by Akhil Sharma
“I wouldn’t. Even if you tried. The flat is mine.”
Pitaji is quiet, as if he is planning. After a while he says, “I’m not so bad a man.”
I laugh. In my fear I had forgotten how strange he is. He keeps looking at me. I wonder what he is thinking. Pitaji goes out into the sun.
I continue to press the sari. Pitaji will attack Asha someday. This is as likely as gravity. I must now leave these rooms and live the rest of my life on other people’s kindnesses. Maybe Kusum can give me money, but I cringe at the thought of her resentful generosity.
The hot press releases a sweet soap smell from the clothes. I was the first person in our extended family to own a press. Rajinder bought it for me. Rajinder was hard. Once, when we were robbed by a cleaning woman, he demanded the police beat her till she showed us where she had hidden my bracelets and Rajinder’s watch. I do not have the courage to go to the police and make up a story that Pitaji tried to rape Asha.
Perhaps an hour later, as I put the clothes in their cupboard, I hear a neighbor outside say, “What are you thinking, Karanji?”
“Nothing,” Pitaji answers. I peer into the gallery. He is standing at the very end, near the steps to the compound. His back is against a wall and he is looking straight ahead, with his shoulders hunched and a hand on his cheek.
Pitaji returns. He walks past me without meeting my eyes, goes into his room, closes the door.
Pitaji’s room can be bolted from the outside. The bolt makes a scratching noise when I draw it. I do not think about what I am doing till the bolt is at rest. Pitaji must have heard me, but he does not ask me to unbolt the door.
I then take Pitaji’s medicines, his diuretics and beta blockers, his brown glass bottles, orange plastic vials, two cardboard boxes, one of pink tablets and another of blue, from the refrigerator and throw them in the dustbin on the balcony. I do this and go to the living room. I stand there shifting from one foot to the other. I enter the common room briefly and see Pitaji’s locked door. I go to my room, where I sit on my bed and look at the floor while gripping my knees. Ten minutes later, not certain whether I am hiding my act or keeping Pitaji from saving the medicines, I shake the dustbin into a polythene bag, race from the flat, down into the alley, throw the bag into a garbage woman’s wheelbarrow.
Soon after Asha returns from school, Pitaji knocks on his door. Because he did not first try to open it, I know he was aware of being locked in. Asha, still in her uniform, is drinking water near the refrigerator. I unbolt the door and step aside. Without looking at me, Pitaji goes to the latrine. I wait next to the door. I do not acknowledge Asha’s gaze. When Pitaji returns, he pulls the door shut behind him.
Asha goes to the roof with her school bag.
I am ashamed of myself and want to love her. From the balcony I call, “Do you want juice?”
Asha comes to the top of the ladder and looks down. “I will forget you. Both of you. When you are dead, no one will ever think of you.” I want to grab Asha and beat her till she falls to the ground crying.
I go back into the flat. The refrigerator even looks empty. I smile.
At night, before I go to bed, I unbolt Pitaji’s door.
When Pitaji comes and kneels beside where I sleep, the fluorescent arms of the clock are past two. I am not afraid and do not reach for the hammer or the knife. “My medicines. They’re not in the fridge.”
“I don’t know.” I pretend to have been woken. I am on my side facing him.
“My medicines?”
“Am I your doctor?”
Pitaji sits on a chair across from the bed. I keep my eyes slitted open. He stays there for nearly an hour. He looks like a dark mound. Earlier, he looked so weak standing at the edge of the gallery that I know I can fight him.
The next morning Pitaji goes to his doctor. I feel that I must continue my war. A few minutes after the door closes behind him, I phone Dr. Aziz. I tell him who I am and say, “My father raped me when I was twelve.” He does not respond to this. I want to tell him all the details but am embarrassed. “I have a daughter who is young. Do you think he might rape her?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I have never talked with him about such things.” His voice is hesitant and sad.
“Thank you.”
“Can I help?”
“No,” I answer.
Pitaji returns and, unexpectedly, puts his medicines in the refrigerator again. When he is sitting on his cot undressing, I come and stand in his doorway. Pitaji looks up, frightened. His thinness and fear turn him mysterious.
