by K R Meera
He didn’t answer any of my questions. He remained silent and motionless. Only the water kept boiling above the blue flames with yellow petals.
He lay down on the makeshift bed made of logwood. When the rice was cooked, I turned off the stove and sat beside him. Darkness and silence that smelled of kerosene filled the room. I dearly wished my life would end at that moment. I couldn’t think of a reason to go on living if he were to reject me. I cried soundlessly. The river flowed tenderly lest a stone be thrown in to stir up a splash. I hadn’t noticed when he slipped his arms that had refused to open up, around my shoulders and begun to caress me. He held me close to his chest and afterwards spoke in a fragile incantation:
‘We were all young. It was a terrible time. Realizing humankind’s capacity for malice, greed and cruelty troubled our conscience. But turning a blind eye to all that would’ve been a bigger sin. That is what set me off on this path. I was in an undergraduate college. I had great pride in who I was, and that is what they crushed. The kind of pride that every individual should’ve had wrapped up in his ribcage. When it was smashed to pieces, I lost myself … I ended up being nothing more than a traitor.’
Warm tears streamed along his cheeks. My own drenched his chest. A hum emanated from his chest as though reverberating from underneath a massive rock. I imagined he contained an expansive reservoir of tears in his gentle chest.
He continued, ‘The most vivid memory of that time will always be a certain room that was darkened, its windows padded with cardboard rags. It stank horribly the moment I walked in. Was it pee, shit, blood or death? People screamed dreadfully all the time. Their ear-splitting howls would break your heart. You knew right away that they had lost their sense of being human. I wished they would die rather than reel in their never-ending traumas. They were my loved ones. It cut me deep to see them tortured. I gave up names without even realizing I had done that. One after another they named somebody else. The captors linked everyone like rings in a chain. They connected the rest to build a story in which I was the only one chosen to be Judas.’
I raised my hands to wipe his tears.
‘You are not a Judas.’
‘I told them, Prema … I couldn’t possibly … I told them what I knew.’ He sobbed inconsolably.
‘I gave up Sunanda. I was in love with her. Yet I told them her name. She was way bolder than I ever was. It didn’t matter how much they tortured her, she wouldn’t cry. I ratted on another comrade when I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer any more. They killed Sunanda and Rajan, a friend of hers. It was I who threw their bodies in the gorge. I could never sleep, Prema. I can sink into a lake, plunge into an ocean or float away upon any river, but the roar from that ravine will still hum in my ears. I am a traitor. I really was betraying myself.’
His chest heaved with the beat of his own cries. My head was spinning. I lost my mooring in the agony of the moment and I drowned in the depths of pain and delirium. He wept all night.
‘You’ve got to sleep,’ I whispered in torpor.
‘I can’t sleep, Prema,’ he said hugging me tightly. ‘You don’t know. A traitor can never sleep.’
He must not have slept that night. I, however, slumbered soundly with the reassuring thought that I was loved. In my sleep, I dreamed of red creepers with giant leaves in murky light. I walked across two craggy mountains on a hanging bridge which was withering from the far end. The bridge collapsed halfway through my walk. It descended into the abyss in the shape of a kingfisher and I was a pearl fish bouncing out of the bird’s beak. Falling through the air was the same as sinking in water. In my frenzy of love, both seemed alike. My only concern was whose cadaver it would be, waiting at the bottom with a chuckle in its open eyes!
Even in my dream I was envious of the girl, Sunanda. Yudas would be mine. I needed him. I’d lead him into a new life when he woke up. Together we’d fight for a new world. A brave new world. New power for people. ‘Long Live the Revolution,’ I whispered. ‘Strength to the Naxalbari.’
When I woke up in the morning Yudas wasn’t home. The cold rice was kept uncovered on the stove, forsaken by even the crows believed to be our forefathers. Only the dampness of our mingled tears remained in my chest. The new world we aspired to seemed empty and doomed. I returned to the hostel feeling hollow, like a dead body that had surfaced on the water on the third day.
