15

Durga had gone out looking for her brother. She searched all over the neighbourhood, but couldn’t find him anywhere. Nearing Annada Ray’s house, she thought, ‘I’ll just look here once—and I’ll see Khuri-ma while I’m at it.’

As she entered the Rays’ compound, a clamour of shouts and wails met her ears. Stepping inside the house, she paused at the door. There, at one end of the veranda, stood Annada Ray’s widowed sister, Sakhi Thakrun, screaming loud enough to bring the house down. ‘Does she have a shred of fear in her? I’ve seen my share of brazen women, but never one like this, my friend, never—I bow at her feet! That husband of hers is a demon, a veritable Yama—when he’s angry, there’s not an ounce of flesh left on your bones. So shouldn’t you, my dear, be a little more careful? It’s true! For three days he’s been saying, “Put the paddy out to sun, woman, put the paddy out to sun”—but does she pay a whit of attention? Does it even enter her ears? Who listens to whom! A wife in a householder’s family is meant to husk paddy, to work, that’s what I’ve always known—but no, not her! She sits there all day long, done up like a painted doll!’ To illustrate what she meant by a ‘painted doll’, Sakhi Thakrun struck a pose, acting out how a woman, exquisitely adorned, ought to sit. ‘Never in my born days have I seen or heard of such a thing, my friend.’

From inside the hall, Annada Ray’s daughter-in-law began to speak, her voice a nasal whine, weeping all the while. ‘Done up like a painted doll, you say! What about yesterday, when I spent the entire afternoon roasting ten seers of mung dal? I started right after the midday meal, and I was still at the roasting pan when I heard the five o’clock train pass. Two whole baskets of dal to roast, then grind—it was dark by the time I finished. Do you think that’s nothing? My body ached all over. At night, I thought I was coming down with a fever, my limbs hurt so much. But does anyone see that? And on top of it all, this beating this morning, for no reason at all. Why? Do I just sit here and eat for free?’

Just then, Annada Ray’s son Gokul entered, holding a stalk of green bamboo, leaves and all, in one hand and a da in the other. Catching the end of his wife’s lament, he roared, ‘So you’re not done yet! I see there’s still plenty of misery in store for you! Don’t make me lose my temper this early in the morning! For three days I’ve been telling you to put that paddy out in the sun, I’m exhausted from saying it. This weather is so cloudy—if the grains start to sprout, which father of yours is going to come and sort it out? Where will our food for the whole year come from?’

Gokul’s wife abruptly stopped crying and, with a surge of spirit, shouted back in a strong voice, ‘Don’t you dare bring my father into this, I’m telling you! What has my father ever done to you? Why must you curse his name whenever you please?’

Before she could finish her sentence, Gokul dropped the bamboo stalk, and with the da still in his hand, vaulted up the veranda steps in a single leap, shouting, ‘You dare! Today it’s either you or me! If I don’t beat this insolence of your father’s house out of you today—’

Sensing that a bloody affair was about to unfold, the family’s farmhand called out from the courtyard, ‘What are you doing, Da-thakur? What are you doing? Stop, stop!’ Then he scrambled up onto the veranda. Durga rushed forward too. Sakhi Thakrun ducked from the veranda into the hall. A great commotion erupted. Inside the hall, Gokul’s wife, facing her husband’s impending attack, had backed away and was now pressed hard against the wall, her arms raised to fend off the blows, her eyes wide with fear. The farmhand reached Gokul and snatched the da from his grasp. Then, pulling him out of the hall, he kept repeating, ‘What are you doing, Da-thakur, stop! Ah—come down, now.’

Gokul was no less than thirty-five or thirty-six, but his frame was not particularly strong. Realizing that to struggle against the robust farmhand would only expose his own malaria-weakened body, he allowed himself to be led down, muttering as he went, ‘Just look! A whole vat of paddy, seed paddy! If it gets wet and sprouts, can we plant it then? For three days I’ve been telling her! And did you see her nerve? I’ll show you nerve, I will—’

Durga breathed a sigh of relief, but realizing this was no time for pleasantries with her Khuri-ma, she slipped out of Annada Ray’s house almost unnoticed.

