The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  ***

  The cart came to a creaking stop. Pramesh helped Shobha down, and they bid goodbye to the farmer, who refused the payment the manager tried to press on him. As the cart pulled away, Pramesh fumbled with his bag and kept his eyes lowered, leading the way to his childhood home. Shobha imagined him as a boy, running around in play, and then she forced herself to imagine that same boy, this time running from his father, not quite fast enough to escape. He pointed to the peepal tree still standing in front. “The tree has barely grown at all. I would have thought it at least twice this height by now.”

  Shobha pulled the end of her sari over her head as she followed her husband. “You are older,” she said. “The things our childhood selves saw as large rarely remain so.”

  She felt a pain in the center of her chest where she imagined an invisible thread had frayed between her and Rani when she’d left the city. Mrs. Mistry had taken the child in hand, applying cold compresses to Rani’s arms and legs, while yelling for her daughter-in-law to fetch several spice mixtures. “Nothing to worry over,” the older woman had said to Shobha, as if Rani had only a sniffling nose or a scratched elbow. “Of course you must go. You have written to her.” She switched out the cold cloths and rubbed a cooling turmeric paste on Rani’s stomach and limbs. “She will see you as a friend, as someone safe. She will tell the real story to you, and only you.”

  What if Kamna was not there? Shobha thought now as she stared at the far-reaching fields and breathed in deep the scent of earth and dust that sifted upward from her footsteps. She could still feel the heat coming off her daughter, the child’s skin so hot that Shobha had wondered how the little body could withstand it. She looked up at the house, at the place where her husband had come into being. She would not leave this place until she found Kamna and listened to whatever thing the ghost wanted her to hear.

  ***

  Near the peepal tree, with his hands on the smooth bark, Pramesh held himself still, listening to the sounds of leaves moving with the breeze, of birds calling. Nothing about this place seemed changed, even the dread it invoked in him. The feeling grew more pronounced as he faced the house.

  “Hello?” Pramesh called out from the front. He felt ridiculous, calling for permission to enter the house he had once freely roamed. Shobha stood beside him, peering beneath the veil of her sari at the open front door. They saw no one, and no sounds reached them from the inside. He walked to the open door and knocked on the frame. When no one came, he hesitated at the door, and then he took a step inside and stopped.

  “What is it?” Shobha peered around his shoulder and breathed out a small exclamation. A small photograph wreathed in fresh flowers hung on the wall to their right. The picture was not a traditional funeral pose showing torso and face, with solemn eyes and flat mouth. Sagar seemed alive in this picture—he stood smiling in what looked like the shadow of the peepal tree in the front yard. His sleeves were rolled up and his arms crossed, one foot cocked back with his toes pushed to the ground while the other stood flat and steady. Pramesh looked into a face exactly like his own and felt the pit in his stomach deepen.

  He observed the rest of the room. There was a worn bolster where his mother had sat with her sewing. Sagar’s mother had used that basket in the corner for newspapers and other reading material. A line of cushions sat beneath Sagar’s picture. He remembered the sun hitting that spot in the afternoons, his mother’s hand on his cheek, waking him from a nap. Then he remembered a different nap, one in this same room. After the Mothers died, he’d curled up next to the bolster, trying to catch some last trace of scent from either of those women. He’d fallen asleep, only to wake to Sagar’s father grabbing him by an earlobe and wrenching him upward. The bruises on his face had taken days to fade.

  He recalled the anger in that man’s touch, the agonizing anticipation of each blow, as familiar now as twenty years prior. His breath felt sluggish in his lungs. He moved away from the door and sat down on the front stoop, unable to venture in further. He held his head in his hands, and then felt his wife’s hand on his shoulder. “Remember why we are here,” she said. “Remember Rani.” He forced his thoughts toward a different terror: his daughter’s aching breaths, her listless form when they’d left her. After some moments, he stood and led the way into the house.

