36

What seems impossible becomes possible; what seems unendurable is endured --- else that night and that day could not have passed in Mahendra's household. He had written Binodini a letter that same night, counselling her to be ready; the letter arrived by post the next morning. Asha was then lying in bed. The bearer came in with the letter and said: "Maji --- a letter." Asha's heart jolted in her breast.

In that one instant a thousand hopes and dreads sounded together. She raised her head quickly and took the letter --- and saw Mahendra's handwriting on the cover, and Binodini's name. Her head fell back at once upon the pillow; without a word she handed the letter back to the bearer.

"Who is it for?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Asha.

It was about eight in the evening when Mahendra came storming to the front of Binodini's room like a tempest --- and found no light, nothing but darkness. He pulled a matchbox from his pocket and struck a light --- and saw the room empty. Binodini was gone; so were all her belongings. He went to the southern veranda --- it too was deserted.

"Binod," he called.

No answer came.

"Fool that I am. I should have taken her with me then. Ma must have tormented her so mercilessly she could not stay in the house." No sooner had this thought formed than he accepted it as a certainty.

He went at once to his mother's room. There too no light was burning, but he could make out Rajlakshmi lying in her bed even in the dark. He burst out at once: "Ma, what have you said to Binodini?"

"Nothing at all," said Rajlakshmi.

"Then where has she gone?"

"How should I know?"

"You don't know?" said Mahendra, disbelief in every word.

"Well. I shall go and find her --- wherever she is, I shall find her." He went out.

Rajlakshmi scrambled up from her bed and hurried after him, calling: "Mahin, don't go --- come back, listen to me, only one word---" Mahendra went out through the gate in a single breath.

A moment later he came back and asked the doorkeeper: "Which way did Bouthakrani go?"

"She said nothing to us, sir. We know nothing at all."

"You know nothing!" said Mahendra in a thundering voice.

"No, Maharaj," said the doorkeeper, folding his hands.

"Nothing." Ma has coached them to say this, Mahendra told himself.

Aloud he said: "Very well then." On the gas-lit streets of the great city the ice-seller was crying his wares, and the hilsa-man his; Mahendra plunged into the babbling crowd and disappeared.