Banquet on the Dead

by Sharath Komarraju

  Her brother was lying on his back on the bed, his legs straight and his hands entwined over his chest. His eyes were closed. There was a vertical line of tilak on his forehead. Prameela did not remember when she’d last seen him without it.

  ‘Sit down, Prameela,’ he said. ‘I have a very bad headache. Will you please apply some balm to my forehead?’

  Prameela pulled the chair close to him and said, ‘I—Karuna does not mean what she says, Swamannayya. You should not take her words to heart.’

  ‘Keep away from the tilak, please,’ said Swami. Then, after a pause: ‘I do not know why she has so much hatred for me.’

  ‘No,’ said Prameela. ‘Not just you. For Raja too.’

  ‘I doubt that, Prameela. She dislikes Raja, yes. If you ask me she probably does not like anyone in the family. But for me I think she has genuine hate. I wonder why.’

  ‘She’s just a girl.’

  Swami smiled, and Prameela smiled back, even though her brother’s eyes were still closed. Swami had always had such a lovely smile. Prameela thought, again, that it was criminal that he had had to stay unmarried.

  ‘She is thirty-seven, Prameela. Not a girl any more. We’re not young people any more, you know.’

  Her fingers moved nimbly on his forehead. ‘But for us she will always be a girl. I do hope you don’t take any of her words to heart, Swamannayya.’

  His sharp, aquiline features hardened just a touch. ‘I try not to, Sister. But I am human too. When someone hates you with so much vengeance, it is hard not to dislike them. And I am sure you will agree, too, that Karuna has much to dislike about her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Prameela, nodding. ‘I know.’

  ‘Mother used to ask all the time who it was that Karuna took after. Remember?’

  Prameela nodded.

  ‘I keep waiting for her to call out to me, from the kitchen, Prameela. I keep expecting her at my door, calling my name.’

  His voice was steady; wooden. No emotion registered on those thin, shapely lips, on the strong jaw, on the high cheekbones, on the steady eyebrows. But Prameela could sense something in the words themselves—something approaching pain. She felt it awaken within her too, rising up to her eyelids and stinging them. She blinked rapidly to ward it off.

  ‘Even now,’ he went on, ‘when I heard your step on the door, I expected her to call out my name. But you said “Swamannayya” and the spell was broken. You’ve always had Mother’s voice, Sister.’

  She closed her eyes and let the tears stream down her cheeks. ‘I know,’ she murmured.

  ‘Will you sing for me in the evening? I find it hard to sleep these days.’

  ‘I will.’

  For a while neither of them spoke. His breathing became less irregular, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. She bent down to place a kiss on his forehead and was just about to leave, when he said, ‘Who are these two men that you talk about?’

  Prameela felt invisible fingers clutch her stomach. She replied, making her voice sound as normal as she could, ‘Policemen, Karuna says.’

  A solitary eyebrow rose. ‘I thought they had asked as all they wanted to know.’

  ‘I—I thought so, too. But they are back. And Karuna tells me there is a detective.’

  Impassivity returned to Swami’s face. ‘Let them.’ And then suddenly he asked, ‘Is there anything you want to tell me, Prameela?’

  She felt the knot in her stomach tighten. ‘No, what do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean, Sister, because otherwise your hands would not be trembling as they are now.’

  ‘I am tired, that’s all.’

  ‘I saw you on that day too. Your hands were shaking, your voice was high-pitched, you face was troubled. I felt you’d “seen” something that you shouldn’t have. Did you?’

  ‘I am tired, that’s all,’ she repeated sternly.

  ‘Perhaps it is that. Or perhaps something is weighing on your mind; something that needs to be told to someone who would understand.’

  Prameela got to her feet, and she heard a soft sigh from her brother.

  ‘I will understand, Sister, if you would only trust me. But I will not force you.’

  ‘There are snacks on the table,’ said Prameela, and walked toward the door.

  ‘Thank you. Please close the door behind you.’

