The Death of Vishnu

by Manil Suri

  “Stranger and stranger this thing gets,” Mrs. Pathak announced unnecessarily. “Now we will go see who is this Mr. Mystery Man who has dropped by to take a nap.”

  Short Ganga shushed Mrs. Pathak, who put a finger on her own mouth in obedience, even though this was a needless exercise since they were, after all, descending to awaken the Mystery Man.

  They stood over the sheet-and-dupatta-covered figure. “Look, he’s stolen my sheet from poor Vishnu—what a Mystery Man and a half, to steal the covering from a dying person,” Mrs. Pathak exclaimed. She bent down to take a closer look. “And this dupatta—I’ve seen it before—who wears this color dress? Is it Mrs. Asrani or Mrs. Jalal?”

  Short Ganga turned to Mr. Pathak, who cleared his throat. “You can take off the sheet and see who it is,” he instructed her, loath to do the task himself.

  Short Ganga thought about protesting, but a part of her was excited at the prospect of being the one to unmask the Mystery Man. Besides, if it did turn out to be Radiowalla, and he attacked her, she would have evidence against him to take to the cigarettewalla, with both the Pathaks present as witnesses. She extended a hand to the edge of the sheet, but just before she could touch it, the figure underneath stirred, then sat bolt upright, its face still obscured.

  Short Ganga drew back, and Mrs. Pathak let out a squeal of fright. Even Mr. Pathak’s voice wavered, as he mustered all the sternness he could. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Vishnu? Is that you? Who is it? Why can’t I see anyone? What is this over my head?”

  “Jalal sahib? What are you doing here? Ganga, help Mr. Jalal to get the cloth off, will you?” Mr. Pathak said, still hesitant to touch anything himself. “What happened, did you fall in the dark?”

  Short Ganga pulled the dupatta off, to reveal Mr. Jalal blinking in the landing light, looking as disoriented as an insect emerging from its pupa.

  “Did I fall?” he repeated dully, as if asking the question to himself. Then, suddenly remembering, he sat up straight. “Vishnu!” he said. “You won’t believe what I saw. He came to me. As a god.”

  “Maybe he did fall,” Short Ganga suggested. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of refuse and phenol emanating from Vishnu and now lingering like a cloud over Mr. Jalal as well.

  “You can’t imagine what he looks like. It’s scary even now to think of it.”

  “Mr. Jalal, what are you talking about?”

  “He showed me. I saw him. Hundreds of eyes and arms and legs. Flames as long as rivers spurting from his mouth. Corpses crushed between his teeth. He’s a god, he said, and he won’t wait around much longer, unless you acknowledge him. Unless we all acknowledge him. That’s what he directed me to tell you. Not to make him angry.”

  Mr. Pathak looked at his wife.

  “Mr. Jalal,” Mrs. Pathak said. “Can you see me?”

  “Yes, of course, I can see you.”

  “Do you recognize me, Mr. Jalal?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I do, look, I don’t have time for this.”

  “Who told you Vishnu is a god?”

  “He did, of course. Vishnu did. Is it so hard to believe?”

  “But Vishnu hasn’t spoken for days,” Mrs. Pathak declared, pleased at the simplicity of her logic. “He may even be dead by now—have you checked his pulse?”

  “I don’t have to. I just talked to him. Haven’t you been listening? Go ahead, one of you, check his pulse if you don’t believe me.”

  Mrs. Pathak turned to Mr. Pathak, who turned to Short Ganga, who looked back defiantly. There was nothing that was going to persuade her to search Vishnu’s limbs for a pulse.

  “He’s not dead, I tell you. He just spoke to me. Not spoke, really—he revealed. That’s what gods do when they want to say something. They reveal.”

  “What did he reveal exactly?”

  “I told you. His real self. He looks just like those gods in the religious calendars—the ones the cigarettewalla has hanging in his shop. Even more mouths and arms and feet, if you can imagine.”

  Mr. Jalal paused, examining the air, as if Vishnu’s apparition might still be floating around. “He was standing here, in front of me, before he swallowed everyone and everything.”

  Short Ganga and Mrs. Pathak exchanged a look. Mr. Pathak sighed. “Come, Mr. Jalal, you’ve had a difficult night. Perhaps you should go upstairs.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Pathak added. “Mrs. Jalal must be worrying.”