Near Panchu Banrujje’s house, under the jamun tree, a man sat mending pots and pans. A charcoal brazier glowed red-hot; a pile of the neighbourhood’s broken pots and bowls lay beside him. The man was short, with a wiry, compact build. His age was impossible to tell—he could have been thirty, he could have been fifty. Around his neck he wore a triple-stranded tulsi bead necklace. A scar ran down the right side of his face; the veins on his wrist stood out like cords. His dhoti was grimy. A crowd of village children had gathered around to watch him work. Durga joined them. The man said, ‘What is it you want, little one?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just want to watch.’

Back home, she told her mother, ‘Ma, you won’t believe the beating Gokul-kaka gave Khuri-ma today!’ And she recounted the entire incident from start to finish.

‘He’s nothing but a stubborn, loutish peasant!’ Sarbajaya said. ‘Ah, that poor, good woman, to have fallen into such hands, in such a family. Her life will be spent getting thrashed.’

‘She’s so fond of me, you know. Whenever she makes anything special at her house, she saves some for me. It hurt me so much to see Khuri-ma cry, Ma! And now Sakhi-thakma is turning around and scolding her.’

For three or four days, she went to the jamun tree to watch the pot-mender. The man asked her all about her home, her father’s name, every little detail. ‘Don’t you have anything at your house that needs mending?’ he asked. ‘Bring it here, little one.’

Durga came home and said to her mother, ‘Ma, can you give me our broken pots and ewers? A very nice man has come—he’s sitting on the path to the other side of the village, under the jamun tree, mending things.’

The man’s name, he said, was Pitam, and he was of the kansari caste. From time to time, as he fanned his brazier, he would sit up straight and call out, ‘Jai Radhe! Radhe Gobinda!’ In the mornings, many of the village men would gather around him. With his tongs, he would lift embers from the brazier and constantly prepare tobacco for the gentlemen, handing it to them with a face contorted in humility, his head tilted to one side. ‘Heh heh, do have some tobacco, Baba-thakur! All my trust is at the feet of Radharani! … Don’t even speak of coconuts, Baba-thakur. Last Jaistha, I thought I’d plant a few seedlings. Bought six-ganda worth of saplings and planted them on half a katha of land. But the frog menace… root, stock, and barrel, everything… all that money, just turned to mud.’

Mukherjje Moshai had been sitting there since morning, hoping to sweet-talk the man into mending his brass water-pot for free. Taking a puff of tobacco, he picked up the thread of the conversation. ‘That’s just what happened, my friend! I, too, had thought of planting twenty or so saplings behind the house this year… but then such a malaria caught me! How are things on your side of the country, Karigar?’ (He had been calling the man ‘Karigar’, artisan, all morning.)

‘Thriving, sir, utterly thriving! Don’t speak of malaria, Baba-thakur, it’s eaten the very marrow from my bones. Here, take your pot. That will be six paisa.’

Mukherjje Moshai took the pot and got to his feet. ‘What! Money for this? On this auspicious day of Kartik, you give a Brahmin a mended thing, and for that you want—’

Pitam quickly grabbed the pot from Mukherjje Moshai’s hand and, smiling with extreme politeness, said, ‘No, sir, forgive me, Baba-thakur, I can’t mend it for free. It’s still early morning, I haven’t even made my first sale. No, sir, I can’t do that. Leave the pot. Send the paisa over from your house.’

Durga’s mother said, ‘Listen, go and ask him. Sometimes they exchange old, broken utensils for new ones.’

Pitam was perfectly agreeable. Durga hauled a huge pile of old ewers, pots, bowls, and pitchers from her house and presented them to him. She spent half her days at the jamun tree, watching him stoke the forge and solder with tin. Pitam had promised to make her a brass ring; he had also said that they wouldn’t have to pay for the repairs. When Sarbajaya heard this, she said, ‘Oh, what a good man he is! Tell him to come by on Wednesday—it’s Apu’s birthday. He can have a little dal-bhat prasad with us.’

On Wednesday morning, Durga got up and went to the jamun tree, only to find the man gone. On asking around, she learned that he had packed up his things and left sometime after dusk the previous day. Apart from the pit for the forge and a heap of burnt charcoal, there was no other trace of him. Durga searched here and there, asked this person and that, but no one knew where he had gone. Her face paled with fear. What would Ma say? Half the household’s utensils were with him! He had told Durga that he had a brazier’s shop in the Jhikrahati market, that he had sent word for his brother, who would be arriving any day with new utensils, and as soon as he came, he would exchange all the broken ones. But where was he? And where was his brother? Durga searched and searched, but could not find him anywhere. Only their things were gone; not a single scrap of brass from any of the other, more cautious folk had been lost.

