Ithaca by David Davidar

or was that something that looked like a human figure wrapped in a lungi? He dropped to the floor, crawled across the room, pushed open the door, crawled out into the passage that separated his room from his parents’ room, closed the door to his room, and ran to the cupboard containing his father’s shotgun. His mother was having a bath, and the servants were in the kitchen preparing supper, as the neighbours were coming over that night.
    Breaking open the shotgun as he had seen his father do, he had loaded it with two cartridges, shoved a couple more into the pocket of his shorts, snapped the barrels back into position, run back into his room, dropped to the floor, and crawled along to the window where he peered over the sill as he had done a few minutes earlier. There was nothing to be seen by the hedge in what little light remained. Not once did it occur to him to call the butler or his assistant.
    Although he was terrified he had quietly unlocked the door to the verandah. Then, as smoothly as he could, he had pushed open the door, before rushing out, the gun held chest high, and screaming, “Who is there? Come out at once or I will shoot!” There wasn’t a breath of wind. The emptiness of the lawn mocked his terror. There was no one by the hedge. He heard a slight creaking sound. He turned towards it; in the dim light the swing swayed up and down.
    Within minutes, the verandah light had come on, and the butler, who had heard him shouting, was there, a poker in his hand. Zach explained what had just happened. His mother joined them and got very angry with him for having takenhis father’s shotgun, and for having put himself needlessly at risk. She phoned the police and a police jeep arrived half an hour later and stayed the night. When Zach’s father returned he had been as cross as his mother had been; he said if Zach ever touched the shotgun again before his sixteenth birthday he would rescind his promise to allow him to use the weapon. When the murderer was caught four days later in the coolie lines a few miles away, where he had been given shelter by a relative, he admitted to the police that during his days of freedom he had spent some time one evening watching Nirmal aiyah’s son in his room. Remembering the incident still alarms him, but he thinks that was the day he had truly begun to learn how to fend for himself.
    As he grew up he figured out how to temper his impetuosity, developed the strength and flexibility that would see him through difficult situations; from his father, he inherited traits that he often wished were better formed in himself, such as patience and calm; but it was from his mother that he got the qualities that most defined him: the ability to take risks, a deep stoicism that helped him through the hard times, and the resilience that kept him going no matter how many times he was struck down.
    Thinking about her now he feels unexpectedly crushed by her death, especially because he hadn’t been able to mourn her properly. This was true of his father’s passing as well, but at least then Julia and his surviving parent cushioned his sense of loss. Moreover, he was closer to his mother than his father, not that it had mattered very much, he was always the absent son who phoned home from time to time and visited once ayear. Julia and his mother had not got on and that had strained their relationship for a while. When his father died, his mother and he had made up and he had tried unsuccessfully to get her to return to the land of her birth so he could take care of her. But there was no moving her. She had turned her face against her parents and England after they had opposed her marriage to the Indian coffee planter she had fallen in love with when she was twenty-two, and so far as she was concerned the decision was permanent. She had stayed away from their funerals, she had signed over everything they had left her in their respective wills to her sister, and now, nearly half a century