  “A ghost has mounted him,” Short Ganga whispered. “Entered through some orifice he left open and climbed up to his head. Definitely a ghost.” She examined Mr. Jalal suspiciously, letting her gaze linger at his ears, his mouth, even his buttocks. “Through some orifice.”

  Mrs. Pathak shushed her. “Come, Mr. Jalal, we’ll help you up to your flat. Ganga, could you unwrap the sheet from his legs?”

  Mr. Jalal watched distractedly as Short Ganga pulled the sheet down to disentangle first his left foot, then his right. The pattern on the cloth caught his eye. The flowers which had looked orange in the landing light last night were actually yellow. He felt elated at this—yellow was an auspicious color, yellow flowers were like little suns, signifying light, signifying energy. Leaning forward, he plucked the sheet out of Short Ganga’s hands, just as she was beginning to fold it up.

  “This is Vishnu’s,” he announced, and arranged the sheet over Vishnu’s body. “We really have to get a pillow for his head.”

  As the Pathaks were helping him up the first of the stairs, Mr. Jalal suddenly clasped each of them by the forearm. “It’s finally happened, hasn’t it?” he said, pulling them closer to him and looking from one to the other.

  Mrs. Pathak’s bangles jingled in protest as she tried to free herself, but Mr. Jalal’s grip was too insistent.

  “Even to me it’s happened. I can’t believe it,” Mr. Jalal said, scanning first Mr. Pathak’s face for confirmation, then Mrs. Pathak’s, and failing entirely to notice her agitation at having her arm seized by a man not her husband.

  “It’s so amazing. I’ve received my sign,” continued Mr. Jalal, still oblivious to Mrs. Pathak, and to the alarm now spreading across Short Ganga’s face as well. Fortunately, just at the point when Mrs. Pathak’s scream seemed imminent (with Short Ganga getting ready to run for the cigarettewalla and Mr. Pathak still wondering how to intervene), Mr. Jalal released his grip and allowed himself to be led up to his flat.

  THE LANDING IS deserted again. Mr. Jalal’s revelation drifts silently over the steps.

  Could it be true?

  He is Vishnu.

  Can Mr. Jalal’s vision be trusted? Does he know what he is saying?

  He is a god.

  Could that be why he has become weightless? Is that how he can will himself from step to step?

  He is Vishnu.

  Yes, it must be true. How else could his hearing be so sharp that he catches Radiowalla’s music, his vision so acute that he sees through brick and stone?

  He is the god Vishnu.

  Isn’t that what his mother always told him? Isn’t that why she gave him his name? How did that saying go, the one she used to make him repeat?

  I am Vishnu, he says. He hasn’t said it since he was a child.

  I am Vishnu, he practices saying. It sounds right to him.

  But what, suddenly, has made him a god? What has changed, after all these years as a mortal? Or was he a god all along, just did not know his power? Was it there within him, waiting all this time to be set free if he tried?

  I am Vishnu. Keeper of the universe, keeper of the sun.

  If he is a god, shouldn’t he consort from now on only with other gods? Isn’t he above ordinary humans—people in this building, people on the street? He has heard Mr. Jalal tell them they should submit to him, venerate him. What if they don’t—how is he to punish them? How will he deal with those who have wronged him in the past, those who dare deny him in the future?

  There is only darkness without me.

  Can he take away t
he sun and the moon? Can he plunge the universe into night? Everything that lives, does it live in his light? Must every desire of his be accommodated, every whim obeyed?

  But what is it he wants? What are gods supposed to desire?

  I am Vishnu, he says to himself. He is eager to learn the new ways and powers.

  IT WAS NINE o’clock in the morning before Mrs. Asrani entered Kavita’s room. Ordinarily, she would have allowed her daughter to sleep much longer on a Sunday, even until noon, but in light of the “I think I would like to say yes” answer from last night, Mrs. Asrani wasn’t sure she could hold it in herself any longer not to seek a confirmation. She had been so excited all morning that she had hardly paid attention to Short Ganga’s gossip about Mr. Jalal being found asleep on Vishnu’s landing, and of his attempted assault on Mrs. Pathak. She was surprised now to find Kavita’s bed all made up, since her daughter almost never did that, and more surprised to find that the bathroom was empty, since Kavita spent what seemed like hours there every morning.