At dusk, after a whole day had passed, Durga, her face on the verge of tears, told her mother everything. Harihar was away from home; who was there to search, who was there to see? Sarbajaya was stunned. ‘Go and tell your Ray-jethamoshai at once!’ she said. ‘Oh, my! I’ve never heard of such a thing!’ When Harihar returned, inquiries were made in the Jhikrahati market. There was no brazier’s shop there belonging to a man named Pitam, nor was there anyone of that description.

Several months went by. It was the month of Bhadra.

One afternoon, Apu was making plans to go out and play when his mother called from behind him, ‘Where are you off to, Apu? I’m making roasted rice and chickpeas. Don’t go out now, all right? You can have them as soon as they’re ready.’

Apu heard but didn’t listen. Although he knew that his mother was making the roasted rice and chickpeas precisely because he loved them, what could he do? What a game must be going on at Nilu’s house at this very moment! Just as he set foot outside the front door, his mother’s call reached him again. ‘You went out, didn’t you! Oh, Apu! Just look at this boy! You could have had them hot… I came rushing from the ghat just to make them for you… O Apu-u-u…’

Apu dashed off and reached Nilu’s house. A lot of boys had gathered, but the game was already over by the time he arrived. ‘Come on, Apu,’ Nilu said, ‘want to go to the south fields and look for baby birds?’ Apu agreed, and the two of them went to the south fields. Just beyond the paddy fields, the paved road to Nababganj stretched from east to west, seeming to cleave the field in two. It must have been over a mile from the village. Apu had never wandered so far before. He felt as if Nilu-da had pulled him far, far away, beyond the bounds of everything familiar. After a little while he said, ‘Let’s go home, Nilu-da. Ma will scold me. It’ll be dark soon, and I won’t be able to walk the Gabtala path alone. Let’s go home.’

On the way back, Nilu lost the path. After wandering about, they found a trail that skirted a large mango orchard belonging to someone. There was still some time before sunset, but clouds were gathering again in the sky. As they were walking, Nilu suddenly stopped short, tugged at Apu’s elbow, and, staring ahead, said in a frightened voice, ‘Oh, brother Apu!’

Unable to understand the reason for his companion’s fear, Apu said, ‘What is it, Nilu-da?’ Then he looked and saw that the narrow path they were on ended in someone’s courtyard. In the yard stood a small thatched hut and a single hog plum tree. Before he could ask anything, Nilu whispered in a terrified tone, ‘Aturi the witch’s house!’

Apu’s face went dry. Aturi the witch’s house! Where on earth had they ended up at dusk! Who didn’t know that for the crime of stealing hog plums from that very tree in the yard, the witch had snatched the life-force of a boy from the fishermen’s quarter, wrapped it in a taro leaf, and sunk it in the water? Later, when a fish ate it, the poor boy’s craving for hog plums was quenched for this life. Who didn’t know that if she wished, she could suck a little boy’s blood with just a glance and then let him go? The one whose blood was drunk would know nothing of it, but would go home, eat his meal, and lie down in bed, never to wake up the next day. How many times, on a cold winter’s night, snuggled under the quilt, listening to his sister’s stories of Aturi the witch, had he said, ‘Didi, don’t tell those stories at night, they scare me. Tell me the one about the raven-haired princess instead.’

Through blurry eyes, he tried to see if anyone was in the house, and as he looked, his entire body seemed to freeze… there, by the bamboo gate in the fence… it was none other than Aturi the witch herself, standing and looking at them—no, it seemed she was looking only at him!

Seeing the very object of his terror standing right in front of him, Apu found his feet would not move, neither forward nor back.

The old woman, Aturi, furrowed her brow, her shrunken cheeks drooping even further. Tilting her head forward as if to get a better look, she began to walk towards them, step by step. Apu saw that he was trapped; there was no way to escape. For some reason, the witch’s anger was directed at him. Any moment now, she would gather up his life-force and wrap it in a taro leaf!

This was the consequence, now coming to pass, of leaving home after causing his mother pain, of spurning the food she offered, of ignoring her repeated calls. He looked around helplessly and pleaded, ‘I don’t know anything—O old auntie—I won’t do anything ever again, let me go. I’ll never come this way again. Let me go today, O old auntie!’

