The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  Menaka had died dancing. And here she was, an old woman on her belly, crawling toward death, begging for the end to come. It would not be long now. Her eyes were closed, her ear flush with the ground. The cold seeped into her clothes, into her bones. The breeze passed over her, the air silent. All those years ago; who had Menaka been singing after? Hari, Hari. Menaka, did you find your Hari? She thought. Did he finally come for you? She pressed herself closer to the ground. Her body was numb. She tried to hold onto her thoughts, tried to focus on the great God, but only one thought circled her mind, her last in this life: Menaka, send your Hari to me. Please.

  ***

  “Is it time yet?”

  “Three minutes, by my watch.”

  Everyone was alert; the children leaned in with drowsy anticipation, women sat with straight backs. The dead man’s father clasped one of his son’s hands to his chest; the mother held the other to her cheek. They both had palms to the man’s heart, to his face.

  They knew what the pots sounded like; they knew the exact moment those vessels would begin to roll and clatter; they knew the consistency with which the spirit spoke. A man with a watch took his place by the washroom door as unofficial timekeeper, and when the last seconds ticked by, he held his wrist up. The watch hands reached the new hour.

  Silence.

  The mother began to pray. She pressed her son’s hand to her breast and rocked back and forth, the Mahadev mantra emitting from trembling lips, her voice loud and ragged. The priests stared at the floor or their prayer beads, and they, too, waited for that familiar sound that had haunted them for many months.

  The pots said nothing.

  “Narinder-ji?” Mohan asked. The old priest shook his head and kept his eyes to the ground. The mother’s chanting grew louder, wilder. Her husband joined her, but his voice was heavy with tears, his words labored and two syllables behind his wife’s. The crowd murmured; men gathered round the timekeeper to ensure he’d gotten the hour correct. “Narinder-ji?” Mohan tried again.

  No one seemed willing to make a pronouncement. Five minutes passed. Ten. The mother continued chanting, her breath dying away and rising again, the words flickering like a wet candle wick. The father had stopped entirely. His face was buried in his son’s chest, the body now wet with the man’s tears. A quarter hour died as people waited for the washroom spirit to assert itself. The mother took a long breath and sighed out the last words of the mantra. All eyes looked to her, then at each other.

  “Narinder-ji?” Mohan could not bring himself to ask the full question.

  “Wait,” Narinder whispered. The mother brought her son’s hand up to her cheek and squeezed it with both of her own. Then she screamed, a terrible piercing wail that tore through the bhavan with the force of a gale. Her sobs engulfed the entire place; every room and inch of floor, every ear heard those sounds and trembled before the woman’s grief. The crowd granted her silence at first, but they could not hold themselves for long. Men and women in the courtyard and the surrounding rooms, in Mohan’s bed and beneath Pramesh’s desk, in Shobha’s kitchen and on the staircase and outside the bedroom door that no one had been able to break through—all of them erupted in waves of talk, calm at first, then urgent, then frenzied, until the entire bhavan was a hive of sound.

  One corner of the hostel, however, kept its silence. In this corner, in a room that had known only one pair of occupants, an old man long watched over by his son eased himself up in a single decisive motion. The eyes that had held a vacant gaze toward the ceiling now looked out the small window, at the cobwebbed corners of the walls and the chipped green paint flaking near the door, into the face of the boy who was now a man, watching him with wide, fearful eyes. Months had passed since this old man and his son had entered this room, this bhavan. Dev, who’d been reading aloud from a holy book in one corner in a steady tongue through mobs and ghosts and dead men come to life, stopped.

  “Bapa?” Sheetal grasped after his father’s hand. The old hand grabbed the young one and squeezed hard and long.

  “Well,” the man said. He paused as if the syllable was all that was needed to sum up his mind’s long absence from the world. “Well,” he said again.

  “Bapa?”

  “Well, I am going,” he said.

  In the next instant, true to his word, he was gone.