  ‘Karuna,’ said Raja, when he heard the voice at the door, ‘my favourite niece! For a moment there I thought you were my sister. Come in, come in.’

  ‘Hello, Raja,’ said Karuna austerely, and placed the plate of snacks on the bed by his chair.

  ‘Come, sit by me. Sit by your favourite uncle. I heard some nice words that you used to describe me just before. What were they? “Incompetent oaf “? Yes, I think that was it.’

  ‘Well, you are one,’ said Karuna in a cold voice.

  ‘I am, I am.’ Raja puffed at his cigarette. ‘I definitely am.’ He picked up a piece from the plate and looked at it. He said, grinning, ‘Perhaps you should have the first piece?’

  ‘If I wanted to poison you, Raja, rest assured you would get to know of it only after you were dead.’

  ‘Ah, the love in this family makes me want to cry.’ His eyes suddenly became hard and furtive. ‘You’ve met the two meddlers?’

  ‘Yes, I see you have, too.’

  ‘So I have. And might I say my incompetence will actually help me here, because I am the only one in the family who could not have killed her.’

  ‘Killed her? Who says anything about her being killed?’

  Raja smiled widely. ‘Why do you think they’re here, my child? They won’t say it out loud, but they think there is something fishy about it all, shall we say. And you have to admit—there is.’

  ‘Rubbish. It was an accident and that’s that.’

  ‘Hmm, I want them to think that and go away too.’ He played with the piece of crispy, orange flour and popped it in his mouth. ‘We won’t have to answer uncomfortable questions that way; and we can each take our share of the pie and go our separate ways. But the problem is, there is something fishy about it all.’

  ‘But who would want to kill her?’

  ‘Come, come, my dear, I know you don’t think much of me, and you may even be right in saying I am incompetent. But I am only incompetent in my limbs. My mind is all right. So don’t pretend you don’t know.’

  Karuna said sharply, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Ah, you know perfectly well everyone in the house wanted her out of the way.’ He leant forward, his body shaking with the effort, and whispered, ‘Even you, my dear.’

  Karuna looked at the old man for a minute, then smiled. ‘I thought all this time you were just stupid, Raja. Now I know you’re crazy too. I was in Hyderabad until that evening. I came down only after you’d taken her out of the well.’

  Raja said, ‘That’s correct, but Warangal is such a crowded place, Karuna. So crowded that it is impossible to say where you might run into someone you know, isn’t it?’

  Karuna stopped and frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, let’s just say someone I know had seen you in the Warangal railway station in the morning. And that someone told me. Now, why were you in Warangal that morning, my dear?’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  Raja grinned. ‘So, sticking to your tale, then. That’s good, even recommended. But you might want to think of an alternative—just in case this one goes bad, you know.’

  ‘Who is this woman who saw me?’

  ‘Ooh, I did not say it was a woman, did I?’

  Karuna sighed and took a snack herself. ‘Look, Raja,’ she said, ‘I was not in Warangal that morning. I don’t know who your informant is and what she saw, but she’s mistaken.’

  Raja shrugged. ‘She might be. I am sure the two men who came in here today would like to see for themselves, though, if she is.’

  Karuna bit off a snack halfway and chewed on it slowly.

>   ‘That would be inconvenient, wouldn’t it?’

  Karuna said, ‘You were at a movie that afternoon, weren’t you?’

  Raja’s face became serious. ‘We’re not talking about me now, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, but I am. You went to a matinee show that day and returned only at six in the evening, after I’d come. Do you remember seeing me sitting in your room when you arrived, Raja?’

  ‘Only the cleaning women are meant to come into my room.’

  ‘Oh, well, but I did anyway. Do you know what I found?’

  Raja stared. The shaking and swaying in his limbs intensified.

  ‘Yes,’ said Karuna, ‘you won’t know. I found your ticket. I wonder how you went to the show without a ticket. Do they allow you in without one?’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said, but his hands immediately went to his pockets.

