by Shruti Swamy
What should she take from the house, just the pictures? And the clothes from the girl’s room she lifted from their hangers and set them down on the bed. Perhaps—food? The air coming from the girl’s lungs had an odd flavor. Spock gave you the feeling that everything was under control, he had written a whole book on all the possibilities, they were all accounted for. Her jewelry wouldn’t burn, but perhaps it would melt, the bridal jewelry she had been saving for the girl: a crust of jewels for the neck and the arms and a complex and delicate gold structure worn in the hair and the ear lobes and nose, even if neither were pierced. And the bride wrapped in silk and strung with gold and jewels looking shy up into the eyes of the new husband, whom she has loved, and already fucked, but still shy, enacting her ritual part, and he too shy, enacting his ritual part, though they laughed as the priest made him promise that he had regarded her only in friendship before this moment, and they had each thought of a secret corner of the other: a dark nipple held between teeth, a dark cock gripped in a pale hand. Under the turban, three gray hairs at the crown of his head, she knew, and the fleck of subtle color in the iris of his left eye. And he to her: the curves of her, the location of several moles. The jewelry was stored in a crawl space above the kitchen, which required a ladder, and she climbed it, and hoisted the box which contained it down, nearly losing balance and toppling over, and where would she be, but finding her footing and giddy as her feet touched the kitchen tile. But this was the wrong box, full of letters, tinder, difficult to look at. She could see his hand. He stroked ink onto the page neatly, his writing was angular and precise, an architect’s hand, while her long scribble imbued several possible meanings into each word; he squinted over them, the months she spent in Kenya doing fieldwork and they had not been able to email because she was too remote. And had talked only once, his voice rushing toward her from another continent, she had wept afterward, missing him. That missing him had felt like pain, but it was sweetness, she knew now, that came with certainty. She climbed up again. At the top of the ladder she saw black ash on the skylight. The light had changed again. Pulled out the box but the child was crying.
Ma!
She climbed down. A flock of helicopters growling overhead. She pulled the girl up. You could read a book by the light of that body, limp in her arms, smelling faintly like eggs.
Ma, I saw a blobby thing! With teeth—and—She was out of breath.
There’s no blobby thing. You were dreaming. I’m going to take your temperature, okay?
I wasn’t dreaming. I had my eyes open just like now.
There’s no blobby thing. She raced to the bathroom, and came back with the thermometer. Open.
The child’s tongue had a fur of white. The egg-timer was sounding again. Hold on.
She twisted the thing quiet. The thermometer read 104 degrees. The girl lay back in the enormous bed. Jesus, kid.
Mama, look, the blobby thing is there. The mother winced at “mama,” the word the child had outgrown, now creeping back into her mouth.
Okay, she said, talking to herself, I’m going to take the photographs, and take the jewelry, and we’re going to go. We’re going.
Go where?
To the doctor.
The girl began to whimper. Mama, I hate the doctor. Mama, I hate her she gives me shots. Mama, please don’t make me go.
Don’t call me that. She hated that word. It made her think of a sweater with stains on it. Mama. A cow with huge teats. The girl was gearing up for a tantrum, but instead the energy seemed to be leeching from her, her body softened and she shut her eyes. What does death smell like? But don’t panic, she was saying to herself. Too late to panic. The rash on the neck of the child looked alien, unlike the rest of the child, which, even hot, felt silky and familiar. An animal knows her young. Could she lick the fever away, or suck from her neck the poison to hold in her own throat. She was not thinking clearly.
Anika, we’re going now, but the girl’s half-shut eyes only showed the white. Ani?
Through the window, her eye caught the edge of it: the fire. Then, picking up the girl, she was back out on the deck, entranced. Look, Ani, but the girl would not look. The light of the day blackened and remade new. Waves of black air were blowing toward the house, streaming up from beyond the trees as though the ocean itself were burning. She felt their bodies acutely in air, in air that had the harsh, milky quality of evening. Lit. She was nearly gasping. Look, Ani, she said again, lifting her daughter’s head. Look how beautiful.
Night Garden
I heard the barking at six thirty or seven. It had been a long, hot day, and evening was a relief. I was cooking dinner. I knew Neela’s voice well, the bright happy barking that he threw out in greeting, the little yips of pleading for a treat or a good rubdown, and the rare growl, sitting low and distrustful in his throat when the milkman came around—he was a friendly dog. This sound was unlike any of those. It was high, and held in it a mineral note of panic. I went over to the kitchen window that looked out onto the yard, where we had a garden. There was a pomegranate tree, an orange tree, and some thick, flowering plants, jasmine and jacaranda, and some I did not know, that my husband had planted years before. But I was the one that kept them alive. Neela stood dead center, in the red earth. His tail was taut and his head was level with his spine, ears pinned against his skull, so his body was pulled into a straight line, nearly gleaming with a quality of attention. He was not a large dog, reddish and sweet and fox-like, sometimes shy, with dark paws and snout. Facing him was a black snake—a cobra—with the head raised, the hood fanned out.
