The planter returned to his bungalow carrying the collar and lead.
Appu, who had been watching the estate road from the veranda, looked behind him.
“Where is Robin, sir?”
“In the jungle.”
“Couldn’t you find him?”
“I found him.”
Appu waited. Years of service had taught him that a European gentleman sometimes needed several opportunities to finish a simple explanation.
“He wouldn’t come,” the planter said at last.
Appu looked at the empty lead.
“Perhaps tomorrow, sir.”
The planter handed him the collar and went inside. Appu hung it on its usual nail beside the back door. That evening, when he took the kitchen scraps outside, he almost called the dog before remembering.
Dingiri’s mother held his face between her hands for so long that he began to feel like a child again.
Then she struck his shoulder.
“Do you know what you have done to me?”
The blow hardly hurt. Her crying did.
He stood beside her until she had finished, then sat on the doorstep while she brought him rice. She gave him more than he could eat and watched every mouthful, as though each one proved that he was truly alive.
His uncle returned from the field before Dingiri had finished.
“So the forest has sent you back.”
“I came to see Amma.”
“And tomorrow you will come to the field.”
Dingiri looked down at his plate.
His uncle began describing the work awaiting him: a broken bund, a blocked watercourse, weeds spreading in the lower field. By the time he had finished, the forest seemed farther away than Dingiri had ever known it.
“I’m going back this evening,” the boy said.
His mother’s hand stopped above the rice pot.
His uncle stared.
“Back where?”
“To the cave.”
For a moment, Dingiri expected another blow. Instead, his uncle gave a short laugh.
“Very well. Live like an animal. See how long you last.”
His mother followed him to the edge of the garden.
“You cannot stay there forever.”
“I know.”
He did not know. But it seemed kinder to agree.
“Will you come again?”
“In two days.”
“Promise me.”
He promised.
She put a small packet into his hand: salt, dried chillies, and a little rice wrapped in cloth.
“Your dog won’t eat chillies,” she said.
“He’s learnt a few things.”
For the first time that afternoon, she smiled.
Robin was waiting beside the stream when Dingiri returned.
He came running through the shallow water, leapt against the boy, and then sniffed the parcel with immediate interest.
“Yes,” Dingiri told him. “She sent something for you too.”
That night, the cave seemed unusually comfortable. The fire burned well. His mother knew where he was. Robin lay with his head across Dingiri’s ankle.
For several weeks, they continued much as before.
Dingiri disliked the way his uncle could find work for him at any hour, even when the day’s work was already done. In the forest, hunger and rain made their own demands, but they did not scold him while he attended to them.
He visited his mother regularly.
After the first visit, Robin insisted on accompanying him.
The dog learnt the path quickly. At the house, he greeted Dingiri’s mother with the confidence of someone who had heard good reports about her cooking.
She gave him rice mixed with fish gravy and stroked his long ears.
“This is the gentleman you stole?”
Dingiri nodded.
“He has better manners than you.”
His uncle refused to feed Robin, but sometimes dropped a piece of dried fish beside his chair. Nobody mentioned it.
On their way home, they passed the road leading into the tea estate.
The first time, Robin stopped there.
He raised his nose and stood looking uphill.
“Come, Mahattaya.”
Robin followed, but reluctantly.
A few days later, he went several paces up the estate road before returning.
Dingiri told himself that there must be a scent worth investigating.
Then one afternoon they heard a horse approaching. Robin hurried to the roadside, tail moving, and watched the rider emerge around the bend.
It was the estate superintendent from a neighbouring property.
Robin’s tail became still.
That evening, Dingiri noticed him watching the cave entrance long after dark.
The boy put down the burr he had been picking from the dog’s ear.
“You miss him?”
Robin turned at the sound of his voice.
Dingiri rubbed the soft place beneath his chin.
“I thought you liked it here.”
The dog pressed closer.
Dingiri sat quietly for a while.
