, because for a moment he did not move.
    Rusty sprang to his feet. The cut across his face had stung him to madness, to an unreasoning hate, and he did what previously he would only have dreamt of doing. Lifting a vase of the missionary’s wife’s best sweet peas off the glass cupboard, he flung it at his guardian’s face. It hit him on the chest, but the water and flowers flopped out over his face. He tried to get up; but he was speechless.
    The look of alarm on Mr Harrison’s face gave Rusty greater courage. Before the man could recover his feet and his balance, Rusty gripped him by the collar and pushed him backwards, until they both fell over on to the floor. With one hand still twisting the collar; the boy slapped his guardian’s face. Mad with the pain in his own face, Rusty hit the man again and again, wildly and awkwardly, but with the giddy thrill of knowing he could do it: he was a child no longer, he was nearly seventeen, he was a man. He could inflict pain, that was a wonderful discovery; there was a power in his body—a devil or a god—and he gained confidence in his power; and he was a man!
    ‘Stop that, stop it!’ The shout of a hysterical woman brought Rusty to his senses. He still held his guardian by the throat, but he stopped hitting him. Mr Harrison’s face was very red. The missionary’s wife stood in the doorway, her face white with fear. She was under the impression that Mr Harrison was being attacked by a servant or some bazaar hooligan. Rusty did not wait until she found her tongue but, with a new-found speed and agility, darted out of the drawing-room.
    He made his escape from the bedroom window. From the gate he could see the missionary’s wife silhouetted against the drawing-room light. He laughed out loud. The woman swivelled round and came forward a few steps. And Rusty laughed again and began running down the road to the bazaar.

    It was late. The smart shops and restaurants were closed. In the bazaar, oil lamps hung outside each doorway; people were asleep on the steps and platforms of shopfronts, some huddled in blankets, others rolled tight into themselves. The road, which during the day was a busy, noisy crush of people and animals, was quiet and deserted. Only a lean dog still sniffed in the gutter. A woman sang in a room high above the street—a plaintive, tremulous song—and in the far distance a jackal cried to the moon. But the empty, lifeless street was very deceptive; if the roofs could have been removed from but a handful of buildings, it would be seen that life had not really stopped but, beautiful and ugly, persisted through the night.
    It was past midnight, though the Clock Tower had no way of saying it. Rusty was in the empty street, and the chaat shop was