I ask, “What did Dr. Aziz say?”
“He said I was fine and gave me new prescriptions.”
“What do I care about that?” I smile to let him see my hate. “Did he tell you I phoned and told him about you? He kept quiet, so I told him about the newspapers you put under me to catch the blood. He called you a monster.”
Pitaji watches me. I glare at him. He stands unsteadily and closes his door in my face. I bolt him in. I then take his new medicines, put them in the paper bag he brought them home in, and slip the bag over the balcony’s ledge into the squatter colony.
My revenge begins this way.
I start cooking six rotis for Pitaji instead of four and pouring a spoon of butter on each. I am not responsible for his appetites.
Pitaji is locked in all day. At night, before going to bed, I unbolt him. He so thoroughly eats everything I prepare that I worry he is throwing away the food. I check in the latrine and I check in the squatter colony, but there is no indication of this. We rarely speak. He occasionally comes into my room and wakes me to ask where the laundry soap is or where to find a needle and thread. He does not mention his medicines again.
One Sunday afternoon, while I am in our room, Asha opens Pitaji’s door and demands that he come out and watch television. She is saying, “Come here,” when I enter the common room. Pitaji is on his cot staring at Asha. I grab her and hurl her away from the door. I lock him in again.
The weeks pile into months. Mrs. Chauduri from work phones. I can tell from her false solicitousness that she is hoping for gossip. “He is sick,” I say, and we end the conversation. No one from Ma’s side of the family tries to contact us. Krishna calls. “You have the shamelessness to pick up the phone,” he says. “Bring my brother.” I hang up. I am surprised that the news has taken so long to spread. He calls a minute later and, without any insults, asks for Pitaji. Pitaji says he is fine and that yes he cannot understand the lies I have told about him. Pitaji’s stomach has again begun to spill into his lap. I am in the doorway to my room. After Pitaji hangs up the phone, he tells me, “I do everything you want.” He appears to wait for me to say something. I do not, and sighing, he stands and leaves for his room. I bolt him in.
Perhaps three months after I first locked Pitaji in his room, Shakuntla Mausiji and Sharmila Mamiji visit one afternoon. I had stopped thinking of the outside world. I hear the doorbell and unbolt him. I often wonder how he spends his day. The only times I see him are when he wants to leave his room. Pitaji is lying on his cot in his underpants looking at the ceiling fan. He must have heard the bell, too.
Mausiji and Mamiji sit on the living-room sofa. Both are small and fat, with nearly white hair. I prepare tea and bring out biscuits.
“How are you?” Mamiji asks when I return from the kitchen.
“Good.”
“We worry about you,” she says. This cannot be true, for why has it taken them so long to visit?
“Now what, daughter?” Mausiji asks. Shakuntala Mausiji is Ma’s older sister, and even though I know not to believe that people of her generation are especially protective or wise, I expect them to be.
“Have you thought of marriage?” Mamiji interprets the question. “There is a man I know who works in a ball-bearing factory. He is good, but was married to a Muslim for two years.”
Because I am worried they might discover what I am doing to Pitaji, my voice remains softly polite. “One marri
age in one life,” I say, trying to appear as traditional as possible.
“Throw yourself on a pyre, then?” Mamiji responds.
“Asha can live with us,” Mausiji says. “It’ll make getting a husband easier.”
Hearing this is a shock. “Asha is the light of the world.”
“Daughter, don’t cry.”
I wipe my face with a fold of my sari.
“Something has to be done,” Mamiji says.
“Pitaji is fine to live with.”
“It might be safer for Asha to be away,” Mausiji adds.
Immediately tears roll down my cheeks. “Don’t say that.” I cannot imagine what might force me to give up Asha. Without her not a single good thing would have happened in my life.
After a while Mamiji asks, “Should we say hello to your father?”
This frightens me. “He’s lying down,” I say, hoping they will understand this as his being asleep.
“Is he awake?”
“I don’t know.”
Together we go into the common room. Pitaji is still lying in his underpants.
“Namaste,” Mausiji says.
After a moment Pitaji replies, “Namaste.”
“How is your health?”
“All right.”