  47

  During her first night in her in-laws’ home, her husband’s birthplace, her true bridal dwelling, Shobha slept free from the company of dreams and her own anxieties. The next morning, she sat with Kamna on the smooth kitchen floor, both women looking through the back door and watching Pramesh playing with Kavi outside. The boy held a cricket bat, his face scrunched in concentration, and as the old man yelled out encouragement and advice, Pramesh bowled and Kavi batted.

  Last night, Pramesh had repeated everything the old man had told him, confirming what Shobha had feared. Shame at what she had thought and done filled her. She did not know how to ask for forgiveness. Mrs. Mistry had said that the rooms in the heart are there; one only had to fill them. She looked out the back yard at Kavi, who had allowed Pramesh to hoist him up and gallop around the yard. The child had a thin twig in his hand, and he pretended to whip Pramesh with it to make him go faster. “You must beat him very hard,” the old man said from his perch on the rope bed. “Old horses require much beating, child. They refuse to learn otherwise.”

  Her husband, Shobha could see, was smiling. She wondered about his heart. Did he have those same rooms already built, waiting to be occupied? Or did he have to create them anew for this moment that he never could have anticipated? “I am glad we came,” she said.

  “If you would come again,” Kamna began. “With Rani, once she is well. The journey is far; I know. But if you could come again.…”

  “We will,” Shobha said.

  Outside, Pramesh stooped so that Kavi could slip from his back, and he walked to the old man and sat down on the rope bed next to him.

  “Tired, yes?”

  “I suppose we had just as much energy when we were children,” Pramesh answered.

  “It is natural that the younger folks can tolerate more. When you know nothing, you risk more of yourself. That takes energy, nah?”

  Pramesh nodded. He still felt wonder at this boy, this son of Sagar’s who knew his childhood better than he did. “We must leave soon—the train keeps to the same schedule, I think,” he said after some time.

  “As you should. Your daughter and your bhavan need you.”

  “Will you visit?”

  “No. I am too old for such a journey. Perhaps you may persuade my daughter—she would do it, for the boy’s sake. Not now, but later, when he is a few years older.”

  “But you will have to come, eventually. You know what the city can give you.”

  The old man shook his head. He had a long spike of grass in his mouth that he chewed on. “Not for me. Not in this lifetime. My life has trundled along in a simple kind of direction. Not easy, mind you, but simple. And though it is tempting to make an end in your Kashi, it seems to me not right to suddenly veer from one path onto another. I would much rather see this one through to the end, no matter where the next life will take me.”

  “And Sagar? What did Sagar want?” The question was painful for Pramesh to ask. He had no idea what his cousin had wanted in death.

  “You mean did he want what Kashi could give him? Can any man tell what another man really wants for his end? I know as much as you do. But I am certain of this: all he ever wanted was to see you and tell you about the boy. Simple wishes, but enough for a dying man to journey into a strange city in hopes of meeting you.”

  “He never did see me, though. He died without fulfilling that last wish.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. You are sitting here, amongst the trees of your childhood where the two of you played. You have eaten his wife’s food; you have
carried his son upon your back. You slept where he once rested his head. He may not have physically seen you, but you have as good as gathered all the remaining parts of his existence in your arms and held tight. Many people could do worse.”

  The boy Kavi, who had been lying on his stomach in the shade of a tree and counting ants as they walked up the trunk, rose and gestured to his uncle. “Taya, come look!” he shouted.

  “We can see you from here,” the old man bellowed. “Give your Taya a chance to catch his breath. He is an old man like me. Go bother your mother and aunt; they are young still, nah?” The child ran giggling through the door. The two men sat and felt the breeze rustling through the tree and onto their faces. The old man handed Pramesh a long stem of grass. Pramesh bit down and tasted a sweet and sharp greenness that he thought he remembered.

  “This is how it could have been,” Pramesh said after a time. The old man clapped his back in a sudden hearty gesture.

  “Different paths. The time for that version of the story is past. Think instead on another version. Think instead that this is how it could be.”

