The Private Life of Mrs Sharma (17 page)

28

Wednesday, 31 August 2011

I am wearing the orange and green sari that I had chosen for today, but I am not at the airport to receive my husband. I have kajal in my eyes and rouge on my cheeks and just a little bit of lipstick on my lips, but I am not at the airport. Only my son is. I am sitting in my flat. Dressed up like a bride I am sitting in the prayer room with a garland of marigolds on my lap and a dead man at my feet.

Six hours ago he was alive, this dead man. He was alive until the moment that I hit him on his head with my son's five-kilo dumbbell. Fifteen minutes before that he had entered into my house through the main door, without one knock, without one word. The main door was closed, but it was unlocked, because I always keep it unlocked in the afternoon so that my son can let himself in when he comes home from school. The man entered into my house quietly, and I don't know for how long he stood outside the kitchen watching me before he said, Renu, come with me now.

I jumped when I heard the voice. My heart jumped. I dropped the pot of rice that I was holding. What are you doing in my house? I said, trying not to shout.

He tried to come into the kitchen but I pushed him out into the hall. Get out of my house! I said. Now I was shouting. I did not care if the neighbours heard me.

I will only leave this house with you, he said.

My husband is coming back today, I said. Get out!

No! he said, also shouting now. You will come with me!

Then, for maybe eight or ten minutes, he shouted and he cried and he begged for me to leave my house and my husband and my life and go away with him. He would not stop. I tried everything to make him leave. I shouted loudly, I begged softly, I tried to explain everything to him, but the man refused to listen to me. He just kept shouting, crying, begging. Then suddenly he stopped. Suddenly, all the shouting and crying and begging stopped. Suddenly, for almost one full minute, I think, he was quiet, absolutely quiet. He sat down on the divan and looked down at his shoes.

I remained standing, leaning against the main door. The room was quiet. I could hear the tick-tick of the wall clock.

After a few seconds he stood up and looked around the room, then he looked at me and walked into my bedroom.

I tried to do some deep breathing. Please come out of that room, I said as calmly as I could say it. I was still standing against the main door. Please, I said again, very gently. Please come out, and let us sit down and talk to each other properly.

He did not say anything, but then suddenly I heard a sound, a sound like a thud, but not a very loud thud. Then I heard
another soft thud, and then one more. When I reached the bedroom he looked up at me with the eyes of a madman.

You will never sleep on this bed again! he said, half-shouting, half-crying, hitting the bed with his fist, hitting the bed with his hand flat, thud, thud, thud, almost like my heart, actually, again and again with the strength of a madman. You will never ever sleep here again!

I tried to pull him away from the bed, but I just could not control him. This possessed madman just kept hitting the bed again and again while again and again he shouted, You will never ever sleep on this bed again!

Then suddenly he stopped and became quiet again. He bent down, and first I couldn't see what he was doing, but when he stood up, I saw that he had one of Bobby's five-kilo dumbbells in his hand. He turned his back to me and started looking around, and even though I could not see his face, I knew that he was looking for something to break. But these were our things, my family's things. I picked up the other dumbbell from the floor, and then, with all my strength, I hit him on the back of his head with it.

There and then he fell down. There and then he was dead.

There were only around forty minutes left for Bobby to come back from school so I could not just sit there all day next to the body and cry. But it seemed as if I could not do anything else. It seemed as if my body could not move. Then I realised that until I calmed myself down there was nothing at all that I
would be able to do. So I got up and went to the prayer room and closed my eyes and prayed, and then as my mind became calmer, my mind also became clearer, and then I understood what I had to do.

I went back to the bedroom. He still lay with his face down, the upper half of his body on the bed, his legs hanging off the bed, his feet on the floor. There was not much blood at all, just one small pool of blackish red at the back of his head and one thin stream of the same colour on the back of his shirt. That was all. I brought some water in a mug and cleaned the wound with my hanky. After that I covered it with gauze. I also tried to clean his shirt with a little bit of Surf. He did not look dead. He looked like a man who was either so tired or so drunk that he had fallen off to sleep while trying to get into bed.

