Saul walked over, opened the cabinet door, reached up and worked the manuscript out from under the several that were piled on top of it.
Except for Amruteshvar, who remained standing in darkness, the three went over to one of the small wooden tables, where Saul untied the cloth ribbon and unwrapped the palm-leaf book.
“Amrutajanmakatha,” said Saul, reading the title aloud and proceeding to open it at random pages.
“Amrutajanmakatha? What?” said Nada, perplexed.
“ ‘The Story of the Origin of the Divine Nectar,’ ” Saul said. “This is a poem about the arising of the amṛta from the churning of the Ocean of Milk. The title is vaguely similar to Amrutajijnasa, but this book has nothing to do with vetalas.”
He turned and looked at the others blankly.
“I guess this is what you must have seen in the catalogue, then,” said Shyamala coolly, looking him straight in the face, trembling slightly with what appeared to be barely restrained fury.
“Shyamala...,” Nada began hesitantly, in a voice touched with concern.
In an instant, Shyamala raised the flashlight and struck Nada on the head, its beam swinging crazily from ceiling to floor. Then Shyamala dropped the flashlight and savagely hurled herself on Nada. The two fell struggling, Nada shouting Shyamala’s name, Saul jumping back in confusion. Shyamala was now sitting astride Nada, strangling her, her fingers pressing deep into the flesh of her neck.
And then, reaching them without visible movement, Amruteshvar was kneeling beside them, gently but firmly grasping Shyamala by the back of the neck, growling something in the strange archaic Kannada that Nada had heard him speak to the possessed rickshaw driver.
Shyamala writhed as if she had been struck a mortal blow, throwing her head back, letting go of Nada, who lay still, dazed, her hair wet with blood.
The pale glow of the tube lights outside fell on Shyamala’s face, which Nada saw dreadfully twisted with confusion and rage.
Amruteshvar continued to grasp her neck, and she spasmed and grunted several times, her eyes turning up, then collapsed, vacated, on top of Nada, as Amruteshvar withdrew his hand.
Making no attempt to free herself, recovered from her brief swoon, Nada lay caressing Shyamala’s shoulders and head, and before long Shyamala began to weep softly. For Nada, there was nothing to forgive: from the moment that Shyamala had struck her, Nada had known.
“He could take any one of us, any time,” whispered Saul, still standing by the manuscript open on the desk, his eyes darting about.
“He won’t attempt it again,” replied Amruteshvar, not whispering. “Shyamala was the most vulnerable. She knew the least and had never been entered before. If he comes again, he must come as himself. Saul, you can easily find the manuscript.”
Picking up the flashlight, Saul walked over to the cabinet with the C manuscripts, and Amruteshvar rose to follow him. Saul opened the door and slowly moved the beam over the paper labels one by one, got down on his haunches to reach the lowest shelf, then stopped.
“Here,” he said, gently working a bundle out from under two others.
Amruteshvar was right next to him, a look of barely controlled impatience and eagerness on his usually impassive face, as Saul brought it to the table and untied it.
Nada had been sitting next to Shyamala on the floor with her arm around the younger woman’s shoulder. She now stood, came over to the table, opened the pile of palm leaves to the final chapter, slowly added page after unbound page to the larger pile as she sought the critical verse.
na śastreṇa na śāstreṇa nihantuṃ śakyate’ mṛtaḥ
Not by weapon, not by lore can the undead be killed
Nada’s face and Amruteshvar’s registered the same shock and surprise.
The gap! The same gap! And then:
mumukṣuṃ śamayet tu tam
one can lay to rest him who longs for release.
“How...?” began Amruteshvar in a voice shaking with consternation and disbelief.
Nada had never seen him betray any emotion stronger than pity, amusement, or at the most a moderate anger, as on the day when he had encountered and battled his brother. Now his face was the image of outrage, with wide eyes and trembling mouth. “He... he got to this one too! How did he get to this one?”
