The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  “She talked in her sleep,” the drunk said. “From the wedding night until her final evening on this earth, she said things, whole conversations, her eyes closed. And always, always she said the same words in her dreams. Over and over. Hari, don’t leave me.”

  This part was new. “Hari—her husband?” Mohan said.

  “No,” the man said. “Nobody knew who this Hari was, but, of course, when a woman begins to say another man’s name in her sleep, there is always trouble. And then she began leaving her bed at night as well. She would find some way out of the house and go walking: down her street, to her neighbor’s, in the alleys. Sleepwalking. Traveling in her dreams. She never remembered any of it when she woke. They found her on the ghat near her home once, sitting with her eyes blank and open. It was all very puzzling, because she was fine during the day, you see. And soon, the city began to talk.”

  “The girl who danced with ghosts, the girl turned into a parrot, the girl who caught the glance of the evil eye.…” Mohan listed off all the different iterations of the tale he knew.

  “See, you do know! Those stories, others, all flying through the air in Kashi like a swarm of gnats, until the gossip shifted direction. She stopped with the nighttime walking, she stopped asking for Hari. That was when she carried a child within her.”

  “Yes,” Mohan said. He knew the rest: a girl was born, cries of happiness exploded in the streets, only to turn into cries of despair. The babe passed even before the girl could first put it to her breast. A quick summer fever, they said.

  “Very soon after her child died, she again began asking for Hari again. Hari—why have you left me? Hari, I am coming. At night, the sound of her anklets made the rounds down the lane and back. Each footstep like a shower of tears.” Maharaj paused, his breath halting in his throat like a scarf caught on a thorn. “She must have walked so far during those nights! Her feet must have touched every part of Kashi, eyes open, but dreaming all the while. And then, the day arrived that all of us knew was coming. Or rather, the night arrived. She left the family home, fast asleep as always. The hours slipped by. And the sun rose, the city awakened, but she did not return.” Maharaj’s voice faded away. He rubbed his bearded chin with the back of his hand.

  “Yes?” Mohan prompted. The drunk said nothing, but his jaw worked silently. He gestured behind him.

  “They found her on the ghats,” he said. “On this ghat. She had slipped, they said, slipped on the wet stone, for she walked even in the rains. Her neck broke while she slept.”

  “Her family,” Mohan said, “her husband’s people—why did they not watch over her in the night? Why did no one follow her, protect her?”

  Maharaj’s shoulders slumped. “Who can tell?” he said. “But they say that the woman did not have another child because she refused her husband, that whenever he attempted to come near her she cried all the louder for her Hari. And they say that the mother-in-law had begun to make inquiries about a new daughter-in-law, one who might fill the current one’s space.”

  “Hai Rama,” Mohan murmured. “How do you know all this?”

  “They say—” the drunk continued, his voice low so that the assistant had to strain to hear him, “they say other things. That the ghat steps had been dry that night, and that the water appeared afterward. And that the woman had been awake for her death.”

  “What?”

  “They say that she screamed, or tried to scream, but someone covered her mouth as they—he—dragged her across the steps.”

  “Rama.”

  “And that you could hear the anklets chime, those tiny bells ringing as her body fell to the stone.”

  “Rama.” Mohan covered his mouth. He looked at the drunk and saw a small bead of wetness trace its way from the man’s eye down the side of his nose to the corner of his mouth. “You were there,” the assistant realized. “You saw it happen.”

  “She would take my hand, sometimes, in the days before she married,” Maharaj murmured. “When I heard her going too far down, I would wait for her at the bottom-most step, and when she reached me I would lead her back up to the top.”

  “But after she married? What about that night?”

  “That Night.…” The drunk’s voice quavered. He shook his head and tapped his skull, and Mohan understood. Maharaj may have been there on that night in body, but his mind had been absent, arrested in a state of blackout that prevented any new memories from forming. He seemed to remember himself, and he brushed a rough hand over his eyes and straightened his back. “The point is that her ghost still lingers.”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t believe me. You don’t believe that she is still here, in this world.”

