Ian McDonald - River of Gods

Away. She presses against Krishan, reaches for his hand beneath the drape of her stained sari, surreptitiously so no one will see, no one will be tempted to speculate on what these two Hindus are doing. Her fingers encounter warm wet. She jerks them away. Blood. Blood spreading in a sticky pool in the space between the bodies. Blood clinging to the ribs of the plastic wall. Krishan’s hand, where it failed by millimetres to meet hers, is a clenched red fist. Parvati pushes herself away, not in horror, but to comprehend how this madness is happening. Krishan sags across the wall leaving a red smear, props himself up on his left arm. From just above his hip down his white shirt is red, soaked through with blood. Parvati can see it pumping through the fabric weave with every breath he takes.

That strange sigh, when he pulled her up on to the train, away from the firing on the platform. She had seen the bullets ricochet from the steel stanchions.

His face is the colour of ash, of the monsoon sky. His breath flutters, his arm quivers; he cannot support himself much longer and every heartbeat pumps more of his life onto the carriage floor. The blood pools around his feet. His lips move but he cannot shape words. Parvati pulls her to him, cradles his head in her lap.

“It’s all right my love, it’s all right,” she whispers. She should call out, shout for aid, help, a doctor but she knows with terrible certainty that no one will ever hear in those jammed carriages. “Oh Krishan,” she murmurs as she feels the wet, sexual blood spread under her thighs. “Oh, my dear man.” His body is so cold. She gently touches his long black hair and twines it in her fingers as the train drives ever south.

This is Mr. Nandha coming up the stairs of Diljit Rana Apartments, jogging up one flight two flight three flight four in the cool cool light of the morning. He could take the elevator—unlike the old projects like Siva Nataraja Homes and White Fort, the services are operational in these government housing blocks—but he wants to maintain the energy, the zeal, the momentum. He shall not let it slip, not when it is so close. His avatars are threads of spider silk spun between the towers of Varanasi. He can feel the vibration of her energy shaking the world.

Five flights, six.

Mr. Nandha intends to apologise to his wife for upsetting her in front of her mother. The apology is not strictly necessary but Mr. Nandha’s belief is that it is a healthful thing in a marriage to give in occasionally even when you are right. But she must appreciate that he has made a window for her in the most important case in the Ministry’s history, a case that, when he has completed the excommunication, will elevate him to Investigative Officer First Rank. Then they will spend happy evenings together looking through the brochures for Cantonment new-builds.

The final three flights Mr. Nandha whistles themes from Handel Concerti Grossi.

It is not in the moment he puts his key in the lock. Neither is it when he sets hand to handle and turns that handle. But in the time it takes for him to push that handle down and open the door, he knows what he will find. And he knows the meaning of that epiphany in the predawn Ministry corridor. It was the precise instant his wife left him.

Scraps of Handel float in his auditory centres but as he crosses the lintel his life is as changed as the raindrop falling one millimetre to one side of a mountain peak ends up in a different ocean.

He does not need to call her name. She is utterly, irretrievably gone. It is not an absence of things; her chati magazines lie on the table, the dhobi basket sits in the kitchen by the ironing board, her ornaments and gods and small votives occupy their auspicious places. The flowers are fresh in the vase, the geraniums are watered. Her absence is from every part; the furniture, the shape of the room, the carpets, the comforting, happy television, the wallpaper and the cornices and the colour of the doors. The lights, the kitchen utensils, the white goods. Half a home, half a life and entire marriage has been subtracted. Nature does not abhor this vacuum. It throbs, it has shape and geometry.

There are noises Mr. Nandha knows he should make, actions he should perform, feelings he should experience proper to the discovery that a wife has left you. But he walks in and out of the room in a tight-faced daze, an almost-smile drawn on his lips, as if preparing defences against the full of it, like a sailor in a tropical storm might lash himself to a mast, to dare it to break over him, to turn into its full rage. That is why he goes to the bedroom. The embroidered cushions that were wedding gifts from his work colleagues are in their places on respective sides of the bed. The expensive copy of the Kama Sutra, for the proper work of a married couple, is on its bedside cabinet. The flat-worked sheet is neatly turned back.

Mr. Nandha finds himself bending to sniff the sheet. No. He does not want to know if there is any blame there. He opens the sliding wood wardrobes, inventories what is taken, what remains. The gold, the blue, the green saris, the pure white silk for formal occasions. The beautiful, translucent crimson choli he used to love to see her wear, that excited him so much across a room or a garden party. She has taken all the padded, scented hangers, left the cheap wire ones that have stretched into shallow rhombuses. Mr. Nandha kneels down to look at the shoe rack. Most of the spaces are empty. He picks up a slipper, soft-soled, worked with gold-thread and satin, runs his hands over its pointed toe, its soft, breast-curved heel. He sets it back in its position. He cannot bear her lovely shoes.

He closes the sliding door on the clothes and shoes but it is not Parvati he thinks of, it is his mother when he burned her on the ghat, his head shaved and all dressed in white. He thinks of her house afterwards, of the terrible poignancy of her clothes and shoes on their hangers and racks, all unnecessary now, all her choices and fancyings and likings naked and exposed by death.

The note is stuck to the shelf in the kitchen where his Ayurvedic teas and dietary items are kept. He finds he has read it three times without taking in anything more than the obvious meaning that she is gone. He cannot join the words up into sentences. Leaving. So sorry. Can’t love you. Don’t look for me. Too close. Too many words too near to each other. He folds the note, puts it in his pocket, and climbs the stairs to the roof garden.

In the open space, in the grey light, under the eyes of his neighbours and his cybernetic avatars, Mr. Nandha feels the compressed rage vomit up out of him. He would love to open his mouth and let it all pour out of him in an ecstatic stream. His stomach pulls, he fights it, masters it. Mr. Nandha presses down the spasms of nausea.

What is that sickly, chemical smell? For a moment, despite his discipline, he feels that his gut might betray him.

Mr. Nandha kneels on the edge of the raised bed, fingers hooked into the clinging loam. His palmer calls. Mr. Nandha cannot think what the noise could possibly be. Then the insistent calling of his name draws his fingers out of the soil, draws him back to the wet rooftop in the Varanasi gloaming.

“Nandha.”

“Boss, we’ve found her.” Vik’s voice. “Gyana Chakshu picked her up two minutes ago. She’s right here in Varanasi. Boss; she is Kalki. We’ve got it all put together; she is the aeai. She is the incarnation of Kalki. I’m diverting the tilt-jet to pick you up.”

Mr. Nandha stands upright. He looks at his hands, brushes the dirt from them on the edge of the wooden sleepers. His suit is stained, crumpled, soaked. He cannot imagine he will ever feel dry again. But he adjusts his cuffs, straightens his collar. He takes the gun from inside his pocket and lets it hang loosely at his side. The early neons of Kashi gibber and flick at his feet. There is work to be done. He has his mission. He will do it so well that none can ever hold a whisper against Nandha of the Ministry.