37

Bihari never sat alone with himself in the dark of the night to commune with his own soul. He had never made himself the subject of his own investigation. He had always lived outward --- towards books and work, friends and people. He took pleasure in giving precedence to the world around him over himself; but one day a great blow had struck, and the world around him had seemed to fly apart; he had been left standing alone on the summit of some mountain of grief rising into a void sky.

From that time forward he feared his own solitude; by loading himself with work he kept this companion at bay, refusing it any respite. But tonight he could not hold that inner inhabitant at arm's length. Yesterday he had seen Binodini safely to her village; since his return, in whatever company, at whatever task, the aching inward self had pulled at him without ceasing towards its own deep solitude. Weariness and exhaustion overcame Bihari today. It was about nine at night; on the southern roof before his house the summer breeze of day's end was restless and unsettled.

In the moonless dark Bihari sat on the roof in a cane chair. He had not given the boy Basanta his evening lesson --- had sent him away early. Tonight his heart was like an abandoned infant in the darkness of the world, arms raised, searching for something --- for comfort, for company, for the warmly familiar sweetness of the life he had once known. Today his resolution had broken down, his discipline lay in ruins somewhere. He had sworn not to think of certain people --- yet his whole heart was rushing towards them; there was not the least strength left to bar the way.

From the friendship of his childhood with Mahendra down to its ending --- the whole long story, painted in many colours, divided by hills and rivers like a great map, had been rolled up within him --- Bihari unrolled it now in the dark. What small world had he built his life upon, and at which ill-starred encounter had it been shattered? He turned this over in his mind. And the first figure to emerge from the shadows was --- a young face, flushed with the last of the evening sun, a bride's face veiled in shyness, framed in the benedictions of a wedding.

This lucky star had arrived from some unknown quarter of the sky and taken its place between the two friends --- bringing with it a very slight estrangement, and yet also a secret tenderness, unnameable, unlawful to cherish; and nevertheless that estrangement, that ache, had remained enveloped in a sweetness so radiant that the whole thing seemed, in memory, to be suffused with golden light. And then came the malevolent star --- the one that had left friendship, conjugal love, the peace and sanctity of a home in ashes.

Bihari tried with all his might to cast that woman --- Binodini --- into the uttermost distance of his contempt and loathing. But a strange thing happened: the blow fell oddly soft; it seemed to pass through him without touching him. That dark and unfathomable beauty --- her fathomless black eyes, her unblinking gaze --- was standing motionless before him in the dark of the waning moon. The warm summer wind coming in from the south fell on his face like her very breath. Slowly that burning, sleepless gaze began to dim; those parched and searching eyes grew moist, softened in a gathering depth of feeling --- and in a moment that figure had sunk to the floor at his feet and was pressing his knees to her breast with desperate force.

And then, like some enchanted tendril winding upward, her arms were about his neck, and a face only now opening like a freshly-blown fragrant flower was drawing near to his lips. Bihari shut his eyes and tried to exile this imagined form from the kingdom of memory --- yet he could not bring himself to strike it; and an incomplete, yearning, unconsummated kiss hovered close against his mouth and filled him with a quivering, impossible desire. Bihari could not remain alone on the dark roof.

He went quickly inside, into the lamplit room, in search of somewhere else for his mind to go. In the corner, on a side table, stood a framed photograph covered with a silk cloth. Bihari uncovered it and carried it to the centre of the room, into the light, and sat down with it in his lap. It was a portrait of Mahendra and Asha taken shortly after their wedding. On the back, Mahendra had written in his own hand "Mahinda" and Asha had written, in hers, simply "Asha." The sweetness of the early days of that marriage had been caught in the picture and could not be erased.

Mahendra sat in a chair, his face wearing the tender, newly-minted expression of a recent bridegroom; beside him stood Asha --- the photographer had not been able to persuade her to put away her veil entirely, but he could not erase the shyness from her face. Today Mahendra was making Asha weep and moving farther from her at every step; yet in the picture his face could not alter by so much as a line the freshness of that early love. The portrait had preserved, in idiot bliss, the permanent mockery of fate.

With that photograph in his lap, Bihari tried to banish Binodini to a great distance by force of reproach. But those two arms, tender with love and soft with youth, continued to press against his knees. He said to himself: you have turned such a beautiful, loving household to ruin! And yet Binodini's uplifted, imploring face with its proffered kiss kept whispering silently to him: I love you. In all the world, it is you I have chosen. But was that an answer? Could such words drown out the anguished cry of a broken household?

Demon! Demon! --- did Bihari say the word in pure condemnation, or did a faint note of tenderness creep in alongside it? At the moment when he had been stripped of every claim and every joy and was standing in the road a beggar without a coin, could he truly with his whole heart reject this unsolicited, overflowing gift of love? What, by comparison, had he ever received? All those years he had offered up his entire life and received only the crumbs and sweepings from love's table.

Today love's Annapurna had sent him a feast laid on a golden dish for himself alone --- and for what foolish scruple should this wretch deny himself? He was lost in this reflective argument, the photograph still in his lap, when he heard a sound nearby and started to his feet --- and found that Mahendra had come in. As he sprang up, the photograph slid from his lap to the carpet; he did not notice it fall. Mahendra said at once: "Where is Binodini?" Bihari moved towards him and took his hand.

"Sit down for a moment, Mahinda. We can talk through all of this quietly."

"I have no time to sit or to talk. Tell me where Binodini is."

"The question you are asking cannot be answered in a word. You must calm yourself a little."

"A lecture, is it? I studied those lessons in my nursery."

"No --- I have neither the right nor the capacity to lecture you."

"Then reproaches? I know what I am --- I am a scoundrel, the lowest of men, and whatever else you mean to say. But the point is this: do you know where Binodini is, or do you not?"

"I know."

"Will you tell me?"

"No."

"You will tell me. You have stolen her and hidden her. She is mine --- give her back." Bihari was silent for a moment; then said firmly: "She is not yours. I did not steal her. She came to me of her own accord." Mahendra roared: "Liar!" and flung himself at the closed door of the adjoining room, hammering on it and calling out at the top of his voice: "Binod! Binod!" He heard the sound of weeping from within.

"Do not be afraid, Binod! It is I --- Mahendra. I will take you away from here --- no one has the power to keep you imprisoned!" He hurled himself against the door; it burst open.

He rushed in to find the room in darkness. Through the shadows he could just make out a shape on the bed --- frozen with terror, making small incoherent sounds, clutching a pillow. Bihari was in the room in an instant, lifting Basanta from the bed and soothing him: "No fear, Basanta, no fear --- there is nothing to fear." Mahendra went rapidly through every room in the house.

When he returned, Basanta was still shuddering with sobs, and Bihari had lit the lamp in the boy's room and laid him down, stroking his back and trying to ease him to sleep.

"Where have you hidden Binodini?" said Mahendra.

"Keep your voice down, Mahinda," said Bihari.

"You have terrified this child for no reason --- he may fall ill. I tell you plainly: you have no business concerning yourself with Binodini's whereabouts."

"Virtuous! Saintly! Do not erect your monument to righteousness here. With my wife's photograph in your lap --- what devout meditation, what sacred prayer, were you engaged in, you hypocrite?" And with that Mahendra picked up the photograph from the floor, smashed the glass under his booted heel, tore the portrait itself into pieces and flung them at Bihari.

At the violence of it Basanta began to cry out again in terror. Bihari's throat went rigid; he pointed to the door and said: "Go." Mahendra stormed out.