  “I do, by the great God I do,” Mohan said, suddenly aware of the time. Soon he would lose the advantage of darkness.

  “How could you know?” Maharaj choked. “Everyone says they know of these things, but does that mean anything?”

  “I am not simply saying it,” Mohan replied. “I believe you because I have seen it.”

  “What? When did you see her?”

  “Not her,” Mohan replied. “Another ghost. In another place.”

  “Where?”

  “At the bhavan,” Mohan said.

  “The bhavan!” the drunk said. “At Shankarbhavan? No, you are mistaken. Anyway, how could you know that was what you were seeing?”

  Mohan hesitated. His answers heretofore had been firm and confident, but the next answer was not his to give, because the secret belonged to another. Yet what could it matter if he told just one person, and a drunk man at that? If he was leaving the bhavan, he needed to leave all of it. Not just the place, the people, but also the pain that had forced him out. “Most certainly a spirit,” he said. “Every sign was there. Pots rattling in the midnight hours and other events.”

  “That is nothing,” Maharaj scoffed. “Pots! What can pots prove about a ghost?”

  “Well,” Mohan began. Again, he hesitated. He was not dead, Pramesh had said—had lied—in a declaration before everyone who mattered. And worse: You cannot even tell a dead man from a live one, can you? Mohan, at least, would be telling the truth if he continued, and he could leave this place with the satisfaction that someone outside the bhavan knew his side of things. He could unburden himself, here, with the holy river as his witness. “We had a dead man come to life.”

  “Oh?” The drunk’s eyes opened wide. “Is it so?”

  “Yes,” Mohan said, at once relieved and unsure about what he’d just revealed. “No deaths, ever since the ghost appeared. But this man was dead.”

  “Are you sure? Aren’t you the one they say cannot tell—”

  “A lie,” Mohan said firmly. “He was certainly dead, and for some hours. And then, back to life.”

  “Back to life,” Maharaj murmured to himself.

  The night was still but not silent: water lapped in wet thuds, insects murmured in rhythmic lullabies. Yet no sound came from the two figures sitting midway up the ghat, their elbows resting on bent knees, their features arranged in identical stoic masks. Facing the river, with the infinite blackness of the night sky reflected in its quiet depths and Magadha beyond, perhaps the two men thought that only they existed in this moment, this city, this world. Then something insinuated itself into their silence.

  “What was that?” The drunk cocked his ears toward the sound.

  “I heard nothing,” Mohan said, his attention only half present. Then he too heard it. A strange scraping sound, like a piece of wood being dragged down the ghat. Low and gravelly, this stretched growl soon turned into a rhythmic knock, a repeated thuk thuk thuk that echoed. Something beyond them was moving. “Is that …” Mohan began, his tongue losing its way in the middle of the thought. Louder and faster came the thuk, thuk, thuk, and now there was something else besides. A lighter, silvery sound floated above the heavy ploddi
ng. Perspiration bloomed on Mohan’s forehead. “A bell?” he whispered. “Hai Rama, are those bells?”

  “This is the hour,” the drunk murmured. “Oh, Rama; this is the hour.”

  “The hour for what?” Mohan croaked.

  “The hour for these things to roam. The hour for worlds to cross.” Maharaj stretched his arms out toward the river, as if he were presenting that holy water to the assistant, embracing it. “One land cursed,” he said, pointing in the direction of Magadha. “And the other blessed, and the water a thin bridge between. Did I not tell you? This is a dangerous place.” He continued his muttered mantra: “This is the hour, this is the place, this is the hour.…”

  “Come, whatever it is, we should leave,” Mohan said. Brass water pots in the bhavan were one thing, but an unknown spirit on the ghat was another. He stood, knees shaky, and attempted to take Maharaj’s elbow, brushing against the pot sitting at the man’s side. As if prodded with a glowing hot iron rod, the drunk jerked himself away with a snarl. “I meant nothing,” a worried Mohan said. “If you’d only give me your hand—”

  “Yes, and give you everything else of mine as well, I suppose,” Maharaj said as he backed away with his pot in his arms, his movements devoid of the earlier stumbling and caution that had worried the assistant so.