  ‘It won’t be there. It is with me. So now, you weren’t at the movies that afternoon, were you?’ She sat back and crossed her legs. ‘No, why am I asking you? I know you weren’t at the movies that afternoon. Now, where were you?’

  ‘That is none of your business.’

  She nodded sagely, mockingly. ‘True. But I think these two men would like to know where you were, don’t you think? And you do understand the position here, don’t you? You don’t know for sure that I was here. Your lady could have been mistaken—you know how easy it is to mistake someone for someone else in a crowd. But I—I know for sure you didn’t go to a movie that afternoon.’

  Raja spat at the wall and said, ‘I bought a ticket in black.’

  ‘Hmm, maybe you did. So how about you tell them about what your lady friend told you and I, in return, will tell them about your ticket.’

  ‘I will,’ he said savagely. ‘I certainly will.’

  Karuna patted him on the cheek and stood up to go. ‘We both have secrets, Raja,’ she said, ‘and only God knows whose secret is worse. If you keep mine, I will keep yours. But if mine comes out, yours will too, and it will be left to the policeman and the mullah to figure out who, between you and I, is more crooked. Do you want that?’

  He shook his head, very slowly.

  ‘Yes, so maybe we can both agree that we’re both equally crooked, and we can keep quiet until we get—as you called it—our share of the pie.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Good boy,’ she said, and softening for a minute against her will, she added, ‘I promise it has nothing to do with Grandmother.’

  He looked up at her with soulful eyes, stubbed his cigarette on the armrest, and said, ‘I promise, too.’

  Karuna gave him a smile and walked out of the room.

  6

  DURGA LOOKED AT THE seated figure of Koteshwar Rao, her husband, with apprehension. They had finished their lunch—a bowl of khichdi each with ghee and yoghurt—almost half an hour ago, and instead of grabbing his hypertension apparatus and hurrying along to attend to his afternoon rounds, her husband had settled back in his chair, crossed his legs, and opened the Sunday paper to the crossword page. It was not that Durga did not like having him around, but like any dutiful housewife she found it somewhat difficult to attend to household duties—like for instance, the unwashed lunch utensils—with him home. A man was supposed to be out during the day. If he had reason to hang about the house, it probably meant something bad.

  She opened a newspaper of her own and spread it out on the dark-brown top of their dining table. It only took a minute of vacant searching for her eyes to tire. Like any dutiful wife, she also struggled to relax, although there were unattended household duties waiting. Knowing that the only answer to her predicament lay across the table, she allowed her eyes to rest back on her husband, hoping that he would look up at some point.

  He didn’t have to. He seemed to be aware of her. ‘Yes?’ he asked, without lifting his gaze from the paper.

  ‘Are you taking the afternoon off?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am expecting someone. I will wait for a while and leave if they don’t arrive.’

  Durga stifled a sharp breath. If he had to take a day off from his clinic, that must mean the people he was expecting—and the matter he wished to discuss with them—were of vital importance. And these days there was only one thing of importance that occupied his mind; something that she sought everyday to erase from their lives without success.

  ‘The policeman again?’ she said coldly.

  He looked up at her and nodded. ‘And a friend.’

  She had heard voices downstairs when she was making dinner, when he had been in the room taking a nap. She had heard Raja laugh; she had heard Karuna’s admonishing tone; she had heard her mother-in-law’s defensive pleas. She had known something had happened, that somebody must have come to upset the apple-cart again, but now she knew that it was her husband who had been behind it.

  She felt angry at him suddenly, for again stirring the waters that were just beginning to calm. He had been so distant these past few days, ever since that day—yes, ever since that day he had not even looked her straight in the eye; she had been discouraged from broaching the topic at all, let alone demand explanations—and now he had gone and called the police for a second look; by himself.

  ‘Must you, Kotesh?’ she asked wearily. ‘Can we not just let the past lie?’

