The Mystic Masseur Read Online Free PDF Page A

making joke.’
    ‘Ah, sahib. Why I should make joke with you, eh? You want me call Leela here self, and you could ask she?’
    Ganesh heard a titter behind the lace curtain. He looked down quickly at the floor and saw it littered with empty cigarette boxes and discarded paper bags. ‘Nah, nah. Don’t bother the girl.’
    A week after that Ramlogan told Ganesh, ‘Something happen to Leela foot, sahib. I wonder if you would mind having a look at it.’
    ‘I ain’t a doctor, man. I ain’t know anything about people foot.’
    Ramlogan laughed and almost slapped Ganesh on the back. ‘Man, how you could say a thing like that, sahib? Ain’t you was learning learning all all the time at the town college? And too besides, don’t think I forgetting that your father was the best massager we had.’
    For years old Mr Ramsumair had this reputation until, his luck running out, he massaged a young girl and killed her. The Princes Town doctor diagnosed appendicitis and Mr Ramsumair had to spend a lot of money to keep out of trouble. He never massaged afterwards.
    ‘Wasn’t his fault,’ Ramlogan said, leading Ganesh behind the counter to the curtained doorway. ‘He was still the best massager we ever had, and I too too proud that I know his one and only son.’
    Leela was sitting in a hammock made from a sugar sack. She was wearing a clean cotton frock and her long black hair looked washed and combed.
    ‘Why you don’t have a look at Leela foot, sahib?’
    Ganesh looked at Leela’s foot, and a curious thing happened. ‘I just seemed to touch it,’ he wrote, ‘and it was all right.’
    Ramlogan did not hide his admiration. ‘Like I tell you, sahib. You is your father son. Is only special people who could do that sort of thing. I wonder why you don’t take up massaging.’
    Ganesh remembered the queer feeling he had of being separated from the village people, and he felt that there was something in what Ramlogan said.
    He didn’t know what Leela thought because as soon as he had fixed her foot she giggled and ran away.
    Thereafter Ganesh was a more willing visitor at Ramlogan’s, and with every visit he noted improvements in the shop. The most spectacular of these was the introduction of a new glass case. It was given pride of place in the middle of the counter; it was so bright and clean it looked out of place.
    ‘Is really Leela idea,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It does keep out the flies from the cakes and it more modern.’
    The flies now congregated inside the case. Presently a pane was broken and patched up again with brown paper. The glass case now belonged.
    Ramlogan said, ‘I doing my best to make this Fourways a modern place – as you see – but is hard, man, sahib.’

    Ganesh still went out cycling, his thoughts maundering between himself, his future, and life itself; and it was during one of his afternoon wanderings that he met the man who was to have a decisive influence on his life.
    The first meeting was not happy. It happened on the dusty road that begins at Princes Town and wriggles like a black snake through the green of sugar-cane to Debe. He was not expecting to see anyone on the road at that dead time of day when the sun was almost directly overhead and the wind had ceased to rustle the sugar-cane. He had passed the level-crossing and was freewheeling down the incline just before the small village of Parrot Trace when a man ran into the middle of the road at the bottom of the incline and waved to him to stop. He was a tall man and looked altogether odd, even for Parrot Trace. He was covered here and there in a yellow cotton robe like a Buddhist monk and he had a staff and a bundle.
    ‘My brother!’ the man shouted in Hindi.
    Ganesh stopped because he couldn’t do anything else; and, because he was afraid of the man, he was rude. ‘Who you is, eh?’
    ‘Indian,’ the man said in English, with an accent Ganesh had never heard before. His long thin face was fairer than any Indian’s and his teeth