He remembered how Robin had run towards the planter when the men first arrived at the cave. He had been so relieved when the dog refused to leave that he had hardly thought about the greeting.
Perhaps Robin had been pleased to see both of them.
The following morning, Dingiri washed the dog in the stream.
Robin objected to having his ears cleaned and shook himself before the work was finished.
“If you are going to visit a bungalow, you must look respectable.”
Dingiri brushed his own hair back with wet fingers. Then they climbed towards the estate.
Robin recognised the road before the tea bushes appeared.
He began moving faster.
Dingiri felt a small pain beneath his ribs.
At the bungalow gate, Robin broke into a run.
“Mahattaya!”
The dog scarcely heard him.
He raced around the house, disappeared behind the kitchen, and began barking.
Appu came out holding a coconut scraper.
“Robin!”
He put down the scraper just in time to save it from being knocked from his hand.
The dog circled him, tail beating against his legs, then rushed to the veranda and looked through the open doorway.
Dingiri stood near the gate.
Appu noticed him.
“So you have brought him back.”
“He wanted to come.”
“Come inside, then.”
Dingiri approached slowly.
Robin had begun searching the rooms.
“The master isn’t here,” Appu called after him.
The dog returned to the veranda and looked up.
“He’s gone hunting.”
Dingiri stopped.
“What hunting?”
“Elephants. Down in the low country.”
“When will he come back?”
“When he has finished making himself tired.”
Appu picked up the coconut scraper.
58“He can work all week complaining that he needs a rest. Then he takes a holiday and walks through hotter jungle than anything we have here.”
Robin settled beside the planter’s chair.
Dingiri looked at him for a moment, then sat on the veranda step.
Appu brought them both something to eat.
Several days’ journey away, the planter was discovering that Appu’s opinion of his holiday was well founded.
His shirt clung to his back. A thorn had torn one sleeve. Something small and persistent had been biting him beneath his waistband since breakfast.
Ahead of him, the tracker, Banda, stopped beside a patch of disturbed earth.
The planter stopped too.
Banda crouched and examined a broad footprint. Farther along the path lay fresh dung and the broken end of a branch.
He touched the branch, then looked into the trees.
“Went this way, sir.”
The planter shifted the weight of his heavy double-barrelled rifle.
Behind him waited a gun-bearer with a spare weapon. The men carrying the camp provisions had remained beside the stream.
They had left their tents before sunrise. At first, the jungle had been cool enough for the planter to imagine an agreeable morning. Then the sun climbed, the insects woke, and every open patch of ground began throwing heat into his face.
For three days, they had followed elephants without obtaining what his companion called a satisfactory opportunity.
His companion, a visiting planter named Wilton, had considerable opinions about opportunities. Most were expressed after supper, with a glass in his hand.
“Rogers would have settled this business before breakfast,” he had said the previous evening.
“Rogers is dead,” the planter replied.
“Not killed by an elephant.”
“No.”
“Lightning. Extraordinary thing.”
Wilton had stretched his legs towards the fire.
“Over a thousand elephants, they say. Fourteen hundred, according to some accounts.”
Banda, sitting beyond the lamplight, had listened without speaking.
“An astonishing sportsman,” Wilton continued.
One of the older camp men said something quietly in Sinhala.
“What was that?” Wilton asked.
Banda stirred the embers with a stick.
“He says people still remember Rogers, sir.”
The planter suspected that this was only part of the translation.
Major Thomas William Rogers had been dead for almost half a century, yet his name still travelled through Ceylon’s hunting camps. Men repeated the enormous totals attributed to him as though reciting the scores of a famous cricketer. His death by lightning at Haputale had acquired another life in village stories, where the elephants were seldom forgotten.
The planter had heard both versions.
Until that evening, he had preferred the one told over drinks.
Banda lifted his hand.
They waited.
From somewhere ahead came a slow cracking sound.
