Then the procession broke free of the daily business of the village and emerged on a high road leading toward the nearby river where the local crematory was. Through the fading sunlight Jeffrey had a sudden glimpse between trees of the laid pyre, and for a moment he thought his legs might give way. Look at the flame. Remember the flame. Guard the flame.
Once the cavalcade reached the outer boundary of the crematorium grounds, drum and flute ceased playing, the dancers drifted away, the mood became solemn. Every eye was fixed on the pyre, which had been constructed of alternate layers of cow-dung cakes — to preserve the fire’s heat — and oak logs, until it stood chest high.
Jeffrey saw the cremator standing next to the cement platform on which the pyre had been built. Sporting a goatee, Subish gave him a smile. He was a spindly-legged man in a dirty pair of khaki shorts, no shirt at all, and a frayed sailor’s cap set jauntily back on his head. His odd, rumpled, carefree look annoyed Jeffrey. Subish could have taken better care of his appearance.
The bearers gently lifted the corpse from the pallet and placed it on the top layer of logs.
“I am here,” flashed through Jeffrey’s mind. He fought back tears. To steady himself, he stared hard at the flame dancing on the surface of the colorless oil.
For a while Subish and other men worked at completing the pyre by building up a few more alternating layers of cow-dung cakes and oak logs to surround and cover the corpse. They left uncovered a space directly over the dead man’s chest and face. All that Jeffrey heard, during this time, was the thud of log on log, the men’s breathing, the wind shaking the leaves of an ashoka tree that stood near the riverbank. Often he glanced down at the flame blown sideways by gusts of wind. He concentrated on the yellow conical shape to keep his mind steady. There was always the mantra — Om Namah Shivaya — that he used to steady his mind for Yoga, but now he could invoke none of the gods. The gods had betrayed him.
At last the pyre was completed. The priest walked forward and chanted verses from the Hindu scriptures, while Subish carried a bucket of melted ghee — concentrated butter — around the pyre, splashing the logs with it so they would ignite quickly. Bending down, the priest took a handful of flowers from a large basket and threw them on the pyre. Other people followed, tossing blossoms, bowing their heads. At last Jeffrey bent over the basket; his hand, reaching for some petals, trembled violently. With white and purple petals clutched in his fingers, he walked to the pyre and let the sweet-smelling flowers sift over his dead father’s face. He wanted to say something. Long afterward he would recall this moment and realize that he had wanted to question his father. Where are you? Are you really here? Your face says no. There is nothing in it. Why did you say, “How can I die? I am here”?
Jeffrey stepped back to make way for the priest, who did more chanting. Meanwhile, from a nearby shed, Subish brought an earthenware jar, holding it with two thick pads of cloth, and placed it at Jeffrey’s feet. Inside the jar were glowing coals.
Jeffrey knew what to do. He took the cloth pads from Subish and gripped the sides. Lifting the jar carefully, he walked to the pyre and held it over the dead man’s exposed chest. Slowly tilting the jar, he poured the live coals out.
Stepping back, he looked around for a stone. Subish pointed to one set in the ground for this purpose. Jeffrey threw the jar hard against the stone, breaking it into ochre shards.
When the priest nodded, Jeffrey picked up the oil lamp, noticing his hands no longer trembled. The ritual had steadied them. “I am doing it, Dad,” he said to himself. “I am doing it right.”
Subish brought forward a long stick wrapped at one end with cloth soaked in ghee. Jeffrey touched the end of it to the lamp wick. With a tiny whoosh, flame spread along the cloth until the stick became a firebrand. Again the priest nodded, so Jeffrey stepped up and without hesitation held the torch to one side of the pyre. With a greater whoosh the flame billowed up from the ghee-soaked logs. He moved to the opposite side and applied the torch there. Within seconds the whole pyre was engulfed in furious yellow light, and the intense heat made onlookers step back. Jeffrey glanced at them. Not one person was looking at the pyre. They feared that their attention would hold the dead man’s soul in bondage to the earth. But Jeffrey looked. Through skeins of flame and complex layers of logs and cow dung, he saw the interior bundle. People could not hold down Father’s spirit — if Father had one. If Father had a spirit, it would rise on its own power and nothing could stop it. If Father had one. Did Father have a soul, a spirit, something lasting? Was he here?