Mausiji and Mamiji exchange glances. They linger. I think they cannot decide whether to mention the man who works in the ball-bearing factory.
“Namaste,” Mausiji says. They depart.
This time I do not close Pitaji’s door till I have washed the pot the tea was made in and the cups in which it was drunk. Bare and still and so passive, he does not seem dangerous. But I cannot imagine the future with him in it. The need to live is so strong that only a mountain piled on top can stop it. With Pitaji, living is the same as destroying. He was able to wait twenty years and then act exactly the same as he had before. Yet nothing in his soft round face or his swollen stomach demands the death I wish him. When I close his door that afternoon it is not to cage him, as it has been before, but to remove him from sight so I can forget.
“I am a good woman,” I say to myself.
“Who can understand what I have suffered?”
“Or how alone I am.”
In the weeks and months that come, I forget him, sometimes for several hours. Then something will remind me and I will know exactly when I last thought of him and how I nearly imagined him while mopping the floor, and again when the fan’s breeze stirred some newspapers. I talk so little, I begin to envy Asha for being able to go out into the world and speak to other children.
Late one night Pitaji begins to scream. He is so loud that Asha jumps upright on the bed still half-asleep. “What?” I say to her, as if I cannot hear. Pitaji continues. The shrieks are high and desperate. I turn on all the lights and go to the common room. Asha follows. I look at his blue door. It is unbolted and he has not been out that night. “He’ll ask if he needs help,” I murmur.
“Do something,” Asha says angrily.
“He knows what’s best for him.”
“God!” Pitaji bays.
The fan whirrs. The tube light keeps the dark dammed out of the common room. At times Pitaji’s cries drop, becoming moans.
The doorbell rings. I go to answer it. It is the woman from next door, a widow with such a square face she looks almost like a man.
“Pitaji ate onions with yogurt and got a stomachache,” I say. Asha is with me.
“When he had his heart attack, my boys kicked open your front door.” She is smiling, as if this was an adventure, and then, almost with regret, says, “This time we won’t have to.” She leaves.
The cries stop an hour or so before dawn. But Pitaji does not appear that morning. Late in the afternoon, when I have begun thinking I should check to see if he is alive, Pitaji enters my bedroom. I am sitting in bed reading the newspaper. He is wearing only his underpants. His stomach pushes their top down.
“I’m not dead,” he says quietly. He comes and stands close to me.
I remain silent, because I do not know how he will react to anything I do.
“I cannot die, serpent.”
Then he goes back to his room and lies on his cot. He does not close the door. I am too frightened to do so. I stay in the living room. When Asha descends from the roof into the common room a little later, Pitaji calls out to her, “Your mother is murdering me. She throws away my medicine and is feeding me so much I have had another heart attack.” I come into the common room. Asha looks at him and then at me. It is strange to have everything described so clearly. Asha climbs back up the ladder. “Murderess,” Pitaji tries shouting, but his voice is no louder than a normal person speaking. He falls asleep and I lock his door.
When he wakes, he shakes the door instead of knocking on it as he normally does when he wants to be let out. I bolt him in when he goes back to sleep.
The thing that made him scream also leaves him without energy. Most days he remains on his cot. But he no longer lets me lock the door. As soon as he finds out he is locked in, he begins shaking the door.
One afternoon he comes into my room. I am sitting on a chair lengthening Asha’s school skirt. “I don’t want to see your unlucky face,” he says. His voice is buried and ar away. “Keep the door closed. But I am no animal to be locked in.”
At first I am half relieved, because it suggests Pitaji will stop me eventually. But he does not go to buy his medicines and he continues to eat the ridiculously rich food I make. I put butter even in his yogurt.
The new compromise works for a while.
I want to celebrate Asha’s birthday quietly. I do not know what Pitaji might do if he finds out. I make halva for her before she goes to school. I pray with her in our room.
Asha takes the bowl of halva I have given her to Pitaji’s door. “Nanaji, it’s my birthday. Do you want some halva?” I am in the kitchen.
Pitaji opens his door. Asha holds the bowl forward with both hands. He looks surprised and then angry. Pitaji takes the bowl and turns it upside down in front of Asha. The spoon in it clinks on the floor.
