Fritz

“Fritz” is a short story which has elements of horror, macabre, and paranormal
events written by Satyajit Ray. The story unravels in first person narrated by
Shankar, the protagonist’s childhood friend and bystander of the events that take
place in the story. The mono-syllabic name refers to a Swiss doll and the entire
story revolved around the mystery associated with the doll.

The story starts with a conversation between the lead characters of the story –
Jayanto and Shankar at a circuit house in Bundi. They were childhood friends
and had attended the same school and college. Jayanto worked in the editorial
division of a newspaper and Shankar was a teacher. Jayanto had always wanted
to revisit Bundi, having lived there for a short while as a kid during one of his
father’s aechaelogical work trips. He wished to compare modern Bundi of that
time to his childhood memory of the place. Shankar felt that Jaipur, Udaipur
and Chittor had more historical places to visit but “simply as a beautiful place,
Bundi was perfect.” Shankar was excited to visit the fort of Bundi. Together, the
two friends set time aside from their busy schedules and stationed themselves at
the circuit house at Bundi to enjoy the antiquated town.

The beautiful circuit house was built during the time of the British and was
more than a hundred years old. It was a single storey building with sloping
roofs. The rooms had high ceilings and the skylights had long ropes which were
used to open and shut them. The veranda faced east and opposite to the veranda
was a huge garden with roses and numerous trees housing the vast section of
local birds. Parrots could be seen and peacocks could be heard outside the
compound.

The antique town of Bundi took one back to the Rajputana era with its cobbled
streets, balconies jutting out of houses and masterful carvings on wooden doors.
Shankar says that – “It was difficult to believe we were living in the age of
machines.”

While sipping tea at the circuit house, Shankar noticed that Jayanto’s spirits
were low, for which he blamed the combination of nostalgia and his friend’s
sensitive nature. When Jayanto begins talking, we find that he was indeed in a
pensive state, reminiscing how small and majestic he felt sitting on the same
cane chair as a kid. Both friends decide to take a stroll in their bungalow’s
garden. During the stroll, Jatanto excitedly spots a deodar tree that he
remembered from his childhood and exclaims – “Yes, It’s here! Exactly where
it was before”. However he could not pinpoint the exact reason why that tree
had a special place in his memory, except that it had something to do with a
“European”.

During dinner, Jayanto was able to remember his childhood days and we find
out the real significance of the deodar tree. The tree was connected with the
memory of a toy that Jayanto enamoured. It was a unique twelve inch figure of
an old man dressed in tradition Swiss style bought at a village in Switzerland
and “it was very lifelike”. It was not mechanised but could bend and twist its
limbs and it had a pleasant smile on its face. The doll had particularized details
on its belt, buttons, pockets, coolars , socks and had a wore a Swiss Cap with a
yellow feather sticking out of it. The seller jokingly said “He’s called Fritz. You
must call him by this name.” Jayanto also recalls his memories of having long
one sided conversations with Fritz and believed that Fritz could respond back if
he conversed in German, which presently seemed like a childish fantasy to him.
One day when Jayanto was in the lawn with Fritz beside him, he spilt tea on his
pants and immediately got changed but when he returned Fritz was nowhere to
be seen. After a bit of searching he found that a couple of stray dogs had
mutilated Fritz and he felt that Fritz was no more – “He was dead.” Jayanto
buried Fritz under the Deodar tree.

Later that night, Shankar woke up to find a disturbed Jatanto, who claimed that
he had felt something walk over his chest. Shankar tried to reason with Jayanto
by saying that it might have been a cat or a rat. Both frinds tried to look for
small anumals who could have been the culprit but found nothing. However,
there were brown circular marks on the quilt. In the morning, Shankar could tell
that Jatanto had had troubles sleeping, and thought of giving him a tranquiliser
later that night.

That morning Shankar and Jayanto left to explore the Bundi fort, and for a short
while Jayanto was enthusiastic again as he spotted pictures that he remembered
from his childhood. However, after some time, Jayanto went alone to the terrace
and sat absent mindedly. Shankar desired to explore the fort for some more time
but seeing his friend in that state, he opted to return back to the circuit house.
Worried about his friend, he asked Jayanto what the matter was. Then, wich
some reluctance, Jayanto confessed to him that he thought it was Fritz who had
visted him the previous night. He supports his statement by saying that he felt
that whatever walked on his chest had only two feet.
Shankar grew worrid about Jayanto’s mental state and decided tthat he would
give him a nerve tonic. Another brilliant idea he had was to dig up the doll’s
grave, so that his friend would be able to see some remnants of the doll such as
the metallic elements of the doll – “buckle of a belt or brass buttons on a
jacket”. The aim of the idea was to get the weird notion of Jayanto feeling that
his childhood doll was out of its grave visiting him.

Jayanto agreed to Shankar’s idea, and they got hold of a gardener to dig up the
spot by the deodar tree where Fritz was buried. During this task Jayanto was so
nervous that he soaked the collar of his shirt with his sweat and “stared at the
ground unblinkingly”. What the two friends found after the grave was dug open
elft them both astonished and scared out of their minds, “There lay at our feet,
covered in dust, lying flat on its back, a twelve-inch-long, pure white, perfect
little human skeleton.” The story ends with this cliff-hanger, leaving the
reader’s mind flooded with questions and various interpretations.

Extra:

Ray has also handled characterization adeptly in this story. Jayanto is sketched
as an emotional and sensitive man, who is troubled by paranoia and memories
of the past; whereas, Shankar is diametrically opposite with his practical
approach to everything. This contrast between the characters’ defining traits
adds balance to the story, such that the supernatural and the real exist together.
In fact, both characters present to us a beautiful bond of friendship that exists
between two childhood friends, despite the fact that age has matured them into
very different people. The patient and steady care with which Shankar handles
Jayanto when he is acting paranoid sheds light on the beautiful equation that the
two men share with each other.

From the beginning of the story, we can understand that something is weighing
heavy on Jayanto’s mind. He was excited about coming to Bundi; but once
there, he seems distracted, pensive, and troubled by the intermittent burst of
memories caused upon visiting the place where he had experienced something
tragic – the loss of his favourite toy and childhood companion. Memories of the
toy begin to haunt him. This preoccupation with his childhood toy and its
freshly unearthed memories even spiral him into a paranoid episode where he
thinks the doll actually visited him at night. One has no way of knowing about
what or who the doll actually was and what was buried by the deodar tree,
because these memories of the protagonist are heavily supressed and distorted.
And it is this dual suppression and distortion of memory that plays a central role
in the short story.