The Gentleman in the Cave

Every afternoon, when the shadows of the tea bushes lengthened across the road, the planter walked his dog past Dingiri’s house.

The planter wore a white coat and carried a walking stick. The dog wore a leather collar and walked at the end of a lead. He was white with chestnut patches, long ears, and a tail that seemed to have more opinions than the rest of him.

Dingiri liked the dog immediately.

He was less certain about the planter.

Whenever the dog stopped to investigate something interesting, the lead tightened. A scent beneath a stone, a lizard in the grass, the urgent news left by another dog—all these were interrupted by the same sharp command.

“Come along, Robin.”

Robin came along, usually looking back.

Dingiri understood that look. At sixteen, he had spent enough time being called away from things he liked.

Since his father’s death, he and his mother had lived with an uncle near the plantation. There was work in the paddy field, work around the house, and occasionally work on the estate. His uncle believed that any boy without a task would soon find trouble.

Dingiri preferred the forest. He knew where fish sheltered beneath the stream banks, which abandoned clearings still had jackfruit trees, and where a rock overhang remained dry through the heaviest rain.

“Go and live there, then,” his uncle often told him.

Eventually, Dingiri began to consider it.

One afternoon Robin approached him while the planter examined a loose stone in his boot. Dingiri held out his hand. The dog sniffed it, then lowered his head to be stroked.

His ears were softer than anything Dingiri had ever touched.

“Leave him alone,” the planter said.

Dingiri withdrew his hand. Robin was pulled away, but turned once to look at him.

After that, the boy found reasons to be near the road at walking time. Sometimes he carried firewood. Sometimes he sat repairing a basket that required an unusually long time to repair.

Robin began wagging his tail when he saw him.

From the estate horse-keeper, Dingiri learnt that the dog slept on the back veranda, chained to a post at night.

“Why chain him?” he asked.

“He came from England. He’s worth a great deal.”

Dingiri considered this explanation. It seemed a poor reward for being valuable.

On the last evening of December, his uncle struck him for leaving the field before the work was finished. Dingiri had gone to help find a missing calf, but his uncle was not interested in the calf.

Later, his mother rubbed oil into his bruised shoulder.

“Try to listen to him,” she said. “We have nowhere else to go.”

Dingiri looked at the floor. He had somewhere. But it was not a place he could offer his mother.

When the house was asleep, he wrapped a knife, a small cooking pot, flint and steel, and a little salt in an old cloth. He stood beside his mother’s mat for a moment, then slipped outside.

He did not go straight to the forest.

Robin lifted his head when Dingiri reached the back veranda. Before the dog could bark, the boy whispered his name.

The tail began striking the boards.

“Quiet. You’ll wake your master.”

He offered a handful of rice saved from supper, then reached for the chain’s fastening.

His fingers stopped.

Until that moment, taking Robin had seemed like part of leaving home. Now, with his hand on somebody else’s chain, he understood that it was stealing.

Behind the closed door, a chair creaked.

Dingiri waited, hardly breathing. Robin licked his wrist.

He opened the fastening.

They crossed the yard together. Beyond the road, beneath the first trees, Dingiri removed the collar as well.

“There,” he whispered. “Now you can stop when you like.”

Robin immediately stopped at a bush.

It was nearly dawn when they reached the cave.

The entrance lay beneath a slanting slab of rock, above a narrow stream. Inside, there was room for a small fire and two sleepers, provided one of them did not object to sleeping close to the other.

Robin had no objection.

Dingiri spread dry leaves beneath his cloth. The dog rested his head against the boy’s leg and fell asleep.

The first two days were less comfortable than Dingiri had imagined. Freedom did not supply breakfast. Robin watched him expectantly whenever he moved the pot.

Dingiri caught small fish in the stream and roasted them. Robin seized the first one too soon, dropped it, and looked offended.

“You must wait, mahattaya. There are no servants here.”

After that, Dingiri called him Mahattaya—the gentleman.

In an abandoned clearing, they found jackfruit trees above the remains of an old fence. Dingiri brought back a mature fruit, cut it open, and boiled the flesh in his pot.

Robin inspected an uncooked piece and turned away.

“You can’t expect English food in this house.”

When the jackfruit was cooked, Dingiri set aside a plain portion for the dog and seasoned his own with salt and chilli. Robin tried a little, considered it, then finished everything.

That evening, they slept with full stomachs.

Gradually, their days acquired a pattern. They went to the stream in the morning, explored the forest, and returned before dark. Sometimes they hunted. Robin would suddenly become still beside a thicket, one foreleg lifted, his nose pointing towards something Dingiri could not see.

The boy learnt to watch the dog as closely as the ground.

Sometimes they returned with a hare. Sometimes they returned with nothing, and there was jackfruit again. Dingiri roasted what they caught and divided it between them. On lean days he gave Robin some of his own share.

The dog no longer looked behind him for permission before entering a stream. He plunged in, emerged dripping, and shook himself beside Dingiri with magnificent disregard for the consequences.

His white coat acquired brown streaks that had nothing to do with his breeding. Burrs caught in his ears. Each evening, Dingiri picked them out while Robin lay beside the fire.

There were difficulties. Rain trapped them in the cave. Damp wood filled it with smoke. Once, Robin cut a paw on a sharp stone, and Dingiri spent a morning washing it and preventing him from running.

