The Henna Artist(57)

I felt a sharp pain in my chest just before I lunged at him. Out came the anger I hadn’t been able to summon the first time I’d encountered him in Jaipur. I punched his arms. I slapped his ears. I pounded his shoulders. If I could have broken his skull with my bare hands, I would have.

Hari put his arms around his head to protect himself, turned over on his back and cried, “Arré!”

“Maderchod!” I screamed. “Salla kutta!” Obscenities I’d only heard men use.

The other men had frozen in midplay. Malik yelled at them to leave, waving his arms at them, as if shooing away pigeons. They got to their feet and went through the open door, leaving their cards behind. They turned to gawk, but Malik rushed at them. He followed them out and pulled the door closed behind him.

Hari managed to roll over and sit up. He tried to grab my arms, but my anger had given me the strength of Shiva. I freed one arm from his grasp and slapped his head again and again with the flat of my hand.

I was shouting as loudly as my lungs would allow; I didn’t care what the neighbors or the lassi drinkers thought. “She’s a child! She’s like your sister! You would do that to your sister? Bastard! Donkey’s ass! Worthless piece of shit!”

Hari scrabbled out of bed and lost his balance, upsetting the cot. He crab-walked backward to the wall. I followed, kicking, smacking, pummeling. I felt a dull throbbing in my hands and scanned the room to see if there was something else I could hit him with. In that instant, Hari stood and grabbed me, pinning me against the wall.

“Stop!” he shouted as he held my arms against my sides. “Have you gone mad?”

I saw terror in his eyes.

“What’s got into you?” His forehead was bleeding and red welts were rising on his forehead and cheeks.

He was holding me so tightly I couldn’t free my arms no matter how hard I tried. We panted like dogs fighting over a piece of meat. I spat at him before he saw it coming, and spittle dribbled down his cheek.

He slapped me with such force a tooth snagged the inside of my cheek and I tasted blood.

“Buss!” he growled. Enough!

I couldn’t stand the thought of Radha’s flesh against his skin, the sweaty stench of him on her. Radha, thirteen. Still a child, barely old enough to know what men expected from a woman. I was responsible. If I’d stayed with him, as a good wife would have, Hari would have never claimed Radha for himself. He wouldn’t have soiled her. Now she was carrying his child.

I let myself slide down the wall. I pulled my knees to my chin, hugged them with my arms, rocked back and forth. I shut my eyes. I wailed. What a mess I’d made of my life, my parents’ life, my sister’s! If I hadn’t been so selfish, this would not have happened. My sister would not have been sullied. My mother-in-law would not have died without me to comfort her. My parents would not have been humiliated. And for what? So I could live a life of my own? How self-centered I had been!

Malik opened the door and stood, small and frightened. “Auntie-Boss?”

When I didn’t answer, he came to me and shook my shoulders. “Auntie-Boss. It’s me.” He said it over and over until I opened my eyes and saw how terrified he was. His swagger was gone, his shoulders hunched in fear. Why had I brought him to this miserable place?

“Please,” I said, “go home.”

His eyes became hard, and he shook his head no. Then he left the room, closing the door behind him. I should have known he wouldn’t leave me as easily as I had left my family. He would stay with me all night if he had to.

Hari picked up the charpoy, straightened it and sat, all the while keeping a wary eye on me. “Why are you here?”

His forehead was bleeding. His hair had grown long, hanging unevenly around his ears. He’d let his beard grow, too, a sparse, patchy growth that make him look like a Kashmiri nomad. His clothes were cheap but clean, his sandals new.

Which of us deserved more blame for what I was about to ask? “How long have you been lying down with Radha?”

He sat up straighter. His bug eyes widened. “Why would you think that?”

“How long?”

“I would never—she’s a child!”

“I believed you when I saw you with that little girl. I thought you were helping the women here. But you were lying then, and you’re lying still!”

“I never touched your sister!” He looked away, then rubbed his hands together. “She offered herself, but—”

“Offered herself?”

Hari’s lower lip was turning purple; he touched it gently with his tongue. “When she came to me, in my village, she said she would give me money if I took her to you. I didn’t believe her. So she said she’d let me do what I wanted with her.” He stuck out his chin, defiant. “I could have—but I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“How did she get pregnant, then?”

His mouth fell open in disbelief.

“She’ll start showing soon enough.”

He shook his head. “No!”

“Yes!”

He got up and came to me, squatted, gripped my arms. “Lakshmi, it wasn’t me.” If he were lying, he’d be covering the scar on his chin.

I searched my memory: Radha when I first saw her with her messy pigtail; Radha welcoming me home with dal batti and subji; Radha in the yard, watering the camellias and jasmine, as she’d promised Mrs. Iyengar she’d do; Radha and Malik playing fivestones on the floor of our room.