We returned. Inside there were lights, waves of activity, the doctor’s voice in the gaps, and outside there were endless stars, infinite darkness, the gorgeous night. But the weeping of the earth just wouldn’t stop.
The star that was overhead slanted to the west; the star that was out of sight rose over the horizon; the darkness to the east paled, a number of small stars vanished, a single large green star shining in their place. This was that celestial moment, that magical instant, when I had awoken and stepped outside on her wedding day, when I had saved her from death, in the only lit boat in that ocean of darkness. For at least one moment that night she had been mine; was that moment again upon us?
Asit whispered, “What, is it done?”
Hitangshu said, “No.”
“But everything seems quiet?”
“Yes, it does!”
“Should we check?” Asit stood up, but didn’t move. For a long, long time we waited, but there was no sound, everything was silent; then we saw Mr. Dey standing before us. In the ashen first light of dawn we saw his lips move. We were so still as we watched, and it was so silent all around, that we seemed to see his words, not hear them.
“Come and see her.”
Asit and Hitangshu did it all, getting hold of piles of flowers from somewhere as well as lots of other small things, fussing around her till two in the afternoon. When it was time to take her away, they were at the forefront. Many others came forward to carry her to the pyre, only I was left out because I was short, I walked alone behind them. Not exactly alone, however, because Hiren-babu had arrived by then, he walked alongside me, barefeet, without having changed out of his traveling clothes.
The next year Hiren-babu got married again and Mr. Dey was transferred. For some time people talked about them, then different tenants came to the ground floor of Tara Kutir, many more houses came up in old Paltan, electric lights lit up. Asit graduated from high school to take a job in Tinsukia, contracted some Assamese disease within six months and died suddenly. Hitangshu passed his B.S. examinations and went off to study in Germany, never to return. He married a local girl and settled down there, who knows where he is, how he is, after the war.
And as for me, I am still here, not in Dhaka, not in old Paltan, not in 1927 or ’28; all that seems like a dream now, a dream interspersed with work, a smell interspersed with reality. That overcast morning, that overcast afternoon, that rain, that night – and you! Mona Lisa, who but I remembers you!
The writer’s final words seemed to float for some time in the cloistered air of the room, he sat silently before that last unanswered question. There was no sign of restlessness in him anymore, he was sitting upright, hands on his lap, looking straight ahead – in which direction, at what, he didn’t know himself. All this while he had practically been talking to himself – virtually thinking aloud. He seemed to have forgotten where he was, whether anyone else was nearby. His words didn’t seem to have ended even after they had, he kept listening to his own words over and over again; eventually, like a stone thrown into a pool of water, the ripples of his words died down, too.
Then he looked around him, saw the waiting room of the Tundla station in the somewhat abnormal light, the cigarette ash amassed in the ashtray, the stubs floating in coffee cups – saw his three co-passengers.
All three were asleep. The contractor in the easy chair had wrapped himself in a blanket, this around his overcoat, his snores like the ringing of an old clock. The doctor was asleep with his head on his arm, which was on the table, but the man from Delhi was sleeping in a sitting position, his head tilted to one side; even in sleep his gravity had not been marred. The air of the room was thick, heavy with the breath of these sleeping people and all the accumulated cigarette smoke of the night. The writer, though he smoked heavily himself, didn’t like the vile smell. He walked outside slowly, shivering at first in the bitterly cold wind, and then, as though welcoming him, a cock crowed loudly very nearby – the harbinger of day, the promise of light, dawn!
A wave of joy washed over the writer. Here was a joy he experienced only after decades. Once again that moment of greatness, when there was night in the sky but dawn in the air – that astounding moment when you couldn’t even imagine how soon the goddess of dawn would stand at the door to the planet, setting aside ever so softly, with such a light touch, the enormous burden of this dark and star-spangled night. As he breathed in the crystal-clear air the writer thought this was just the kind of a dawn that he had experienced once or twice in old Paltan in 1927. How strange it was that the world does not expand, that everything remains the way it is, but only we wither and fall.
He began to pace up and down the platform. There was a crowd of stranded passengers in the third-class waiting room; some were nodding off on the tea shop benches, many had simply stayed on the platform with their luggage. How awful the night had been for them. And that young couple, the writer suddenly remembered, the one that had stood at the waiting room door for just a moment before going back, who had started it all, about whom the four middle-aged men had spent the entire night talking – yes, it had been all about them, the players and their situations might have been changed in each instance, but the emotions they felt were all the same, weren’t they – where was that young couple?
As he marched up and down, his eye fell on them accidentally. On the platform, where the weighing scales are placed, they had found a little nook behind a pile of packing cases. It was a good spot – behind the wall of the packing cases they had escaped both the strong grip of the cold and the prying eyes of people. The eyes of the writer in him lingered a while on that scene. Even in that very public station, they had discovered a secluded, intimate spot; having made a little bed for themselves, how snugly they were sleeping, under the same blanket. Not even the luxury of a palace would have brought greater happiness to them on this night. The light was low, you couldn’t see their faces, but you could make out that even in their sleep they hadn’t forgotten each other’s existence; even in their sleep, they were completed by their proximity to each other.
The writer slowly moved away. Gradually the sun rose, people started moving about, in a while there was news that the train would be coming any time now. The entire station sprang to life.
The contractor, the doctor, and the man from Delhi emerged one by one, their luggage carried by porters. They looked dusty in the first light of dawn, a little older because of the lack of sleep and their unshaven faces. The four met, but no more words were exchanged – they just said, “Ah, there you are,” and moved away. They, men whose night had been spent in a strange intimacy, together within four walls, could barely recognize each other in the stark light of day on that busy platform. When the train came, perhaps deliberately, they got into different compartments, as though they wished to erase the previous night. Only the writer kept looking out of the window over and over again in the hope of spotting that young couple one more time; but no one knew which compartment they had gotten into – or had they stayed back in Tundla? They could no longer be seen in the crowd.
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My Kind of Girl Page 11