Nada and Saul stood staring at him, as appalled as if Avinash himself had appeared before them soaked in blood and with body parts tumbling from his mouth.
Everything had depended on Amruteshvar, this
mysterious man—if he was a man—who had until this moment given every sign of knowing everything, past, present, and future, that they would need to know in order to defeat Avinash. Even if he was standing back to watch them discover the truth for themselves, Nada had never had any doubt that he himself knew it, and that he could always consent to waive this exasperating condition and simply tell them what they needed to know when it became obvious that it was beyond them.
Tonight, confronted with this unexpected deviation from some ancient narrative of which he had thought he was the master, he had revealed his own limited and fallible humanity. In an instant, they had become four mere humans awaiting the pleasure of the truly omniscient supernatural.
Hands slipped round Amruteshvar’s throat from behind, and he disappeared into the darkness, from which sounds of voiceless, savage struggle now emerged.
Saul turned the flashlight in that direction. Its beam found Avinash and Amruteshvar on the stone floor between two rows of cabinets.
Avinash, clad like Amruteshvar in traditional attire, was astride him on his back with his hands around his neck, rhythmically pounding his brother’s face against the floor.
Amruteshvar reached back with his left hand, caught Avinash by the throat, and swung him in an arc over his head, hurling him onto his back against the floor, then sprang to his feet and kicked him, sending him flying down the aisle and crashing into the desks and chairs against the opposite wall.
Saul turned to look for the women, who winced when the flashlight’s beam fell upon them where they stood together, Nada with her arm around Shyamala’s shoulders. He moved towards them, gesturing with his free hand that they should all stand near the desk with the manuscript, and wait there, within range of whatever protection its auspiciousness might afford. Because what would be the point of escaping, even if they could?
More sounds of violence and a thunderous crash arose from the darkness. In the dim light from outside, one cabinet was hurled against its neighbours, which in turn fell like dominoes.
Saul again shone the flashlight into the darkness. Half the room was strewn with fragmented wood and glass, manuscripts still bound and intact, others torn open and scattered. Scarcely visible, shadowy figures flashed in and out of sight like jets over a bombarded city. One of the windows instantaneously became a blasted confusion of glass and metal, the sound registering a moment later like a crash of thunder.
Then the air was filled with a leonine scream of indignation and surprise. A figure appeared out of nowhere amidst the chaos on the floor. It was Amruteshvar. Even in that pale light, even at a distance, even though he appeared identical to his brother in every other way, the humanness of his expression of defeat and despair distinguished him unmistakably from Avinash.
He lay on his back, blood gushing from huge wounds all over his body, oozing onto the shards of glass and soaking the red cloth and palm leaves around him in a widening circle. He stared straight upward with fully conscious eyes, breathing raggedly.
Saul and Nada approached slowly, stepping over wood, glass, palm-leaf pages, and cloth, leaving bloody footprints on the floor. Both were weeping by the time they had reached him. His chest had been shattered by a tremendous blow. Whatever else he had made of himself, whatever superhuman powers he might have acquired, Amruteshvar was also most certainly a man, and he was dying like one.
<
br /> “Amruteshvar,” whispered Nada, stooping and caressing his head.
The gaze he turned on her was filled with a love and concern she had never perceived in him before. Her tears dripped onto his face, mingling with his blood.
He was trying to say something, phantoms of words flitted faintly under his rasping, bloody breaths. His eyes widened, then closed in resignation. Nada heard a faint sound behind her like the swishing of a garment, the clatter of something against the floor, then a dull thud of impact further away.
She turned and saw Saul lying slumped against the far wall in the lunar glow of the tube lights outside. The flashlight lay on the floor between them, shining into the empty darkness.
She cried out in alarm as hands emerged from
behind her, slipping under her arms, tightening under her breasts. Avinash’s breath was on the back of her neck, she felt his lips and teeth laid against her skin, his smile as he inhaled at last the fragrance of her unbound hair, dropped his hands to caress her thighs, pressed himself fully against her from behind.