  “Have you seen Kavita?” Mrs. Asrani asked. Shyamu and Mr. Asrani looked up from the breakfast table. “Did she go outside?”

  Mr. Asrani shook his head. “No one’s been outside since I got the newspaper.”

  “I’ll find her for you,” Shyamu offered. “Kavita,” he called out. “Kaveeetaaaaaaa…”

  There was no reply. “She’s not there,” he said. “I guess she ran away with the Jalals’ son after all, so we can all live happily ever after.”

  It was definitely the wrong thing to say. Mrs. Asrani’s inaugural slap of the day was so energetic that Shyamu burst out crying. “Go inside to your room,” Mrs. Asrani commanded, taking away his half-eaten jam sandwich.

  Shyamu kept crying at the table, so Mr. Asrani returned his sandwich to him. Between sobs, Shyamu started putting pieces of jam-spread bread in his mouth.

  “God help you if she’s run away with that cockroach. God help you if you have a black tongue,” Mrs. Asrani thundered. “And you, jee?” she said, turning her attention on Mr. Asrani. “Are you going to just sit there and sip tea, or are you going to try and find your promising young daughter?”

  “I’ll go look in her room, to see if everything is still there,” Mr. Asrani said, glad for a chance to be out of range of his wife.

  He came back a few minutes later. “Everything is intact,” he said. “There’s nothing missing, and even her suitcase is still in the cupboard. She must have gone out while I was not looking—she should be back soon.”

  “I knew it was too good to be true,” Mrs. Asrani lamented, her anger temporarily diffused by despair. “Her saying yes and everything. What are we going to do? What will I say to Mrs. Lalwani?”

  “Calm down, Aruna. Nothing’s happened. She’ll be back—”

  “You,” Mrs. Asrani snarled, replugging into the socket of her anger. “This is all your fault. From when I have been predicting this, and all you can say is ‘Calm down, Aruna. Calm down, Aruna.’ Now do you see the result of letting your daughter climb on top of your head?”

  Mr. Asrani was silent. He knew, from experience, that the safest course of action when things reached this stage was one of abject contrition, like that expected from an errant schoolboy. He sat at the table and tried to look as wretched as Shyamu.

  “What are you so silent about now? Is some magic genie going to pop out of your tea cup and tell you where she is?”

  Mr. Asrani did not look up. Shyamu, still sniveling, but tired of his sandwich, started breaking the bread into crumbs and mashing them on his plate.

  Mrs. Asrani looked from her husband to her son, and back to her husband again. She was suddenly uncertain about what point she had been trying to make. But it was apparent she had gotten it across. She took a deep breath.

  “Now listen everyone, and this means especially you, Shyamu. If she comes back in a little while, good. But until she does, I don’t want either of you telling anyone—and I do mean anyone—that she’s gone. Especially not the next-door neighbors. Who knows, maybe they’re the ones who even put some sort of nazar on her.” Mrs. Asrani cast a baleful eye towards the Pathaks’ apartment.

  “And if, God forbid, our Kavita actually has run away with that cockroach, then we just have to wait. Wait till she comes to her senses, wait till she comes back, and not breathe a word about it until then. It would be ruinous if people came to know what has happened.

  “Understood?”

  Shyamu flattened the remainder of his sandwich and watched the jam squeeze out.

  “Shyamu, I’m talking to you. Understood?”

  With a look dripping with misery and remorse, Shyamu nodded that he had understood.

  MR. JALAL LAY on his bed and tried to make the cricks in his back disappear. He had several months’ worth of them to work on. Now that his travails had paid off, now that he had received his sign, there seemed no reason to deny himself small luxuries, such as returning to his bed. He pressed his neck muscles into the mattress, then the ones in his back, feeling the cotton stuffing yield to fit the contours of his body. Ah, the softness—so pleasurable, so decadent—no wonder people didn’t get revelations every night as they slept on their pillowed and padded beds. Something in Mr. Jalal’s spine released with an audible pop, and the relief that flooded into his brain almost made him swoon.

