Echoes

by Ellen Datlow

  That night, I woke up and found my sanitary napkin drenched as I lay alone in my bed. It felt like there was a knot of barbwire between my legs. I got up to go the single bathroom of our ground floor to change it. As I came out of the bathroom, sighing at the cramps, I saw a shadowy figure in the corridor, washed by the dim bulb in the bathroom. I nearly screamed. The figure said “Lokhi-Di.” It was Chandrasekhar. I put my hand over my mouth, frozen. I was in my nightgown. It hadn’t been stained, thankfully. I wanted to turn back and check the entire bathroom floor and toilet for stray drops of blood. My face went hot. Dadababu, I finally whispered, my heart pounding. You scared me, I said.

  “Lokhi-Di. Sorry,” he said, in English. His smile was yellow in the faint light.

  I realized that the front of his white pyjamas, right between his legs, was stretched. I could see the sweat shining in the hair on his chest.

  “I was just coming to use the bathroom,” he said, as if to explain what I was seeing.

  Yes. Of course, I said, but he was in front of me, standing there. I didn’t know how to ask him to step back so I could leave.

  And then he said, so abruptly, and softly: “I’ve seen the way you look at me, Lokhi-Di.”

  I admit, that at that moment, I thought about reaching out to touch that part of him that was stretching against the fabric of his pyjamas. To touch a man like I never had.

  Dadababu, good night, I said instead, not looking at the reflected glitter of the bathroom light on his spectacles. My tone was polite, as if I hadn’t heard what he had just said. For a second there was silence. The pat of water dripping onto the floor of the bathroom. “Good night, Lokhi-Di,” he said, and stepped back and to the side of the corridor. I walked past him, not looking behind me. I could feel the blood between my legs, damp and warm, the pain radiating outwards like a familiar hand reaching inside me. I lay in bed for a long time afterwards, both longing for and dreading Chandrasekhar’s appearance at my door. It didn’t happen. The next morning, he acted like he always did. I didn’t meet his eyes. Suddenly, he was family. I felt dirty, the blood still there between my legs, hidden under the folds of my saree and the fabric of my underwear. He would never belong to me like he belonged to my sister.

  If you ever read this, Pampi, will you think I’m making up that incident by the bathroom? That this is a fantasy of jealousy? Maybe it was, and my mind is making it up, and I’m the one being tricked.

  • • •

  Sometimes Pampi and I watch Charu on Doordarshan, singing Rabindra Sangeet on our little screen. She always looks radiant under the studio lights, and her voice, the way her fingers caress the harmonium and make it sing with her, makes me so proud my stomach begins to ache. On TV she always wears sarees, glittering green and red and blue ones lined with gold. Pampi seems to take these performances for granted, talking about how Charu sweats too much on camera. When Chandrasekhar was alive, she would be full of praise for Charu’s singing and playing. Sitting beside her, Chandrasekhar would weave his head to the music from the TV, puffing on his pipe as if the smoke were incense to honour his daughter.

  You don’t deserve to be her mother, I never tell Pouloma. And then I am filled with the sour feeling of being the resentful spinster. She is still grieving, after all.

  • • •

  When I was a child I would listen to the screeching and yelping of foxes and jackals outside our barred windows at night while trying to go to sleep. Now, ever since Charu and Pratik put me and Pampi in this box of a flat three stories up, I can’t really hear much except the honking of cars from the main road, and the occasional barking of the stray dogs downstairs. The old house is rubble, not from a bomb, but from developers building a multi-storey like this one.

  • • •

  Last night I woke up with a start, covered in sweat. I saw someone standing at the door of my bedroom. I could just make them out. I couldn’t move, because I was scared. I didn’t want them to see me. In the shadows, I saw the folds of a saree hanging off the figure, and I realized it must be Pampi.

  I said her name faintly, still afraid to break the thick quiet of nighttime, in case it wasn’t her. I realized the room smelled bad, very bad, like that rotten smell in the living room and the kitchen. Now it was here too.

  Pampi? I said, a little louder this time.

  “I miss you,” the figure said. It was Pampi, had to be. The voice was barely audible, like I was hearing it through a bad telephone connection.