The planter could see nothing except leaves, creepers, and a dark tangle of branches.
Then a tree moved.
At least, that was his first impression.
A grey shape emerged behind it, so large and so quiet that he wondered how long he had been looking at the animal without recognising it.
An elephant stood in the shade, pulling vegetation towards its mouth.
Banda turned his face slightly to feel the breeze.
He led them away from the path and through a shallow depression. They moved slowly, placing their feet where he placed his. The planter’s rifle, comfortable enough when admired in the bungalow, became an awkward burden among the branches.
A creeper caught his hat.
He freed it and looked up to find Banda watching him.
Nobody spoke.
This was the part absent from the stories told at dinner: the waiting, the sweat running into the eyes, the difficulty of moving a human body quietly through a forest that seemed designed to catch it.
The gun-bearer followed close behind.
The planter could hear the elephant chewing.
Banda stopped beside a tree and pointed.
There were more of them.
A second adult stood farther back, half concealed by leaves. Beside her, a calf pressed its forehead against her leg.
The planter lowered his rifle.
They watched the little animal reach for a branch beyond its grasp. Its trunk curled, missed, and tried again.
The mother pulled the branch down.
The calf took possession of it with great satisfaction.
Banda glanced at the planter.
“Leave these,” the planter whispered.
They withdrew as carefully as they had approached.
Only when they reached the stream did Banda speak.
“Big bull farther down, sir. Alone.”
The planter nodded.
He sat on a stone and took the water bottle.
His hands were trembling slightly, although he had fired no shot.
The bull’s trail led them into thicker forest.
Here the ground was broken by old pits and exposed roots. Flies gathered around their faces. Once, Banda stopped so suddenly that the planter nearly walked into him.
The elephant was ahead.
They could hear its breathing.
The planter had imagined that an animal of such size would announce itself continuously. Instead, it stood beyond a screen of leaves, betrayed by a faint movement and the occasional sound of vegetation being torn.
Banda indicated that they should wait.
The bull moved into a narrow opening.
It had no great tusks of the kind illustrated in the African hunting books. Its magnificence lay elsewhere: in the weight of its head, the thickness of its forelegs, and the ease with which it broke a branch that would have required two men and an axe.
The planter brought the rifle halfway up.
Then the elephant stopped chewing.
Its trunk rose.
Banda’s hand tightened around the planter’s sleeve.
The breeze had changed.
For a moment, all three men stood motionless.
The elephant turned towards them.
The planter saw an eye, small in that enormous head, and suddenly understood that the animal was watching him as closely as he had been watching it.
Then it came forward.
Banda pulled him sideways.
A branch struck his face. He stumbled against a root, recovered, and found the rifle caught across two saplings.
The elephant’s approach filled the space around them.
The planter dragged the weapon free.
A shot crashed through the trees.
Smoke obscured everything.
He did not know whether he had hit the elephant. He scarcely knew whether he had aimed.
Banda shoved him behind a thick trunk.
Something struck the tree hard enough to shake loose fragments of bark.
The gun-bearer cried out.
For several seconds, the planter could hear nothing distinctly. There was movement, a violent breaking of branches, and the pounding of his own blood.
Then the noise began moving away.
They remained crouched behind the tree.
Banda was the first to rise.
He listened for a long time.
“Gone,” he said.
The planter looked down.
One leg of his trousers had split at the knee. There was blood on his hand, though he could not immediately find the wound.
The gun-bearer sat on the ground, still holding the spare rifle.
His mouth was open.
“Are you hurt?” the planter asked.
The man shook his head.
Banda examined the damaged tree.
The planter looked at the mark on the bark and then at the place where he had been standing.
For the rest of the morning, nobody mentioned Rogers.
They found no blood on the retreating elephant’s trail.
Banda followed it far enough to satisfy himself that the animal was moving steadily, then returned.
The planter was waiting beside the stream.
“We’ll go back,” he said.
