The Flower of Forgiveness

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

It gave crocodiles. Of all things in the world crocodiles! Not a welcome gift to many, but Lâl, it seemed, was a hunter of crocodiles. Not a mere slayer of alligators, like the men of the half-savage tribes who frequent the river land; who array themselves in a plethora of blue beads, and live by the creeks and jheels on what they can catch or steal; who track the cumbersome beasts to their nightly lair in some narrow inlet, and, after barring escape by a stealthy earthwork, fall on the helpless creature at dawn with spears and arrows. Lâl was not of these; he was of another temper. He hunted the crocodile in its native element, stalked it through the quicksands, knife in hand, dived with it into the swift stream, sped like a fish to the soft belly beneath, and struck upwards with unerring hand, once, twice, thrice, while the turbid orange water glowed crimson with the spouting blood.

I heard this tale curiously, but incredulously. Why, I asked, should Lâl run such risks? What good were crocodiles to him when they were slain? There was not so much risk, after all, they replied, for it was only the bottle-nosed ones that he hunted, and though, of course, the snub-nosed ones lived in the river also--God destroy the horrid monsters!--still they did not interfere in the fight. And Lâl was careful, all the more careful, because he had but two possessions to guard, his skin and his knife. As to what Lâl did with the crocodiles, why, he ate them, of course. Not all; he spared some for his friends, for those who were good to him, and gave him something in return. Had the Presence never heard that the poor ate crocodile flesh? They themselves, of course, did not touch the unclean animal; and their gifts to Lâl were purely disinterested. He was a straight-walking, a labourful man, and that was the only reason why they lent him a field. Even the Presence would acknowledge that crocodile flesh without bread would be uninteresting diet; but as a rule the pig, the parrots, the squirrels left enough for Lâl to eat with his jerked meat. The village lent him the sickle, of course, and the flail, and the mill, sometimes even the girdle on which to bake the unleavened bread; but all for love, only for love. Yet if the Presence desired it they could show him the jerked meat, some that Lâl had left for the poor. It was dry? Oh, yes! Lâl cut the great beasts into strips, and laid them in the sun on the dry sand, sitting beside them to scare away the carrion birds. Sometimes there would be a crowd of vultures, and Lâl with his knife sitting in the midst. "He will have to sell some of his jerked crocodile to pay his revenue this year," I remarked, just to amuse them. Again the idea was comic; evidently Lâl and money were incompatible, and the very idea of his owning any caused them to chuckle unrestrainedly amongst themselves. Then, growing grave, they explained at length how Lâl had nothing in the world but his knife. All the rest--the sun, the river, the crocodiles, the field, the bullocks, the plough, and the seed-grain--were lent to him by them and the good God; lent to him and to the other people who ate of the field of Lâl.

As I rode away a brace of black partridges rose from one of the green patches, and close to the tamarisk shelter a brown rat sat balancing a half-dried stalk of barley. The river gleamed in the distance, a wedge-shaped flight of coolin cleft the sky. All that day, when the shadow-like crocodiles slipped into the sliding water, I thought of Lâl and his knife. Was it a crocodile, after all; or was it a man, stealthy, swift, and silent? Who could tell, when there was nothing but a shadow, a slip, and then a few air bubbles on the sliding river? Or was that Lâl yonder where the vultures ringed a sand-bank far on the western side? Why not? None knew whence he came or whither he went, what he hoped, or what he feared; only his field bare witness to one human frailty--hunger; and that he shared with the pig, and the parrot, and the squirrel people. But though my thoughts were full of Lâl for a day or two, the memory of him passed as I left the river land, and once more spring, summer, and autumn brought forgetfulness.

There were busy times for all the revenue officers next year. The fitful river had chosen to desert its eastern bank altogether, and concentrate its force upon the western; so while yard after yard of ancestral land was giving way before the fierce stream, amidst much wringing of hands on the one side, there was joy on the other over long rich stretches ready for the plough and the red tape of measurement. In the press of work even the sight of the river land failed to awake any memory of Lâl. It was not until I was re-entering the outskirts of the village at sundown that something jogged my brain, making me turn to the posse comitatus behind me and ask,--

"And where, this year, is the field of Lâl?"

We were passing over an open space baked almost to whiteness by the constant sun,--a hard resonant place set round with gnarled jhand trees, and dotted over with innumerable little mud mounds.

"There," wheezed the venerable pantaloon, pressing forward and pointing to one newer than the rest. "That is the field of Lâl."

Then I saw that we were in the village burial-ground. I looked up inquiringly.

"Huzoor!" repeated a younger man, "that is Lâl's field. It is his own this time; but for all that the Sirkâr will not charge him revenue." The grim joke, and the idea of Lâl's having six feet of earth of his own at last, once more roused their sense of humour.

"And the other people who ate of the field of Lâl?" I asked, half in earnest, for somehow my heart was sad.