The nausea of utter terror flooded her. She flew into a fury of self-preservation, striking back with her elbows, reaching with both hands and grasping for his head. He growled, pressed his hands against her shoulders and thrust her forward. She staggered a few steps and collapsed face-down, and he hurled himself on her again. Astraddle on her buttocks, he seized her by the hair and nape, yanking back her head as she resisted him with every muscle, oblivious to any pain.
Again she felt the heat of his mouth on her cheek, heard a confusion of emotions in his snarling breath. He wrestled her onto her back and slammed her to the floor, and now she could see his face. He was weeping, his tears mingling with the network of blood that trickled from his clumped and glistening hair. His fanged mouth was twisted into a ghastly amalgam of triumph, mockery, fury, and anguish. He sat high astride her, looking down on her, paused as if hesitating, as if contemplating her.
Blood dripped copiously onto her from deep wounds to his head and body, bloody tears dripped into her eyes and mouth and mingled with her own. Because she was weeping too, weeping with pity and rage for the cyclic tragedy in which they were imprisoned together, in which the only act of love now left to her was self-surrender to her beloved’s corrupted passion.
And in an almost visible flash of insight, they came to her, the missing words:
tasyā’rthāya hutātmai’va
only one who has sacrificed himself for his sake
hutātmā! “One who has sacrificed himself”! So this was the missing verse:
na śastreṇa na śāstreṇa nihantuṃ śakyate’ mṛtaḥ
tasyā’rthāya hutātmai’va mumukṣuṃ śamayet tu tam
Not by weapon, not by lore can the undead be killed; only one who has sacrificed himself for his sake can lay to rest him who longs for release.
She realized that this was right, and that this was what she wanted. She had had enough of being harassed and thwarted by the motiveless malice of this stranger who had invaded her lover and warped his love only because he had cherished her too passionately, this intruder who in lifetime after lifetime, for the better part of a millennium, had destroyed their destined happiness by keeping them from knowing each other. She wanted her suffering to end, even if it meant her death. She wanted his suffering to end, even if it meant life without her. And she wanted their tormentor to be destroyed.
She arched her back and raised her throat to him, her eyes serenely closed.
There was a profound silence and stillness. She opened her eyes, and saw Avinash still staring down at her. An expression of astonishment had flooded his face, driving all malevolence from it, rendering it more human than ever before, despite the red eyes and bladelike fangs. They paused motionless in their joined position. He shuddered and jerked backwards as if the very sight of her lying self-surrendered beneath him were an overwhelming blast of wind or a flash of invisible light. His eyes closed in rapture or agony. He was trembling, suspended, unbreathing. Invisible hands seemed to shake him by the shoulders as he slipped from their grasp. The air was filled with a searing, inhuman scream that seemed to originate not from him but from somewhere above him. And then he fell forward onto her, released.
Saul lay where he had been hurled against the wall. Shyamala was sitting on the floor with her arms round her legs, watching.
Avinash and Nada lay still, but breathing. Amruteshvar lay not far away, showing no sign of life except a trace of ebbing consciousness in his eyes. He was looking straight upwards, but the faint smile that flickered onto his lips showed that he had seen everything. He was kṛtakārya, one whose task is accomplished. He too had been released.
Saul and Shyamala rose unsteadily to their feet.
Avinash and Nada stirred. He raised his head and looked at her in wonder. She smiled in half-believing joy as she looked into his eyes, brown-irised, fully human. Blood and tears mingled on their faces.
They sat up slowly, still embracing, still staring into each other’s faces, their understanding and memory flowing ever more fully. They turned to look at Amruteshvar, stood up, walked slowly towards him, hand in hand, as Saul and Shyamala likewise approached from where they had been standing.
Smiling serenely, moments from death, Amruteshvar looked up at them as they stood around him weeping. Tears were flowing from the corners of his eyes too, washing channels through thick blood.
