20

Very shortly afterwards, Mahendra received, at his lodgings, a letter in a familiar hand. During the bustle of the day he did not open it --- he tucked it into his breast pocket and kept it there. As he listened to lectures at college, as he made his rounds in the hospital, the thought would rise up in him from time to time that a bird of love was asleep in the nest of his chest, and that the moment he woke it all its soft, intimate song would fill his ears. One evening, in his solitary room by lamplight, Mahendra settled himself comfortably in his chair with a good rest for his back.

He drew the letter from his pocket --- warm from the heat of his body. For a long while he sat without opening it, studying the superscription on the envelope. He knew there would not be much in the letter. Asha could not be expected to express her feelings with any coherence or skill. He would simply have to supply the gentle, tender thoughts from his own imagination, reading them into her unformed letters and crooked lines. As he read his name, written with such care by Asha's clumsy hand, it seemed to him that within his own name he could hear a melody --- --- the music of a pure love from the innermost sanctuary of a virtuous woman's heart.

In these one or two days of separation, all the heaviness of their prolonged closeness had lifted from Mahendra's mind, and the joyful memory of a simple young bride's new love glowed bright again within him. All the little vexations of daily domestic life that had lately been nagging at him were swept away, and in a clear light of love, unencumbered by task or cause, the image of Asha in his mind had come alive. Mahendra very slowly tore open the envelope, drew out the letter, and pressed it against his forehead and cheek.

The scent of an essence he had once given Asha as a gift rose from the paper and entered his heart like a long, wistful breath. He unfolded the letter and read it. But what was this? The lines were crooked enough --- but the language was not the simple, artless kind he had expected. The hand was awkward --- but the words did not match it at all. This is what it said --- "Beloved --- the one you have gone away to forget --- why should I remind you of her by writing to you? The creeper that you tore from its vine and flung to the ground --- with what shame does it make any effort to twine its way upward again? Why did it not simply merge with the dust and become dust?"But what harm will it do you, my lord, if for a moment you are reminded?

How much can it touch your heart? And yet your neglect has entered my ribs like a thorn and lodged there. In every day, every night, every task, every thought --- whichever way I turn, it is there to pierce me. Tell me some way to forget, as you have forgotten." "My lord --- that you once loved me --- was that my fault?

Had I ever hoped for such happiness even in a dream? Where did I come from, who knew of my existence? If you had never looked at me twice, if I had been allowed to stay in your house as an unpaid servant, could I have reproached you for it? What was it in me that charmed you, beloved, what did you see that you raised me so high in your regard? And now --- if a thunderbolt has fallen from a clear sky, why did it only scorch me? Why did it not turn body and soul to ashes altogether?" "These two days I have borne much, I have thought much --- but one thing I cannot understand.

Could you not have cast me aside even while remaining under the same roof? Was there any necessity for you to leave the house because of me? Do I occupy so much of your world? Had you left me in some corner of your house, outside your very door, would I even have caught your eye? If that is so, why did you go --- was there no path by which I might have been the one to leave? I came floating in, and would have floated away." What letter was this? Whose was this language? Mahendra had no difficulty in understanding. As though struck and stunned, he sat holding the letter in motionless bewilderment. His mind, which had been running full-speed along its familiar track like a locomotive, had received a collision from the opposite direction --- and derailed, lay overturned and battered in a jumbled heap beside the line. After sitting long in thought he read it again, twice, three times. What had for so long been a distant rumour of a shadow now seemed to take shape before him. In one corner of the sky of his life a comet had been visible, dim as a shadow --- and now its great sweeping tail blazed in a line of fire. The letter was Binodini's. Simple Asha had copied it out in the belief that it expressed her own feelings. The thoughts she had never entertained before rose in her mind as she wrote out Binodini's composition. The words she had copied from outside took root inward and became truly her own; and the new pain that arose from this could never have been expressed by Asha with any such beauty. Asha said to herself: How did my friend understand the thoughts of my heart so perfectly? How did she express them so exactly? And she clung to her intimate companion with a still more eager dependence --- for the pain that lived within her, the words for it were her friend's alone --- she was so helpless without her. Mahendra rose from his chair, knitted his brows, and tried at some length to be angry with Binodini --- but the anger turned instead upon Asha. What foolishness, what an outrage upon her husband! And so muttering, he sat back down in his chair and read the letter again as evidence. As he read it, an inner exhilaration slowly began to rise within him. He tried very hard to read the letter as Asha's letter alone. But in no manner would this language call Asha to his mind. After reading a line or two, a intoxicating suspicion --- foaming and heady as spilled wine --- would surge and overflow within him on every side. The suggestion in this letter --- veiled yet explicit, forbidden yet close at hand, poisoned yet sweet, at once bestowed and withdrawn --- this ambiguous intimation of a love drove Mahendra to madness. He felt the urge to plunge a knife somewhere into his own hand or foot --- to do something to shake off the intoxication, to send his mind flying in some other direction. He brought his fist down hard on the table, leapt from his chair, and said: "Away with this --- let me burn the letter." He brought it close to the lamp. He did not burn it --- instead he read it once more. The next morning the servant swept a great deal of ash from the table. But it was not the ash of Asha's letter --- it was the ash of Mahendra's many incomplete and abandoned attempts to write a reply.