On the wedding day, I woke to the strains of the shehnai, before sunrise. As soon as I awoke I remembered that other last night, when I had rescued Mona Lisa – or so it had seemed then – from the clutches of death. The happiness that had borne me away that night as I watched the emergence of daylight – that same happiness returned to my breast, gave me goosebumps. The shehnai brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t stay in bed, I went out and stood beneath the starry sky, heard them blowing the conch shell inside the house. I went close to where she was; if only I could see her at this moment before dawn, when the sky signaled midnight but the clear air spoke of morning, if only I could see her once in this extraordinary celestial moment. But no such luck, the haldi ceremony was underway, she was surrounded by so many unfamiliar girls, so much to do, so much to dress up for – I couldn’t possibly steal a glance in the middle of all this. I stood outside and listened to the sounds and activity inside, and over all of this showered the strains of the shehnai. The last star twinkled out of existence before my eyes, the trees became visible, as did the body of the earth: once more the sun dawned upon the planet.
That day Asit went so hoarse his voice was reduced to a new bride’s whisper; he was so busy he could barely recognize me. Hitansghu was busy too, busy and a little pompous, for the groom and his party had occupied two rooms in their house: he had worn out his sandals ferrying messages between the ground floor and first floor. All day long I tried to help Asit and Hitangshu in turn, but I didn’t think I was proving useful. Eventually, when it was time to pick up the bride’s platform and move it in a circle seven times around the groom, as was the custom, I stepped forward, only to be elbowed out by Asit and Hitangshu. She put her arms around them and did her seven rounds, I could only stand and watch.
The next day onwards, the three of us became Hiren-babu’s slaves. No one was as handsome, no one as learned, no one with as good a sense of humor. Other men seemed monkeys in comparison, even I, his only detractor of any kind, did not feel any more that his face looked silly. In fact, I began to imitate him, trying to sit, stand, walk, laugh, talk like him. The other two did the same, and this made me laugh; maybe each of us was laughing at the efforts of the other two, though none of us actually said anything.
One afternoon we were listening to a funny story Hiren-babu was telling when he looked around and said, “Could you just find out where Toru is?”
“Should I fetch her?” I said and ran off.
Mona Lisa was combing her hair on the south veranda, her back to the sun. I stood near her and forgot to speak; she suddenly seemed new, different, dressed in a fresh, crisp sari, vermilion in her hair, jewelry glittering on her ears, hands, and neck, and a strange fragrance emanating from her – not Hiren-babu’s scent, not the whiff of fresh furniture with its taint of alcohol, not even hair oil or face powder. Instead, it seemed to me that the very soul of all these smells had possessed Mona Lisa’s body. I breathed it in deeply, my head reeling.
She raised her eyes, looked at me and said, “What?”
“Nothing . . .” I said, then remembered my errand. “Hiren-babu is calling for you.”
She didn’t appear to have heard what I added last, and kept combing her hair serenely.
“Can’t you hear me? Hiren-babu is calling for you.”
“So what if he is? Do I have to jump at his bidding?”
“What . . .?”
Pausing in her combing, she looked at me and said, “Not much longer. I’ll be gone soon.”
I said, “You’ll love Calcutta, Dhaka’s no place to live.”
“Will all of you remember me, Bikash?”
I bustled about, trying to hurry her up, and said, “No more talking. Come on now.”
“Can’t you see I’m combing my hair? Go tell him I can’t go now.”
I was taken aback, but Mona Lisa rose soon afterwards, and I followed. “And then, Hiren-babu?” I said.
But Hiren-babu seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for storytelling. He stared outside through the window, while Mona Lisa sat on a chair and plucked at the tablecloth aimlessly.
I entreated him, “Please tell me the rest!”
“Not now.”
I sat on the bed and, leafing through an English book, remarked, “I’ve read this. Very interesting.”
Hiren-babu suddenly rose and said, “This one’s very interesting too. Why don’t you take it home and read it, I’ll take a quick nap. All right?”