He turned his gaze on Nada and Avinash.
“Pāhi tām,” he said. Take care of her.
11
The Shared Path
Nada looked up to face a terrifying, hopeless mess in the manuscriptorium. There was the chaos of destruction caused by the brothers’ battle: the splintered cabinets and desks, scattered and blood-soaked manuscripts, broken windows. Worse, there was Amruteshvar’s corpse: nothing could have manifested his humanity more clearly than the surprising fact that no final miracle caused his body to disappear into thin air at the moment of death, or undergo some other supernatural metamorphosis, as might have been expected.
Silently, as if by a wordless consensus, the four of them carried the body outside into the night and cremated it on a large pile of sticks that the groundskeepers had collected near the library’s unused second entrance in recent days. Perhaps some fruit of Amruteshvar’s punya, holy merit, was after all to be seen in the way the body was totally consumed without a trace by the flames, and maybe, too, in the fact that neither the noise of the battle nor the light of the blaze attracted any attention from the guard or the groundskeepers’ colony—though this might well also have been because they thought the Institute was again under attack by some infuriated mob.
Nada and the others made no attempt to clean up the manuscript department, which would have been impossible anyway, but they did rewrap the Amrutajijnasa, leaving it on the table, since its shelf had been smashed in the battle. Then they locked the door of the south wing, locked Saul’s room in the guest house (they found the door still open and the light still on), and walked back to Yadnya, where they all collapsed into sleep in the study, Nada and Avinash on the pallet, Saul and Shyamala on the floor.
In all this, Avinash was one of them. He worked wordlessly alongside them, stunned like them by the tragedy that had just occurred. He and Nada stayed close to each other, frequently sharing touches of tenderness and reassurance, acting as if they were resuming a whole lifetime that they had lived together before somehow being cruelly separated.
“Lata...” he said to her once, half-whispering, looking into her face with wonder, as if unbelieving, or afraid to believe. And she clasped his hand, and returned his gaze with the fearless assurance and love that she knew he needed to see.
“It’s true,” she said. “We’re here.”
The whole scene was so unreal that Saul and Shyamala didn’t even seem to notice the bizarreness of Avinash’s suddenly changed role. B
ut in fact his presence among them now did not seem unnatural, since he was evidently an altogether different person from the monster who only minutes before had been intent on killing them all.
The most obvious mark of this change was his eyes, now brown, and fully human in the range of emotions they registered: wonder, fear, pity, remorse, love, tenderness, gratitude. His wounds were appalling, but apparently did not represent any serious permanent injuries, since other than a slight limp in his left leg, his movements were normal and unimpeded.
And the limp was emblematic of a more general change: he had lost the terrible magnitude, the aura of enormous superhuman strength and inhuman cruelty that he had had as a demon. Amruteshvar had died like a man. From now on, clearly, his brother would live and suffer as one. And one day he, too, would die.
After that night, Nada and Avinash began living together at Yadnya, lying low, and never leaving the house. Disoriented by the unreality of their bliss and the inconceivable events that had made it possible, they gave no thought to the future, immediate or distant, sinking into each other with the suicidal defiance of doomed fugitive lovers towards a hostile world that will soon come after them.
At first Kamala was horrified at the sight of Avinash, whose face had been seared into her memory on the night so many years before when he had broken into the house and cursed her husband with the disease that had ruined their lives and ultimately killed him.
Nada did not have to work too hard to persuade her: even though Kamala had never joined Nada and Dr. Kshirasagar in their translation of the Amrutajijnasa, they had never kept any secrets from her, and the three had always discussed the work as equals—and of course, on the night of the encounter in the manuscriptorium, Kamala had revealed that she had always known more than Nada realized, more even than Nada herself. So Kamala was easily able to understand what had happened in recent weeks, and that the Avinash with whom Nada was now so passionately in love was a fundamentally different being from the monster who had terrorized them all for so long—all, and no one more than Avinash the man.
The Vetala Page 12