The Kitemaker: Stories Read Online Free Page B

he pattered up and down between the house and the water-tank, with the bucket clanging against his knees.
    Back and forth, with a wide, friendly smile.
    I frowned at him.
    He was about my age, ten. He had short-cropped hair, very white teeth, and muddy feet, hands, and face. All he wore was an old pair of khaki shorts; the rest of his body was bare, burnt a deep brown.
    At every trip to the water tank he bathed, and returned dripping and glistening from head to toe.
    I dripped with sweat.
    It was supposedly below my station to bathe at the tank, where the gardener, water carrier, cooks, ayahs, sweepers, and their children all collected. I was the son of a ‘sahib’ and convention ruled that I did not play with servant children.
    But I was just as determined not to play with the other sahibs’ children, for I did not like them and they did not like me.
    I watched the flies buzzing against the windowpane, the lizards scuttling across the rafters, the wind scattering petals of scorched, long-dead flowers.
    The sweeper boy smiled and saluted in play. I avoided his eyes and said, ‘Go away.’
    He went into the kitchen.
    I rose and crossed the room, and lifted my sun helmet off the hatstand.
    A centipede ran down the wall, across the floor.
    I screamed and jumped on the bed, shouting for help.
    The sweeper boy darted in. He saw me on the bed, the centipede on the floor; and picking a large book off the shelf, slammed it down on the repulsive insect.
    I remained standing on my bed, trembling with fear and revulsion.
    He laughed at me, showing his teeth, and I blushed and said, ‘Get out!’
    I would not, could not, touch or approach the hat or hatstand. I sat on the bed and longed for my father to come home.
    A mosquito passed close by me and sang in my ear. Half-heartedly, I clutched at it and missed; and it disappeared behind the dressing-table.
    That mosquito, I reasoned, gave the malaria to my father. And now it was trying to give it to me!
    The next-door lady walked through the compound and smiled thinly from outside the window. I glared back at her.
    The sweeper boy passed with the bucket, and grinned. I turned away.
    In bed at night, with the lights on, I tried reading. But even books could not quell my anxiety.
    The sweeper boy moved about the house, bolting doors, fastening windows. He asked me if I had any orders.
    I shook my head.
    He skipped across to the electric switch, turned off the light, and slipped into his quarters. Outside, inside, all was dark; only one shaft of light squeezed in through a crack in the sweeper boy’s door, and then that too went out.
    I began to wish I had stayed with the neighbours. The darkness worried me—silent and close—silent, as if in suspense.
    Once a bat flew flat against the window, falling to the ground outside; once an owl hooted. Sometimes a dog barked. And I tautened as a jackal howled hideously in the jungle behind the bungalow. But nothing could break the overall stillness, the night’s silence . . .
    Only a dry puff of wind . . .
    It rustled in the trees, and put me in mind of a snake slithering over dry leaves and twigs. I remembered a tale I had been told not long ago, of a sleeping boy who had been bitten by a cobra.
    I would not, could not, sleep. I longed for my father . . .
    The shutters rattled, the doors creaked. It was a night for ghosts.
    Ghosts!
    God, why did I have to think of them?
    My God! There, standing by the bathroom door . . .
    My father! My father dead from the malaria, and come to see me!
    I threw myself at the switch. The room lit up. I sank down on the bed in complete exhaustion, the sweat soaking my nightclothes.
    It was not my father I had seen. It was his dressing gown hanging on the bathroom door. It had not been taken with him to the hospital.
    I turned off the light.
    The hush outside seemed deeper, nearer. I remembered the centipede, the bat, thought of the cobra and the sleeping boy; pulled the sheet tight over my head. If I