  ***

  “Mittu, fetch that green coconut your grandfather just bought and ask him to crack it open. Get him to pour the water into a glass and bring it up for Rani. Can you do that?” The boy ran downstairs to do his grandmother’s bidding. Mrs. Mistry knew her grandchildren all loved her, but Mittu did not move so fast because of his affection for his grandmother. He had a soft spot for Rani, and the boy had hovered at the girl’s door and sometimes next to her bed until a wandering adult pulled him out by the ear and scolded him in the muffled quiet of a bedroom.

  Mittu was not the only one—the entire household, which usually operated on a system of bickering and making up, had molded itself around the little girl. The child was doing better. Mrs. Mistry had sat up nights, trading sleep with her daughter-in-law in shifts. The girl had become hotter and hotter, her breaths shallower, her body so still. The two women had soaked cloths in water and placed them on the girl’s body to bring the fever down. At one point, they were constantly shifting the cloths, which seemed to dry as soon as they touched the girl’s skin. The doctor, who Mrs. Mistry viewed through skeptical eyes, had no better solution. “The turn will come soon,” he said with useless authority.

  “Turn for what?” Mrs. Mistry had demanded.

  “That remains to be seen,” the gentleman replied.

  The turn had come, late that night, two days after the girl’s parents had left for the manager’s home village. The room was dark and Mrs. Mistry had dozed off. At first, she missed the girl’s breaths becoming deeper and fuller. She realized the change when she woke with a sudden start and began to once again switch out the cloths. They were no longer hot; they were simply warm, and when an hour had passed, they became cool. After another half hour, Mrs. Mistry removed them completely.

  The girl’s eyes opened by the time the sun came up. She was sitting up an hour later and eating the rice and milk that Mrs. Mistry fed her with a spoon.

  By the afternoon, she was well enough to have the other children come in and read to her. By the next day, the older girls were able to braid her hair and act out a play for her in the room. That afternoon, Mrs. Mistry felt the girl was well enough to be out of her bed, but decided against it. Mittu was in the room, pulling at Rani’s hand.

  “Leave her be,” Mrs. Mistry said as she pushed her grandson out with a gentle shove on his shoulder, and the boy disappeared down the hall. When she turned, she saw that the girl had slipped off the bed. “Back into bed with you,” Mrs. Mistry said, and she tried to lift the girl away from the door. For a moment, Rani relented and allowed the older woman to tuck her in. Ensconced in a chair beside the child, Mrs. Mistry was about to take up her sewing when Mittu returned.

  “Yes, I heard you, what is it?” the boy asked from the hall. Rani pushed the blanket away and shoved off the bed; small feet pattered across the floor.

  “Mittu, what nonsense are you spouting, didn’t I say to leave her be?”

  “Yes, but she called me, Dadi!”

  “Don’t tell lies, child. Shall I call your Dada? He’s just in the other room and he is not afraid of giving out punishment.”

  “She did say it, Dadi. She told me to wait so here I am. It isn’t my fault you didn’t hear.”

  Mrs. Mistry looked from one child’s face to the other. Rani had Mittu’s hand in hers; she smiled at the boy and tugged him toward the terrace. “All right then. Away with both of you. But only for a little bit, and don’t you dare wear her out, do you hear? Ey, Mittu, I said, did you hear?”

  The children bolted for the terrace. “We heard you; we heard you,” came an impatient cry from the stairs.

  48

  Stretched out on the ghats in his usual place, Maharaj slept the dreamless sleep he always had since That Day. He woke once in the middle of the night, turned over and pointed his face toward the river, and fell back asleep. He’d had plenty from Thakorlal, who’d paid him to fold paper into envelopes and glue down the seams. The man had been stingy with the payment, but Maharaj had surprised him with the speed of his work, the steadiness of his hands, the straight seams and crisp folds he created on envelope after envelope. At the end of the job he received a few extra coins, most of which went to back to Thakorlal.