“I am here.”
It was not so. Jeffrey sat down on the earth, while flames rose briskly into the twilight, and the heat from the conflagration added to that of the sultry afternoon, causing sweat to pour in rivulets down his face.
The priest squatted beside him. “Ganesh, don’t look.”
“I must.”
Without glancing at the pyre, the priest grimaced and rose with a sigh. Along with the others he left the crematorium grounds. No one but Subish, the keeper of this place, would stay while the blaze was in its fury. Only at dawn would the others return, when there was nothing here but ashes.
Jeffrey looked. He sat in the full lotus position of Padmasana, learned painfully and patiently with his guru, and stared at the burning pyre, its dark parcel inside the maze of logs and cow-dung cakes. The sun had set, but he hadn’t noticed, so intent was his mind on the processes of cremation. He would not glance away. This was happening to his father; he must therefore experience it. He did not avert his eyes even when, to his horror, enormous blisters formed on the corpse. Flowers and dhoti had burned off, leaving the body itself fully exposed, the limbs and trunk seething in flames. The terrible blisters expanded and popped with a put-put sound that Jeffrey would never forget. He watched the interior liquids begin to ooze from the broken blisters, then gush forth like springs from the earth.
“I am here.”
Minutes later, when the sizzling liquids stopped flowing, it seemed to Jeffrey that the corpse had shrunk greatly in size — nothing but bones now, and tatters of flesh that had turned a ghastly white, the color of chalk. Tears filled Jeffrey’s eyes, but he continued to look. He must not draw back from what was happening to his father. Or to the corpse. To his father, to the corpse. To both? Or only one?
Time passed while the wood split and crackled on the pyre, the snaky rising of flame almost hypnotizing Jeffrey. He had no sense of time anymore, no awareness of how long he was there before the corpse sat up.
His father sat up. Right up, as if rising from bed. Trunk and head lifted from the pyre, scattering logs in the rising.
Jeffrey leapt to his feet, yelling, “Dad! Dad!”
Out of nowhere came Subish, wielding a large club. With swift, powerful blows he beat the corpse down.
Jeffrey rushed at him. “Don’t hit my father! Don’t you hit my father!”
Subish paid no attention, but kept battering the corpse until it lay flat on the logs, each blow loosening from the dark body a glitter of sparks. Then he turned and motioned Jeffrey away. “Sit over there if you’re staying! Otherwise go home! I’m in charge here!”
Sobered by this command, Jeffrey backed away and sat down. He was trembling and sobbing, unable to believe what had happened. “I am here.” Is that what Father meant, that he would rise from the burning? That it would take a club to put him down again? Of course not. “I am here.” The words meant nothing. They were a lie.
Finally Subish came over and sat down beside him. “Forgive my shouting at you, Ganesh. You just saw something few people ever see. It’s a good thing too. It would upset the families. Better they don’t see.”
“My father — sat up.”
Subish chuckled and used his frayed sailor cap to wipe his sweaty brow. He had a bald head that glistened like mahogany in the firelight. “Not your father, Ganesh. It wasn’t he who sat up. That was only the body tightening up when it lost its moisture. Happens every time. In the big cities,
they tie the bodies to the logs with baling wire, but here we do it the old way. Why, I’ve seen them jump up and look like they were going to run away!” He added quickly, “Forgive me. Sometimes I speak thoughtlessly.”
Jeffrey reached out and touched the man’s sweaty arm. “Forgive me, Subish, for shouting. For a moment there, I —”
“You hoped.”
Jeffrey nodded, brushing the sweat from his face. “I think I did. For a moment.”
“Well, you must not look for your father here.”
Jeffrey stared at the cremator, who until this moment had never impressed him one way or another, except to annoy him today by wearing a sailor’s hat and a pair of dirty shorts. Now Jeffrey studied the bony face, the wispy goatee, the smile made singular by two missing front teeth, the kind and steady eyes. The eyes held him — they meant more than all the rest of Subish.
