Narinder waited at the door.
35
Bhut detached himself from the mob with the quiet ease of a leaf separating from a tree branch. He wasn’t interested in a dead man; he wasn’t even interested in a live one. He was interested only in a woman—the woman living just across the street. The woman whose gaze he could feel on his neck as he took slow deliberate steps to a door he knew quite well. He looked to the upper-story window, where he knew she would be, where she always was. Their eyes met; she was the first to turn away. He heard her give a sharp order, and in response he moved to the door, waiting.
***
Mrs. Chalwah saw him standing outside her house as he had all those years ago, the boy turned man, fast becoming an old man. She had waited so long, had lived in both fear and expectation of this meeting, but now she felt nothing. She called again down the stairs, and her daughter-in-law, unaccustomed to such a sharp summons from this older woman whom she’d only known to pray and speak in submissive tones, raced up the stairs to see what the matter was. “Open the door,” Mrs. Chalwah said.
“Ma?” The younger woman looked at the old with questioning eyes.
“The door, the door,” Mrs. Chalwah said again with impatience. “Open it. The Officer-sahib is here.”
***
Inside the bhavan, the head priest stopped the crowd from moving forward, but the men did not spare Narinder their words. “We know there is a ghost in here. You cannot deny it.”
“I deny nothing,” Narinder said. Pramesh pushed his way to the front and stood with his head priest. “But you are wrong,” Narinder continued.
“So you do deny it!”
“Hai Rama! The manager has even a holy man lying for him.”
“How can this be a holy place, Bhaiya? I would not let my daughter even cross into the lane where this house stands. How could someone bring their blood to die here?” Individually, these men would never be so bold as to contradict a priest, but their collective power imbued them with daring. “Narinder-ji, will you lie to our faces? Even as you speak the great God’s name on your prayer beads? Will you tell us there was never a ghost?”
“Did I say that?” Narinder put his hands out in a helpless gesture. “You are perfectly correct. There was a ghost. But no longer.”
“No longer? Did it simply walk away? What nonsense is this?”
Narinder smiled, his expression so strange in that atmosphere of accusation and anger and primal desperation that Pramesh blinked, wondering if it was a trick of the light. “No Bhaiya. It cannot walk away. But it can be convinced to move along via the proper rites.”
The crowd, quick to believe the presence of such a miraculous spirit, was less eager to take in the truth about its disappearance.
“It is clearly a lie. How convenient that the ghost should be gone just when we all know.”
“Perhaps it is still here. How do we know it was truly banished?”
“But they were seen doing tripindi shraddha yesterday—what if it really did leave?”
“Where did you send it? Where would such a ghost go?”
Narinder looked away and loosed his prayer beads from his clenched hand. “Who can tell where any of us will go in death, Bhaiya? You can hope for a good death in Kashi, but no one knows. Neither can I tell you where the spirit will go. But the thing you want is no longer here. That is all I can say.”
He folded one free arm behind his back, and with the other he commenced thumbing his prayer beads and making a round of the walkway, pushing through clusters of men. He walked on, maintaining his usual steady pace, as if this was a day like any other.
***
Bhut had not expected to be invited in with such ease. As a boy he’d dreamed of gaining entrance and concocted wild fantasies of what he would say and do, though he could remember none of these schemes as the younger Mrs. Chalwah led him into the small sitting area and offered him a chair. She did not seem to know what to do next, but a sharp cry from above sent her upstairs. When she came back down again, her face held an air of nervous apology. “Ma asks you to see her upstairs,” she said. “She can no longer come down on her own, you understand.”
Bhut followed as the younger Mrs. Chalwah pulled the end of her sari closer over her head and led the way to the staircase. The steps were high and narrow, set in concrete, and Bhut could understand what a formidable obstacle an older woman might find them to be. Then he remembered another set of stone steps and the girl who had not fared as well as Mrs. Chalwah had all these years, and his mouth set into a flat line.
She sat in a cane chair with many pillows and cushions surrounding her, as if their support kept her body from crumpling into a heap. Patches of skin peeked through the sparse strands of stringy white hair pulled back and rolled into a bun the size of a small ladoo. A pair of spectacles sat propped on her nose. A tray with chai and two digestive biscuits sat untouched on a nearby table, and her prayer beads lay curled in her lap like a tame snake that she stroked habitually with her fingers. The bed was the only other piece of furniture. No books, no pictures on the walls, not even a colorful blanket. The room was as devoid of life as Mrs. Chalwah seemed to be. So, he thought. She has suffered, too. He imagined he might feel satisfaction at knowing this, but he felt nothing.
She looked at Bhut as he sat in the chair that her daughter-in-law dragged in from another room. He waved away the water that she brought; declined her offer of chai. “You have come,” she said. Bhut only granted her a stiff nod. His eyes avoided hers and instead studied every crack in the floor and chip in the paint, as if the dilapidated furnishings might give him some pleasure, some power over her. “And what is it that an old woman can do for you?”