  Because the saree-covered figure was in the dark of the doorway, I couldn’t see the face. There was something strange about her posture, as if she had partially turned towards me without turning her lower body properly, twisting her back.

  “It’s time to leave,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say. Leave? Where, it’s the middle of the night. Pampi, go back to sleep, I told her. Somewhere outside, beyond the rooftops, I heard the faint sound of a local train passing through the night, whistling. She turned and walked into the dark. I could hear the hiss and pad of retreating feet dragging across the floor. Then, I don’t remember anything but waking up today morning. Kalpana said that I’d left the front door open, that I was lucky a thief didn’t get in. Had Pampi done that, while sleepwalking? Maybe I had been dreaming, or she had been. I don’t dare go and ask her. The odd thing is that I feel like I miss her, too. She sleeps so much I barely see her during all day. But last night, I didn’t feel that way. Not because she was right there in my room. No, it was because in that moment, I was scared of her. I felt like the little sister from so many years ago again, confronted by a sister I both knew and didn’t know.

  • • •

  Today the phone rang during load shedding. It’s on the desk where I sit and write, thankfully, so I can pick it up without having to hobble around with my walking stick. When I picked up the receiver, it sounded like a long distance trunk call, because of the clicking and static. There was silence on the other end, other than the interference.

  Hello? I said.

  “Lokhi-Di,” came a faint voice. It was a man.

  Who’s this? Partho? I asked, because Partho is one of my cousins who still remembers to call once in a while.

  “Hello, Lokhi-Di,” came the voice again. My cousins call me that. So did my brother-in-law. The voice was so faint I could barely hear it, like a signal from a radio being tuned in and out. Something began to tickle my chest from the inside, a butterfly emerging under my heartbeat.

  Who is this? I asked.

  “Is Pampi there?”

  She . . . yes, I mean. Who is this?

  “You know who it is,” said the voice. A wash of static buzzed through the receiver, crackling with each word. Clicking like bird’s claws against the other end.

  I looked out at the dark city, the light-less neighborhood under the deep blue evening. Everything out there seemed too silent. “Where’s Pampi?” the static rasped.

  I think she’s asleep. Arre, who is this? I can’t recognize you. Is it Partho? I said.

  “Pampi isn’t asleep,” said the voice, and the inflection of the words was so familiar, I felt light-headed for a moment, the sky above Calcutta, beyond the grill of the window, warping and dimming slightly.

  What?

  “Tell her to come here and join me. It’s getting late,” said the voice. Beyond the static, beyond the sound of the words, I heard the mournful wail of a train.

  Join you? Where? Who are you?

  “She knows where. She doesn’t belong there in that flat anymore,” the voice came, almost drowned out by the sound of the train horn again in the background. “You know where, Lokhi-Di. You should follow her here.”

  What is this, is this a joke? Partho?

  “I’ve seen the way you used to look at me, Lokhi-Di. And Pampi, and the children. Follow her here. The children can take care of themselves now. You can’t be a mother to them.”

  I had no idea what to say. The phone clicked and crackled and hissed into my ear at the si
lence. Who is this? I said again, weakly.

  “You know it’s too late. Take your sister and meet me here.”

  I admit I asked, then, very softly: “Chandrasekhar?”

  The trains in the background wailed again, and there was a sharp click. Then the whir of the dial tone.

  • • •

  I just woke up to an empty house. I knew in my heart it was empty. It was dark in the room, the power was out. I could barely see anything. It was blue outside, late evening light. By that faint glow I could see Pouloma lying next to me in the bed.

  “Pampi? What are you doing?” I asked, because she never comes and naps in my room. The bed creaked, I could feel it move as she shifted onto her side to look at me. She was silhouetted against the blue coming from the window, her arm against her hip, turned to me. I couldn’t see her face, or anything of her, except the outline of her body. It was like she was wearing a saree made of darkness. I wiped the sweat from under my chin, the aanchal of my saree damp. I leaned over and felt for the switch to turn on the bedside lamp. It didn’t turn on, because the power was out.