Pitaji stops lying on his cot except at night. He wanders the flat. Periodically he grabs folds of his stomach, shakes it at us, and speaks in a falsetto, as if it is his stomach talking. “After he dies, will I keep living?” I refuse to answer him when he is in such moods. In front of Asha he has his stomach say, “It’s his penis that made problems, not me. Why should I die, too?” Mostly Pitaji makes pronouncements and does not attempt conversations.
Pitaji tries to enter every part of our lives. He plays cards against himself on our bed. He sits beside us during meals and sometimes in the middle of them starts spooning subji from our bowls and breaking off pieces of our rotis. I can’t touch my food after he’s touched it. He treats Asha the same way he treats me. I ignore him, and Asha begins to follow my example.
Pitaji sometimes comes into our room in the middle of the night and turns on the light and sits at the foot of the bed without saying anything. Sometimes his anguish stirs my own and I wish to comfort him. In these moments I look away.
But one day I notice Pitaji’s ankles are dirty. Then I understand that patches of his skin have turned black from the absence of blood. I start to cry. When unhappiness is so great, how can one separate mine and yours?
Pitaji looks down at his ankles and murmurs, “My life.”
There is a period when Pitaji takes to leaving the flat. He goes down the gallery to the flat next to ours and tells the widow who lives there and her two sons that I am killing him for money I believe he has.
The widow tells me this. “If we had money, wouldn’t we spend some?” I tell her. I am afraid of being robbed and murdered if rumors of wealth spread.
Then Pitaji goes down into the compound and tells them what he has done to me but claims that these are all lies. I learn from the widow that he cries as he tells the story. Then he always tells his audience that he is being slowly poisoned for money.
I do not care that he
is telling them what happened or claiming that this was a lie. But I worry about crime. One evening, when he is wandering around the compound with his story, I go down and shout, “Senile fool, leave these people in peace.” Then I address the two old women he had been talking to: “Come upstairs. Look in my home and see what we have that’s worth stealing.” They follow eagerly while Pitaji stays downstairs. I show them how dull my knives are. I point out that I’ve been thinking of buying a deodorant for the latrine but don’t want to get caught up in unnecessary expenses.
One day Pitaji comes into my room and announces, “I am taking the flat back.” He is wearing pants and shoes. Going down the gallery, he moves with his feet splayed out and carefully, as if he is afraid to slip. I wonder how the clouds and blue sky look to him.
When he returns from his lawyer, he again lies down on his cot.
It is the last time he leaves the flat.
Once, I find Asha standing beside Pitaji’s cot.
“Come here,” I demand, and she does. Pitaji looks at the ceiling. His face is wet as it almost always is. “What were you talking about?”
“I asked why he cries all the time.”
Asha looks at me. She has the face of someone so much older that I am afraid. “What did he say?”
“He said he doesn’t want to die.”
TWELVE
Kusum worried as she watched the low white buildings of Indira Gandhi International Airport drift by the window. The flight had been delayed in London, and it was early morning. To Kusum the slow confusion of the trucks and vans guiding the plane seemed the result of fatigue. Ben, Kusum’s husband, was asleep in the aisle seat, and their six-year-old daughter, Carolyn, her bare feet hovering midway between seat and floor, lay dozing in the center. Kusum and her family had arrived in Delhi to meet Asha and decide whether or not to adopt her.
Waiting in line to go through customs, Kusum slipped two fingers through a belt loop of Ben’s jeans, and he, automatically, caressed the back of her neck. Several times since Pitaji died they had discussed taking in Asha. Because all the neighborhood knew of Pitaji’s rape of Anita, Asha was considered naturally inclined toward depravity. Grown men sometimes surprised her when she was walking alone and shoved her into walls and then pressed themselves against her. Now that Asha was fourteen and developing breasts, the molestations were more frequent and violent. Also, she was nearing the age when the U.S. government would make immigration difficult. “I won’t let Anita force us into anything,” Kusum said, looking up at Ben. She released Carolyn’s hand and put both arms around her husband’s waist. Ben was slender, with thinning curly hair. Beneath the airplane odor on his shirt, she found his smell of clean laundry and apples and wondered why she was so distrustful of people.