  Despite all the homebrew, when he woke his head was clear. The light was still dim; the sun had only just begun to rise. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, and then he realized he was not alone. A woman and her companion sat below him on the second to last step of the ghat where the stone dipped into the river. Her hair was dark and piled atop her head; her clothing was rough, and she wore no ornaments, but she was beautiful with luminescent skin and dark eyes that he felt he had seen before. She took no notice of him. Another man’s head lay in her lap, his body stretched out on the stone. The woman touched the man’s brow, and then she looked at her companion. Maharaj was surprised he hadn’t noticed that person first. He had an animal skin slung around his shoulders, and strings of prayer beads snaked around his powerful arms. His hair was matted and wild. He knelt by the woman, as if to whisper something to her, but he bent lower still and whispered something into the supine man’s ear. Maharaj strained to hear the words, but he felt as if all the sound in the world had been muted. The ghat was quiet.

  The sleeping man lifted his head from the woman’s lap and stood. He was tall and lanky, with long arms and legs and a mustache that sat beneath his hawk-like nose and large clear eyes. When he turned away from the couple Maharaj saw it—a white flash of a scar on the man’s forehead, a split in the eyebrow. The man took a step forward, and was gone. Maharaj blinked. And then, he saw the wild-haired man bore a trident in his hand. He grasped the woman’s hand and turned, and when Maharaj blinked again the sun was further up in the sky and he was alone on the ghat.

  Maharaj shook his head, rubbed his eyes. He sat on the steps for a while and thought. He’d never breathed a word of what he’d seen That Day on Magadha, the day he’d gone to seek the Bearer. He would say nothing about what he’d just seen now. Both stories were boons from the universe, meant for him only, and he would keep silent about both, always. Some gifts, he knew, could not be shared. Some gifts could be given only once, to stay with the receiver forever, until the memory of the gift, of that life, faded when death came.

  He sat there for some time. Eventually, people joined him. He felt their disgusted looks, the prayers they spat in his direction to ward off the evil eye that he surely carried.

  “Thieves! My boat is gone!”

  “Raman, you idiot, why can’t you secure your boat like everyone else?”

  “Ask that Maharaj over there what happened to it. Ey, Maharaj! Where is this duffer’s boat?”

  He scraped the last remaining coins from his pocket and shook them in his hands. He stood and stared down at his palms. “Magadha,” he said.

&n
bsp; “What’s the fool talking of now?”

  “No, he is right. Look, look there, isn’t that it?”

  “So far down shore! Ey, Maharaj, who took it?”

  The drunk threw his hands upward, palms out. “Not I, Bhaiya.” He walked up the steps. At the head of the ghats, a child waited. “Where is your ma?” Maharaj asked. The child did not answer. She looked back at him with woeful eyes. Maharaj thought a moment. He held out his hand and the girl cupped her palms beneath his fingers. He dropped the coins into this cup. “Spend it on sweets,” he said. “Spend it on ribbons, on a doll.” The child ran off, the coins making a dull jangle in her hot fists. “Spend it on life,” Maharaj said to himself, and he disappeared down the adjoining alley.

  ***

  “Push that way, Bhaiya, pull up to the left.”

  “How many times have I said Raman is a simpleton? His poor mother.”

  “There, just there, yes, pull up onto the sand.”

  “You get out, Bhaiya.”

  “Fine, I will be the brave man. You stay there. Don’t leave, you hear! Wait for me to push off first.”

  “Anything in the boat?”

  “Nothing. Where do you suppose this thief went?”

  “Not far. Shall I wait for you?”

  “You mean wait while I walk around Magadha, looking for this fellow?”

  “I will be right here.”

  “Your mother raised a coward, you hear?”

  The boatman flicked his hand at him and remained seated while his companion trudged off on the sand. He spread his knees wide and released a comfortable belch. He’d made sure to moor only half of his boat on the sand. The other half, the half he sat in, bobbed in the water apart from this cursed land.