Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

The rain began falling. There was a roar from the people on the roofs nearby. "The clothes," Rajinder said. He pulled away.

We ran out. It was hard to see each other. Lightning bursts illuminated an eye, an arm, some teeth. Then there was darkness again. We jerked the clothes off, letting the pins fall to the ground. We deliberately brushed roughly against each other. The raindrops were like thorns. We began laughing. Rajinder's shirt had wrapped itself around and around the clothesline. Wiping his face, he knocked his glasses off As I saw him crouched and fumbling around helplessly for them, I felt such tenderness that I knew I would never love him as much as I did at that moment. "The wind in the trees," I said, "it sounds like the sea."

We slowly moved back inside, kissing all the while. When he entered me, it was like a sigh. He suckled on me and moved back

and forth and side to side, and I felt myself growing warm and loose. He held my waist with both hands. We made love gently at first, but as we both neared climax, Rajinder began stabbing me with his penis. I came in waves so strong that I wanted to say, Make me invisible; make me the sky. When Rajinder sank on top of me, I said, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he answered.

The candle had gone out. Rajinder got up to light it. He drank some water, then lay down beside me. I wanted some water, too, but did not want to say anything to suggest thoughtlessness. "I'll be getting promoted soon. Minaji loves me," Rajinder said. I rolled onto my side to look at him. He had his arms folded across his chest. "Yesterday he said, 'Come, Rajinderji, let us write your confidential report.' " I put my hand on his stomach. Rajinder said, "Don't." He pushed my hand away. "I said, 'Oh, I don't know whether that's good, sir.' He laughed. What a nincompoop. If it weren't for the quotas he'd never be manager." Rajinder chuckled. "I'll be the youngest bank manager in Delhi." I tugged a sheet over our legs. "In college I had a schedule for where I wanted to be by the time I was thirty. By twenty-two I became an officer, soon I'll be a manager. I wanted a car. We'll have that in a year. I wanted a wife. I have that."

"You are so smart."

"There were smarter people than I in college. But I knew exactly what I wanted. A life is like a house. One has to plan carefully where all the furniture will go."

"Did you plan me as your wife?" I asked, smiling.

"No, I had wanted at least an M.A. and someone who worked, but Mummy didn't approve of a daughter-in-law who worked. I was willing to change my requirements. It's because I believe in moderation that I am successful. Everything in its place. Also, pay for everything. Other people got caught up in love and friendship. I've always thought that these things only became important because of the movies."

After a moment I asked, "You love me and your mother, don't you?"

Rajinder considered how to answer me. "There are so many people in the world that it is hard not to think that there are others you can love more." Seeing the shock on my face, he quickly added, "Of course I love you. I just try not to be too emotional about it." The candle's shadows on the wall were like the wavy bands formed by light reflected off water. "We might even be able to get a foreign car."

The second time he took me that night, it was from behind. He pressed down heavily on my back and grabbed my breasts.

I woke at four or five. The rain scratched against the windows and there was a light like blue milk along the edges of the door. I was cold and tried wrapping myself in the sheet, but it was not large enough.

T H K E E

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leep was there immediately. The fear was so great, I could not stay conscious. I closed my eyes and was gone. The sleep lasted only minutes. I roused when Anita snapped off the common-room light on her way to bed, but I kept my eyes closed and hoped to faint again.

Asha moving past Anita into the common room and Anita staying in the doorway; Asha moving past Anita into the common room and Anita staying in the doorway. I dreamed this all night, and each time I did, my heart started wildly and I woke. Then the alcohol and fear dragged me into sleep again. I woke and passed out so many times that I grew confused and began doubting whether Anita had stood in my doorway and called Asha away from me.

Around three that morning, the alcohol thinned to the point that I no longer passed out automatically. My bladder started to ache, but I did not want to get up. Walking to the bathroom would

make it harder to believe that I had imagined everything. I stayed on the cot with the sheet pulled over my face and thought, Anita couldn't remember; what happened with her was so long ago. If she couldn't remember, why would she be suspicious? Besides, from where she stood, how could she see I had my penis against Asha's back? When she told Asha to brush her teeth, there was nothing on Anita's face to show that she knew.

As my certainties kept changing, there were moments of complete calm and moments of overwhelming terror. I tried to imagine my life if Anita confronted me over her childhood. I could not. Not only would the future end, but everything I had been would also be erased.

A little before five, the pain in my bladder forced me up. My room had become packed with fears, and leaving it for the common room felt like stepping off a crowded bus into wind. The balcony door and the kitchen shutters were closed, but enough light slipped through them to tint the darkness blue. I could hear the whoosh of my own blood. My fears were joined by horror.

As I urinated in the dank darkness of the latrine, I thought that my fifty-seven years had not only not taught me decency, they had not even taught me caution. The recklessness of caressing Asha while Anita was in the common room was the same as when I had fondled Anita in the storage room on the roof while Radha and the other children could be heard moving about downstairs. My penis's smoothness reminded me of when it was slick with blood and sperm. I began crying. There was something fatal in repeating my crime so exactly. The preciseness had the same inevitability as death. I sobbed so strongly I had to put a hand against the wall for support.

Weeping was comforting. A part of me reasoned that because I was crying and penitent, God could not have let Anita see what I was doing. Besides, if God allowed the discovery, who would be helped? Whatever happened, Anita needed to stay with me because she had no money. Her poverty should keep her from confronting me. Then I noticed how my mind was working, and shame filled me.

An Obedient Father 6$

I thought of Asha speaking in Urdu when she thanked me for the badminton rackets, and I cringed at what I had done with someone so small.

From the shame came the idea of going to my village and finding the pundit to make sure he was in Delhi tomorrow This way Radha would be prayed for by someone who knew her. I would be doing something good and God would protect me because of this. Going to Beri also meant one day of not having to see Anita.

Misery often makes me want to look away from the present and leads me to nostalgia. As I swallowed my heart medicine in the blue dark of the common room, I imagined walking through Beri's sugarcane fields and sitting beneath a mango tree. I wanted to be a child again, with the future a wide, still river in the afternoon.

When I passed through Anita and Asha's bedroom on my way out of the flat, I heard one of them roll over. The room was completely dark and I could not see who had turned and whether either was awake. The door chain clacked as I unhooked it, but no one spoke.

The dark sky was beginning to fade in streaks, and night's mildness was still in the air. I found a bicycle rickshaw where the Malka Ganj and Ghanta Ghar roads meet in a V. The streets to the Inter-State Bus Terminal were mostly empty. A few old men were out for strolls, and there was an occasional mysterious person: a woman dressed for a party talking with herself on the sidewalk: "Don't worry about me. I'm a queen. I'm a governor"; or a teenage boy with a suitcase, barefoot and walking with his head tilted up and a rag to his nose to stanch a nosebleed. But mostly there was just the creak of the rickshaw as the driver's feet slowly rose and fell on the pedals.