I myself let out a cry. The cobra had lifted the front of her body at least two feet from the ground. I had never seen one so close, even separated by four strong walls and a pane of glass. I could see, even, her delicate tongue, darting between her black lips. Her eyes were fixed on the dog, and his on hers. Their gaze did not waver. Her body too was taut with attention, shiny back gleaming from the low evening light. The sky, I saw now, was red, low and red, and the sun a wavering orange circle in the sky.
Of course my first instinct was to rush out screaming and scare the thing off. But something stopped me. I stood for a full minute at the sink, shaking all over. Then I took a deep breath and phoned my sister.
“There’s a cobra outside with Neela.”
She exhaled. She was my big sister, and had been subject, lately, to too many of my emergencies. “It’s okay. Call Dr. Ramanathan. He knows about snakes. Do you have his phone number?”
I did.
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
“It’s okay, Viji.”
“I can’t—” Then I stopped myself.
“Can’t what?” My sister has a voice she could soften or harden depending on circumstance. She kept it soft with me now, like talking to a child. I wiped my face, like a child, with the bottom of my shirt.
“I’ll call back,” I said.
I went again to the window. The animals were still there, exactly where they had been when I last looked. The dog had stopped barking, and the cobra looked like a line of poured oil. I dialed Dr. Ramanathan’s number.
“Doctor, there’s a snake out there with my dog. A cobra. In my yard.”
“A cobra is it?” I could see him in his office, his white hair and furred ears. He had a doctor’s gruffness, casual in the most serious of circumstances, and had seen both my children through countless fevers, stomach upsets, and broken bones. “Has it bitten?”
“No, they haven’t touched each other. They’re not even moving. Just staring each other down.”
“Don’t do anything. Just watch them. Stay inside.”
“Nothing? He’ll die,” I said. “I know it, he’ll die.”
“If you stay inside the house, he won’t die. The snake was trying to come inside the house, and he stopped it. Now he is giving all his attention to the snake. If you break that concentration the snake will kill him, and it will also be very dangerous for you.”
&nbs
p; “Are you sure?”
“No one must come in until the snake has left. Tell your husband to stay out until the snake is gone.”
After I hung up with Dr. Ramanathan, I took a chair and set it by the window, so I could sit while I watched the dog and the snake. It was a strange dance, stranger still because of its soundlessness. The snake would advance, the dog would retreat a few steps. The hair was standing up on the back of his neck, like a cat, and now the tail pointed straight up. I could see fear in his face, with his eyes narrowed and his teeth bared. The snake looked in comparison almost peaceful. I didn’t hear her hiss. The white symbol glowed on her back. Their focus was so completely on the other. I wondered if they were communicating in some way I couldn’t hear or understand. Then the dog stood his ground and the snake stopped advancing. She seemed to rise up even higher. There was something too perfect about her movements, which were curving and graceful. Half in love with both, I thought, and it chilled me. Evening came down heavily, the massive red sky darkened into purple.
The phone rang. It was my sister.
“Well?”
“They’re still there. They’ve hardly moved.”
“Viji have you eaten? It’s getting late.”
I had been in the middle of making a simple dinner for myself, and had of course forgotten. The rice was sitting half-washed in a bowl next to the sink, the onion was chopped and raw. I didn’t feel hungry, less, even, than usual—I don’t like to eat by myself. Instead, I felt hollow, like a clay pot waiting for water. It was pleasant, almost an ache.
“What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty, darling—eat something. Shall I come over?”
“No! Dr. Ramanathan says no one can come in or out.”
“You phoned Susheel?”
“What’s the point?”
“What if he comes home?”
“He’s not coming.”
“It’s his dog too.”
“My dog,” I said, too loudly. “He’s my dog.”
Then back to the window. It had grown dark. I hesitated to turn on the light in the house, in case they would startle. Our eyes all sharpened as the light faded. There was a bit of light that came in from the street, from the other houses, though it was filtered through the leaves and branches of the fruit trees and the flowers. In it, I could see the eyes of my dog, bright as live coal. There is a depth that dogs’ eyes have, which snakes’ eyes lack. Snakes’ eyes are flat and uncompromising, and reveal none of the animating intelligence. Maybe I could learn something from that. I sometimes think there is too much doggishness in me.
Now, very quietly, I could hear the snake hissing. There was a rough edge to it. The dog advanced. The snake seemed to snap her jaws. I have seen a dead snake, split open on the side of the road. Its blood was red and the meat looked like meat, swarmed with flies. People said it was a bad omen for me, a bride, to see it then. Imagine the wedding of the Orissa bride, who married the cobra that lived near the anthill, and was blessed by the village. People made jokes about the wedding night, but everyone’s marriage is unknowable from the outside. I saw a picture of her in the newspaper, black hair, startled eyes, and I blessed her too—who wouldn’t? This same communion, it must have been, two sets of eyes inextricably locked, for hours. The kumkum smeared in her part like blood. The dog was gaining ground. He stood proud and erect, still focused but doggish now, full of a child’s righteousness. His ears pricked up. But then, for no reason I could discern, the weather between them turned, and it was the snake who held them both, immense and swaying, in her infinite power.