  He held her gaze for minute, looked down at the newspaper, pursing his lips, then looked up at her again. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She might not have meant anything to you—’

  ‘Kotesh!’ she said. ‘Do you really believe that? You know that among all your family, she was my favourite.’

  He meant to say something more, but stopped himself and said instead, ‘Right. So be it. I just wanted someone professional to come and have a look. It just doesn’t look right to me.’

  ‘Kotesh, we’ve talked about it. We’ve agreed that it doesn’t look right. But what good will come out of—out of all this?’

  He shrugged. ‘The truth will come out.’

  ‘And then? Once the truth comes out, what then?’

  He looked puzzled by that. He said, ‘It is enough that the truth comes out. And the guilty will be punished.’

  ‘But what of the remaining?’

  ‘Those remaining will get along just fine. The truth has to come out.’

  She sighed, but low and softly so that he would not hear. ‘So this has got nothing to do,’ she said, ‘with what Raja said?’

  A tightening of the lips, a clench of the jaw muscles, a little rise and fall of the temples. She had seen enough. She went on: ‘Raja says a lot of things he doesn’t mean, Kotesh. You do not have to prove your innocence to anybody.’

  ‘It is not what Raja said. The truth has to come out.’

  She bent her head. ‘There are only two people capable of killing her. You and I both know who they are.’ She saw him nodding at her. ‘We have talked about them before.’

  ‘We have no evidence it was Lakshman. Or my aunt.’

  ‘True,’ Durga admitted. ‘But they’re the likely ones, you agree.’

  ‘They are the only ones I thought had the nerve to kill her, yes.’

  She felt vaguely that something was not right about that sentence; then she got it. ‘You say “thought”—in the past tense. Does that mean you have changed your thinking?’

  ‘Maybe—maybe—I’ve been thinking a bit—maybe.’

  ‘Who do you think is likely now?’

  He averted her eyes. ‘I—don’t know. All that talk of psychology and temperament that we had the other day—it seems not so important anymore. We should be going by hard evidence, should we not? Not just some psycho-babble.’

  She still did not understand. He was saying these words to her, but she felt he was not making any sense. If he really meant what he said—no, he couldn’t possibly. ‘You do know,’ she ventured, knowing that she was on shaky ground, ‘that these investigations are not foolproof? That the police and detectives make mistakes too?’

  He looked up with—what
was it? Hope? ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘What if they examine all the hard evidence that you speak of, and they mistakenly conclude that it is a murder while what really happened was an accident, say?’

  His gaze dropped from hers, and returned to the newspaper lying under his forearms.

  ‘Oh, Kotesh,’ she said again, ‘must we? Can we not tell them that we don’t need any of this? Can we just not let it go? She is gone. What does it matter now?’

  His eyes met hers, to lock together for a moment. Then he looked away and said, ‘No. No. It must come out. All of it.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it your way. But if that is the case, Kotesh, will you promise me something?’

  ‘Yes—yes, of course.’

  ‘Will you promise me that you have not killed her?’

  He looked shocked at the question, and she searched his face. By all the signs, it was genuine shock. He nodded, slowly at first, then with increasing intensity. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Then I am happy.’ She got up and turned to go into the kitchen, towards the sink where the dishes lay. His voice came to her when she was in the doorway.

  ‘Will you?’

  She paused. ‘Will I what?’

  ‘Promise that you—’

  ‘Did not kill her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked back at him over her shoulder and smiled. ‘Of course, dear. I promise.’

  In the other wing of the house, in the first-floor living room, the television was blaring. Kamala sat in her chair, one leg folded, foot thrust under the thigh of the other leg, and balanced a big bowl of rice on her lap. With deft, practised movements of her fingers, she flicked at the grains of rice, separating the stones and casting them away. After each flick she looked up and surveyed the television screen before lowering her head again. In the chair opposite, leaning over the glass coffee table with a sheaf of papers underneath his arm, Venkataramana sat, scowling from behind his glasses.