FOUR
‘She was murdered. I know she was! Amma took her last breath bawling her lungs out. Ugh! Why in the world should one cry? I was bedridden having delivered a baby. This house used to be a leafy shack. The police walked all over us. They beat the shit out of my husband. He became a TB patient, couldn’t do a thing. He was hurting like hell until he died. Don’t think I say this only because she was my younger sister! She was some woman, wellbuilt and healthy, had a mind strong enough to beat even the menfolk. She knew all along that it would end up like it did. She’d say, “What if a few of us were to go? Let the rest of you live your life in peace?” In the end she was gone, just like she said she would. What about the rest? Did their lives get any better? I don’t know, child. Sometimes I think they did. Don’t you think their sacrifice ought to be the reason why folks like us are still around eking out a life?’
Sunanda’s sister talked while she meshed coconut leaves together. I was trying hard not to see the vision of Sunanda sinking into the gorge.
It took some trouble to find Sunanda’s sister. To locate her I pretended to be a journalist working on a story on the Emergency. The grey-haired retired schoolmaster whom I got acquainted with at the extreme leftist CPI-ML office laughed sarcastically. ‘Nothing kills me more than these features in print! The torturers, Padikkal, Pulikkodan et al pale in comparison to the fantasy literature peddled by your ilk.’ I smiled, feeling guilty. He didn’t realize that the reason behind my smile was my love for Yudas. He knew very little about Sunanda. ‘The only evidence of Sunanda and Rajan’s arrests had been Das’s words.’ After my father, he was the second person to call Yudas by that name. My heart skipped a beat.
‘Das?’ I asked as though I’d never heard of him.
‘Yes, Das. You’ve never heard of him, have you? Oh! Weren’t there many more people like Rajan and Das in those days? This is J.U. Das. A wise guy. He is still around somewhere, but I don’t know where. His heart must be broken.’
‘Did he love Sunanda?’ I asked him, concealing my envy.
‘Oh! One heard many such tales. Didn’t all that happen in a different period, child? It was hardly a time for infatuation. Folks had begun to sacrifice their lives for bigger causes. What should’ve been given more importance was the fact that so many youngsters from all corners of the state had swept up to resist the government rather than this harping on the torture saga.’ He sighed.
Sunanda’s sister sighed exactly the same way.
‘There were a lot of them. Many people like you came to me looking for old stories. How was she tortured? Who bashed whom? When did I last see her? … Isn’t that all over? Whoever is gone is gone. Das told me she was thrown into the gorge. It must be true. They caned her legs black and blue. Poured chilli powder all over the gashes. Pummelled her chest to a pulp. Her nipples were crushed and fell off. She wouldn’t cry though. She took after our father. He was like her. He too was thrashed at the toddy labour union march. Blood gushed out of his mouth, yet he chanted “Inquilab Zindabad”.’
I was tearing up. My face drooped and I sobbed. That was for the sake of my father.
Unaware of that, she offered me solace. ‘Don’t cry child. It happened a while ago. It’s done. Buck up.’
She continued, ‘Sunanda finished the tenth standard and attended a typewriting school. She dreamed of passing the public service exams and securing a job. I raised her. She wasn’t just a younger sister, but more like a daughter to me. I never so much as pinched her. She got in touch with the group at the library. Arrests had already begun. Some came out of prison too. Nothing would turn Sunanda away from the group. Wh
o knows how those God-awful murderers hurt her? Das said her sari was stripped off her. She was made to stand up naked. Beaten. When they bashed her hind legs, chunks of flesh flew all over the place. Even that didn’t make her cry. She was like that. She’d never cry. Das told me that they couldn’t get anything out of her.’
‘Das … Did you see Das after that?’
‘Yes. He comes here once in a while. Who else has he got but some of us?’
‘Were they in love?’
She smiled.