Bhut had also been turning this question over in his mind. All the rage he had felt earlier—toward Raman, then the crowd, then at himself for believing that the answer he wished for could be so easily found all these years later—all that anger was churning and turning inward. He was infuriated with his own inadequacy. What did he expect? What could he take from an old woman? He stood, saying, “It was a mistake to come here.”
“I know why you are here, even if you do not.”
She gazed at him, as she had gazed at him whenever he passed by these many decades since he’d lingered for hours outside her home as a boy, full of fire and despair. She closed her eyes. “Strange, yes? That you and I should be so linked.” The circle officer’s eyes widened in anger, but she shook her head. “You know we are. We are among the last who remember.”
“You remember,” Bhut snarled. “Only you could truly remember. You and your son, the only two who were there—you told him to do it, didn’t you? You could have been a friend to her, but you protected him instead, all these years.”
“Did I?” Mrs. Chalwah’s smile was sad. “You’ve given me a far bigger part in this than I deserve, Officer-sahib.”
“Yes? Then what was your part? Tell me, set me straight after all these years.”
“The whole story?” she said, offering him one last chance to turn away, to remain in ignorance.
“Everything.” The anklets shifted in his shirt pocket, and he put his hand to his chest, feeling his heart beat. “Tell me. Tell me what really happened to her.”
She gestured to his chair with one papery hand. “Sit, please,” she said. “Sit, so that I may tell you a story.”
36
Though the sun would not dip below the horizon for several hours, and though no one man made the suggestion, the mob decided: the men would stay through the day and into the night’s prime spirit hours and wait for the ghost to announce itself.
Pramesh did not care whether they waited or stayed. When the gates fell, so too did all the concerns tugging at his mind except for one. He turned his back on the courtyard and headed up the stairs to the bedroom. The door with Thakorlal’s new key plate was locked; Shobha would not open it
until Pramesh assured her many times that it was only him. When she turned the key and eased back the door with Rani held tight in her arms, her face relaxed, but she did not loosen her grip on the child. “Are they still here?”
“They think they will get the proof they want.” He stretched his arms out, and his wife passed their daughter over to him. Rani’s weight made him feel lighter. In spite of the commotion her eyes were half-closed, lashes trembling with the effort of staying awake. “She seems a touch warm,” he said as he laid her down on the bed. Shobha followed, but not before first shutting the door and locking it. She placed her cool palms on the child’s forehead and frowned, looking toward the window where the lime and chilies hung. “Probably just a cold,” the manager said, following her gaze. “Did you just put that up today?”
“She just got rid of a cold last week,” Shobha said, ignoring his question, her brow wrinkled. “She shouldn’t be ill again, not so soon.”
Pramesh lifted the child’s chin with his finger, but Rani turned away and burrowed deeper into the pillows. The manager looked about the room, found the girl’s favorite wooden horse, and nestled it on the bed near the child’s hands. “It’s been a shocking day, and it is still only morning. Let her rest.”
“The men—what proof do you mean?”
“The ghost. They’re intending to stay, thinking they’ll hear the pots. It’s not worth thinking about—they do not matter,” Pramesh said. It was true; he did not care what the men would do. “They will be gone soon enough. They will wait all day and all night, and nothing will happen, and eventually they will leave,” he continued, as much to himself as to his wife. He looked out the window to the Mistry’s terrace, which was free of its usual pack of screaming grandchildren. “Mrs. Mistry will not mind if you both stay with her for a few nights. You cannot stay here; not when it is like this.”
But Shobha would not meet his eyes or accept. “She has many people in her house to care for. We will be fine here,” she murmured as she moved a curl of Rani’s hair.
“Is that wise?”
“As you said, the men will stay the night, and they will leave in the morning when they see the ghost is gone.” Shobha attempted a smile and placed her hand on Rani’s leg. “Better for her to sleep it off here. It is only for a day and night.”
Pramesh did not have the energy to press the point. He laid his palm on Rani’s forehead again, then left the room and shut the door, hearing the lock click back into place behind him.
The vantage from the kitchen showed the full range of the mob’s assault. He had left behind a pack of about thirty men. Now, with the fallen gates leaving the bhavan open to the street and the city, that number almost doubled, with folk observing the crowd from the street and then plunging in to investigate.
“How will we know the ghost’s presence? What will it do?”
“It differs, doesn’t it? There was one in the woodworker’s lane that used to do nothing, showed no outward sign of its presence, but if you entered the space it occupied, every bad memory in your life would come back to you, and you would not sleep for days after.”
“Or that one that sang at night, remember? If you were walking that late—not that I ever did, Bhai—you might hear it singing at a certain hour in a certain lane. If you returned the tune with your own, they say it would leave you alone. But if you stayed silent.…”
“My cousin told me of one that rendered every man impotent if he were to walk near. Of course, none of them would really admit to it, but it must be true.”