  Then I remembered that the house was empty. That Pouloma is dead. I could smell the damp fabric of her saree, and the faint sweet scent of talc powder caking on her sweat, and the tamarind tartness of her breath after she’d sucked on her favourite Hajmola digestive tablets. But most of all, I could smell the familiar stench of emptied bowels, or something rotten. I felt sick, and felt myself sway on the bed.

  “Pampi,” I said. I reached out to touch her blank, shadowed face, expecting cold, pliant flesh. “Chandrasekhar called.” My hand went through air, into the blackness, though my eyes stayed on her solid silhouette. The crows screamed outside. My heart racing, I struggled upright and waved my hand further through her body. She remained silent.

  As my throbbing, clammy fingers vanished into the void of her body, the world exploded into blinding light and sound.

  Electricity flooded the room as the power returned, the ceiling fan clattering on loudly, the tube light snapping and buzzing to life. In the five seconds of stuttering shadow and light as the old fluorescent struggled to turn itself on, I saw my arm hovering inside my sister, vanishing into her bone-white saree at the point of the lower abdomen. My eyes darted to her face under the cowl but there was none. There was only the pillow behind her, as her entire body faded like the afterimage on a television turned off. As the shadows ceased and the tube light stopped flickering, I saw my hand held out over an empty bed, where seconds ago had been an entire person.

  • • •

  Today I tried to read this journal and really figure out what I have written in those stretches of darkness, where it feels like I am dozing and dreaming while writing, that the dusk has become a part of me and sent me into a faraway place, until Kalpana shakes my shoulder and washes reality with her candle, or the power returns with the fan bursting into clattering life above me. I feel sick in my heart and stomach, at the untidy words on these pages. Despite what I have written during the load sheddings, my sister no longer lives with me in this flat. She no longer lives anywhere. But I remember talking to Pouloma in the dark, and waking up next to her. Why do I remember that?

  I don’t know if I’m remembering these moments from when she was still alive, from when we lived here together. But as hazy as the gaps in my life become, my hand moving through my sister’s vanishing body is clear as the snap and flash of that tube light illuminating my empty bedroom. That blackness under the cowl of her saree as brutal as the plain, white, featurelessness of her face covered in white cloth at the crematorium, the assurances that I didn’t want to see what was beneath one last time before she went into the flames. I never did see.

  Today afternoon Charu came by with a tiffin carrier of daal and chhana and a foil-wrapped packet of rooti because Kalpana is sick again, the poor thing. Charu went to the kitchen and reheated it all on the stove, despite my protests. Then, together, we sat for lunch. Potol wasn’t with her this time, nor Sanjay—school, I think. While eating, Charu said Pratik has written to the building society to get a generator for the stairwell because of all the load shedding. It’s not safe, she said. I didn’t say that I would never try going down those stairs in the dark. She said that Pratik was also looking into at least buying an inverter for the flat so that I can have power in the living room when load shedding happens.

  Then, tearing little strips of rooti on her plate, she asked, “Lokhi-Mashi, do you want to come stay with us? We have an extra room. I’m sure Bijoy would be fine with it.”

  I told her it was fine, that she shouldn’t worry about me, that I still had my wits about me, that I didn’t want to be a burden to them in their flat with their children to take care of.

  “It’s not a burden. I don’t like seeing you here alone like this.”

  I remembered again, then. Of course, of course I am alone here.

  “I know you’re fine, Lokhi-Mashi, but I’d feel better if you were there with us, and not sitting in this empty flat day after day.” I wondered then, how many times I’d talked to Charu as if her mother still lived here.

  I told Charu that she made my life sound very sad, with a bit of a laugh. She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that. When Ma was here it made sense, but now . . . every time I walk up and down those stairs. I feel like I should be taking you away from here.”

  Don’t worry, I don’t take the stairs anyway, you know that, I take the lift, I said. I told her not to worry. I was fine here. Charu smiled at me, then, but I could tell she didn’t want to.

  “Mashi, just think about it. We would be happy to have you with us. No more sitting in the dark during load shedding—our flat has an inverter. And you wouldn’t be alone all the time.”

