Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Around eleven the day Pitaji was released, an ambulance carried him home to the Old Vegetable Market. Two orderlies, muscular men in white uniforms, carried his bulk on a stretcher up the stairs into the flat. Fourteen or fifteen people came out into the courtyard to watch. Some of the very old women, sitting on cots in the courtyard, kept asking who Pitaji was, although he had lived there six years. A few children climbed into the ambulance. They played with the horn till somebody chased them out.

The orderlies laid Pitaji on the cot in his bedroom before leaving. It was a small dark room, smelling faintly of the kerosene with

which the bookshelves were treated every other week to prevent termites. Traveling had tired him. He fell asleep quickly. Pitaji woke as I was about to leave. I was whispering to Ma outside his bedroom.

"I don't know when I'm coming back. I have my own family."

"How much I suffer, only God knows."

"You should have made him go to a doctor right in the beginning."

"What could I do? I can't make him do anything."

"Are you talking about me?" Pitaji tried to call out, but his voice was like wind on dry grass.

"You want something?" Ma asked.

"Water."

As I started toward the fridge. Ma said, "You can't give him anything cold."

I got water from the clay pot. Kneeling beside the cot, I helped Pitaji rise to a forty-five-degree angle. Ma had undressed him. He was wearing only his undershorts. His heaviness, the weakness of his body made me feel as if I were embracing an enormous larva. Pitaji held the glass with both hands. He made sucking noises as he drank. I lowered him when his shoulder muscles slackened. His eyes moved about the room slowly.

"More?" he asked.

"There's no more," I said, even though there was. Ma was clattering in the kitchen. "I'm going home."

"Rajinder is good?" He looked at the ceiling while speaking.

"Yes," I said. "The results for his exam came. He'll be promoted. He came second in all Delhi." Telling him this felt like a taunt, as if I was suggesting he was a failure.

Pitaji closed his eyes. "I feel tired."

"All you've been doing is lying in bed. Go to sleep."

"I don't want to," he answered loudly.

Remembering that in a few minutes I would leave, I said, "You'll get better."

"Sometimes I dream that the heaviness I feel is dirt. What an awful thing to be buried, like a Muslim or a Christian." He spoke slowly. "Once I dreamed of Baby's ghost."

"Oh." I was interested, because Baby's importance was confusing.

"He was eight or nine. He didn't recognize me. Baby didn't look at all like me. I was surprised, because I had always expected him to look like me."

There was something polished about the story, which indicated deceit. My hatred increased. "God will forgive you," I said, wanting him to begin his excuses and disgust me further.

"Your mother has not."

Had she forgiven Pitaji for what he had done to me but not forgiven him for making her unhappy? "Shhh." Now there was so much unhappiness that even anger was overwhelmed.

"At your birthday, when she sang, I said, 'If you sing like that for me every day, I will love you forever.' "

I was on my way home. "She worries about you."

"That's not the same. When I tell Kusum this, she tells me I'm sentimental. Radha loved me once. But she cannot forgive. What happened so long ago she cannot forgive." He was blinking rapidly, preparing to cry. "But that is a lie. She does not love me because I—" he began crying without making a sound—"I did not love her for so long. Radha could have loved me a little. She should have loved me twenty for my eleven."

Ma came to the doorway. "What are you crying about now? Nobody loves you? Aw, sad baby." Holding the sides of the doorway, she leaned forward. She appeared eager.

"You think it's so easy being sick?" he said.

"Easier than working."

"I wish you were sick."

I watched them. For a moment I didn't have the strength to stand. Then I remembered, I can go to my home.

My sleep when I returned to my flat was like falling. I lay down, closed my eyes, plummeted. I woke as suddenly, without any half-memories of dreams, into a silence which meant the electricity was gone, the ceiling fan still, the fridge slowly warming.

It was cool. But I was unsurprised by the monsoon's approach, for I was in love. The window curtains stirred, revealing TV antennas. Sparrows wheeled in front of distant gray clouds. The sheet lay bunched at my feet. I felt gigantic, infinite. But I was also small, compact, distilled. I had everything in me to make Rajinder silly with tenderness. I imagined him softening completely at seeing me. I am in love, I thought. A raspy voice echoed the words in my head, causing me to lose my confidence for a moment. I will love him slowly, carefully, cunningly. I suddenly felt peaceful again, as if I were a lake and the world could only form ripples on my surface while the calm beneath continued in solitude.

I stood. I was surprised that my love was not disturbed by my physical movements. I walked out onto the roof The wind ruffled treetops. Small gray clouds slid across the pale sky. On the street, eight or nine young boys were playing cricket.

Tell me your stories, I will ask him. Pour them into me, so that I know everything you have ever loved or been scared of or laughed at. But thinking this, I became uneasy that when I actually saw him, my love might fade. My tongue became thick. What shall I say? I woke this afternoon in love with you. I love you, too, he will answer. No, no, you see, I really love you. I love you so much that I think anything is possible, that I will live forever. Oh, he will say. My love will abandon me in a rush. I must say nothing at first, I decided. Slowly I will win his love. I will spoil him till he falls in love with me. As long as Rajinder loves me, I will be able to love him. I will love him like a camera lens that closes at too much light and opens at too little, so his blemishes will never mar my love.

I watched the cricket game to the end. Again, I felt enormous. When the children dispersed, it was around five. Rajinder should have left his office.

I bathed. I stood before the small mirror in the armoire as I dressed. Uneven brown areolae, a flat stomach, the veins in my feet like pen marks. Will this be enough? I wondered. Once he loves me, I told myself I lifted my arms to smell the plantlike odor of my perspiration. I wore a bright red cotton sari. What will I say first? Namaste, how was your day? With the informal you. How was your day? The words felt strange, for I had never before used the informal with him. I had, as a show of modesty, never even used his name, except for the night before my wedding, when I said it hundreds of times to myself to see how it sounded — like nothing. Now, standing before the mirror, when I said Rajinder, the three syllables had too many edges. Rajinder, Rajinder, I said rapidly several times, till it no longer felt strange. He will love me because it is too lonely otherwise, because I will love him so. I heard a scooter stopping outside the building, the metal door to the courtyard swinging open.

My stomach clenched as I walked onto the roof The dark clouds had turned late evening into early night. I saw Rajinder roll the scooter into the courtyard. He parked the scooter, took off his gray helmet. He combed his hair carefully to hide the emerging bald spot. The deliberate way he tucked the comb into his back pocket overwhelmed me with tenderness. We will love each other carefully.

I waited for him to rise out of the stairwell. My petticoat drying on the clothesline went clap, clap in the wind. How was your day? How was your day? Was your day good? I told myself. Don't be so afraid. What does it matter how you say hello? There will be tomorrow, the day after, the day after that.