The Last Burden Read Free Page B

downstairs is hauled out of his fretted torpor by the shrill pinging of a bell. Pista stands hard by him with the bell that is customarily at Urmila’s beside, staidly pronouncing, ‘Thakuma has snuffed it.’ Shyamanand takes unconscionably long to get there. He stares at her and with the first spasm feels as though, somehow, an ice-cream sky with tendrils of chilled cloud has ambled into the room. With his right fist he bludgeons and pounds her heart, the bile of panic vaulting with each thump. He then slumps on to the floor and breaks down. Pista could never have conceived his grandfather in that situation. He goggles at his grandmother inhale and wheeze like snorting wheelwork. He is instructed to telephone his parents’ offices. Neither is in. Shyamanand’s tears frighten the boy; he scampers to Aya. Both, after boundless rummaging, exhume Dr Haldia’s telephone number, whose answering service enchants Pista. Shyamanand, run-down on the floor, waits for some being to relent and be benign. Aya brings water and wad for Urmila’s brow. Pista wishes to listen to the answering service again. Aya tramps out for counsel from her neighbourhood comrades. A timorous Pista dogs her. Shyamanand watches the water drip from the wad into the ashen hair that camouflages the ear, the rictus mouth, the slate skin at the temples, the gashes on either side of the mouth scored by exhausted time, the crescents of ivory where the unseeing eyes lurk beneath the lids, the penduline skin at the throat, the disordered sari, the naked gasping, the wasted, scissioned hands, the pewter-and-burgundy bangles. He trembles with helplessness and almost craves to be in her position where doubtless this exhaustion would not harrow him. He has not theself-mastery to rise from the floor. Two sons and a bloody daughter-in-law – but where are they now?
    ‘Burfi. Are you high? You sound strange.’ Jamun is mindful that they have already expended ample long-distance time on Mrs Hegiste’s telephone.
    A tee-hee, discomposing. ‘Baba and I have squabbled, so what’s new. This afternoon Joyce had almost agreed to look in at the hospital, but he carped, it isn’t proper to send her, I should go in her stead, Ma at this hour should not be girdled by outsiders, by Christians who do not care for her, even in these circumstances don’t her sons rank her worth their time – his usual drivel, but so untimely in this wretchedness that I – well – let fly.’
    Jamun is fearful. Burfi has always been hot-tempered, and in his tizzies has ever so often flattened out only other people’s belongings. But his essence, his marrow, is buoyancy, and he ordinarily inclines to break with the past. He is in this manner distinct from his father.
    At their last booze bout, on his birthday, Burfi, sozzled legless, has stretched out a hand towards a disinclined Joyce, and blazoned, ‘I don’t hanker after a single breath of my past, not a sole second.’
    Nobody heeds his words, or so it seems, until some prattle later, Shyamanand without warning says, ‘Why should you be hungry for your past, you who like a darling pet has been tutored to forget?’
    Urmila, strained and miserable, has lain down betimes, to writhe and twitch on the bedlinen till morning, as is her custom. Shyamanand thinks ill of drinking, yet is intent on brightening a birthday with his sons. Tippling at least congregates them. Otherwise for days he doesn’t come upon them at all, scarcely sights them as they bundle off to and fro office, or some errand, or scurry downstairs in the mornings for the newspaper.
    The geniality dissolves at Shyamanand’s remark. Joyce shifts to wooden and quits the room. Jamun bides equably for Burfi to cut up rough before following her. Burfi’s face stales. Hecrinkles his lips and glowers, circumventing other eyes. ‘You’ve again squashed our spirit, our good humour by your rottenness.’
    ‘By saying what’s correct? Why should you languish for your past –