28

After the sleepless night and its tumultuous emotions, a deep lassitude had settled over Mahendra's body and mind by the following morning. It was the middle of Phalgun, and the heat was beginning. On other days Mahendra would sit at the table in the corner of his bedchamber and read. Today he leaned back against the bolster of the floor-spread and lay there. The morning wore on and he did not go to bathe. Hawkers cried their wares as they passed along the street. The sound of office carriages on the road was unceasing.

A new house was being built in the neighbourhood, and the mason-women, beating the newly-laid roof in unison, had taken up a monotonous song in chorus. In the mildly heated southern breeze Mahendra's frayed and overwrought nerves had gone slack; no stern resolve, no difficult effort, no conflict of the will was suited to this languid, limp day of spring when one felt inclined to let everything go.

"What has come over you today, brother-in-law --- will you not bathe? And here the food is ready. Oh, what is this --- lying down like that! Are you unwell? Have you a headache?" So saying, Binodini came close and laid her hand upon Mahendra's forehead.

Mahendra said, with half-closed eyes and a listless voice, "I am not quite well today --- I shall not bathe today." Binodini said, "If you will not bathe, at least come and eat something." And she coaxed and urged until she had brought Mahendra to the dining-room, where she served him with anxious care and made him eat.

When after the meal Mahendra lay down again on the floor-spread, Binodini sat by his head and began slowly to massage his temples. With eyes half-closed Mahendra said, "Dear Bali, you have not yet eaten yourself --- go and take your meal." Binodini would not go.

In the warm breath of that idle noon, the curtains billowed; the meaningless murmuring of the coconut-palm trembling against the wall outside entered the room. Mahendra's heart began to beat faster and faster --- and Binodini's quickened breathing, keeping pace with those heartbeats, stirred the hair upon his forehead. Not a word passed from either throat. Mahendra thought to himself: "Adrift upon the endless current of this vast world, the little vessel touches somewhere or other for a moment --- what does it matter to anyone, and for how long does it truly matter?" Binodini sat at his head, smoothing his brow, and under the weight of an intoxicated youth she was gradually bending forward --- until at last the ends of her hair brushed his cheek.

The faint, trembling touch of those tresses, tossed by the breeze, made his whole body quiver again and again; suddenly it was as if his breath caught and could not escape from somewhere near his heart. With a start he sat upright and said, "No --- I have college, I must go." And he rose, without looking at Binodini's face.

Binodini said, "Do not hurry --- let me fetch your college clothes." And she brought out his college dress.

Mahendra hurried off to college, but he could settle to nothing once he was there. He made many futile attempts to fix his mind on his work, and came home early in the afternoon. Entering the room, he saw Binodini lying face downward on the floor-spread, a pillow drawn under her chest, reading some book --- a wealth of dark hair spread out across her back. Perhaps she had not heard Mahendra's footfall. He came up softly, placing his feet with care, and stood beside her. He heard that as she read, Binodini let out a long, deep sigh.

Mahendra said, "O you compassionate creature --- do not waste the treasure of your heart on imaginary people. What is it you are reading?" Binodini started up and sat back, quickly hiding the book in the folds of her sari.

Mahendra tried to snatch it away. After much scrambling and snatching, he managed to pull the book free from Binodini's defeated arms and saw --- it was Bishabriksha. Binodini, breathing quickly, turned her face away and sat in offended silence. Mahendra's heart was heaving, but with great effort he managed to laugh and say, "What a cheat you are! I had imagined it would be something very secret indeed. All this tussle, and in the end it is only Bishabriksha." Binodini said, "What secret could I possibly have, I should like to know?" Mahendra said, before he had quite thought, "Suppose, for instance, there had been a letter from Bihari?" In an instant lightning flashed in Binodini's eyes.

The playful Cupid who had been sporting in the corner of the room was struck to ashes a second time. Binodini rose to her feet like a flame suddenly ignited. Mahendra caught her hand and said, "Forgive me --- forgive my jest." Binodini wrenched her hand away and said, "Whom are you mocking? Had you been worthy of his friendship, I might have borne it if you mocked him. But you with your small, mean spirit --- incapable of friendship --- and yet you presume to jest." Binodini was on the point of leaving when Mahendra flung himself down and clasped both his arms about her feet to detain her.