‘She was beautiful. And above all, she had a steely inner strength. Das adored her. Was it love? Or affection? I don’t know. He believes she was caught and murdered because of him. It couldn’t be. They would have got her even if he hadn’t. The time was such, wasn’t it?’
‘Didn’t Das betray Sunanda and Rajan?’
‘Huh! What did he even know? Nothing! But he convinced himself that that was what happened …
‘Das was a kind boy. A poet. He loved Sunanda. He loved everyone. He came from a decent family. All he had was his mother. She died seeing her only son’s life in ruins.’
‘Where is Das now?’ I inquired.
‘Who knows? He comes here once in a while. Gives me some money, even though I don’t need any. But he will feel bad if I tell him that, so I take it.’
Sunanda’s elder sister’s daughter walked into the house when I was about to leave. She had been doing a course at the Amrita Institute. ‘Sunanda looked just like her,’ said the elder sister. I looked at the girl with wide eyes. She had a dark complexion, and a fine face which radiated a kind of resolve. I suddenly felt inferior. Das, who had known a girl like Sunanda, could never love someone like me—a hollow woman, the kind who would never sink and was burdened with a reprehensible legacy including attempts to cover up the stench of rotten flesh by burning incense.
I bought myself a copy of the Bible for the first time when I took leave of Sunanda’s sister. I browsed through it, trying to find sections referring to Judas. I read about Judas from the chapter titled ‘Apostles’ Creed’:
Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulf illed, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, The Gospel of Yudas which was guide to them that took Jesus. For he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry. Now this man purchased a f ield with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that f ield is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, the f ield of blood.
I put the book down. I tried to forget Yudas in each of the following nights. I reeled under a bout of severe depression. I became habituated with headaches and the loss of appetite. Ulcers and sinusitis made me miserable. I saw my father in uniform when I closed my eyes. In a dark hall where sunlight was kept out with raggedy sheets of paper on the windows, my father lined up wiry young men whose bosoms swelled with pride. He drank standing at the bottom of a giant pile of bottles. My mouth tasted the salt-and-sour blood which my father ruthlessly beat out of the youngsters. I suffered an unbearable pain as though a nipple was ripped right out of my breast.
I didn’t have enough money to support a lengthy medical recovery. So I went back home, unable to complete the diploma course in that town. I remember the day I returned to the village on the shores of the lake. I had taken a commuter bus. By the time I got down at the foot of a banyan tree surrounded by a ring of dry leaves fluttering in the breeze from the lake, I was tired and couldn’t move an inch. My wilted, moth-infested feudal home waited for me. Cirrhosis and tremors had already left my father bedridden for the rest of his life. My father’s elder sister, Balu’s mother, remained the only one to take care of him. The main source of our income was the bank interest she earned on the insurance money she received when her husband passed away. I tried hard not to think of Balu when she served food on my plate with an empty look in her sunken eyes. Every time I remembered him, the image of his coral-shaped face with innumerable holes came to my mind. I inquired jokingly if people weren’t drowning in the lake any more. My aunt had a scowl on her face. I have had only corpses to remember, their ghastly dead faces, nibbled at by fishes, that became pale and swollen underwater.
Sometimes I would walk to the south end of our backyard and watch the lake in the distance from under the expansive old mango tree. The lake lay wearily among the hills like a beached whale. The lush green had vanished from the slopes. The tall rubber trees beyond the faraway mound had been cleared to make way for new plantations, leaving the mound barren. A couple of barges floated by lazily sometime in the day. And I remembered him even when I didn’t want to. ‘Croc’ Yudas. He kept going deeper into the abyss of my mind, hauling the dead bodies he recovered on to the shore of my memory.