“Where must I look for him then?” asked Jeffrey.
Subish shrugged. “Go to the temple like others. Ask Lord Shiva. Ask Lord Krishna. Ask the goddess Devi. Ask the god whose name you are known by — ask Ganesh. The gods know. I certainly do not.”
“But what do you think happens?” Jeffrey persisted. “You have gone through this many times. You see the bodies sit up. What do you think?”
“Me? I do my work. I am paid for it. Tomorrow, after I clean up the platform, I will bathe in the river, buy some arrack, drink, and have a good snooze. It’s always the same with me. I let the gods take care of the rest.”
*
The last that Jeffrey remembered of the long night was the look of the flames, how imperceptibly they grew smaller, their dancing less violent, until he could no longer see an object embedded in them, only a vast liquid basin of shimmering orange. He felt a kind of peace settle around him, as if the dying flames brought calm. The only sound at the crematory was that of crickets singing and, infrequently, the distant hoot of an owl. Subish had long since fallen asleep, making of his sailor’s hat a tiny pillow. His goatee was a smear of darkness against his otherwise glowing skin in the firelight. Jeffrey nodded — flames, then darkness.
Abruptly Jeffrey awoke to the sound of crows. A squabbling group of them had nested in a nearby tree; when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a huge, ugly-beaked crow balancing on a limb too small for its great bulk.
Jeffrey sat up. There were no more flames, no fire at all, but smoke rising from the collapsed mass of logs. It was hard to believe that yesterday the crossed logs had risen to the height of a man’s chest. Now they resolved themselves into a mound no more than a few inches deep.
Subish was already up and around. He came from the river, his body dripping. “Good morning, Ganesh,” he said cheerfully, as if they had never shared such a terrible watch together. “Go down and see the fog.”
Jeffrey got up. His legs were stiff in the moist, cool morning. He walked to the riverbank and watched puffs of fog roll away from a grove of bamboo. The gray ephemeral tentacles slowly let go of the thin trunks and faded into the soft flow of orange light that would soon turn a brilliant red in the east. Jeffrey walked into the water, into its cooling freshness. Behind him the crows cawed raucously and across the river a cow mooed as it greeted the day. Jeffrey looked up. A sliver of moon still shone faintly in the sky, tilting the vast canopy between night and day. He felt good. He felt wonderful. There had never been such a beautiful morning.
When he returned to the pyre, the priest had arrived along with a dozen other people — farmers who had known Jeffrey’s father.
“Are you ready, Ganesh?” the priest asked gently.
“I am ready.”
“Did you stay here all night?” When Jeffrey nodded, the priest shrugged. “Put it on my head, please.” He meant an earthenware jug at his feet. Ganesh lifted it and gave it to the priest, who held it with both hands on his head. Subish followed the priest to the smoking pyre and at his command knocked a little hole in the side of the jug with a sharply pointed rock. Water poured out. Still holding the jug on his head, the priest tilted it toward the heap of ashes. He moved from one side to another, until the ashes of the corpse were thoroughly wet.
Jeffrey thought, Some of the ashes are from the logs, not Father. Does it matter? How can it matter? How can it not matter?
Setting the jug down, the priest bent over a central mound of ashes — hardly more than a handful — and worked diligently for a while. Finished, he stepped back and called Jeffrey, who saw the crude doll-like shape of a man that the priest had fashioned from the moist ashes.
“Get me the milk, Subish,” said the priest, looking pleased with his artistry. Subish handed him another jug, which he held over the ashes shaped like a man’s body. Reciting some verses, he then poured out the milk, which, in the feathery ashes, made little holes, like rain pattering into dust. With the sacred milk he had purified the ashes and removed from them all the sins of the man.
“It is done,” sighed the priest, turning to Jeffrey. “Now collect the ashes and take them to the river.”
“Not this river.”
“Why not?”
“I must take them to the Cauvery.”