Nilu was so scared he had almost burst into tears, but Apu was too terrified for tears.

The old woman said, ‘Why be scared of me, my little fathers? Why fear me?’ Then, thinking they were playing a great joke on her, she laughed and said, ‘Am I going to catch you, my little darlings? Come, come to my house. I’ll give you some dried mango pulp, come on.’

Dried mango pulp… The witch was trying to trick them, to lure them into her house. And once they were inside, that would be it! He had heard so many stories from his mother about how witches and ogresses used tricks like this to trap people.

What could he do now? Was there a way out?

The old woman came a little closer and said, ‘Why are you afraid, my little fathers? I won’t say a thing. Why fear me?’

This was it, the end! The punishment for not listening to his mother was about to be meted out. Any moment now she would reach out, collect his life-force, and wrap it in a taro leaf! He expected her at any second to drop her smiling face, assume a grotesque form, and break into a hideous laugh—just like in the story of the ogress queen! Just as a fawn, caught in the hypnotic gaze of a forest python, is said to be unable to look away, so his own eyes were mesmerized, fixed firmly on the old woman’s face. In a choked voice, utterly bewildered, he cried out, ‘O old auntie, my mother will cry. Don’t do anything to me today. I never came to steal plums from your tree. My mother will cry!’

He had turned blue with terror. The house, the yard, the trees, Nilu, everything around him seemed to dissolve into a haze. There was no one anywhere… only him and the cruel gaze of Aturi the witch… and far, far away, the sound of his mother’s voice calling him to eat his roasted rice!

The next moment, however, his extreme fear gave him a kind of desperate courage. With a muffled cry, crazed with terror, he plunged through the jungle of bhant, sheora, and rangchita bushes before him, breaking and leaping over them, and ran blindly into the gathering dusk. Nilu ran after him.

Not understanding the cause of their fear, the old woman thought to herself, ‘I didn’t go to hit them, I didn’t go to grab them. Just young boys. Who knows why they got so scared of me at dusk? Whose little boy was that?’

By the time Apu reached home, evening had fallen. Sarbajaya had just lit the stove and was preparing to fry palm fritters. Durga sat nearby, scraping the palm to extract its pulp. Seeing her son, she said, ‘Where have you been? You went out this afternoon and haven’t eaten a thing all day. Don’t you feel hungry or thirsty?’

The things Apu wanted to tell his mother were piled up in his mind, all trying to come out at once, and in their jostling, they blocked each other’s exit, rendering him utterly speechless. He only managed to say, ‘Should I change my clothes, Ma? This is what I was wearing this afternoon.’

Then, to his astonishment, he saw that his mother showed no eagerness at all to give him the roasted rice, but was instead examining the palm pulp with great concentration to see if it was too thick or too thin. When her inspection was finished, she said to Durga, ‘Let me fry a few and see. If not, there’s some rice flour under the big bedstead. Go and fetch a little more.’ Then, turning to her son, she said, ‘Wait, Apu, I’ll fry some hot ones for you right now.’

Apu said, ‘Why, Ma? What about the roasted rice and chickpeas?’

‘But you didn’t eat the roasted rice, did you? I called you so many times, but you just went out. It got cold, so Durga ate it. But these fritters will be ready in a moment. I’ll fry them and give them to you.’

The house of cards that Apu had been building in his mind since that afternoon was blown to the ground in a single puff. So this was how his mother loved him! From the moment he had left the house, he had been constantly thinking, ‘Ma must be so worried about me. “My Apu, why isn’t he home yet? I rushed back from the ghat just to make those for him, and ah, he didn’t get to have any.”’ Yes, as if! As if his mother was losing sleep over him. She had calmly fed the snacks to his sister and was sitting there, carefree. He was the only one who had been worrying himself sick for nothing all this time.

Durga said, ‘Ma, hurry up and fry them. The clouds are getting really dark. If it starts to rain, we won’t be able to fry anything. The roof leaks, you know! It’ll be just like the other day.’