I didn’t say anything and went out slowly; I felt, through my back, the door being closed. I didn’t return home, I sat down exactly where she had been sitting on the veranda. The comb with the scent of her hair was still lying there, I picked it up and ran my fingers over its teeth repeatedly.
One more day, one more day. The day of departure came, was postponed, another day, another. And then they left.
This time there was a letter, one letter for the three of us, in a thick blue envelope, addressed to me, this time. I wrote the reply for all of us, a little on the long side, and a poem as well, which I didn’t send. The letters came to an end soon, from both sides, and all I wrote was poetry.
We got all the news from Mrs. Dey. They were well, very well. Hiren had bought a car, they had made a trip to Asansol. The talkies had come to Calcutta, tomatoes were dear, but winter had suddenly receded, one hoped there would be no illness. As soon as it got a little warmer they’d be going to Darjeeling.
I started seeing, in my mind, images of Darjeeling, a place I’d never seen, but Mrs. Dey dispelled them one day, saying, “They’re coming.”
Coming! Here! To Dhaka! Why, what happened to Darjeeling?
Answering our unasked question, Mrs. Dey said, “She’s not well, she’s going to stay with me now.”
“Ill again?” All three of us were startled.
“Not ill exactly, not very well, that’s all,” Mrs. Dey smiled slightly.
We felt very disturbed. Disturbed by her voice, her smile. Not well, but not ill – what was going on? Yet Mrs. Dey was serene and complacent, she appeared to be pleased with the news. We felt quite angry, really.
The three of us turned up within an hour of their arrival. Mona Lisa was leaning back on the sofa, a cigarette tin in her hand. We looked at one another – had Hiren-babu’s behavior driven her to take up smoking?
She smiled faintly upon seeing us, didn’t say anything.
“How are you, Mona Lisa?” We tried to set a light tone to our reunion.
Bringing the cigarette tin close to her face, she touched it with her mouth and closed the lid, saying, “Well . . .”
“Are you unwell?”
Without replying, she said, “What news?” Then she started talking of this and that, frequently raising the tin to her mouth.
Hiren-babu entered and said to her, eagerly, “Toru, how are you feeling now?”
Raising tired eyes, she said, “Fine.”
“Why don’t you lie down for a while?”
“No, I’m fine as I am.”
“Ah, you boys are here. Toru here has . . .” Hiren-babu stopped abruptly.
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Nothing, but . . .”
But what? Had she got some dreadful disease that couldn’t be talked about with anyone else? And she seemed to have changed, didn’t even laugh wholeheartedly when she wanted to. Our mothers had always told us girls became healthier after marriage, but what had happened to our Mona Lisa?
Mrs. Dey brought her a small plate and said, “Try this, will you?”
“What is it, Ma?”
“Try it and see.” She took a little on her finger and pushed it into her daughter’s mouth.
“No, no, no more.” Lines of discomfort were etched on her face; she put her hand to her throat and lowered her face.
We walked without speaking for a while after we came out, feeling rather depressed. Asit broke our silence. “She was spitting into that cigarette tin.”
“What?” I was shocked.
I looked for an explanation. “That must be part of her illness then.”
“She’s not ill.” Asit said solemnly. “She’s going to have a baby.”
Hitangshu chuckled in response. “Why are you laughing?” I asked him, angrily. “What are you laughing at?”
Asit said, “That’s why her mother brought her that green mango mixture. People in her condition like sour things.”
“You know everything,” I roared in rage.
“What’s the matter with you?” Asit looked at me, in apparent amusement.
“Leave me alone. I hate it, I’m going home.”
I deserted them and went home, sitting down to write poetry in the twilight, solitary.
Hiren-babu went back in two days. His train left in the afternoon. The luggage was placed in the horse-drawn carriage. Hiren-babu stopped as he was about to get in. “Did you leave something behind? Should I go get it?” I said quickly.
“No, I’ll go myself.”
He went in with quick steps, then returned and got into the carriage without looking to his left or right. The horseman cracked his whip. Asit craned his neck, “When are you coming again?”