  As he had waited for Arifa to let him in, there had been only one thought burning in his head. The directive that Vishnu had given him. He had to spread the word, inform people, impress on them that Vishnu was a god. He had braced himself at the door like an athlete at the start of a race. He would sprint in straight to the telephone, call all the people he knew, even contact the Times of India.

  But a peculiar incoherence had possessed him. His words had not seemed to convey their message. “Enlightenment does come in a walnut,” he had insisted, and the Pathaks had discreetly taken their leave. “Thousands of hands and feet,” he had said, waving his arms around to simulate Vishnu’s many limbs, and Arifa’s expression had changed from confusion to dismay. Eventually, he had allowed himself to be ushered into their bedroom for a rest.

  It was not going to be easy, Mr. Jalal realized. First the Pathaks and Short Ganga, now Arifa—nobody had believed him. He supposed he couldn’t really blame them—what he’d seen was so fantastic, and he’d been too excited to be articulate. But if he couldn’t even convince his wife, what chance did he have with the rest?

  How had the Buddha done it? And Jesus and Muhammad and the other prophets? Even the present-day godmen. He remembered seeing the Satya Sai Baba on TV, descending from his podium onto a platform that swept through a sea of adoring disciples. Waves of devotees surged towards the platform, screaming and crying as they tried to touch his saffron robes. The Baba walked along unperturbed, with his arms raised in blessing, a beatific smile fixed on his face. It had been hard to see the Baba’s feet on TV, and the effect had been of someone gliding across water.

  Mr. Jalal imagined himself standing on his balcony, clad in robes of saffron himself. The road below choked with people assembled there to receive his message. Taxis and buses honking their horns as they tried in vain to negotiate the throngs. Silence descending suddenly and completely, as he raised both his hands just like the Baba had done. He would gaze individually at as many of the thousands of upturned faces as he could—the sea, his sea of followers. All those eyes focused on him, all those ears waiting to hear the compelling words issue from his mouth.

  But what, exactly, would those words be? The ones that would crackle down through the air, like lightning, like electricity, and energize the entire crowd? From where would he summon the power to seize the attention of such an enormous congregation? To inspire them, to incite them, to make them forever his followers?

  Mr. Jalal felt his back begin to stiffen again and willed himself to relax. He was getting ahead of himself. Right now, the important thing was that he was in, he had been initiated. He had opened his mind wide enough to receive the visi
on. The giant mouths, the tongues of fire, the steam and smoke, all these he had witnessed. The sign he had been waiting for had finally been granted. He tried pressing his spine into the mattress again, and heard several small crackles, but nothing as satisfying as the previous pop.

  Or had it? What tangible evidence did he have? Wasn’t he being absurdly credulous? Couldn’t the whole thing—heads, tongues, fire—just have been a dream? He had, after all, dreamt before—had he forgotten how real some dreams could appear? Wasn’t this explanation a more rational one, not involving signs and visitations and other fanciful notions? Wasn’t it, in fact, the only logical explanation, the one that demanded his immediate and complete acceptance?

  Mr. Jalal recognized his old friend, Reason. Revived and hungry to reclaim its rightful place. Perhaps it had wakened from its hibernation the instant he had lain down again in this bed. Perhaps it had sniffed out the torpor into which the mattress was lulling his body. Already, he could feel it nipping here and there tentatively, testing the durability of what he had witnessed.

  He had to get off the mattress immediately. There could not be a second’s delay. Mr. Jalal rocked himself on the bed, then rolled off the edge. A dull crack jarred through his spine as the back of his head hit the floor. That was good, he thought, it would discourage his prowling friend. He lifted his head and let it thud several times to the floor. Maybe that would send Reason whimpering back into its cave.

  He lay on the floor and closed his eyes. He could feel the familiar hardness of the tile against his back. Pain throbbed into his forehead from the base of his skull. He had to concentrate, concentrate to make things as they were before.

  The image came slowly, like a painting raised to the surface of a murky pool. The swords were the first to be visible, edges glinting as they sliced through the air. Then came the arms that brandished them, and the mouths and the eyes and the faces. Then there was Vishnu towering above him, in all his hideousness and splendor.