The Assassin's Song (38 page)

“No—really?” I quickly replied. But I wasn't so sure.

“Maybe we should inquire?”

“No, let's go,” I told him. “I don't feel so good.”

The doctor told me I should not have had that last beer and drove me home.

One used to hear stories of how an elephant never forgets, how a female cobra could cross the ocean to seek you out and wreak her revenge …

Was that a mere coincidence of sound and circumstance I had discerned outside the church? This was not unheard-of, surely. Two alien chants sounding alike.

Or was that my father reaching out yet again; was this Pirbaag's ancient magic working on me …

The following days I was taunted by a melody playing at the very back reaches of my head; not even a real melody, but a fleeting image or shadow of it, the mere threat of it. I could not suppress it.

The next Saturday, my in-laws back in Winnipeg, I was possessed by a burning temptation, almost gave in to it. Came afternoon, I picked up my car keys: perhaps I should walk past that church again, and listen; or even go inside and have a look, satisfy my curiosity: who were the singers? Presumably they gathered there every Saturday. They could not be … But suppose they were? I put the keys back. And the following Saturday the feeling returned, this tormenting serpent. I fought it off, only because had those singers been my people, I would have had to face my father, whose photo would surely have been there in a place of prominence.

My
former
people, I reminded myself, for I did not want or need them again. I had left them already.

“What's wrong with you these days?” Marge asked.

“Oh?”

My head on her lap, her hand through my hair; Julian playing nearby,
though he would soon demand attention. My favourite scene at home, this, a faint odour of her warm womanhood wafting through her nightdress. We could have had many children. Initially she had wanted only this one child; finally, when she came around and desired a companion for Julian, a series of miscarriages destroyed our plans.

This was a pity, for motherhood became her, and she enjoyed looking after our home. Like other women in the area, she had postponed her career. I would sometimes muse about this, for I knew her to have been a brilliant science student. But family and home were all for now. Over the years she had softened, lost some of the snappiness that had so provoked me once. But if she was no longer the beautiful enigma who had bewitched me before, she was now the woman who tenderly cared about me, even loved me. Physically she had grown a little plumper (her Indian genes, she called this) and had cut her hair short, but she was still pretty, and her face had acquired a radiance that could only reflect her condition, make me proud that I was a decent father and husband.

“You've been distracted—something's been bothering you and you're not telling me.”

“It's nothing.”

She was not meant to accept this, of course, and I waited.

“Nothing?—like what?”

A ruffle through the hair, and I confessed.

“Just that I remembered my father.”

A long intake of breath. Then: “Why don't you write to tell him that? If you don't write, perhaps I will.”

“Please. In my own time.”

She had accepted this before, and she accepted it now.

She had not wanted me complicated, and I had presented her with a simplified, new me; I did not even have any pictures from home, except that one of my mother. So she did not know what I had shrunk from, and that my father was not a normal person, he was a god, a role that I was supposed to take over. A fully Indian girl might have guessed, from whatever little I had revealed about myself; Paddy, I think, had an idea. My past, after all, reflected the hoariness and complicatedness of India.

“All right,” she said.

With another ruffle through my hair, she withdrew her hand. And I
wondered for the first time whether she understood more than she let on. If she did, I knew that she would still prefer me uncomplicated. She too had kept secrets from me. Teenage episodes I had only caught hints of, from her mother's mouth. Details of those wild years as an activist, from which she had sought out the safe haven of our relationship. It was what counted. We had a home and a child, and now we were no longer young.

It began to seem gradually over the days that I had simply conjured up my spectre from that unusual chanting outside the church and frightened myself like a child. With that observation, I was back on track, the serpent from across the seas vanquished.

Time passed. Julian went to grade school. From a stocky toddler with rubber cheeks he had grown into a tall boy with a fair complexion and brown eyes and hair. The facial lines were finer, ending in a tipped chin that was his mother's. The ears were a bit long, a reminder of my father that I had to live with; the hair was curly, surprisingly unlike that of anyone we knew in our families, and could not be parted. He played soccer, did not take to cricket. He played piano, did not take to tabla and spurned the sitar, and wished to play the sax one day like his grandfather. He liked to read and had his own bookshelf.

He could make you laugh. On the way home from school, holding hands:

Everything was done for our Julian, as it was for his friends in the neighbourhood; no doubt he would have grown up spoilt, but—we argued—our values and those of our neighbours were sure to keep a check
on him. We would hold earnest discussions about him, plan his life in detail: what school—the farther private or the neighbourhood public; what second and third language; what university, ultimately? Everything had to be right. It was pure idolatry, this devoted care for a child, however reasoned and cautious. Punishment was as rare as it was painful. I recall every reprimand I gave him; I recall my own pain when I yelled at him and slapped him once above the wrist, and I would cut off my hand now to take that moment back.

Exaggeration, yes, but true in its way.

And the sorrow; the end of the illusion.