  I smiled back at her and said I would think about it. I knew then that she and Bijoy would decide by themselves to stop renting this flat and move me to their place soon enough. It was a waste of money, and I am, apparently, forgetting things more often than I want to admit. So why did I feel a pang of disappointment when she mentioned these plans, about inverters and generators and moving?

  But I know why. I’ve always told Kalpana not to bring the candles to where I’m sitting in the living room. There has always been something about being held in the arms of the dark, suffering in the silent heat, something comforting.

  The darkness reminds me of my sister. This is the place we were alone together again.

  • • •

  Maybe if I write down how she died while the afternoon sun shines outside, I will remember that she is dead.

  Not so long ago, I can’t seem to remember how long, and I can’t ask Charu or Pratik or anyone because they will worry, but I think it was about a year ago, my sister woke up from her afternoon nap late, just as the power went out in the evening. It was summer, like it is now, so it must have been a year ago. As Kalpana was lighting candles in the kitchen to place around the flat, Pampi walked through the living room where I was sitting waiting for tea. I could hear the call to prayer from the mosque a few streets down from us, drifting in through the verandah. A local train somewhere far away, whistling through the twilight. As Pampi walked by me, I asked her why she had slept in so late, whether she was feeling all right.

  She said to me: “Chandrasekhar called.”

  Her husband, of course, could not have called, because he was dead. Neither of us is young, so while this comment startled me, it didn’t seem too strange. Only unsettling, because it meant Pampi was in a muddled mood, which often led to her getting angry, lashing out. She had gotten confused before. Then, instead of sitting down with me, she walked past me toward the front door, swaying impatiently from side to side to keep pressure off her weak hips. She didn’t have her walking stick.

  I am not a fast woman either, at this age. I barely even realized she had opened the door when she stepped out into the building’s stairwell. I felt the warm gust of the draft that comes through the living room when
the front door is open. There were no lights on in the stairwell, of course. No lift operating without power. I grabbed for my walking stick and tried to get up to follow her and get her back inside, spending precious seconds in panicked confusion before calling to Kalpana to get out of the kitchen and chase Pampi-Di who had walked out into the dark stairwell. Kalpana was just walking out from the kitchen to the living room with a candle at that moment, sending shadows leaping everywhere. Eyes wide, she put the candle down on the dining table adjacent to the sitting area as quick as she could, and ran towards the door. I had managed to get up and walk in her wake, my stick grinding against the stone floor with each heavy step, the room wavering and sallow from the light of the candle. I felt dizzy, my knees shooting with pain. The front door was wide open, black as a moonless sea, the draft from the stairs like warm breath gushing from a wide mouth. Kalpana plunged into the darkness just as I heard a noise like a sack full of potatoes hurled down the stairs. A scream pierced the darkness as I walked towards it. Not my sister, but Kalpana. Pampi was probably already dead at that point, having gone headfirst down an entire flight of stairs in her rush to get wherever she was going. Without her walking stick, without any illumination in the stairwell, the fall was inevitable. I waited at the top of those stairs in the dark, sweating, for the power to come back, because Kalpana refused to let me try to navigate the stairs. She stood guard by Pampi. Soon enough the stairwell was speared by light from torches waved by our neighbours coming out of their flats, concerned voices echoing down the shaft of the stairwell. The beams of light revealed blood like a glistening fresh coat of dark paint on the stairs leading down from Pouloma’s twisted body, her white saree half unraveled, her pale belly speckled with moles in the torchlight. She was caught in a dance that she couldn’t have danced at her age, limbs bent and spine arched and twisted in wild abandon. The aanchal of her saree covered her face like an ominous veil, soaking blooms from head wounds. There she lay, until the power came back on, until the ambulance came, until her children arrived with their faces shining with tears. When the lights came back on I nearly shouted for someone to turn them off, to keep her wreathed in shadow so she would not have to show herself like this. The stairwell was hot, full of people, and rank with the stench of the final bodily indignities of death. I felt so faint by the time strangers were moving her limp body onto a stretcher that it felt like I might follow her down those steps now dark with a spilled part of her once-beautiful body.