Honor: A Novel(43)

“But Meena says nobody forced her,” Smita said. “She says she loved her husband.”

Govind stared at the floor. When he looked up, Smita saw that a muscle in his jaw was convulsing. “How this can be, memsahib?” he said. “What you suggest is against the natural order of things. Can a fish fall in love with a cow? Can a crow fall in love with a tiger?”

Smita gave Mohan a quick glance, but she was unable to read his expression. “So, you have no regrets for what you’ve—what has happened to Meena?” she asked, hearing the hollowness in her own voice.

Govind smiled faintly. “I have regrets, for sure,” he said softly. “I regret that my sister survived. And most of all, I regret that the bastard child she was carrying is still alive. She even brought the infant to court when she appeared before the judge-sahib. Can you imagine? It was as if she wanted to defile the whole court with her excrement.”

The blood rushed to Smita’s face as she remembered Abru’s sweet face. She wanted to stand up and yell obscenities at this vile man, to rain blows on his head. Instead, she looked at a spot on the wall beyond him until she could trust herself to speak. “The child is innocent,” she said.

“I made my peace with Meena leaving our home to go live in sin with that man,” Govind said. “She humiliated me three times, memsahib. Once when she defied me and took the factory job. The second time when she ran away to Birwad to live with those Muslim chamars. The whole village spat at me then, but still I did nothing to avenge the insult. My mistake. But the third disrespect was intolerable. They came to my door with a box of sweets, holding hands, pointing to the evil she was carrying in her belly. The shameless whore and her Muslim pimp came and defiled my doorstep. Holding her head high. As if it wasn’t a crime against God, that thing growing in her belly.” Govind choked back angry tears. “What was I supposed to do? Tolerate their evil? Allow him to call me his brother-in-law, as if we were equals in the eyes of God?”

“Couldn’t you have just asked them to leave?”

“That I did. They ran home with their tails between their legs, like the mongrels they were. But memsahib, when the crops in my field go bad and don’t give the good-proper yield, you know what we have to do? We must burn the fields to the ground. Then, the next year, the crops grow back stronger. That is what had to be done—the land had to be cleansed. I just regret that two of the crops are still growing.”

There was a sudden, charged silence in the room, as if they all realized that Govind had almost confessed to Abdul’s murder. After long minutes, Mohan spoke into the silence. “You say you’ve seen her in court. So you are aware of the damage the fire has done? Her one eye is melted shut. Half of her face is gone. But it is not enough for you?”

Govind opened his mouth to answer, but Mohan was staring directly at him, holding his gaze, and after a moment, Govind looked away and stared at the floor. “Your ways of life are different than ours, sir,” he said at last.

Smita felt Mohan tense and spoke before he could. “What about you, Arvind?” she said quickly. “Do you feel the same way?”

Arvind looked from her to his brother and then back at her. “Whatever my older brother thinks is best,” he said.

“But I thought you were close to Meena,” Smita said, although in that moment she couldn’t recall how she knew this, whether Meena had mentioned the detail to her or she’d read it in one of Shannon’s stories.

For a split second Arvind’s face softened, but then he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. This my brother’s house. He is my elder.”

“And yet, this entire house was built from your sisters’ earnings, wasn’t it?” Mohan said. As the affront registered on Govind’s face, Smita wanted to smack Mohan.

“Arre, wah, seth,” Govind said, his eyes glimmering with malice. “You are a guest in my home, but you are so free with your insults. Yes, you are correct. Our sisters paid for this house out of their ill-gotten wealth.”

He turned to Smita, as if he expected a more sympathetic ear. “I had a bride picked out for Arvind. She came from a good family from a nearby village, and they were willing to pay a big dowry. But after word got around about my sisters working at that factory, they called off the wedding.”

Arvind was staring straight ahead, his face expressionless.

“Were you upset about this?” Smita asked him.

Arvind laughed dismissively. “They dug their own grave,” he said. “From the dowry my bride would’ve brought, we would have paid Meena and Radha’s dowries. That’s why only Govind bhai was so anxious to get me married off first. Then, he could get rid of our sisters. Two less mouths for us to feed once they became their husband’s responsibility. But as it turned out, we didn’t have to pay any dowry to that old cripple who married Radha.”

Smita had thought that Arvind was the gentler of the two brothers. But she found herself disliking him as much as she did the older one. It was as if Meena’s transgressions had destroyed all familial feeling.

“So, tell me something,” Mohan said. “Who put up the bail money to get you out of the lockup? Did you have to borrow from the money lender?”

“No, seth,” Govind said. “We used our own money.”

“Your sisters’ money? Their savings?”