Saturday morning. It was junior league soccer at Forest Hill Park, Scotland were to play Brazil today. We dropped Julian off and rushed to the variety store for a water bottle, guilty and quarrelsome because had we brought it with us we would not miss the vital start of the game and be the only ones absent among the cheering parents. Raucous encouragement and coaching from parents, with a ready drink for the champion to replenish his liquids and salts, made all the difference to his performance.

“Couldn't you have gone yourself and let me stay—”

“Well, I thought if I waited in the car, you would run inside and get the water—what would you have looked like—no water for the child.”

“I would have cheered, at least. Taken him to the fountain.”

“You always—”

Not the best start to the day, then. And she was right, I should have let her go with Julian. But she could have insisted. Now the Saturday traffic snared us; looking for parking we went around in circles. We returned with a pack of the best bottled drink but too late, the forty-minute game was over. Blue-shirted Scotland were already emerging from the park, cheerful and flushed with exhaustion. And there stood Julian on the other side of the street, the anxiety on his face melting into a smile, and he waved happily at us. Scotland had beaten Brazil, a rare event anywhere. I slowed down at a hydrant, he started running towards us; didn't see the other car that we both saw as he crossed, and he went flying, our boy, our happiness.

Nothing you've imagined about your worst fear comes close. In the first place you don't believe it, for weeks on end, most of the time; you'll wake up from the nightmare, something tells you, nothing can be so bad. It is not meant to happen, it hasn't. Life is a happy, positive occurrence, a spontaneous and joyful assertion of “I Am!” released from the primal slime. This … this death … is death, is regress, is not natural. There is nothing to say to your partner in grief; a brooding choking silence now sits on your heart. You can't eat together. You will not be touched. You sleep in the same bed; you listen in the night to the sounds of her grief that you cannot, dare not try to comfort. It's hers, just as you have yours. She needs it; you need yours. What's left in you to give? You so much want to be alone in your sorrow, to be consumed by it until you are one with it and no more. This is not your world any more.

Once a grieving woman came to the Buddha carrying a bundle in her arms.

“How can I help you, Mother? Why do you weep?”

She laid her burden at his feet, a dead child.

“You are the holiest of holy, Gautama, you know the secret of life itself. Make him live again. Only you can do it, Lord … and I will serve you the rest of my life!”

“There is one remedy,” the compassionate Buddha said, placing his ample hand on her head. “But I need a certain oil. It is not easy to obtain.”

“I will search heaven and earth to find it, Lord!”

“Then go and look for the people in this world who have not yet encountered grief. From each of them beg a mustard seed. When you have collected enough such seeds, bring them to me, and I will prepare the oil to bring back your child.”

She understood, bowed her head.

“Now go cremate your child and your grief.”

And that song line that you felt only as a distant shadow on the mind, a fleeting impression you turned away from—it sounds loud and clear.
Haré fuliya sohi karamave
… and the flower too withers; O mind, you fool, you deluded butterfly …

A funeral ginan, a dirge of sorts. How could your elders, your father, teach you this—this pessimism, this assertion of grief as a remedy to grief?

But grief there is, and you must learn to live with it. Look at the bigger picture, look at the world around you. You are not alone. The “I Am!” of life is not a boast but a struggle to survive.

Finally you begin to talk to each other, try to pick up the pieces of your life together.

“Would you like an egg this morning?”

“Yes … I would love that actually. Scrambled, perhaps.”

“Or you could make your Indian omelette …”

“Yes, I'll do that!”

The sound of a mother and child outside the window … you pretend not to notice, but you listen: there are two children actually, with the mother or nanny. And you think, If only she hadn't been so hotheaded; a brood would have glued us together … and perhaps she reads your mind as your eyes meet.

And thou—who tell'st me to forget, Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.

This new vacuum in your life; how will you fill it?

You go out, you meet friends. The Padmanabhs come and go. What can they do for you; what can anybody do. Gautam-George flies in for a day to comfort his sister; missed the funeral. He is married in suburban Toronto with
three
children. In this day and age. Well, better three than zero with memories. Try as you might, your home is like a lovely garden on which a freezing heartless wind swept down one day; now there is only this barrenness to take in. You make efforts to revive, but each time your heart pulls you back into its dark depth.

One day you come home to a note on the dining table, placed with consideration under your coffee mug: “I have gone away.” Just that. We had a life together, we had love and friendship and a child, we had some great times; but now there's nothing but pain and I have gone away. Hug and
kiss also understood. We did love each other, with our own brand of passion. We laughed. But that last long cry killed us.

I had been punished for my arrogance; shown up. Fool, you thought you knew better. This was what God said to his favourite Azazel—and sent him straight to hell and damnation, because he had said no to the command, to the role He had envisioned for him. And the demon Ravana had his island-fortress Lanka set ablaze by a band of monkeys. Archangel and demon, they defied and tempted—and angered—their God. Their worlds came tumbling down. Azazel and his books; Ravana's worldly power and glory. And I—all my happiness founded on my sense of myself in a larger world, and my love for a woman, and finally our devotion to our child. How flimsy a construct, this happiness, how vain; how easily it tumbled down. Hadn't I always been taught, all is illusion, all will come to naught?