I spent many years at home. The house had turned into a torture camp for me. My young brothers had already become grown-ups. One joined the Pentecostal group and the other became a bootlegger and a notorious criminal in the community. I stayed in a room where a garlanded black-and-white portrait of my mother hung. I was never loved by my mother. She never had been loved by my father. None of us has ever had anyone else’s love. Life had always unfolded under an emergency of some kind. Nobody dared to open up. Nor did they dare to love. The police arrested my brother on the day my ulcer got worse and blood began to seep into my mouth. My father lay on the bed, unable to lift his head. A police van arrived in the middle of the night. As soon as my aunt opened the door, our courtyard reverberated with the sound of police boots. I came out with bleary eyes only to be thrust aside as they hollered, ‘BLOODY ROTTEN BITCH OF AN ASS-IMPALER!’ I fell on to the doorsteps opening into my father’s room. My forehead slashed open after it slammed into the wall, and blood gushed out. At the same time, blood from the ulcer oozed out of my mouth. I felt elated in that moment to be able to spill some blood for my father’s band of brothers. After the police took my brother away, my father sat on the bed in disquiet. The next day I was asked to visit the police station, only to be informed that he had escaped from lock-up soon after he was arrested. My brother might have died in custody. His dead body emerged from the lake the day after.
The fishermen didn’t want to pull my brother’s body out of the water. Naturally I thought of Yudas. In my younger days he would spread his arms like a fishing net over the lake before he leapt into it. The lake submitted herself to him like a languorous lover, unfolding the secrets of her womb for him. This time it was a Tamil who came to recover the corpse. The dark, stocky man had yellow eyes. He was drunk before he waded into the lake. I didn’t have tears in my eyes when I watched my brother’s corpse brought to the shore. The corpse had blue streaks on its thighs, chest and back. No sooner had the body been laid down than the Tamil man began to haggle. A thousand and five hundred, he demanded. Some in the crowd bickered. I didn’t have any money on me, so the villagers set up a collection to pay him. My brother’s body was stiff and bent inwards even before he was pulled out of the water. Those who were arrested along with my brother said he died when he was put under the rollers during torture. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to cry. His body too was laid in the front yard of the house and surrounded by burning incense sticks. Some people carried my father out to show him the body.
‘My son … my son,’ Father whimpered a little.
‘The police killed him with the roller rods,’ I said aloud for everyone to hear.
‘The police?’
There was a look of distrust in Father’s tired and crevassed eyes. I relished that look. I suddenly felt an affection for my brother. He had paid the dues for our father with his life. Our house sank back into the gloom. The scent of incense deprived me of sleep again. I tossed and turned in bed thinking of Yudas. I couldn’t continue to live without his love. It’s not just the traitor; his lover too can’t have sleep. Her body too never ceases to feel like it is being scorched. I was terrified at the thought o
f my life being eaten away by termites inside this dilapidated and rancid Naalukettu. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I would run to the lake, tie a stone to my legs and throw myself to the deep end of the water. My body would undulate in the waves at the bottom, rooted into the crimson dirt like a leafless water plant. I imagined Yudas closing in to recover my corpse. I wanted to cry. I would allow only Yudas to make me cry.
FIVE
‘Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.’ Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
I read this section from the Bible every day and each time I thought about Yudas. My love for him was a burning flame in my heart that refused to be put out. My heart melted like a candle so that the flame could stay alive. I cried for him, and in my mind I trudged the path to Kakkayam camp every day to submit to the lashings in his stead. My illness only got worse with time. The room where my father lay was enveloped in a rotten stench. I would see his emaciated form wrapped in black wool, and I would shudder the same way I had when I saw the corpse in the deep end of the lake where I sank for the first time. He couldn’t sleep. Some nights he would randomly repeat in his frail voice. ‘Who is crying …? Water rumbles!’ At other times he would jabber, ‘Water in the gorge.’ I didn’t ask him which gorge it was. He too had long fallen into the gorge’s depths. Once in a while he bawled as though his heart had just been broken. Sometimes he spoke incessantly. He must be opening himself up, I would think. Tormented by his memories, Father too might be ratting himself out.
There was no word on Yudas. I wrote to Sunanda’s sister sometimes. She would reply through postcards. Yudas had moved to Malampuzha, she wrote once. She didn’t say what he did there.