At that moment a shadow fell across the room; Mahendra released her feet and looked up with a start --- it was Bihari. Bihari stood with a steady gaze that scorched them both, and said in a calm, deliberate voice, "I have come at a most inopportune moment, but I shall not detain you long. I came to say one thing. I went to Kashi; I did not know that sister-in-law was there. I gave her offence in my ignorance; I have no opportunity to beg her pardon, and so I have come to beg it of you. If, knowingly or unknowingly, I have ever been touched by any sin that has caused her a moment's pain --- I ask that it may never bring her any suffering. That is my prayer to you." Mahendra's mind blazed within him because this weakness of his had been suddenly exposed to Bihari.

This was not a moment for magnanimity. He gave a slight laugh and said, "There is an old tale of eating offerings in the temple --- your case is precisely that. I have not asked you either to confess your guilt or to deny it; so why come to play the saint by seeking pardon?" Bihari stood stiff as a wooden image for a few moments --- then, as his lips began to tremble with the fierce effort to find words, Binodini spoke out: "Bihari-Thakurpo, do not answer. Do not say a single word. What that man has brought himself to utter has left its stain upon his own mouth --- it has not touched you." Whether Binodini's words had reached Bihari's ears was doubtful --- as if driven by a dream, he turned from before Mahendra's door and descended the staircase.

Binodini followed him and said, "Bihari-Thakurpo, have you nothing to say to me? If there is blame to lay at my door, lay it now." When he walked on without answering, Binodini stepped before him and took his right hand in both of hers.

Bihari thrust her aside with a revulsion that was past all measure and walked away. He did not even know that she had fallen with the blow. Hearing the sound of the fall, Mahendra came running. He saw that the wound on Binodini's left arm near the elbow was cut and bleeding. Mahendra said, "Good heavens, that is a considerable cut" --- and at once tore away a piece of his thin shirt to make a bandage for the wound.

Binodini hastily drew her arm away and said, "No, no --- do nothing. Let the blood flow." Mahendra said, "Let me bind it and apply a dressing --- the pain will stop and it will heal quickly." Binodini moved aside and said, "I do not wish it to heal. This cut --- let it stay." Mahendra said, "I was beside myself today and I humiliated you before another --- can you forgive me?" Binodini said, "Forgive you for what? You did well. Do you think I fear people? I bow to no one. Those who strike me and walk away --- are they my entire world? And those who hold me down at their feet --- are they nothing to me at all?" Mahendra, half-maddened, said in a choked voice, "Binodini --- will you not then accept my love?" Binodini said, "I shall receive it as a crown upon my head. Love --- I have not had so much of it in my lifetime that I can turn it away with a 'I want none of it.'" Mahendra then took both her hands in his and said, "Then come to my room. I gave you pain today, and you in your turn came away having given me pain --- until that is entirely effaced, I can take no pleasure in eating or sleeping or in anything at all." Binodini said, "Not today --- let me go today. If I have caused you pain, forgive me." Mahendra said, "You must forgive me too --- otherwise I shall not sleep tonight." Binodini said, "I forgive you." Mahendra at once became urgent and eager to receive from Binodini's hands some token of forgiveness and affection, something immediate and tangible.

But he looked into her face and stopped in his tracks. Binodini descended the staircase and was gone. Mahendra climbed slowly upstairs and began to pace the roof. There was, in the fact that Bihari had come upon him thus suddenly today, an unexpected sense of liberation. The squalor that attaches to all concealment seemed, now that one person had seen the truth, to be in some measure dissolved. Mahendra said to himself: "I do not wish to go on falsely maintaining that I am a good man --- but I love. I love --- and that is no lie." The pride of his own love so swelled and emboldened him that he now began, in his own mind, to glory arrogantly in his own wrongdoing.

Into the hushed evening and the silent vault of stars and the infinite world, he flung a gesture of contempt, and said within himself: "Let whoever will think whatever ill of me --- but I love." And with the mental image of Binodini, Mahendra covered the whole sky, the whole world, every obligation and duty.

Bihari's sudden arrival today had, as it were, overturned and shattered the stoppered inkpot of Mahendra's life --- and Binodini's black eyes and black hair, spreading like ink in all directions, blotted out everything that had been white and every word that had been written there, and left only a black undifferentiated mass.