Yet the dog seemed content. He woke when the birds woke, followed scents until they ended, and slept with his nose against a human hand.

During a long afternoon of rain, Dingiri told him about his mother.

“She’ll be worrying,” he said.

Robin raised his head.

“I should have left a message.”

He had meant to go back briefly, but the longer he stayed away, the harder returning became. There would be questions about the dog. There would be his uncle. There would be the chain.

Meanwhile, his mother had reported him missing to the police vidane, the village officer. The planter had reported Robin stolen. The vidane recorded both complaints without connecting them.

A missing boy might be staying with relations. A valuable English dog might have been taken many miles away.

By February, a notice describing the stolen dog had appeared. Dingiri knew nothing about it. He was occupied with more immediate concerns: a cracked pot, diminishing salt, and a gentleman who had discovered that chasing monkeys was an excellent way to spend an otherwise quiet morning.

It was a hunter who eventually brought news.

He had been moving silently along a wooded ridge when something white crossed an opening below him. He stopped. For a moment, between the trunks, he saw a dog with chestnut patches and remarkably long ears.

Then it vanished into the undergrowth.

He saw no person. He heard no voice. There was no reason to call out, and he continued along the ridge.

But that evening, passing through the village, he mentioned what he had seen.

“An odd-looking dog,” he told the vidane. “Not one of ours. White, with patches. Ears hanging halfway down its face.”

The vidane put down his betel box.

“Where?”

The following morning, the hunter led him into the forest with the planter, the horse-keeper, and two village men. The planter carried a new collar and lead.

Near the place of the sighting, they searched slowly. One of the men found a narrow track down to the stream. Farther on, the hunter noticed a faint thread of smoke among the trees.

They approached the rock quietly.

Dingiri was lifting the jackfruit pot from the fire when Robin stood up. The boy looked towards the entrance and found six men looking back.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then the planter called, “Robin!”

The dog bounded towards him, tail wagging. The planter bent to stroke his head. Relief softened his face, until he saw the boy behind him.

“You stole my dog.”

Dingiri lowered the pot.

“Yes, sir.”

The vidane caught him by the arm.

“So this is where you’ve been.”

Dingiri did not struggle. He watched the planter buckle the collar around Robin’s neck.

The dog accepted the familiar hands and the familiar voice. But when the planter turned towards the path, Robin stopped.

“Come along.”

Robin took two steps, looked back at Dingiri, and sat down.

The planter pulled gently. The dog leaned against the collar.

“Robin. Come.”

Robin lay down.

The horse-keeper took the lead and tried coaxing him. Then he tried pulling. Robin spread his front paws against the earth. When the man pulled harder, a low growl came from beneath the long ears.

The horse-keeper loosened his grip.

“He won’t come, sir.”

The vidane looked suspiciously at Dingiri.

“What have you done to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Call him, then.”

Dingiri swallowed.

“Mahattaya.”

Robin sprang up and came straight to him, dragging the loose lead. He pressed against the boy’s legs, then turned towards the cave, where their breakfast stood cooling.

The horse-keeper’s mouth twitched. He looked away before the planter noticed.

The planter took a biscuit from his pocket. Robin ate it gratefully. Then he returned to Dingiri.

The planter looked inside the cave. There were two portions of food on flat stones, a heap of dry firewood, and a bed of leaves with a boy’s cloth spread across it. His dog’s old collar lay in a crevice.

“What have you been feeding him?”

“Fish. Meat, when we get it. Jackfruit.”

“My dog eats jackfruit?”

“Yes, sir. You have to let it cool.”

The vidane shifted impatiently.

“We should go. His mother thinks he may be dead.”

Dingiri’s face changed.

“Is she all right?”

“She will be, when she sees you.”

The planter unbuckled the collar.

“Walk with him,” he told Dingiri.

The boy went a few paces towards the stream. Robin followed readily. But at the fork where the path led out towards the plantation, the dog stopped again. He looked up the homeward path, then back towards the rock.

A squirrel moved overhead. Robin’s ears lifted. For a moment, everybody waited while he considered a matter far more interesting than theirs.

Then he trotted back to the cave and lay down at its entrance.

The planter stood with the empty lead in his hand.

He had expected gratitude, perhaps an ecstatic reunion. He had supplied good food, a clean bed, and every comfort a dog could reasonably require.

Apparently, he had overlooked a few unreasonable requirements.

“I can carry him,” the horse-keeper offered, without enthusiasm.

The planter watched Robin stretch out on the warm stone.

“No.”

He turned to Dingiri.

“You will go home and see your mother. Today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you will not steal another dog.”

“No, sir.”

The vidane cleared his throat. “About this one—”

“I shall not make a complaint against the boy.”

“But the dog, sir?”

The planter looked down at the collar. Then he put it in his pocket.

“The dog seems to have made a complaint against me.”

Dingiri crouched beside Robin and stroked his ears.

“I have to see Amma. I’ll come back before dark.”

Robin lifted his head, licked the boy’s hand, and settled again. Dingiri rose reluctantly. This time the dog let him go.

As the party climbed towards the ridge, the planter looked back once.

Robin lay at the mouth of the cave, his paws crossed, watching the trees. Beside him stood a small pot of cooling jackfruit.

For the first time in his life, the gentleman was waiting for nobody’s permission.

---