Before their very eyes, the tops of the bamboo grove turned black in the shadow of the massing clouds. The sky had grown dark, heavy with cloud, yet the rain still held off—a time that brings a peculiar sense of delight and wonder, a feeling of not knowing what terrifying downpour might be on its way, one that might just sweep the whole world away. And yet, though it rains every time and the world is never washed away, the spell is never broken. Durga’s heart filled with this joy of the unknown; from time to time, she would come to the edge of the verandah, peering out from under the low eaves to gaze up at the sky, dark with cloud.

Sarbajaya fried a few bora and said, “Here, Durga, take this bowl to him. He must be hungry—he’s had nothing since this afternoon!” It was those last words that proved his undoing. Until that moment, Apu had been managing somehow, but the note of tenderness in his mother’s final words made the dam of his wounded pride burst completely. He threw the bowl, bora and all, into the courtyard and cried, “I don’t want your bora! I’ll never eat it! Go on!”

Sarbajaya was left dumbfounded by her son’s behaviour. In a poor household, only she knew what struggles it took to scrape anything together. And now this wretched boy had, for the second time, wasted food that had been gathered with such hardship! Filled with indignation and rage, she looked at her son and said, “What has gotten into you today! It seems ash is written in your destiny. Go on then, eat that while it’s hot.”

Now it was Opu’s turn. He had never heard such words from his mother’s lips. He had been hoping for a few words of comfort and affection, and instead, at dusk, she had spoken so cruelly! He stood up and said, “Fine, Ma. I didn’t get any chalbhaja—don’t you think I was hurt by that? Do you think I haven’t been thinking about it since this afternoon? I—I’m never coming back to your house again! You said I should eat ash—why should I eat ash? And I suppose Didi gets to eat all the good things? I’m not coming back to your house. Never ever!”

Just as he had recently fled from old Aturi’s house, heedless of the darkness, the thorn-brakes, and the mango grove, so now, beside himself with anger, he scrambled down from the verandah and dashed towards the outer courtyard with the same desperate abandon. His wounded expression, his pouting lip, and the very way he spoke struck Durga as so comical that she nearly collapsed with laughter. “Hee hee… Oh, that Opu… he’s completely mad, Ma, isn’t he? The way he talks!” Then she mimicked her brother’s speech: “I didn’t get any chalbhaja—hee hee!—And don’t you think I was hurt by that? What an absolute fool! ‘Hey, Opu! Wait, Opu-uuuuu!’”

Opu ran along the path beside the boundary wall, towards the bamboo grove at the back. The clouds still hung motionless in the sky. At the foot of the bamboo grove, amidst the thickets and bushes, the monsoon dusk was pitch-black and desolate. Ordinarily, he would never have even dreamed of coming to a place like this alone, at this hour. But for now, standing there, he had completely forgotten the darkness and desolation all around him, the rustling sound from within the bamboo, the old tales of the ghost in the nearby solte-khagi mango tree. He stood there thinking—I’m never going home! Never in this lifetime will I go home again!

Once the first flush of indignation had passed, a chill began to creep over him. Fearfully, he glanced towards the distant solte-khagi mango tree. He thought to himself: It would be perfect if a ghost came right now and carried me off to the highest branch. Ma would search for me until she cried herself to death… She would think, Why did I tell him to eat ash this evening? That’s why my little boy, my Khoka, got angry and went out into the dark under the storm clouds, and never came back. For a moment, he savoured with vengeful pleasure the depth of his mother’s suffering were he to die at the hands of a ghost. After that, he moved from where he was and went to stand on the path beside the wall. He was beginning to feel frightened. There was an indistinct sound from the bamboo grove ahead. Opu fearfully raised his eyes to look. His mother and sister were calling for him from the direction of Ranu’s house, “O Opu-uuuuu!” There seemed to be another sound from the bamboo grove. He began to feel a great unease. But the difficult part was this: unless they coaxed him back, he couldn’t just walk into the house on his own after such a fit of temper. Surely he was not so utterly lacking in self-respect. Now his sister seemed to be coming out through the back gate of Ranu’s house.

He ran and stood at the corner of the wall in front of the door.

Suddenly, as she came along, her eyes fell on the space beside the wall and Durga cried out, “There he is, Ma! Look… he’s standing right there! Look! Here, by the wall!” Then she ran and grabbed her brother’s hand. (There was no need to run.) “Oh, you little rascal, so you’ve been standing here quietly all this time, while Ma and I have been searching all over the place for you! Just look at you!” The two of them took hold of him and brought him into the house.