Free Diamond Dust by Anita Desai Page A

bending to fondle the dog's drooping head. 'He cannot help himself, you know, but afterwards he feels so sorry, and then he is
so
good!'
    'Yes, I see that,' C. P. Biswas said out of the corner of his mouth, 'and how long is that to last?'
    But Mr Das preferred not to hear, instead busying himself by making the collar more comfortable around Diamond's neck. 'Now I must take him back and give him his bath before I go to work.'
    'Good idea,' said C. P. Biswas, tucking his lips tightly over his yellow teeth.

    Diamond, who had been badly bitten and probably thrashed or stoned in the course of his latest affair, seemed to have quietened down a bit; at least there was a fairly long spell of obedience, lethargy, comparitive meekness.' Mr Das felt somewhat concerned about his health, but seeing him slip vitamin pills down the dog's throat, Mrs Das grimaced. 'Now what? He is
too
quiet for you? You need to give him. strength to go back to his badmashi?'
    That, sadly, was what happened. By the time the cool evenings and the early dark of November came around, Diamond was clearly champing at the bit: his howls echoed through sleepy Bharti Nagar, and neighbours pulled their quilts over their heads and huddled into their pillows, trying to block out the abominable noise. Mrs Das complained of the way he rattled his chain as he paced up and down the enclosed courtyard, and once again the garbage collectors, the postmen, the electric and telephone linesmen were menaced and threatened. Only Mr Das worried, 'He's gone off his food. Look, he's left his dinner uneaten again.'
    Inevitably the day came when he returned from work and was faced by an angrily triumphant Mrs Das bursting to tell him the news. 'Didn't I tell you that dog was planning badmashi again? When the gate was opened to let the gas man bring in the cylinder, your beloved pet knocked him down, jumped over his head and vanished!'
    The nights were chilly. With a woollen cap pulled down over his ears, and his tight short jacket buttoned up, Mr Das did his rounds in the dark, calling hoarsely till his throat rasped. He felt he was coming down with the flu, but he would not give up, he would not leave Diamond to the dire fate Mrs Das daily prophesied for him. A kind of mist enveloped the city streets—whether it was due to the dust, the exhaust of tired, snarled traffic or the cold, one could not tell, but the trees and hedges loomed like phantoms, the street-lamps were hazy, he imagined he saw Diamond when there was no dog there, and he was filled with a foreboding he would not confess to Mrs Das who waited for him at home with cough mixture, hot water and another muffler. 'Give him up,' she counselled grimly. 'Give him up before this search kills you.'
    But when tragedy struck, it did so in broad daylight, in the bright sunshine of a winter Sunday, and so there were many witnesses, many who saw the horrific event clearly, so clearly it could not be brushed aside as a nightmare. Mr Das was on the road back from Khan Market where he had gone to buy vegetables for Mrs Das, when the dog-catcher's van passed down the road with its howling, yelping catch of hounds peering out through the barred window. Of course Mr Das's head jerked back, his chin trembled with alertness, with apprehension, his eyes snapped with rage when he saw his pet enclosed there, wailing as he was being carried to his doom.
    'Diamond! They will kill my Diamond!' passersby heard him shriek in a voice unrecognisably high and sharp, and they saw the small man in his tight brown coat, his woollen cap and muffler, dash down his market bag into the dust, and chase the van with a speed no one would have thought possible. He sprang at its retreating back, hanging there from the bars for a horrid moment, and, as the van first braked, then jerked forward again, fell, fell backwards, onto his back, so that his head struck the stones in the street, and he lay there, entirely still, making no sound or movement at all.
    Behind