The Light of Dead Fires

by Sakiv Koch

  “It was then that the first vagabond cloud wandered into the pristine sky. It cast a brief but dark shadow over the magnificent landscape and went away.

  “‘If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Anandita, whom no sorrows can touch,’ Ravi said after he set me down, ‘and if it’s a boy, we’ll call him Smastrus — the perfect human-being, with all the eight attributes of a complete man.’ And that’s how you were named, Smastrus, by an elated father who never saw you, by an incredibly beautiful, extraordinary father you were not destined to know.”

  She fell quiet for the space of a precious minute. The darkness outside had become the densest yet, whispering that dawn was about to arrive. The town-hall clock had called out regularly throughout the night, urging them to hurry up.

  “After awhile, we also went out for a walk, taking care to keep a considerable distance between ourselves and our unreasonably disgruntled relatives. Raj’s trail was easy to see and avoid. Sometime after hearing Ravi’s boisterous laughter, Raj had evidently taken a thick branch and shaped it into a whip.

  “Dozens of wildflower stalks stood wounded and headless, leaking fat drops of sap, while yellow daisies and blue anemones lay like severed heads in Raj's destructive wake. ‘The madness is upon him,’ I muttered.

  “‘Yes, it is,’ Ravi said grimly, as we saw an intricately-woven bird’s nest lying on the ground. Two chicks lay dead in their torn-down, smashed-up home. A shudder went through the very core of my being, a deep place Sona hadn’t been able to touch. Both Ravi and I had been able to overlook Sona’s offence so easily because we believed Raj to have ‘become alright’ to a great extent. Of course, I’d had the additional satisfaction of having slapped her with all my strength and vomited over her deliberately, but the main gardener keeping serious worry from weeding up in our hearts was Raj.

  “That gardener had turned vicious abruptly and, for an instant, my imagination ran in sheer terror through a lush-green garden quickly transforming into a bleak, vast desolation. We descended into the valley and looked at Raj and his wife from behind a clump of trees.

  “They stood at the bank of the river that flowed through the valley. The river was half-a-mile wide at its broadest point and went along at a leisurely pace, as though it were in no hurry to reach its destination. There was a small stone jetty venturing into the river. Half a dozen small and medium-sized boats were moored to it, nodding invitingly to take us across to an amazingly beautiful field of flowers that stretched to the horizon on the other side of the river. Silver birches stood as proud guardians amongst a vibrant carpet of marigold, windflower, marsh, geranium and many other kinds I don’t know by name.

  “The both of us stood mesmerised by the intoxicating sight, which pushed Raj and his family to the backs of our minds for a few moments. The sound of breaking glass jerked our attention back to the said virulent family. Raj had a catapult in his hand and was fitting another stone to its cup. He took aim at the largest boat moored at the jetty and let fly. This boat was quite different from the others: it was a motor-boat with a cabin built upon its deck. Although it was very old, the boat still held traces of the white-and-red paint it had worn in its youth. Its name was printed upon its sides: The Fierce Tigress.

  “Another grimy pane of glass belonging to the boat’s cabin shattered with Raj’s second shot. Sukh Lal, the caretaker came running from a little shed, with a jerry-can in his hands. ‘I’ve got the petrol, sir!’ he shouted from far away, breathing raggedly. ‘Please don’t hurt the Tigress any more!’

  “Raj laughed. The laugh, in essence a brother to the laughter that had welled out of Ravi’s exhilarated soul barely an hour ago, was incalculably different from Ravi’s. It contained petty malice and told us that Raj was drunk. ‘My next rock was going to hurt your head, you airhead! Fuel her up! Never keep me waiting again!’”

  “‘But her hull needs to be patched up in a couple of places!’ Sukh Lal protested even as he ducked his head in apprehension of being hit. He ran on to the jetty and proceeded to transfer the contents of the jerrycan into the boat’s fuel tank. ‘I’ll have her ready for you by morning tomorrow, sahib,’ the caretaker continued to plead. ‘She hasn’t been out on the water in a very long time —’. A stone whizzed by the old man’s ear and made a dent in the Tigress’s gunwale.

  “That’s when Ravi stepped out and showed himself.