“Yes, that is a very sacred river,” the priest said thoughtfully. “But you will have to pay money to get there. Can you pay for the bus ride?”
“Let the boy do what he wants,” put in Subish. “Anyway, foreigners always have money.”
Jeffrey started. It was the first time in his memory that a villager had ever called him a foreigner.
“Then, if you have bus fare,” said the priest, “go to the Cauvery. It is more sacred there than here.”
At the word “here,” Jeffrey glanced quickly at the wet little mound of ashes. Then he said, “Do you have a metal jar, Subish? For the journey?”
“I do. A copper one. With a thick cloth cover that we can seal with wax. But it will cost you five rupees.”
Jeffrey turned to the pyre and stared again at the ashes. In a few minutes he would be scooping them into a copper pot. Maybe two handfuls altogether. His father.
“I am here.”
At this moment Jeffrey felt a terrible despair; it was like a hand seizing hold of his body and draining him of strength. Only two handfuls of ashes. The man he had loved, admired, worried over — the man he had wanted to keep here with him always. Always here! Next to him, standing right here! Two handfuls of ashes.
*
For the next few days Jeffrey stayed home, sleeping most of the time as if exhausted after tremendous physical labor. He slept in his own tiny room and kept the door closed to his father’s bedroom. He had forgotten about school and Yoga classes; they existed in another world at another time, when he had belonged to this village. Rama had been right: he belonged to it no longer. His friend had spoken the truth, more anxious to be honest than obliging. On the day after the funeral, people started coming to the house and asking if he had anything foreign to sell. They were blunt; the respectful deference of the mourning had gone up in the smoke of the pyre. Even the retired postal worker and his wife came to ask if there were anything foreign he wished to sell. Jeffrey had nothing to sell — there was nothing of value in this household, foreign or otherwise — but the idea of his neighbors asking him, as if they were confident of his going away for good, intensified the sense of loneliness and isolation that had been his ever since he scooped the ashes into a copper pot.
On the third day the housekeeper told him she would be leaving. After tomorrow she would no longer work or cook for him. Why? Because it was bad luck to work in such a house. She had only stayed this long because of respect for his father and a liking for him. But she could not stay longer; her neighbors would think less of her for working in such a house, with only a boy for master. Then on that same day the landlord appeared, a short man with thin arms and an immense paunch. Though clean, his dhoti was rumpled across the flab of his great belly. He wanted a month’s rent in advance. When Jeffrey observed that the rent was paid until the end of next week, the la
ndlord snapped, “I know it, but I cannot keep the house for you after that date, unless I have both the next month’s rent and another month’s in advance.”
“But, sir, why?”
“You are here all alone?”
“Yes, sir.”
The fat man snorted. “Who knows what a lone boy will do in a house? Boys are irresponsible enough when they are not alone. You might play with matches, burn it down, do anything. I must protect my interests. I mean nothing against you personally, Ganesh; you have always been a nice boy. But this is business.”
Later that day the old Irish priest, who ran the Mission School, came to the house. He wanted to know when Jeffrey was leaving.
“I haven’t thought about it, Father.”
“Well then, lad, you’d better. It’s more than three weeks of school you’ve been missing, and with good reason, to be sure, but you can’t go on this way. You need someone to look after you, Jeffrey. You need to go back to your own country and take hold.”
Jeffrey understood that by “taking hold” the old priest meant taking hold of the Christian faith again and renouncing the alien gods of his father.
It was after this conversation that Jeffrey left his house for the first time since the funeral. He went to see Rama.
They sat on the back porch of the large, rambling house, while two of Rama’s brothers played badminton on the lawn.
“I’m sorry,” Jeffrey began, when his friend handed him a bottle of Orange Fanta. “You said people would change, but I didn’t believe you. I just got angry. Now I know it’s true.”
Rama nodded. “We are village people. My father says life is narrow here. He complains of it, but his work is in this district, so we’ll never leave.”
“I see now that everything depended on my father. What people thought of him. Otherwise we could never have stayed and people would never have treated me as one of them.”
“People thought your father was a god-man. And you were liked too.”
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