They had come through the forest on foot, in leather jackets from the Kathmandu black market, khaki pants, bandanas – universal guerilla fashion. One of the boys carried a gun.
Later reports accused China, Pakistan, and Nepal, but in this part of the world, as in any other, there were enough weapons floating around for an impoverished movement with a ragtag army. They were looking for anything they could find – kukri sickles, axes, kitchen knives, spades, any kind of firearm.
They had come for the judge’s hunting rifles.
Despite their mission and their clothes, they were unconvincing. The oldest of them looked under twenty, and at one yelp from Mutt, they screamed like a bunch of schoolgirls, retreated down the steps to cower behind the bushes blurred by mist. "Does she bite, Uncle? My God!" – shivering there in their camouflage.
Mutt began to do what she always did when she met strangers: she turned a furiously wagging bottom to the intruders and looked around from behind, smiling, conveying both shyness and hope.
Hating to see her degrade herself thus, the judge reached for her, whereupon she buried her nose in his arms.
The boys came back up the steps, embarrassed, and the judge became conscious of the fact that this embarrassment was dangerous for had the boys projected unwavering confidence, they might have been less inclined to flex their muscles.
The one with the rifle said something the judge could not understand.
"No Nepali?" he spat, his lips sneering to show what he thought of that, but he continued in Hindi. "Guns?"
"We have no guns here."
"Get them."
"You must be misinformed."
"Never mind with all this nakhra. Get them."
"I order you," said the judge, "to leave my property at once."
"Bring the weapons."
"I will call the police."
This was a ridiculous threat as there was no telephone.
They laughed a movie laugh, and then, also as if in a movie, the boy with the rifle pointed his gun at Mutt. "Go on, get them, or we will kill the dog first and you second, cook third, ladies last," he said, smiling at Sai.
"I’ll get them," she said in terror and overturned the tea tray as she went.
The judge sat with Mutt in his lap. The guns dated from his days in the Indian Civil Service. A BSA five-shot barrel pump gun, a.30 Springfield rifle, and a double-barreled rifle, Holland amp; Holland. They weren’t even locked away: they were mounted at the end of the hall above a dusty row of painted green and brown duck decoys.
"Chtch, all rusted. Why don’t you take care of them?" But they were pleased and their bravado bloomed. "We will join you for tea."
"Tea?" asked Sai in numb terror.
"Tea and snacks. Is this how you treat guests? Sending us back out into the cold with nothing to warm us up." They looked at one another, at her, looked up, down, and winked.
She felt intensely, fearfully female.
Of course, all the boys were familiar with movie scenes where hero and heroine, befeathered in cosy winterwear, drank tea served in silver tea sets by polished servants. Then the mist would roll in, just as it did in reality, and they sang and danced, playing peekaboo in a nice resort hotel. This was classic cinema set in Kulu-Manali or, in preterrorist days, Kashmir, before gunmen came bounding out of the mist and a new kind of film had to be made.
The cook was hiding under the dining table and they dragged him out.
"Ai aaa, ai aaa," he joined his palms together, begging them, "please, I m a poor man, please." He held up his arms and cringed as if from an expected blow.
"He hasn’t done anything, leave him," said Sai, hating to see him humiliated, hating even more to see that the only path open to him was to humiliate himself further.
"Please living only to see my son please don’t kill me please I’m a poor man spare me."
His lines had been honed over centuries, passed down through generations, for poor people needed certain lines; the script was always the same, and they had no option but to beg for mercy. The cook knew instinctively how to cry.
These familiar lines allowed the boys to ease still further into their role, which he had handed to them like a gift.
"Who wants to kill you?" they said to the cook. "We’re just hungry, that’s all. Here, your sahib will help you. Go on," they said to the judge, "you know how it should be done properly." The judge didn’t move, so the boy pointed the gun at Mutt again.
The judge grabbed her and put her behind him.
"Too soft-hearted, sahib. You should show this kind side to your guests, also. Go on, prepare the table."
The judge found himself in the kitchen where he had never been, not once, Mutt wobbling about his toes, Sai and the cook too scared to look, averting their gaze.
It came to them that they might all die with the judge in the kitchen; the world was upside down and absolutely anything could happen.
"Nothing to eat?"
"Only biscuits," said Sai for the second time that day.
"La! What kind of sahib?" the leader asked the judge. "No snacks! Make something, then. Think we can continue on empty stomachs?"
Wailing and pleading for his life, the cook fried pakoras, batter hitting the hot oil, this sound of violence seeming an appropriate accompaniment to the situation.
The judge fumbled for a tablecloth in a drawer stuffed with yellowed curtains, sheets, and rags. Sai, her hands shaking, stewed tea in a pan and strained it, although she had no idea how to properly make tea this way, the Indian way. She only knew the English way.
The boys carried out a survey of the house with some interest. The atmosphere, they noted, was of intense solitude. A few bits of rickety furniture overlaid with a termite cuneiform stood isolated in the shadows along with some cheap metal-tube folding chairs. Their noses wrinkled from the gamy mouse stench of a small place, although the ceiling had the reach of a public monument and the rooms were spacious in the old manner of wealth, windows placed for snow views. They peered at a certificate issued by Cambridge University that had almost vanished into an overlay of brown stains blooming upon walls that had swelled with moisture and billowed forth like sails. The door had been closed forever on a storeroom where the floor had caved in. The storeroom supplies and what seemed like an unreasonable number of emptied tuna fish cans, had been piled on a broken Ping-Pong table in the kitchen, and only a corner of the kitchen was being used, since it was meant originally for the slaving minions, not the one leftover servant.
"House needs a lot of repairs," the boys advised.
"Tea is too weak," they said in the manner of mothers-in-law. "And not enough salt," they said of the pakoras. They dipped the Marie and Delite biscuits in the tea, drew up the hot liquid noisily. Two trunks they found in the bedrooms they filled with rice, lentils, sugar, tea, oil, matches, Lux soap, and Pond’s Cold Cream. One of them assured Sai: "Only items necessary for the movement." A shout from another alerted the rest to a locked cabinet. "Give us the key."
The judge fetched the key hidden behind the National Geographics that, as a young man, visualizing a different kind of life, he had taken to a shop to have bound in leather with the years in gold lettering.
They opened the cabinet and found bottles of Grand Marnier, amontillado sherry, and Talisker. Some of the bottles’ contents had evaporated completely and some had turned to vinegar, but the boys put them in the trunk anyway.
"Cigarettes?"