  “‘Hand those things to me, Raj!’ Ravi said, walking up to his brother and extending his hand for Raj’s stick and catapult. I knew that Ravi hadn’t wanted to interfere, but Raj was carrying things too far. I followed my husband with a thudding heart, unable to tear my half-fearful, half-curious gaze from Sona.

  “There was an angry, bruised impression of my fingers upon her left cheek. She hadn’t bothered to change her clothes! Can you believe that, Smast? I couldn’t. It still jolts me to think of her continuing to wear her filthy salwar kameez. She had apparently sponged the vomit off them while still wearing them, as there were large, damp patches all over the front of her shirt. Her little son’s clothes were also wet in places. He stood by his mother’s side, holding on to her leg, and looked at me with a mix of wonder and fear in his big, innocent eyes.

  “Sona smiled her bitter half-smile as she regarded me acidly, communicating her hatred with her hardened eyes, telling me wordlessly that she would do things to me I couldn’t imagine possible. Ravi glanced at her and then at me, understanding the gist of what must have taken place between us earlier.

  “Raj didn’t bother to look at me. ‘These are my toys, bhaiya,’ he said, hiding his weapons behind his back. ‘Go make your own if you wish to play my kind of games. Ha, ha! Your cultured wife,’ he jerked his head in my direction without really looking at me, ‘can teach you a thing or two about hurting and damaging things. She’s a master at it! Ha, ha.’

  “His praise of my destructive abilities was so absurd that I felt no twinge of guilt, not even at having concealed the quantum of my violence from my husband.

  “‘Give those things to me,’ Ravi repeated, in calm, measured tones, paying no mind to his brother’s slurred words, ‘and you will wait until tomorrow morning to take the motor boat to the other side. If you wish to go right now, take one of the other boats.’

  “‘I’m not a child—,’ Raj said defiantly, saying the exact words I’d said to Ravi earlier. Ravi grasped Raj’s upper arm, turned him around and snatched the stick and the catapult from his hands with the ease that came from the huge difference in their respective strengths.

  “Raj’s mouth worked in pure rage, but no sound issued from it. He gave a murderous look to the cowering Sukh Lal, grabbed Sona’s forearm, and stomped off, dragging her after him. She, in turn, dragged the little boy after her.

  “‘I had to hit her,’ I said as we watched them going away. Ravi nodded absentmindedly. ‘I did something else, too,’ I continued, ‘something much worse.’

  “‘You don’t have to talk about it right now,’ he said and then turned to Sukh Lal. ‘Did you supply liquor to Raj?’ Ravi asked.

  “The man nodded eagerly, apparently misconstruing the import of Ravi’s question. ‘I can supply it to you, too, sahib!’ Sukh Lal said. ‘The finest scotch whiskey, single malt —’

  “‘Don’t do it again!’ Ravi said sternly. ‘That boy needs to stay away from liquor, do you understand?’ Shouting at someone was completely uncharacteristic of Ravi. Both his expression and tone softened in a moment. ‘I wish I had told you earlier not to sell him any alcohol. My fault, not yours. Anyway, what kind of a boat is that Tigress?’

  “Sukh Lal took us about twenty years back by telling us the story of a wealthy Englishman who used to stay at that resort every summer. He had brought the motorboat from Europe and left it at the river permanently. He was extremely fond of fishing and painting. He would cross the river in his boat and spend several hours in the ‘flower paradise’ on the other side. His fashionable wife had been pestering him for years to bag some tiger and leopard skins, just as
the husbands of all her friends did every year. The Englishman was content with having named his beloved boat The Fierce Tigress and wanted nothing more to do with big cats if he could help it.

  “But the poor man couldn’t help it. One day his wife called him a sissy. The harassed man went into the jungles of Kumaon with a rifle that very night and was found the next day with all the fleshy parts missing from his body.

  “‘Excuse my crudeness, ma’am,’ Sukh Lal said to me as he finished his gruesome tale. ‘Ironically, a fierce tigress most probably enjoyed him as dinner and nobody has ever come to claim the boat in the two decades since its owner died.’

  “We were looking at the abandoned boat while the caretaker told us its story. Its bobbing on the water grew more pronounced as the wind started to pick up speed abruptly. The westering sun’s still-strong beams weakened all of a sudden. I looked up and saw a column of clouds flying into the skies, conquering its blueness in a matter of minutes.