Who knows how much time passed. I sat there by the window. The three of us were in a kind of trance. Once, I awoke with my head in my arms, I had fallen asleep right there on the lip of the sink. I blinked once, trying to make sense of the kitchen’s dark shapes. It seemed as though I had had a dream of a snake and Neela, engaged in a bloodless, endless battle, and when I looked outside there they were, keeping this long vigil. Their bodies were outlined by moonlight. At this hour, they looked unearthly, gods who had taken the form of animals for cosmic war. But I could see the fatigue in my dog. You see it with people on their feet for hours, even when they try and hide it, a slump in the shoulders, the loose shoulders of the dead. No different with my dog. He would die, I was sure of it. I pressed this thought against me. The empty house. I would let all the plants go brown in the yard. I would move.
I find that at night, you can look at your life from a great distance, as though you are a child sitting up in a tree, listening to the meaningless chatter of adults. I stood up in the kitchen. It had been years since I was up this late. Slowly, infinitely slow, the creatures were inching back, toward the shed at the side of the house, the dog retreating, the snake advancing. Their movements were like those of huge clouds that seem to sit still in the sky, and you mark their progression only against the landscape. I followed them, moving from one window to the other. I became very angry with Neela. What arrogance or stupidity had urged him to take on this task? It’s easier to be the hero, to leave and let others suffer the consequences. To run barking into the house was all he needed to do, to show me the snake so I could close up our doors.
I stood. The snake hissed up, and made a ducking move forward, toward Neela, who snarled, baring his yellow teeth, doing a delicate maneuver with his paws, shuffled back, weaving like a boxer. He let out three high yelps, pure anger, and snapped his jaws, and the snake rose even higher, flaring out her hood, hissing, I could hear it, loudly, like a spray of water. Then she lowered herself. Back and forth on the ground as she slunk away, leaving her belly’s imprint on the dirt.
I went outside. The air was clean and cool, thin, as it hadn’t been all day, almost like it had rained. He was tired. He whimpered when he saw me, his ears pricking up, and pressed his wet snout in my hand as I got close. He was radiant. With his mouth pressed closed between my hands, his eyes looked all over my face, joyful and humble, the way dogs are, filled with gladness. He swayed on his feet with fatigue, then slumped down to his knees in a dead faint, tongue lolling back. His breathing came out slow and easy.
Who had death come for, the dog or me? I lifted the sleeping creature in my arms. He was no heavier than each of my children when they were young, and I took them in my arms to bed. The air was very still outside at this time of night—or morning. Hardly any sound came from the street, and all the lights were off in the neighboring houses. The air rushed in and out of Neela’s body, his lungs and snout. What you have left is what you have. I carried him into the house.
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks:
To the extraordinary Samantha Shea. To Betsy Gleick and the wonderful team at Algonquin. To the institutions that have supported my work: Vassar College, San Francisco State, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center, the San José State Center for Steinbeck Studies, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and Kundiman. To the Ruby and Rachel Khong. To the San Francisco Public Library and its Friends.
To Laura Furman.
To my teachers: Josh Harmon, Maxine Chernoff, Kiese Laymon, Candice Lowe Swift, and Peter Orner. Traci and Jay from the California State Summer School for the Arts. Melissa Sanders-Self.
To dear readers and friends: Meng Jin, Rebekah Pickard, Marco Lean, Adam Gardener, Chris Freimuth, Catherine Epstein.
To my family, especially: Asha Pandya, Sanjay Iyer, Merylee Smith Bingham, Ed Bingham, Josh Bingham, Hansa Bhaskar, Beena Sharma, and BY Swamy.
To Shamala Gallagher.
Most of all, to Abe and Kavita. The joy of you both astonishes me.
About the Author
The winner of two O. Henry Awards, Shruti Swamy’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. In 2012, she was Vassar College’s 50th W.K. Rose Fellow, and has been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and Hedgebrook. She is a Kundiman fiction fellow, a 2017–201
8 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, and a recipient of a 2018 grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in San Francisco.
Published by
Algonquin Books Of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2020 by Shruti Anna Swamy.
All rights reserved.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following journals, where these stories first appeared: Black Warrior Review, for “Blindness”; the Kenyon Review Online, for “The Laughter Artist”; West Branch for “Wedding Season”; AGNI for “A Simple Composition”; the Boston Review for “The Siege”; the Paris Review for “A House Is a Body”; McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern for “Mourners”; Joyland for “Didi”; and Prairie Schooner for “Night Garden.” Additional thanks to Laura Furman for her inclusion of “A Simple Composition” in the O. Henry Prize Stories 2016, and “Night Garden” in the 2017 collection.