“I’ll be coming. Look after her,” said Hiren-babu and turned away. My heart cried out.
How silent that afternoon, how picturesquely beautiful, back in the March of 1928, in old Paltan. The carriage became smaller and smaller, and disappeared around the bend of the road. We went inside. Mona Lisa was crying into her pillow, her body racked with sobs.
“Mona Lisa!”
“Listen, listen to us now.”
“Hiren-babu will come again . . .”
“Next time we simply won’t let him go.”
“Don’t cry, don’t cry anymore, Mona Lisa.”
The tears didn’t stop. I knelt on the floor next to her, put my hand on her head and said, “Quiet now, quiet now, Mona Lisa.” As I spoke, my voice broke too and I had tears in my eyes.
Mona Lisa pushed me away after a few minutes and said, “Hey – why are you crying? Silly!” Grabbing my hair, she shook me and said, “You’re a man – aren’t you ashamed to cry? Stop immediately.”
I raised my face. The moment our eyes met there was a tremor in my breast, and smaller tremors continued all day, I couldn’t forget even in my sleep.
The three of us surrounded her. So that she could be well, happy, never feel upset. If she suddenly felt the whim to eat something out of the ordinary, Asit scoured the city to fetch it. That she would lose the desire to have it as soon as she saw it was well known by now, but we lived in the hope of her new desires. And if ever she did eat something, and liked it, we were over the moon with happiness.
Hiren-babu returned after three months. By then Toru’s health was much improved; she was eating, going out, buying new clothes from peddlers, looked fuller. This time Hiren-babu stayed for ten days, and then again during the Durga Puja vacation.
But by then her condition was deteriorating again. The doctor visited frequently, prescribed medicines, but from what we could hear, none of it was working. We didn’t know why she was suffering, didn’t understand it, but we could see its effect for ourselves – she had dark circles under her eyes, she was out of breath after a sentence or two, her face sometimes blue. We hovered nearby, fanned her when she lay down, tried to amuse her when she seemed well, but never succeeded.
One day I said, “Babar took on Humayun’s illness, how nice it would be if something like that could be done.”
Asit burst out in laughter. “Whatever else you can do, you cannot take on this illness of hers.”
I reddened and said, “Not the illness, but the suffering.”
Hitangshu said, “Really, how she’s suffering. She paces up and down all night, apparently – just can’t sleep. It even hurts to lie down.”
Asit said, “That’s inevitable. Have you seen the way she looks?”
I protested, “What do you mean? She looks beautiful, very beautiful.”
“However beautiful she may be, these last few days . . .”
I raised my voice and said, “This is the time when she’s looked the most beautiful!”
The sharpness of my tone probably took them by surprise; they didn’t say anything else.
The more days that passed, the more beautiful she appeared to me; her body seemed to be possessed of an amazing beauty. One day I couldn’t help but tell her as much. Last year, when they returned from Ranchi, all of heaven had fit into a small train compartment. On just such a sun soaked winter day, now, she suddenly said, “Bikash, I see you staring at me far too often these days.”
“You’re very beautiful these days, that’s why.”
“Wasn’t I beautiful before?”
“Even more now.”
Mona Lisa frowned and looked outside. She said, “You people really love me, don’t you. But please don’t look at me that way, it makes me uncomfortable . . . Oh, how sunny it is outside!”
I got up and shut the window.
“I’ll take a nap, all right?”
A sheet was folded near her feet, I unfolded it and said, arranging it over her, “You’re well these days, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.”
On her face I saw hope mixed with courage, fear with hope, patience with fear. Moving the sheet so that her feet remained uncovered, I said, “Why did Hiren-babu leave?”
“Doesn’t he have work to do?”
“When is he coming again?”
“In good time.”
“Why did he have to go – I wish he hadn’t.”
“Enough now, never mind all that,” she said, turning on her side and shutting her eyes. Her eyes closed, she said, “I’m going to sleep,” and immediately fell asleep. Poor thing, couldn’t sleep nights, how tired she must be. I said a prayer, I don’t know to who: may everything go well for her, may everything go well for her.
