Short Stories By Rabindranath Tagore

The Postmaster

For his first job, the postmaster came to the village of Ulapur. It was a
very humble village. There was an indigo-factory near by, and the
British manager had with much effort established a new post office.
The postmaster was a Calcutta boy – he was a fish out of water in a
village like this. His office was in a dark thatched hut; there was a pond
next to it, scummed over with weeds, and jungle all around. The indigo
agents and employees had hardly any spare time, and were not suitable
company for an educated man. Or rather, his Calcutta background made
him a bad mixer – in an unfamiliar place he was either arrogant or ill-at-
ease. So there was not much contact between him and the residents in
the area.
But he had very little work to do. Sometimes he tried to write poems.
The bliss of spending one’s life watching the leaves trembling in the
trees or the clouds in the sky – that was what the poems expressed. God
knew, however, that if a genie out of an Arab tale had come and cut
down all the leafy trees overnight, made a road, and blocked out the sky
with rows of tall buildings, this half-dead, well-bred young man would
have come alive again.
The postmaster’s salary was meagre. He had to cook for himself, and
an orphaned village-girl did housework for him in return for a little
food. Her name was Ratan, and she was about twelve or thirteen. It
seemed unlikely that she would get married. In the evenings, when
smoke curled up from the village cowsheds, crickets grated in the
bushes, a band of intoxicated Baul singers in a far village sang raucously
to drums and cymbals, and even a poet if seated alone on a dark
verandah might have shuddered a little at the trembling leaves, the
postmaster would go inside, light a dim lamp in a corner of the room
and call for Ratan. Ratan would be waiting at the door for this, but she
did not come at the first call – she would call back, ‘What is it,
Dadababu, what do you want?’
‘What are you doing?’ the postmaster would say.
‘I must go and light the kitchen fire –’
‘You can do your kitchen work later. Get my hookah ready for me.’
Soon Ratan came in, puffing out her cheeks as she blew on the bowl of
the hookah. Taking it from her, the postmaster would say abruptly, ‘So,
Ratan, do you remember your mother?’ She had lots to tell him: some
things she remembered, others she did not. Her father loved her more
than her mother did – she remembered him a little. He used to come
home in the evening after working hard all day, and one or two evenings
were clearly etched in her memory. As she talked, Ratan edged nearer to
the postmaster, and would end up sitting on the ground at his feet. She
remembered her little brother: one distant day, during the rainy season,
they had stood on the edge of a small pond and played at catching fish
with sticks broken off trees – this memory was far more vividly fixed in
her mind than many more important things. Sometimes these
conversations went on late into the night, and the postmaster then felt
too sleepy to cook. There would be some vegetable curry left over from
midday, and Ratan would quickly light the fire and cook some chapati:
they made their supper out of that.
Occasionally, sitting on a low wooden office-stool in a corner of his
large hut, the postmaster would speak of his family – his younger
brother, mother and elder sister – all those for whom his heart ached,
alone and exiled as he was. He told this illiterate young girl things which
were often in his mind but which he would never have dreamt of
divulging to the indigo employees – and it seemed quite natural to do so.
Eventually Ratan referred to the postmaster’s family – his mother, sister
and brother – as if they were her own. She even formed affectionate
imaginary pictures of them in her mind.
It was a fine afternoon in the rainy season. The breeze was softly warm;
there was a smell of sunshine on wet grass and leaves. Earth’s breath –
hot with fatigue – seemed to brush against the skin. A persistent bird
cried out monotonously somewhere, making repeated and pathetic
appeals at Nature’s midday durbar. The postmaster had hardly any work:
truly the only things to look at were the smooth, shiny, rain-washed
leaves quivering, the layers of sun-whitened, broken-up clouds left over
from the rain. He watched, and felt how it would be to have a close companion here, a human object for the heart’s most intimate affections.
Gradually it seemed that the bird was saying precisely this, again and
again; that in the afternoon shade and solitude the same meaning was in
the rustle of the leaves. Few would believe or imagine that a poorly paid
sub-postmaster in a small village could have such feelings in the deep,
idle stillness of the afternoon.
Sighing heavily, the postmaster called for Ratan. Ratan was at that
moment stretched out under a guava tree, eating unripe guavas. At the
sound of her master’s call she got up at once and ran to him.
‘Yes, Dadababu, you called?’ she said, breathlessly.
‘I’m going to teach you to read, a little bit each day,’ said the
postmaster. He taught her daily at midday from then on, starting with
the vowels but quickly progressing to the consonants and conjuncts.
During the month of Srābaṇ, the rain was continuous. Ditches, pits
and channels filled to overflowing with water. The croaking of frogs and
the patter of rain went on day and night. It was virtually impossible to
get about on foot – one had to go to market by boat. One day it rained
torrentially from dawn. The postmaster’s pupil waited for a long time at
the door, but when the usual call failed to come, she quietly entered the
room, with her bundle of books. She saw the postmaster lying on his
bed: thinking that he was resting, she began to tip-toe out again.
Suddenly she heard him call her. She turned round and quickly went up
to him saying, ‘Weren’t you asleep, Dadababu?’
‘I don’t feel well,’ said the postmaster painfully. ‘Have a look – feel my
forehead.’
He felt in need of comfort, ill and miserable as he was, in this isolated
place, the rain pouring down. He remembered the touch on his forehead
of soft hands, conch-shell bangles. He wished his mother or sister were
sitting here next to him, soothing his illness and loneliness with feminine
tenderness. And his longings did not stay unfulfilled. The young girl
Ratan was a young girl no longer. From that moment on she took on the
role of a mother, calling the doctor, giving him pills at the right time,
staying awake at his bedside all night long, cooking him convalescent
meals, and saying a hundred times, ‘Are you feeling a bit better,
Dadababu?’