  “Ravi took my hand and we started to walk back to our cottage. The wind dug out and kicked up scraps of dry leaves and dust into our eyes. When we came to it, we saw the lake starting to churn with small whitecaps.

  “In less than an hour, a thick cloud cover lowered over the mountains like a coarse black blanket. Darkness came prematurely. Lightening assaulted it every now and then. The fast-approaching storm laughed with deep, frightening booms and peals of thunder. When the rain began, it fell not in drops, but in packets of water. It continued with the same unappeasable ferocity for the next thirty-six hours.

  “We couldn’t so much as step out of our cottage during that reign of rain, but those two nights and one day formed our true holiday. There was just one irritant in that ‘dream-come-true’ time: Ravi had contracted a throat infection and developed a fever. All of our conversations had to climb over rocky landslides or descend through deep pits of protracted bouts of coughing.

  “‘My child, irrespective of whether we are blessed with a son or a daughter, will have all the eight rasas, the essences of emotions that make a soul beautiful,’ he said, as we sat in our candle- and lightening-lit room. ‘He or she will be capable of the shringar ras, which encompasses both aesthetics and love; of the hasya ras, that is humour; of the vibhatsa ras, that is capability to deal with pathetic things or people arousing disgust; of the raudra ras, that is, retributive fury when it is absolutely warranted; of karuna, that is unbound compassion; of the vir ras, which bespeaks immense courage; of the bhayanak, capable of striking horror in the hearts of enemies; and lastly, he or she will be adbhuta, which is to say unique and amazing.’

  “As he described these attributes, I was able to picture someone very like Ravi, with the exceptions of the bhayanak ras and the raudra ras — my husband neither had the essence of horror nor that of fury. But he wanted you to have them, Smastrus — the meaning of your name, as I told you earlier, is one who is the master of all the rasas.

  “The rains stopped on the morning of the next day. The hinges of my jaws and the back of my head ached from having smiled more or less continuously for such a long time. The sky remained heavily overcast with thunderheads, spread out to the horizon like a black, upside-down ocean of unspent cannon shells. We sat in the window-seat, his fever-warm hands clasped in mine, looking at the trees and bushes shedding their water busily, continuing their private rains.

  “It was from a stand of dripping firs that two demons stepped out. The female fiend was carrying a human child in her arms. The male demon was not walking, he was literally prancing and stamping about, as though let out of a small bottle after centuries of confinement.

  “‘Not a good time to be going out. It might start raining again any moment,’ Ravi commented, watching his restive brother with half a mind to open the window and shout his name. Women have a way of discouraging their men from doing certain things without saying anything. Ravi looked at me and refrained from calling out to Raj.

  “He didn’t say anything further on the topic for the next half an hour, but he was clearly getting worried with each passing minute. He had good reasons to be concerned: the temperature had dropped considerably in the last two days and the ground underfoot had grown as treacherous as Raj and Sona themselves. In that place, downpours reduced visibility to just a few feet. And then there was the gale-force wind. It shrieked constantly and threatened to uproot just about any tree it took a dislike to.

  “I’d started to grow a bit uneasy, too, but only on the little boy’s account. The wandering couple could have walked right off the planet as far as I was concerned. By the end of that half an hour, Ravi had reached a decision to go look for them and bring them back. He hadn’t said anything to me yet, but I could see the intention forming in his mind and journeying towards his lips as though his head and face were made of glass.

  “‘You are not well; I’ll go,’ I declared, preempting him. His eyes widened for an instant and then he laughed out loud.

  “‘There’s no way I am letting you go out there,’ he said.

  “‘Send Sukh Lal then,’ I suggested.

  “Ravi shook his head. ‘Raj scares that poor man so much, Sukh Lal is likely to suffer a heart attack at coming face to face with him. I’ll go.’

  “We argued for the next few minutes, and I got my way in the end. I promised him that if I couldn’t find them easily and quickly, I would come back.

  “I put on my warmest coat and stepped out. The wind slammed into my body, as though it had been waiting for a long time to ambush me. I fought back, bending my head down and narrowing my eyes to slits.