In bed that night I thought, she might be in pain now, walking around her room, the darkness of the howling jackal outside and seven or eight hours still left of night. Why could I not do anything, why could I not go to her right now, put her to sleep by some miracle? To see suffering and not be able to do anything about it – was this man’s fate? Were we really bound hand and feet, with no other recourse? These thoughts drove sleep away, gave me lines of poetry. As soon as I got up I saw the light of the new moon outside; Tara Kutir could be seen indistinctly, like a dream, like a memory. I didn’t look for long, I lit a lantern and sat amidst the kerosene fumes and mosquito bites to write poetry.
Every day went this way; sleep deserted my nights. I stayed awake with her; I was her bodyguard, I would protect her from all grief. I imagined myself as a god of sorts as I thought this way, amazing myself with the remarkable lines of poetry that came to mind as a result.
On such a night – it was nearly two in the morning – my hand suddenly shook as I wrote. I heard someone calling me outside, “Bikash, Bikaaa . . . sh!” I waited a little, and heard the same call again, in a muted voice. Opening the door, I came outside to find the two of them standing, like shadows, outside it.
The moon wasn’t up yet that night, probably didn’t come up at all, as it was close to new moon. The sky sparkled with stars, the three of us stood in that stardust’s glow, on that winter’s night, in the field, with beating hearts.
“Well, Asit? What news, Hitangshu?”
“It’s started, probably,” Hitangshu spoke.
“Started?”
“I could hear movements, conversation and a low moaning downstairs. I seemed to hear it in my sleep, then I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. So I called Asit and came to you – were you awake?”
I didn’t say anything. In the starlight I saw Hitangshu’s face was pale, and Asit was looking the other way, into the distance. We had changed too in this time, our laughter and jokes were few and far between, we didn’t chat much, and as for the person we had said a thousand things about, we were compl
etely silent about her. We were breathless, breathless with expectation.
We didn’t realize we were trembling, didn’t know we were walking, didn’t understand when we opened the small garden gate and stood below the stairs. Surely we made no noise, and weren’t talking either, but Mr. Dey came out with a torch almost immediately, as though he had been waiting for us. Softly, he said, “Asit, could you go on your cycle to Dr. Mukherjee, get him to come back with you.”
Asit disappeared like a shadow. Hitangshu sat down on the stairs. A continuous, muffled sobbing pierced our backs and entered our breasts; it seemed to have no sound except that of suffering, as though someone had wounded the very soul of the earth. And this sobbing rose from the very breast of the earth, so it would never cease.
We couldn’t set eyes on her, not even from a distance; we couldn’t go to her room, not even near it; all we could do was sit outside, in the cold, in the dark, not asleep, not awake, before the sky, face to face with destiny.
The comings and goings of the doctor began, went on all night, continued the next day. As soon as it was morning we sent an extra charge telegram to Hiren-babu, and thought, no matter how quickly the wire arrived, no matter if Hiren-babu’s heart flew here even more swiftly, he would never be able to arrive before the next afternoon – how helpless man was, how impotent! Doctors, nurses, midwives; medicines, injections, prayers – still helpless, man was still helpless. What was happening, had happened, would happen; nobody had the answers in their eyes, the doctor’s face was like stone, her parents had no words except short instructions, her mother couldn’t even look us in the eye – and who had known all this time there was a shriveled old man concealed beneath Mr. Dey’s immaculate appearance? Who had known these tears were hidden in the blue folds of the sky? And did we have nothing to do besides listen to those tears?
Afternoon came before noon that day, the darkness before afternoon. Then, when the night was a little heavier, suddenly a scream arose from the bowels of the earth; it rose, it fell, it rose again toward the sky; the sky was silent, the stars did not budge. Again, like the scream of the sacrificial lamb before the deity, not twice, not four times, not ten times, but endlessly. We ran outside, but no matter how far we ran the sound chased us, this was the cry of mother earth, where could you hide from it?
My Kind of Girl Page 10