  They walked to the back of the house. The kitchen was small and clean, with a tidy hearth and earthenware pots and jugs lining the walls. Like the front room, this one was neat and organized, not a stray speck of dust; all evidence of a comfortable and well-cared-for home.

  The door from the kitchen to the back was open, and they stepped outside. Pramesh peered into the distance, taking in the fields and the trees, remembering Sagar’s sturdy form as he walked back and forth with those water pots. Even the day after his injury, he continued to make the trip alone until Pramesh was strong enough to join him.

  “There is no one here,” Shobha said. The disappointment was heavy in her voice.

  “Perhaps they are away,” Pramesh replied. His eyes remained on the fields, the image of Sagar burned into his memory so that the boy he remembered trudged toward him even now through the tall grasses. He rubbed his eyebrow and turned back to the house, this place that seemed so familiar and yet so strange, like a place he had visited in a dream. They could walk to the center of the village to see if any of the old neighbors were around, loath as he was for anyone else know he was here. It was probably safest to go to Champa-maasi’s. He shifted his bag in his hands.

  “Wait,” Shobha said. Her hand grasped his elbow, a mixture of fear and hope in her eyes. He followed her gaze back to the fields. There was that imagined version of Sagar again, still walking toward him, clay pot in hand.

  And a woman, walking with an elderly man at her side. An uncertain beat began to sound in Pramesh’s chest, while Shobha gripped his arm tighter. At the edge of the field, those others spotted the manager and his wife, and they stopped. The woman looked as if she might faint. But the old man whispered something to her, and the color came back into her face.

  And then a boy came bounding out of the fields and thrust some long grass stems and limp flowers into the woman’s hands. The child turned to the house and noticed Pramesh and Shobha standing on the back veranda. His eyes widened. Pramesh noted the trim body, the long arms and legs and the boy’s large head overrun with thick black hair.

  The boy remained where he was, gaze fixed, until a smile broke across his face, radiant. He turned back to the adults behind him. “He is here!” the child cried out, his tone triumphant. “Pramesh-taya is here!”

  44

  Pramesh could not take his eyes off the boy, this child version of his cousin. His heart seemed to expand in his chest until he felt he could not breathe. He sipped at the water that Kamna brought to him and Shobha in the front room. The boy—Kavi—lingered first on a bolster near Pramesh, then at his grandfather’s knee, then leaned against his mother when she returned from the kitchen and sat next to Shobha. So like Sagar! The movements, the smile, the entire manner about him. And his eyes—there was a light in the child’s eyes that Pramesh had only ever seen in one other person’s. “How old?” he asked.

  “Seven.” Kamna smoothed her son’s hair, and he batted her hand away, his smile wide, his eyes darting everywhere even as he snuck glances at the manager.

  “A son … his son.” Pramesh swallowed. “I never imagined it.”

  “That was the reason he left this place—to tell you. What did he say when you saw him?”

  The manager tried to return Kamna’s gaze, but he could not. He looked to her father and then to the boy, who continued to stare at him with wide eyes. The old man stood and beckoned to the child. Once the boy was out of hearing, Pramesh summoned his courage. “He made it to the hostel. But there was … a mistake. He died before I ever saw him.”

  He told the story, starting with Sagar being led to the wrong hostel
, then being turned away at the gate, his walk around Kashi, his body in the boat, the botched funeral rites, the nighttime washroom disturbances, and ending with the ailing and decrepit guests who refused to die and the weaver who came back to life. As he talked, he kept his eyes on the scene just outside the open doorway, on the child who ran about outside. But when he spoke of the ghost that lingered, he shut his eyes, unable to face either his cousin’s child or his wife.

  Kamna’s eyes were bright and wet, but the tears did not fall to her cheeks. “I asked him to tell you earlier. When Kavi was born, his every birthday…. Many times, I told your cousin to write to you. He meant to, but he could never finish the letter. The days flew by, the months became years.”