  The thuk thuk thuk behind them quickened.

  Bewildered, Mohan walked toward the drunk. “Come now,” he said as he took slow steps on the ghat. “It is late and you are tired.”

  In answer, a hollow thud sounded some meters away. An abandoned wooden crate had bounced down the steps, as if by an invisible hand, landing some paces away. The sounds of thuk and bells ceased, and several things happened at once:

  Mohan leapt forward, hoping to catch Maharaj before he stumbled and injured himself.

  The drunk fell back, releasing his hold on the pot and sending it tumbling down. On the last step, it cracked open, and half the shards fell into the waiting river. With a yelp, the drunk slid down after it, spitting the great God’s name. Mohan cried out, stumbled and grabbed Maharaj’s shoulders, trying to drag him further up into the safer and higher regions of the ghat.

  “You cannot have it,” the man snarled as he reached his hands into the water and grasped about the wet darkness. His fingers felt something, his hands curled and lifted, and he flung his prize—a hardened bit of stone and earth—in a wild arc that ended at Mohan’s head.

  Mohan landed on his back with a shocked gasp and spoke no more.

  ***

  Staggering about in the dark, Maharaj made his way up the stairs. He reached Mohan and touched that man’s hands and stomach and legs and face, searching for clues of movement, of warmth, of life, and instead finding stillness and damp. His hand rested on Mohan’s head and came upon a wetness whose odor he recognized. “Ah Rama, Rama, Rama!” the drunk cried.

  He knew enough not to remain in this place. He carefully made his way back to the last step and felt about the stone. So dark, impossible to see, yet he knew he’d heard that bag pop out of the shattered pot. Maharaj’s eyes strained, and his hands came upon a limp piece of cloth, the ties undone. He upturned it and emptied the remaining contents into one trembling palm. For years, he’d safeguarded that pouch of treasures, the last remnants of that other life, in his clay pot. No one had thought to look there, not even Thakorlal. Over and over his fingers searched through the small trinkets therein, but he could not find the one thing he was looking for. “Where is it,” he whispered. “Oh, my love—where are they?” Desperate eyes turned back to the river, and he knelt and ran his quivering hands over the stone. Nothing.

  He dared not tarry any longer. Maharaj flew up the stone stairs, bound for the house of the only man he trusted and the only substance guaranteed to clear his mind: the metal-man Thakorlal and his homebrew. As he ran from the ghats his thoughts lingered on the man he’d abandoned. “Dead!” he said to himself as he ran into the night. “Dead!”

  The ghat was still. Even the river paused in lapping against the unyielding stone. No movement came from the man sprawled on the steps. The blood that had spread in a steady trickle from his head ceased its flow. His chest lay as flat as unleavened dough. All was quiet.

  Thuk thuk thuk.

  The wooden crate, on its side on the hard stone, began to move again. It inched slowly across one level of steps. At an uneven joining of the stone, the crate came to a struggling halt. The crate pushed and pushed, trying to get over that lip in the steps, until it turned over and tumbled down the stone again, this time landing in the water with a melancholy gulp.

  Something stirred from where the crate once lay, stretched, and moved. A glint of silver flashed in the dark, accompanied by a tinkling chime. And out stepped a cat.

  Gray, placid, the cat glanced around, green eyes taking in with lazy interest the scattered tableau before it. The bobbing crate under which it had been napping. The black water. The man on the steps. And the silver anklets curled under the man’s foot, wrapped in a dirty bit of green silk. The cat opened its mouth and yawned. A pair of silver bells, affixed on a ragged length of string tied around its neck, sang out in soft notes. It licked its paws, and then stalked up the stairs, disappearing into the dark.

  Sometimes, only questions remain.

