He had always wanted to return after growing up, just to see how much the modern Bundi compared to the image he had in his mind.
“You know, Shankar, it is really quite strange. The first time I came here I used to sit cross-legged on these chairs. It seemed as though I was sitting on a throne. Now the chairs seem both small in size and very ordinary. The drawing-room here used to seem absolutely enormous. If I hadn’t returned, those memories would have remained stuck in my mind.”
“But why did you suddenly think of a tree?”
[…] “I can’t remember that now. Something had brought me near the tree. I had done something here. A European…”
“European?”
“No, I can’t recall anything at all. Memory is a strange business…”
It was not the usual kind of doll little girls play with. One of Jayanto’s uncles had brought for him from Switzerland a twelve-inch-long figure of an old man, dressed in traditional Swiss attire. Apparently, it was very lifelike.
“But once I had Fritz, I forgot all my other toys. I played only with him. A time came when I began to spend hours just talking to him. Our conversation had to be one-sided, of course, but Fritz had such a funny smile on his lips and such a look in his eyes, that it seemed to me as though he could understand every word. Sometimes I wondered if he would actually converse with me if I could speak to him in German. Now it seems like a childish fantasy, but at the time the whole thing was very real to me.”
“In other words, Fritz did not exist for me anymore. He was dead. […] I buried him under that deodar tree. I had wanted to make a coffin. Fritz was, after all, a European. But I could find nothing, not even a little box. So, in the end, I buried him just like that.”
I had no doubt that Jayanto had only had a bad dream. All those childhood memories had upset him, obviously, and that was what had led to his dreaming of a cat walking on his chest.
“Fritz came into our room last night. Those little marks on my quilt were his footprints.”
There was very little I could do at this except catch hold of him by the shoulders and shake him. How could I talk sensibly to someone whose mind was obsessed with such an absurd idea?
If Jayanto could actually be shown that that was all that was left of his precious doll, he might be able to rid himself of his weird notions; otherwise he would have strange dreams every night and talk of Fritz walking on his chest.
The spade slipped from the gardener’s hand. I, too, gaped at the ground, open-mouthed in horror, amazement and disbelief.
There lay at our feet, covered in dust, lying flat on its back, a twelve-inch-long, pure white, perfect little human skeleton.
