Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

She stopped when she reached the house, for she sensed something amiss. She looked down the narrow lane, at the blackened stubs of wooden planks and collapsed, soot-covered sheets of corrugated iron which lay all around the house. Then she pushed against the heavy wooden door of her house and almost fell in, for, to her surprise, the door was open. The door opened into a short, dark corridor, which ended in an open courtyard. There was a room on either side of the corridor and more around the courtyard.

Zindi stood in the corridor and shouted: Karthamma … Abu Fahl … The only sound that answered her was the cooing of pigeons in the courtyard. Frowning, she went into the room to her right and hung her plastic bag on a nail in the wall. The room’s complement of mats stood rolled in a corner as she had left them. A kerosene-stove lay beside them. She picked it up, held it to her ear and shook it. She knew by the sound that it had not been used since she left. She looked into a biscuit-tin and saw that none of the tea inside it had been used, either.

She hurried out into the courtyard and shouted again: Professor … Kulfi … Alu … Once again there was no answer. Turning, she threw open the door of the room opposite her own. It was the door to the room in which the men of the house lived. Mattresses were spread neatly on the floor. Trousers, lungis and jallabeyyas hung from pegs on the wall and wet clothes dripped on a line which ran from one barred window to another. The windows were shut as they always were during the day: that was one of Zindi’s rules.

Suddenly uneasy, she dug into her petticoats, pulled out a bunch of keys and hurriedly opened a steel cupboard which stood in one corner of the room. The cupboard was tidy, as it always was; Rakesh’s pile of shirts and printed T-shirts lay stacked in a neat pile, beside Professor Samuel’s bulging wallet; cassette recorders and transistors stood in a row on the bottom shelf, undisturbed. Sighing with relief, Zindi locked the cupboard.

Back in her own room Zindi unlocked her wooden provisions chest and went through it carefully. The sacks of wheat, rice and sugar and the packets of tea lay untouched. Breathing hard, she went down the corridor, into the courtyard, shading her eyes from the sudden brightness of the sun.

A storm of cackles greeted her. Several plump chickens flapped out of her way, and in a wired pen in a corner a long-necked gander hissed and spread its wings protectively across its flock of geese. The sides of the roof above were lined with grey pigeons looking down into the courtyard, their heads cocked. Zindi saw that the birds had not been fed and she fetched corn and wheat and half a cabbage for two rabbits in a wire-covered wooden crate.

Then she crossed the courtyard and unlocked the door to the women’s room. The room was divided into cubicles by lengths of cloth nailed into the walls and ceiling. She went around the room, pulling the makeshift curtains apart. The room was undisturbed and empty. Experimentally, she tried the heavy brass lock on the door of the next room. It was firmly locked, and that was the one lock in the house to which she had no key.

Zindi went back to her room, the heavy folds of her face knotted into a scowl, her jowls dripping sweat. She spread a mat on the floor and sat down to wait.

It was sundown when she heard the knocks she had been waiting for. She switched on the naked bulb in the corridor and stood there for a moment, her hands on her hips, shaking with anger. The rapping grew louder, and she flung the door open. Karthamma, Professor Samuel and Rakesh stood outside. Rakesh held Boss, the baby, cradled in his arms. Behind them, dimly outlined in the darkness was a man in a jallabeyya, stocky, dark and powerfully built, the texture of his face that of supple leather. He had only one eye; the other was an even grey, glowing dully beneath a half-closed lid.

Zindi’s eyes fastened on him. When the first wave of her roar broke it sent them all staggering backwards into the shadows: So it’s you, Abu Fahl, you bastard, you son of a bitch. It’s you who’s been behind everything all along? So this is your plan, is it? Lure the others out of the house like cattle, in the middle of the day, and leave it open for half the world to come in and take what it likes? You know what we’ve been through and now you plan this? This is the way you’re setting about it? Wallahi, wallahi , you don’t have to wait any longer. As God is my witness, you can have all your things and wander off for ever to eat out of a ditch. That’s where you were born, that’s where you’ll end. Wait.

Zindi ran into her room. An instant later a tin case flew out of the door and crashed on the wall opposite with such force that its hinges fell apart, spilling clothes, money, cassettes. Then she heaved one of the two mattresses in her room to the door and threw it out. There, she shouted, that comes to an end now, and I’m happy at last.

Abu Fahl pushed Professor Samuel aside, jumped over the mattress and leapt at Zindi. Wrenching her arms behind her, he pushed her down on to the mattress. He knelt beside her and put a hand, as large and horny as a goat’s head, on her heaving shoulder. Zindi, he said softly. Zindi, calm yourself. Calm yourself. Haven’t you heard?

Zindi rolled her eyes at Karthamma and Rakesh. I’ve heard enough, she growled deep in her throat. I’ll give you something to hear about.

Abu Fahl looked up at the others and rubbed his wrist on his blind eye. She doesn’t know, he said. God the Living, she doesn’t know.

Zindi was suddenly still. She looked at Karthamma and saw the tear-clotted smudges of dirt on her face. She saw the rents in Rakesh’s clothes and the gash of dried blood on his shirt. Ya satir! she whispered, looking from one to the other. What? Tell me.

The Star collapsed today, said Professor Samuel. Abu Fahl and the others were meant to be painting the basement. But when it happened only Alu was inside. He was trapped in the basement, right in the middle of the building. Abu Fahl saw the whole thing. And all the others. There wasn’t a wall left standing. Tons and tons of concrete. All of it right on him. But we have to be grateful. It was only him, just one man, while it could have been everyone.

The lines and ridges on Zindi’s cheeks seemed to sink deeper. Her jowls trembled and then the whole of her face collapsed inwards. She struck her forehead with the heel of her palm. Him, too! she cried, and her voice rasped like sandpaper on lead. All the others and now him!

Zindi rose and went to Karthamma. Putting her arms around her, she pulled her head on to her shoulders and for a long while the two women held each other in a firm, consoling embrace, until Zindi took her hand away and stroked Karthamma’s head in recognition of the especial poignancy of her grief. Then Zindi took her by the arm and led her towards the women’s room. At the end of the corridor Zindi turned to the men and said, in a voice taut with determination: All the others and now him. But he’ll be the last. No more weeping! The time has come to do something.

It was a long time before Zindi came out of the room. She went straight to Rakesh, took Boss from him and carried him into her own room. The men straggled aimlessly in behind her. She found the comforter she had bought for Boss, washed it and put it in his mouth. Then she seated herself on a mat at one end of the room with the baby on her crossed legs. She sat stiffly upright, her face grimly set. When Zindi sat like that the massive stillness of her presence reached into every corner of the room and patterned everything, every object, every person around her like iron filings around a magnet. She gestured to the men to unroll mats and seat themselves. Then she pulled a brass kerosene-stove before her, pumped it till it hissed and lit it. Carefully placing half a cob of corn, scraped clean of its seeds, on the flame, she asked: Where are the others?