“We could simply ask the manager.”
“And hear more of his lies? Better to wait. We will know when we see or hear it.”
Pramesh paused in front of the gaping space where the gates had once stood. The men, more out of practicality than conciliation, had propped the halves up against the walls. The air rushed into this newly made wound in the bhavan, and Pramesh stood in this space and wondered how men could be capable of so much in mere minutes. He felt drained. His office and Mohan’s room were in disarray, his assistant was badly injured, and his wife was terrified to venture into her own kitchen.
Narinder continued his rounds on the prayer beads. He picked his way through the men as he traversed the walkway. His reassuring way of moving, neither too fast nor too slow, with an unbroken rhythm, had a calming effect: the men ceased chattering, and some moved into patches of sun coming into the courtyard and began to drowse. Narinder was an unswerving pillar of duty who never shirked his responsibility, just like that other, battered man now back in his room. He owed Mohan an explanation.
***
Bhut’s face was pale. Mrs. Chalwah looked out of the window. She felt a strange calm envelope her.
“That was the truth?” Bhut asked.
“It was. It is.”
“Why did you never say anything? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“And do you really think,” Mrs. Chalwah looked at him with piercing eyes. “Do you really imagine that anyone would have believed me?” He lowered his face into his hands again and shook his head. “After all,” Mrs. Chalwah turned from Bhut to look out the window again, at the last mob stragglers. “An accident is far less entertaining a story than a murder. If they do not get what they need, they have the means to turn it into the thing they want.”
“Who?”
She gestured out the window to where the mob had been. “Them. You must understand, in your line of work. You know them so well.”
“But our family, and me—why did you never explain to me?”
“Would you have let me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were eleven, twelve, yes? You stood in front of my house every day for six months, in the rain, when you should have been in school, probably even at night. You were not a boy who would have accepted any explanation I might offer.” Bhut did not contradict her. “In any case,” Mrs. Chalwah continued, “what of the things your family never explained to me? They must have known. A girl does not begin to sleepwalk, to call after someone else, simply because she becomes a wife.”
Bhut opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Then a new understanding dawned on her.
“You didn’t know,” Mrs. Chalwah said. “Of course. You were too young, and they kept it from you.”
Bhut rose, cap in hand. “You could be saying anything—any lie to save your face,” he said, stepping to the door.
“I could. But there are two in your house you could always speak to.” Bhut turned back to her, and she fixed him with a curious look. “You’ve asked them about this before, haven’t you? The whole story?” He only stared at her, and she allowed herself a sad smile. “All these years, I dreaded you coming,” she said. The circle officer did not linger. He turned his back on her, and she listened to his footsteps on the stairs.
For so long, Mrs. Chalwah had longed for death. Each Shraavana month, cycling through year after year, she prepared her soul and willed her body to perform the exit that simply did not come. A part of her knew why she refused to die. She had been waiting for Bhut. She heard her daughter-in-law bid the circle officer her usual goodbye—Do not be a stranger, Sahib. The sound of his footsteps crunching outside drifted up to her window, and she whispered to herself: I wish you had come sooner.
37
Shobha felt Rani’s forehead again. The child had fallen asleep and made no protest as Shobha pulled off her dress and put her into a different, softer garment, one with buttons that could be easily opened if the girl felt hot later on. Shobha felt warm herself; the bedroom was stuffy. She opened the window, frowning at the lime hanging just overhead, and she saw a boy down below, staring up at the bhavan.
She pulled back. He didn’t look like one of the Mistry grandchildren; they usually came to the door. She felt a pang. She did not have those children in her home often, given the guests and the dying folk, but she loved
the way they all clustered around Rani and made that girl seem like the brightest flower in the bunch. If only she’d done something else with the letter, if only Mrs. Mistry had never seen it…. Time, she hoped, would soften the quarrel between herself and her neighbor.
After a moment, she heard the ping of small stones being thrown. They did not quite reach the window. She could hear them patter on the wall just beneath before falling back to the ground between her house and Mrs. Mistry’s. She looked down again. “What is it? If you want your father, you’d better go through the front and find him yourself.”
The boy was undeterred. “A message for you, Madam.”
Shobha pulled her sari over her head. He was just a boy, and she had to lean out of the window to hear him. “What is it then?”
The boy held up a paper packet. “I tried to go through the front, but I didn’t see you, Madam. He expressly asked that I put this in your hand only.”
“Who said? Who sent you?”
“The postmaster, Madam!” The boy held up the parcel, as if Shobha might fly down and take it herself. The sun was beginning to go down, but there was still light enough for anyone passing by to see the awkward tableau.
“Fine, yes, a moment.” She went to her almirah and opened the drawer that held spare petticoat drawstrings, which she knotted together into one long rope, and then she dropped one end down to the boy. He secured the packet and waved up at her. As soon as she began to pull it up the child bolted, running out of the gully and into the lane.
The City of Good Death Page 33