  “I walked around the lake and passed through the woodland that sloped gently to the valley below. The sight of the swollen river was as much a shock as the cold slap of the wind had been.

  “It appeared to be a time for arguments — Raj and Sona stood at the foot of the stone jetty, shouting at each other. Raj was gesticulating fiercely at The Fierce Tigress and Sona was shaking her head equally vehemently. Their three year old son seemed to be much more sensible than his parents. Sona had placed him on a stone bench situated several yards away from the jetty. He was alternately looking up at the brooding sky and at the madly rushing river.

  “Raj started to move down the jetty, but Sona clasped his arm and tried to stop him, her little feet skidding on the jetty’s wet stones. I ignored their drama and went to the bench upon which the little, frightened boy sat timidly.

  “The usually quiet boy got so excited or so relieved at seeing me that he uttered a loud baby-whoop. His parents turned to look at him, saw me, and a sea change came over their attitudes. They effected an instantaneous ceasefire in their hostilities. It’s amazing how their otherwise incompatible minds became one whenever they had to deal with me.

  “The boy lifted his arms in air, wanting me to pick him up. I was reluctant, but his appeal was so irresistible that I bent down to do so.

  “‘Leave him alone!’ Sona shouted, walking rapidly towards me. Raj followed close behind, walking with a drunkard’s sway. My heart skipped a beat and I looked over my shoulder to see if fleeing would be feasible. The already-terrified child started to bawl as I stepped away from him.

  “‘Do not dare to bestow your loving touch on me or my child ever again,’ she said, touching her right cheek, where the bruise of my blow had faded considerably but not vanished altogether.

  “‘She tricked you into lowering your guard?’ Raj asked his wife. The reek of his breath reaffirmed what his gait had already established: he was drunk as a lord.

  “‘Yes, she did,’ Sona lied while glaring at me.

  “‘And then she dirtied your clothes?’

  Sona nodded.

  “‘And then she hit you and ran away?’

  “‘Yes.’

  “‘What say you to a rematch, huh?’ Raj asked the both of us. ‘Let’s cross to the other side,’ he jerked his hand towards the paradise of flowers. ‘You two can have a go at each other’s throats to your hearts’ content. I’ll be the imparti
al referee to ensure there’s no foul play involved. Ha, ha, ha!’

  “When neither of us showed any enthusiasm for his proposal, Raj lunged forward, lifted his boy from the bench and tossed him high in the air. The child screamed. A squeal of fright escaped my lips. Sona’s face paled and her hands twitched involuntarily, but she made no sound. Raj barely caught the boy on his way down and guffawed maniacally. ‘This young chap is not a piglet; he’s a lion cub. Ha, ha! Papa’s going to take you to the other side of the river, sonny boy, and your ever-bitching mother can go to hell!’

  “He sent the poor, red-faced boy flying up again with this declaration. Even higher this time. The boy’s bladder expressed his terror by letting go. A trickle of water fell upon Raj’s upturned face and froze him for a moment. Sona somehow caught her son in her arms at the very last moment. Even then, the lower half of his body struck the ground.

  “Raj had turned into a raging monster. He wiped his son’s urine off his face with a beastly grunt and raised his hand to hit the boy. Sona turned the child around and started to run with him. ‘It’s not his fault,’ she cried.

  “‘Give him to me, bitch,’ Raj said, chasing her. He’d have caught her easily had he been sober; but he wasn’t. He stumbled and fell to the muddy ground on his face.

  “Sona stopped and turned around. ‘Please don’t be angry,’ she appealed to him in mellifluous tones. ‘He’s so young and yet so brave, just like his father!’

  “‘Be quiet, woman!’ Raj roared as he struggled to get back to his feet. ‘Just like his father!’ he mimicked Sona. ‘Are you calling me a coward? I’m going to teach him a lesson he won’t forget all his life!’

  “‘Let’s cross to the other side, to the paradise of flowers,’ Sona said suddenly.

  “Raj blinked in surprise and sudden pleasure. ‘Really?’ he asked, forgetting his wrath at his child.

  “‘Yes, really.’

  “I was relieved that Sona had managed to quell Raj’s rage, but I didn’t like the methodology she had adopted for it.