  Kamna looked at the tree through the open front door as she talked. She spoke with carefully, choosing every word as if she were picking through lentils in a sifting basket. “He thought then, as we all did, that there would always be time.” Her face was tight and tired. She opened her mouth to speak again but instead a low sigh escaped her lips. Shobha reached out, hesitant at first, and then touched the woman’s fingers lightly. Kamna met her eyes with a small smile. “When the sickness came, it struck so many of us, our neighbors, my family. Many got better, but he never did. I could tell. He stopped running races with our son; he returned earlier from the fields and had to lie down for whole afternoons. Food always remained on his plate. And then I became ill—”

  “You were ill?” Pramesh asked.

  “Yes. The same awful fever, the same sickness. He was afraid that we would both die and you would never know about our son. He wrote, but he did not send the letter. So foolish. Even when I said I would mail it myself.…” She made a weak sound of impatience and rubbed her temple, bangles softly jangling. “He thought for many days, and then he came to me with his decision: too much time had passed for a letter to suffice, he said. He wanted to tell you himself. He seemed weaker every day, and my father discouraged him, but you know how he was; he had decided. He had to see you; he wanted so badly for you to hear about our son from his lips.”

  The manager thought of Sagar enduring the journey to Kashi, walking through the streets, body burning with fever, limbs limp and aching. He must have been in agony. And yet he’d pushed on—of course he had, with the thought of his son driving him. Pramesh watched the boy running outside, the old man sitting on a rope bed and shouting things at him. “Jump! Run to that tree! Throw that stone as high as you can!” The boy obeyed, giggling when his grandfather’s commands overlapped and he had to do two things at once.

  “He was so ill. I begged him not to go,” Kamna said. She looked at Pramesh and Shobha, and her gaze was defiant, but then it softened. “I think I knew he would not come back. I felt it, somehow. Such bad dreams. He laughed when I tried to tell him. He would not let the idea go. He wouldn’t be happy any other way, so I finally relented. I did every puja I could think of; I made him sit so I could remove any nazar. And he left.” Her voice was faint now. “I never doubted him. When he decided on something, it was always done, no matter how impossible. But when we received your letter—I knew, even before then. It was a feeling.”

  Shobha reached her hand toward Pramesh’s bag and undid the clasp. She reached inside and brought out a full glass bottle, which she handed to Kamna. “The river,” she said. “He meant to fill it and bring it back to you, didn’t he? For you and the child; for your illness.”

  Kamna attempted a smile, but her lips quivered beneath her full eyes. Her sadness pierced Pramesh’s heart, and he looked away. “I asked him for it,” she said. “He laughed; he never believed in such things. But he never denied me anything, nor our son.”

  They sat in silence, listening to the old man and the young boy play outside. Shobha spoke up. “I am sorry,” she said. “We arrived here without an invitation or sending word.”

  Kamna looked surprised. “You hardly need an invitation to your own home. And you forget: we have been expecting you for many months now, even before I wrote you that letter.”

  “But I never wrote to say we were coming, and your letter arrived damaged; I could not read it.” Shobha reached her hand back into Pramesh’s bag and pulled out the envelope of scraps as proof.

  “Still, I knew you were coming. He promised me right before he left.”

  “What do you mean?” Pramesh asked.

  Kamna set the bottle down and took Shobha’s hand in both of her own and spoke as if she were stating something obvious. “He said you would come to us.” The words came back to Shobha: When will he be here? He said he would come. “He was certain,” Kamna continued. “Always, always, he said you would come.”

  Kamna and Shobha retired to the kitchen to fix the evening meal, and Pramesh ventured outside to the front porch to watch the old man and Kavi. The boy stopped playing as soon as he saw the manager and clung close to his grandfather, stealing glances and smiling at Pramesh. He seemed smitten, and did not leave until his grandfather pushed him toward the front door and bade him to go to his mother. The old man then beckoned Pramesh to the two rope beds sitting at angles from each other on the veranda. The sun had dipped down the horizon, and the air sounded with the pleasant rustle of birds nesting for the night and insects beginning their evening reverie.