Many days later, the postmaster got up from his bed, thin and weak.
He had decided that enough was enough: somehow he would have to
leave. He wrote at once to his head office in Calcutta, applying for a
transfer because of the unhealthiness of the place.
Released from nursing the postmaster, Ratan once again took up her
normal place outside his door. But his call did not come for her as
before. Sometimes she would peep in and see the postmaster sitting
distractedly on his stool or lying on his bed. While she sat expecting his
summons, he was anxiously awaiting a reply to his application. She sat
outside the door going over her old lessons numerous times. She was
terrified that if he suddenly summoned her again one day, the conjunct
consonants would all be muddled up in her mind. Eventually, after
several weeks, his call came again one evening. With eager heart, Ratan
rushed into the room. ‘Did you call, Dadababu?’ she asked.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow, Ratan,’ said the postmaster.
‘Where are you going, Dadababu?’
‘I’m going home.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘I shan’t come back again.’
Ratan did not question him further. The postmaster himself told her
that he had applied for a transfer, but his application had been rejected;
so he was resigning from his post and returning home. For several
minutes, neither of them spoke. The lamp flickered weakly; through a
hole in the crumbling thatched roof, rain-water steadily dripped on to an
earthenware dish. Ratan then went slowly out to the kitchen to make
some chapati. She made them with none of her usual energy. No doubt
her thoughts distracted her. When the postmaster had had his meal, she
suddenly asked, ‘Dadababu, will you take me home with you?’
‘How could I do that!’ said the postmaster, laughing. He saw no need
to explain to the girl why the idea was impossible.
All night long, whether dreaming or awake, Ratan felt the
postmaster’s laugh ringing in her ears. ‘How could I do that!’
When he rose at dawn, the postmaster saw that his bath-water had
been put out ready for him (he bathed according to his Calcutta habit, in
water brought in a bucket). Ratan had not been able to bring herself to ask him what time he would be leaving; she had carried the bath-water
up from the river late at night, in case he needed it early in the morning.
As soon as he finished his bath, the postmaster called her. She entered
the room softly and looked at him once without speaking, ready for her
orders. ‘Ratan,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell the man who replaces me that he should
look after you as I have; you mustn’t worry just because I’m going.’
No doubt this remark was inspired by kind and generous feelings, but
who can fathom the feelings of a woman? Ratan had meekly suffered
many scoldings from her master, but these kindly words were more than
she could bear. The passion in her heart exploded, and she cried, ‘No,
no, you mustn’t say anything to anyone – I don’t want to stay here.’ The
postmaster was taken aback: he had never seen Ratan behave like that
before.
A new postmaster came. After handing over his charge to him, the
resigning postmaster got ready to leave. Before going, he called Ratan
and said, ‘Ratan, I’ve never been able to pay you anything. Today before
I go I want to give you something, to last you for a few days.’ Except for
the little that he needed for the journey, he took out all the salary that
was in his pocket. But Ratan sank to the ground and clung to his feet,
saying, ‘I beg you, Dadababu, I beg you – don’t give me any money.
Please, no one need bother about me.’ Then she fled, running.
The departing postmaster sighed, picked up his carpet-bag, put his
umbrella over his shoulder, and, with a coolie carrying his blue-and-
white-striped tin trunk on his head, slowly made his way towards the
boat.
When he was on the boat and it had set sail, when the swollen flood-
waters of the river started to heave like the Earth’s brimming tears, the
postmaster felt a huge anguish: the image of a simple young village-girl’s
grief-stricken face seemed to speak a great inarticulate universal sorrow.
He felt a sharp desire to go back: should he not fetch that orphaned girl,
whom the world had abandoned? But the wind was filling the sails by
then, the swollen river was flowing fiercely, the village had been left
behind, the riverside burning-ground was in view. Detached by the
current of the river, he reflected philosophically that in life there are
many separations, many deaths. What point was there in going back?
Who belonged to whom in this world?

But Ratan had no such philosophy to console her. All she could do
was wander near the post office, weeping copiously. Maybe a faint hope
lingered in her mind that Dadababu might return; and this was enough
to tie her to the spot, prevent her from going far. O poor, unthinking
human heart! Error will not go away, logic and reason are slow to
penetrate. We cling with both arms to false hope, refusing to believe the
weightiest proofs against it, embracing it with all our strength. In the
end it escapes, ripping our veins and draining our heart’s blood; until,
regaining consciousness, we rush to fall into snares of delusion all over
again.