A Burning(51)

Rolled up in the corner, a carpet for praying on, so we piss on it, and laugh. A terrified man is dragged down from the roof, the Muslim we are after. He moves his mouth, but he has taken out his dentures, and his sunken cheeks beg and beg before his voice finds itself. He joins his hands in prayer, and we say, “Now you have learned to pray properly?”

He watches his wife’s legs opened by the true men of this country, and he appears to die before we can kill him.

    Anyway, we stomp on his skull so that the cream of his brain splatters on the floor. Teach him to have ideas about killing our holy mother cow, whom we love and respect.

Later my man says, opening the small icebox and hauling out a chicken, “But where is the beef?”





PT SIR


PT SIR LIES IN bed that night, an arm flung over his head, his wife snoring by his side. He looks at the shadows cast on the ceiling by passing headlights, and in a kind of daze he knows this much: His career in politics is over. Never before has he thought of it in such grand terms—“career in politics”—but now, on the verge of losing it, he knows how close he has come to having it.

What did he witness today? With each turn of the ceiling fan’s blades, he knows, and he refuses to know. He pulls a blanket up to his chin, and covers his ears in the warm cloth. He knows what he watched, and in watching and not lifting a finger, condoned. He is no less than a murderer. He turns from side to side, seeking a position of comfort, until his wife drowsily scolds him. Then he lies on his back, still as a corpse.

In the morning, eyes gritty with sleep, he cannot stand to shave his face. He cannot bear to look at his face in the mirror. What face is this? Does it belong to him? He prepares to tell Bimala Pal what happened, and to offer his resignation from the party roll. Perhaps her benevolence will keep him out of jail, perhaps it will not. The massacre happened in his presence, perhaps even started from his comments about religion.

    The sun rises higher in the sky and, somehow, absent from his body, PT Sir finds that he has bathed himself and eaten a simple breakfast of oats. He has worn his shirt, and tied his shoelaces, and now he stands at the door, ready to go.



* * *



*

WHEN PT SIR APPEARS at her door, Bimala Pal is pacing in the living room, a phone held at her ear. She wears a beige shawl whose frilly edge flaps as she walks. She gestures at him to sit, and disappears into the office.

PT Sir sits at the edge of the sofa. He feels faint, and lowers his head between his knees. A concerned assistant offers him cold water, and he gulps down one glass, then another.

When Bimala Pal emerges, she asks, “How was your rally?”

Then, looking at his sweating face, she says, “Are you feeling all right? Do you need water?”

PT Sir shakes his head.

“I had water,” he replies, the words catching in his dry mouth. A high-pitched keening lingers in his ears. Following her to her office, he feels that his legs have disappeared.

“Actually,” he begins, once they are in the closed office. “The rally yesterday…”

    “You don’t look well,” observes Bimala Pal. “I’ll tell Raju to call a taxi for you—”

“No,” he interrupts. He cannot leave now. “One thing happened at the village.”

PT Sir tells Bimala Pal everything. His tongue forms its own words, and he barely hears them over the drumbeat of his pulse. When he finishes, the two of them sit in silence. A crow alights outside the window and harshly caws. Through the closed glass of the window, PT Sir can see its outline.

For a while, Bimala Pal looks silently at the crow too.

PT Sir waits for her to tell him to leave, to never contact the party again. He will return to his schoolteacher’s life. It was what he had, before. It was not unbearable.

Then she looks up and gives him a smile. “Have a biscuit,” she says, pushing an open packet toward him. “You know, it is sad that a man died, very sad about the children too. I can see you are disturbed. I understand. But did you lay a finger on them? Did you personally hurt them in any way?”

When PT Sir realizes that she is waiting for his reply, he shakes his head.

“Then why,” Bimala Pal says, “are you taking the weight of it on your own shoulders?”

PT Sir comprehends each word a moment after she speaks it. Could she be forgiving him?

“There is nothing to forgive,” says Bimala Pal. “In politics, you will see, sometimes it feels that you are in charge of everything and everyone. But we can only guide them, inspire them. At the end of the day, are they our puppets? No. So what can we do if they raise their hand, if they decide to beat someone, if they feel angry?”

    PT Sir dislikes this justification. At the same time, he reaches desperately for the only relief he has felt since the massacre. Bimala Pal does not seem angry. She does not even seem surprised.

Looking at Bimala Pal’s good-natured face, her hands joined on the table in front, her kind eyes wrinkled at their corners, PT Sir feels that she has saved him. From what, he no longer wants to imagine. Yes, she has saved him.

When Bimala Pal speaks next, he understands that she has known what happened all along.

If anybody asks, she tells him, PT Sir is to say that the unstable brick house in which the man was living collapsed. It spontaneously collapsed. And how does PT Sir know? He was doing a rally nearby. It is true that the house did collapse—when the party wrecked it with hammer and ax. It is true that the house did fall upon a man who died.