  “I don’t believe you know much about my family,” the old man said. He pointed to himself. “Om. My wife passed just a few years ago. And we have only one daughter, our Kamna-beti. And you—your wife is Shobha. Children?”

  “A daughter. Rani—younger than Kavi.”

  “A daughter,” Om smiled. “Your cousin wondered, especially after Kavi came. Nothing lovelier. Sons are headstrong, my wife used to say. Daughters are stubborn, but their hearts are bigger. Or so I’ve always thought.” He was quite at ease across from Pramesh, humming a low song beneath his breath.

  “The land—I trust that you had no troubles with the ownership?” Pramesh stumbled over the words, but he wanted there to be no question about the motives for his visit.

  “None.” Om drew his hands over his hair, which was silver and cut short, but still full. His face was clean-shaven and his body was slight with a sculpted softness to it, the evidence of a man once wiry and strong whose muscles had stretched and relaxed with age. “We did not expect it. I thought perhaps that was your way of settling things. And it secured the boy’s future. I was grateful.”

  “Of course. I am glad of it.”

  “We thought—I thought—that you knew about the boy, and that you still chose not to visit. That your feelings prevented you from coming here. I misjudged you.” The old man’s gaze never flinched.

  Pramesh hunched on the bed, legs crossed. “I think, perhaps, that fault is mine.”

  “You were not happy with the marriage,” Om said. “You were not happy with the family he chose to marry into. With me.” When Pramesh demurred, the old man continued, “I never blamed you for this. But humor me: tell me the story you know.”

  “I never believed the gossip,” Pramesh said. “I admit: I doubted your motives. But the stories about her always seemed too outlandish, too cruel.…”

  “Ah. But you felt I had sold her, perhaps?” Om peered closely at Pramesh, who blushed. “Yes,” the old man wagged his chin to himself. “Tell me the stories, whether you believed them or not. Perhaps then I can explain to you.”

  He was earnest, and so Pramesh told the story. There was no embellishment, no room for anything but what he remembered Sagar telling him. He was quick in explaining Kamna’s reputation for running away, of her dalliance with the wealthy man, encouraged by her parents, who later spurned her. Of the money Om had extracted from that man’s family, of the man’s later death and the family’s forced peripatetic existence from then on, no village content to have people of that sort take up residence for too long. Of the other men she was said to have met. The words gave him no pleasure, and when he finished, he expected the ol
d man to be defiant and defensive at this rehashing of his family’s past.

  “That is all?” Om asked. He seemed more weary than angry.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is only that some versions go a different way. In some versions, she is the one to spurn the man, break his heart. In some versions, they have her with child—in others, she is assumed barren, because they say she has been with so many men. We’d hear all the stories from our neighbors. We’ve heard—that was the way they’d always begin. Never mind that they could have gotten the truth from me at any time. They were content with others’ tales.”

  There was no emotion in Om’s voice; he talked as if this painful history was someone else’s to bear, and yet Pramesh could see the control in the old man’s eyes, the years of indifference he’d had to practice to come to his present state. “Only one man ever asked for the truth, and so only one man ever received it. He came to my home, drank my wife’s chai, and had the courage to ask me what had really happened. I had a clear conscience when I gave him my daughter. And your Sagar, our Sagar, had a clear heart when he took her from me.”

  As the old man took possession of Sagar with his words, the sensation Pramesh felt was like a cool cloth applied to his face on a hot day.

  “I would like to tell you what I told him, if you have the patience.”

  Pramesh nodded.

  “My daughter was indeed a bit of a runaway, but she did so with the full permission and knowledge of her parents. She was always happiest when she was by herself, walking amongst the fields or near the stream that ran near our home. When she was younger, very young, folk laughed and said she was led by fairies. A blessed girl, they said, who could see things that others could not. Funny, how folk accept that a child might have an eye to another world, but a grown woman may not. When the girl became older, the same people forgot about the fairies, and instead called her lazy. They said a girl who ran when there was work to be done was a girl not worth the food her family fed her. They called her slow, dim-witted, and worse.