Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Outside, across the street, the boys were washing down the elephants with brushes and buckets of water. One boy was on top of an elephant and the other was scrubbing India off its side. The other elephant had already been washed and was eating leaves from a pile of branches before him. Chalk had settled into wrinkles. I looked at the elephant's face. A fly sat near one wizened eye. I shivered.

K nita sat on her bedroom floor near the gallery sifting a /Xk copper tray of black lentils for pebbles and grit. She did not glance up from her work as I entered the flat.

I had planned to go to my room and take off my shoes, then build up my courage to talk again with Anita. I walked two steps past her and then sat down on her bed. Delay would only make things harder. I stared at Anita's back. She did not turn around, but her back straightened and her fingers flew faster.

I opened my mouth and forced words out. "I promise…" Anita's head turned slightly. "I won't hurt you." I thought this was a foolish thing to say, but I could not stop my stupidity. "I won't live long." Anita finally turned around. "I should be dead in a few years. Why hate me when I will be gone soon?" She stared at me. "I can change," I said.

Anita slammed the tray to the floor. The clang was enormous. The lentils rustled across the floor. Anita kept hold of the tray for a moment. Then she set it quietly on the floor and stood. She walked through the bedroom, into the common room.

My mouth tasted of iron. Maybe five minutes later, maybe twenty, I followed her.

Asha was asleep on the sofa, sweating in the sun coming through the window.

Anita sat crouched under the kitchen's stone counter. She had her back to the wall and her knees pulled to her chest. Standing just outside the kitchen, I cringed at this wretchedness.

I squatted in the kitchen doorway. Neither of us spoke for a while. The refrigerator hummed. I thought, Maybe she's desperate to end this, too. "What should we do?" I asked. Anita moaned. "I'll do anything." After a moment or two, I repeated, "What can I do?"

"Die. That's what I want," Anita squeaked. She pointed at her jaw. "Look what you've done to me."

I wanted her to say more, say everything so that some of her anger might be drained. "We have to live together," I said. "I don't want to die this way."

After several minutes Anita said, "I want you to give me money."

This surprised me, but no more than if she had demanded I live in the room on the roof, a possibility I had considered.

"How much money?"

"Two thousand rupees a month."

"All right."

"And I want the flat when you die."

I thought of Rajesh's anger when he heard this but said, "Yes."

"I don't want to pay for any of Asha's schooling, and I want five hundred rupees a month for that."

"Yes."

Anita began crying then, quietly I waited with her till she said, "Go away"

I returned to her bedroom, where I had left the shawl. I brought it back and, squatting in the kitchen doorway, pulled it slightly out of the bag. I placed it on the floor between us. "It's a pashmina shawl. For you."

She looked at it. "I want cash."

"I'll give you cash also." I then went into my room and took two thousand rupees from what I had collected for Mr. Gupta. Anita had the shawl in her lap. I placed the bundles on top of the shawl.

When Anita started cooking dinner that evening, I came out of my room. She looked up from the pot of subji she was stirring, and I stopped. I had spent the afternoon on my cot Ustening to the radio. I left my room because I wanted to act on our agreement right away so there would be no doubt we had struck a bargain. I moved to the center of the common room and sat down on the floor.

I brought with me my transistor radio and a Gita. I did not remember the last time I had opened the Gita. A holy book, I thought, would suggest the solemnity of my commitment to the bargain. Before last week I would have worn just my underpants and undershirt. But I did not want to call attention to my crotch and therefore wore pajamas. The radio played. I sat up straight and tried appearing proper, even though usually if I spent much time on the floor, because of its hardness, I reclined on my side. A distant but

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distinct satisfaction came through the anxiety of being in open sight, as if I were managing to move through a difficult and dangerous labor. I reread several times Krishna's argument to Arjun that it was acceptable for him to fight his cousins, because he was responsible only for actions, whereas God controlled consequences.

Asha woke from her long nap, and after going to the roof to see whether a kite might have caught on the TV antenna, she sat beside me in silence, switching from station to station on the radio. She kept closing her eyes as though she was ready to slip back into sleep.

"Take a bath," I said. This was the first time I had spoken normally to her in several days, and it felt strange. "You'll be less sleepy." Forming and speaking a sentence was like making something. Anita glanced at me. I continued talking, feeling willful, as if the more words I said, the stronger my hold on the world of the common room would become. "How is school? Do the children talk about Rajiv Gandhi?" I noticed that I sounded as if I had been away.

"No," Asha answered, yawning.

"Strange how somebody so important can just vanish and it makes no difference."

"His family must be unhappy," Asha said, spinning the station dial. Till then I had only thought of Rajiv Gandhi's death as the end of a dynasty. I remembered the swiftness with which Rajinder had died. One side of Asha's hair was matted down and there were hatchmarks on her cheek from the sofa's weave. Her thinness and disheveledness made her look poor.

"Take a bath," Anita said, sounding as if she had already repeated this several times. She poured a glass of water into the subji. We stared at each other. This meeting of gazes felt like something new, one of the benefits of our compact.

"Yes," Asha said, but made no move to stand.

"Has your mother been giving you yogurt for breakfast?"

"No."

"What are you doing?"

"I only asked if she had been eating yogurt." I understood that Anita was drawing the limits of what I had bought.

"Go bathe," Anita said.

"In five minutes," Asha replied.

"This is not a shop that you can bargain with me."

Asha went and got her towel, which was draped over the balcony ledge. I started at the Gita again.

During dinner only Asha and I talked. Asha asked me if I was better, and I found myself replying, "Better than before," even though I had not meant to qualify my answer. When I questioned her. How is school? Why did you sleep so much this afternoon? Did Mr. Gupta's phone wake you last night? she answered in short phrases. Anita was examining us and I think this quieted Asha. Having a home again made me want to talk and talk. In my loneliness, any detail, whether Asha had turned left or right at a street corner, would have been comforting. Even with her short answers, I might have developed a conversation, but I thought that to do so in front of Anita could appear threatening.

Near the end of the meal Asha asked Anita, "Will you play badminton with me?"

"No."

"Why?" Asha said, sounding startled. "You said you would."

"When I tell you to take a bath I want you to do it right then."

I couldn't watch the punishment and looked at the floor. I believed Anita was training Asha to obey her immediately as a way of guarding against me.

"I took a bath."

"I'm not playing with you. You can play with someone else. I don't want to play with you."

"Who?"

"Find someone."

"Will you play with me?" Asha asked me.

"No," I whispered.

Anita stood and went to wash the dishes. A little later Asha climbed the ladder to the roof