Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

She put the spoon into Alu’s hands and helped him slip a few drops of water through Kulfi’s dead lips.

When she saw the body Zindi sank to the floor slowly, like the crust on a loaf of cooling bread. She straightened Kulfi’s outstretched arms, and then suddenly, like a scolded child, she began to rock from side to side, sobbing. She was pointing at me, she sobbed. Did you see her? She thinks I did it.

Alu put his arms around her. Zindi, he said, whispering, so that the doctors at the other end of the room would not hear him. Zindi, it’s not your fault; there was nothing you could do.

How do you know? Zindi whispered back. Her death won’t be on your soul. You’ve done nothing but stare at your thumbs ever since we left al-Ghazira. It was I who decided everything; I who brought her to this house of death; it’s I who’ll have it hanging over me on the Day of Judgement.

By why, Zindi? She came of her own will.

But I allowed her to stay on here, even after I smelt death in this place. If I’d done what I should have and we’d left, she would have lived.

But, Zindi, Alu said, you know we couldn’t have left. Boss is ill; and anyway where would we have gone?

She elbowed him angrily away. I don’t want your hugs and your explanations, she hissed. I’ll have to live with this for every day of what’s left of my life. Leave me in peace. What can you ever understand of this?

A hand touched her shoulder and she turned. It was Jyoti Das, his eyes bloodshot and swollen, his mouth open. He was trying to say something.

It’s the vulture, she cried.

It’s my fault, he stuttered. He reached out to touch her feet.

Zindi jerked her legs back. Don’t touch me, she snarled. Keep your murdering claws away or you’ll kill me, too.

Jyoti Das stared at his hands in despair. What could I do? he said. She came in out of the desert like a mirage and I …

Take him out, Alu, Zindi sobbed. Take him away. Don’t let him get his claws into me …

She was still sobbing as they helped each other up and limped out of the room like a pair of grieving cripples.

What do we do now? said Mrs Verma.

You don’t do anything, Dr Mishra said. You have no connection with the whole business except that it happened under your roof. What you should do now is ring up the hospital and the police. They’ll come and take the body away. Then it’s out of your hands. Maybe they’ll do an autopsy; they may have to, for the death certificate.

And then?

What do you mean, ‘and then’?

I mean, said Mrs Verma, what will they do with the body? They can’t keep it in the morgue for ever.

Dr Mishra shrugged: They’ll do whatever they usually do under these circumstances. I suppose they’ll hand it back to the next of kin. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with you or me or any of us.

Mrs Verma thought hard, with her chin cupped in her hands. That means, she said, that they’ll hand the body back to Mr Bose. But what will he do with it?

How does it matter to you? Dr Mishra said brusquely. He can do what he likes. It’s none of your business. You don’t even know them. They just turned up today and you gave them shelter. For all you know, they may be international criminals or something. I think you should be very, very careful. Don’t get mixed up in this business.

Let’s see, Mrs Verma said, counting the possibilities on her fingers. He could take the body to Algiers. But how, and what for? Or he could fly it back to India. But how? He’d have to take it to the airport at Hassi Messaoud, and who knows whether there’s a plane tomorrow — and anyway the body would never last. Or else he could just leave the body with the authorities and let them … dispose of it.

Her eyes widened as she thought out the implications of that last possibility. What do you think they’d do with it? she said. Involuntarily she clenched her fist and raised it to her mouth. What do you think they’d do?

Dr Mishra chuckled: What’s another corpse to you, Mrs Verma? You’ve been seeing dozens every day ever since you first went to Medical College. You’ve chopped them up, pulled out their gullets, pickled their hearts in alcohol. Don’t you think it’s a bit late to start weeping over a bit of dead tissue?

It’s not the same thing, she said confusedly, when it happens in your own house.

It’s exactly the same thing, he answered, tapping the table with his pipe. Surely you don’t need me to tell you that. There’s nothing there that you wouldn’t find in any morgue or any textbook.

But only a few hours ago I offered her a room in my house because she had nowhere else to go. Don’t we owe her anything now; now that she’s dead?

We owe her nothing, he said sharply. We didn’t even know her.

But what will her husband do? Where will he go with the body?

He can go, Dr Mishra said gleefully, back to wherever he came from.

Mrs Verma rose from the table, her hands clasped determinedly together. There’s only one thing to do now, she said. We shall have to cremate her ourselves, properly, somewhere among the dunes.

Dr Mishra slumped back, stunned. After a while, his voice hoarse with shock, he murmured: How can we do that? There’s no crematorium here. What will the authorities say? We can’t do it. There’s a proper procedure for these things.

That can be worked out very easily, Mrs Verma said, clearing the table. After all, the authorities know us and we know them. We can explain the circumstances. I’m sure they’ll be sympathetic.

Mrs Verma, Dr Mishra said softly, recovering himself. When you said ‘a proper cremation’ what exactly did you mean?

Well, like we’ve seen it being done for our fathers and mothers, I suppose.

Say it, Mrs Verma, don’t be afraid. What you mean is a proper Hindu cremation.

It doesn’t matter what you call it.

Dr Mishra leant forward with all the aplomb of a chessplayer about to signal a checkmate. But, Mrs Verma, he said smiling, what makes you think she’s eligible for a proper cremation?

How could Jyoti Das explain, especially with Alu’s expectant, unblinking gaze clamped on him like that, what she had looked like when she first came through the door, how he had seen her then? It was an image with too long a past; it had appeared so suddenly, like the last photograph in a hastily riffled album, out of the haze left by pages of blurred pictures.

There was, for example, that final interview with the Ambassador in al-Ghazira, when he had said, with a sarcasm which could have sliced silk: Tell me, is it true, Mr Das, that you were away shopping when your so-called ‘extremists’ made their getaway? And before he could deny it the Ambassador was off, reminiscing pointedly about the incompetence of all the cloak-and-dagger men he had ever known; about the grudge they bore against the world because they hadn’t qualified for the more prestigious services in the examinations; about the ‘extremists’ they concocted to wangle trips abroad at government expense.

Mr Das, do you really think, he asked softly at the end, that we believed all this business about ‘extremists’? We know quite well why they send you people to visit embassies every now and then; they send you to watch us .

Then later there was Jai Lal sitting beside him, telling him how a First Secretary in the embassy had confided to him that even a small part of the report the Ambassador had sent to headquarters would be enough to stub out young Jyoti’s career like a half-smoked cigarette. And then Jai Lal again, telling him how there was only one way of retrieving something of his once bright future — and that was to find the Suspect.

After that, grey, sour days, waiting for his permission to proceed Cairowards to be cleared. And more grey days even after the permission arrived, for nobody in the embassy in Cairo would meet him. His contact said: The news is spreading fast; everyone’s heard about the business in al-Ghazira and your, your …