  How could a docile girl, an ordinary woman, become a malevolent spirit that even the strongest and most practical of men feared? How to reconcile the girl who sat by the window, waiting for her husband and waving to little children who yelled at her from below, with the ghost whose reputation controlled the movements of an entire city when they traveled to one tiny ghat? How to create a logical path between the living and the dead?

  Where did she go when she walked at night? Did she take the same path each time, or did her steps deviate? Did she stay in one part of the city? Did she really walk the entire time, until the sun rose and found her in bed, or did she stop and rest? Did her eyes remain open or closed? Did she sleepwalk before her marriage? Did she know what had happened when she woke? Was she like a body housing two souls, one dominant during the day and the other presiding at night?

  And Hari: a lover, of course, but who was he? Perhaps a man she had met while traveling? Was he a guest whom her family had hosted, the son of one of her father’s school friends? An old love, no doubt, but what were the circumstances of their first meeting? What of the love letters they might have exchanged, the tokens of affection passed between their hands? Did her parents know and disapprove? Or did Hari jilt her? Did she enter her marriage in a pure and true state? Or was she willfully deceitful? And did the deceit eat away at her soul, her sense, did it goad her feet to walk until the streets were marked with her footprints?

  How did her parents arrange her marriage? Did they know? Did they suspect that a demon sat on her shoulder, nudging her along at night, or did they worry that her mind was fragile? Did they think the evil eye rested its gaze solely on her, or did they seek out doctors, holy men? Did they attempt to exorcise her, or did they leave her be and hope everyone else would as well? Did the sickness exist elsewhere in her family?

  Did she goad her mother-in-law or did she wear the mantle of duty, no matter how difficult? Was her husband good or bad? Did he force himself upon her when she pushed him away, or did he keep his distance and nurse a wounded heart? Did marriage turn her into a different person, or had she been the same all along? Did she kill her own child?

  Who did she blame for her death? What did she want, what made her linger? When would her ghost be satisfied and leave? And when she finally departed, would she still receive the boon of an end to her incarnations, or would she suffer rebirth? Are the actions of a ghost the same as the actions of a living person? Are they weighed on the same scale of good and bad, duty and sin?

  Did she cling to life until the end?

  Was she relieved to die?

  Was the yearning mapped in her human heart someth
ing she was permitted to keep as a wandering ghost?

  Part IV

  31

  Shobha had always been an early riser, but the day after the tripindi shraddha she allowed herself a few extra minutes in bed, stretching out her limbs, listening to Pramesh’s deep slumbering breaths. She rose, pressing her husband’s feet and pulling the blanket back up over Rani, who’d kicked it off in her sleep, before heading downstairs. She tended to the bhavan’s home shrine, lighting incense, circling each picture and silver figurine with the flame ensconced in the small copper lamp she held, applying red sindoor and rice to the holy foreheads, the head priest’s voice echoing from the courtyard behind her. She finished her puja with two quick rounds of her prayer beads, reciting the great God’s name.

  She took out the dough she’d made for roti the night before and kneaded it until it was smooth and pliable. She picked through the rice and set it to soak. She opened the kitchen shutter a crack. And she allowed herself to think about Kamna.

  The ghost might have been gone, the washroom quiet, but her mind still rattled with questions, wondering which version of Kamna’s story to believe. But did it matter? On the train platform after that disastrous village visit Pramesh had asked her whether she believed in not looking back. She’d said yes—but then what had she been doing this whole time? How easily Pramesh was able to shut the door on any portion of his past life. She needed to learn that trick. She thought of the last letter she’d sent, regretting her haste.

  The air was crisp and thick and laden with the scent of the city, of earth and river water and smog and incense. Today was, after all, just a day, a single bead in the necklace of her life. The day would pass, tomorrow would come, and the next day and the next. It would not matter to her fifty beads later on the necklace. She would forget in a hundred. A splinter from the shutter caught on her skin, and she looked down to brush it away. A step sounded; not the milkman’s clank and squeak, but someone coming on foot. She turned back to the window and pulled the shutter a hair wider.