“To camp, sir?”
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow?”
The planter washed his scratched hand.
“Home.”
Banda nodded without surprise.
At camp, Wilton received the account with disappointment.
“You had him right in front of you.”
“Yes.”
“And only one shot?”
“One was quite enough for me.”
Wilton began explaining what he would have done.
The planter let him finish.
That night, rain drove them beneath the canvas shelter. Thunder travelled across the forest, followed by a flash that briefly showed every tree beyond the camp.
Wilton looked up.
“Rogers weather.”
The older camp man rose and moved farther from the opening.
The planter watched the darkness where the trees had appeared.
He thought of the bull reaching for leaves, unaware that men had spent three days arranging to kill it.
Then, unexpectedly, he thought of Robin.
He wondered whether the dog was sleeping beside a fire in the cave.
When the planter returned to the bungalow, Robin heard him before Appu did.
The dog sprang from beneath the veranda chair and ran towards the gate.
The planter stopped on the path.
“Robin?”
Robin leapt against him, putting two muddy paws on his coat.
The planter dropped his bag and bent down.
For a little while, neither paid attention to anyone else.
Dingiri stood beside the veranda.
He had stayed overnight at Appu’s invitation. Robin had searched the bungalow twice before settling down, and Dingiri had been unable to bring himself to call him away.
Now he watched the planter rubbing the dog’s ears.
Appu came down the steps.
“The boy brought him yesterday, sir.”
The planter looked up.
Dingiri lowered his eyes.
“He kept looking towards the estate road.”
“Did he?”
“I thought he wanted to see you.”
Robin left the planter, ran back to Dingiri, and then returned again, as though making certain that both had noticed the other.
The planter straightened slowly. His knee had stiffened during the journey.
“Come and sit down,” he told the boy.
Appu brought tea.
Robin lay between their chairs.
For a while, the planter asked about the cave, the stream, and Dingiri’s mother. The boy answered cautiously at first, then with increasing ease.
“Do you still feed him jackfruit?”
“When we have it.”
“Appu says he refused it here.”
“Was it cooked properly?”
From the doorway, Appu gave Dingiri a wounded look.
The planter laughed.
Then Dingiri noticed the torn sleeve and the scratches on his hand.
“Did you shoot an elephant, sir?”
“I fired at one.”
“Did it die?”
“I don’t think I touched it.”
Dingiri looked relieved.
The planter watched him.
“Would you have been sorry?”
The boy stroked Robin’s head.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
Dingiri considered the question.
He knew that elephants could ruin a field in a night. He had heard men shouting and beating tins to drive them away. He had seen the damage afterwards.
But that was not what he had been asked.
“Was it troubling you?”
The planter looked towards the tea slopes.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
Appu collected the empty cups.
Late in the afternoon, Dingiri rose.
“We should go before dark.”
Robin stood too, then looked at the planter.
The boy’s face tightened.
The planter noticed.
He reached towards the nail beside the door, where Appu had hung the collar. His hand paused beneath it.
Then he took his walking stick instead.
“I’ll come part of the way.”
They went down the estate road together.
Robin ran ahead, returned, and ran ahead again. He stopped at a ditch to investigate something that required careful attention.
Neither of them hurried him.
At the forest path, the planter rested both hands on his stick.
“Come again,” he told Dingiri.
The boy nodded.
“Bring him when you visit your mother.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if he stays a night here, you can stay too. Appu will find you somewhere to sleep.”
Dingiri looked up.
“Without a chain?”
The planter glanced at the dog.
“Without a chain.”
Robin was already several paces into the forest. He turned, waiting.
Dingiri followed him.
When the planter began walking home, he heard paws behind him.
Robin came back for one more greeting, pushed his nose against the planter’s hand, and then hurried after the boy.
The planter watched until both had disappeared among the trees.
Up at the bungalow, Appu was preparing the dog’s supper.
He would leave it covered