After I cleaned him up nicely I had to pull him off the bed. He is not a very big man, not very heavy at all, but he was lying face down and I was scared that I would break his nose or his head if I just pulled him off the bed with his legs just like that. So I rolled him on to his back slowly and carefully, and then slowly and carefully I pulled him off the bed, inch by inch, with his legs. After that, after his whole body was on its back on the floor, I held on to his brown leather shoes and I pulled him into the prayer room. I have never carried a dead man but I always thought that the dead become heavy, become stone. But this was not very difficult, actually. Maybe because I make sure that the floor is always clean his body moved so smoothly, so easily across the floor as I pulled it. So I pulled him into the middle of the prayer room, under the fan, and
straightened out his arms and legs. I tucked his shirt into his pants and smoothed his hair, and I switched on the fan. He was calm. Actually, I was also calm. Sitting next to him here in the prayer room I felt calm in the same way that I used to feel calm standing next to him on the Metro.

Then I remembered that I had to clean up everything before Bobby came back so I went back to the bedroom again. By God's grace there was not much cleaning up to do. There were some dents and scratches on the headboard and the right side of the bed, and some on the bedside table, but nothing else. I just had to straighten the bed sheet and pillows, and dust off the bedcover and spread it again neatly on the bed. After that I went to the kitchen to clean up the rice that had fallen on the floor.

It is an odd thing. I think that it did not take more than ten minutes for the house to look normal again. A man lost his life in this house, he got killed here, but just ten minutes after that this same house seemed normal again.

Before Bobby came back from school I had enough time to have a bath. But then I had to think, which was difficult, because I did not have to think like a mother or wife or daughter-in-law or receptionist, the people that I am. I had to think like a woman who has killed a man.

The first thing I thought was that Bobby should not know about this just now. He would know about it afterwards, but just now I should hide it from him. This, I knew, would be
easy. He never goes into the prayer room, and if by chance he noticed the damage on the bed and bedside table, I would tell him that the pelmet came crashing down while I was cleaning the windows. Then I decided that I would send him alone to the airport to receive his father. I would tell him that I have had a very bad headache and that I would wait for them at home.

I don't know if I have thought correctly, I will only know that after some time, but killers probably never think correctly. But am I a killer if I never wanted to kill him?

I have sent Bobby off to the airport. I sent him off early. I told him to stop off at the flower seller in the market to buy a bouquet of roses for his father, yellow ones, one dozen of them, because I thought that I would keep the garland of marigolds that I had bought this morning to welcome my husband when he enters the flat. But the police will probably enter the flat before my husband will. So then maybe I will put the garland around the neck of the first policeman who enters the flat. Or maybe I will lay it over this dead body that lies here at my feet.

I will have to call up the police. There will be a smell soon. They will come, they will probably be here in forty-five minutes or one hour because the police are always late, and then they will be shocked. The police will be shocked to see such a respectable woman. They will look at each other, the three or four policemen who will come, and they will not know what to do with this woman who is so nicely dressed up in
this pretty orange and green sari draped in the Gujarati style. What type of criminal is this? they will whisper to each other.

But am I actually a criminal? I did not want to kill him. I only wanted him to stop shouting and banging and breaking everything. My husband is coming back home. I only wanted this man to go away. Was that a crime?

His mother will think that it is a crime. Even if a tiger or cancer had killed her son, his mother would think that it is a crime.

But I will not lie to the police. I don't need to. They will understand. They will understand the reason why this respectable woman did what she had to do. They will investigate, and do blood tests and lie tests and what not. But it seems that they will have to arrest me first. That is the way it is, I think. I will be arrested before they do anything else. Maybe they will put handcuffs on me. And then after that they will investigate. And then they will understand.

My husband will also understand, I know. I am his wife. I can make him understand anything. Obviously he will first be angry. He will shout and he will cry and in the middle of all the drama my poor son will watch helplessly. But it will all be fine in the end, I know. Both these men know that I am a respectable woman.

But the mother won't understand.

I don't think that I am actually feeling too scared. The truth is that there is no reason to feel scared. And whatever it is,
today is a special day, it is the day that my husband comes back to me after six hundred and nine days' time, and nobody, no dead body, no living body, is going to stop me, stop my family, from celebrating this grand day. I could not go to receive my husband at the airport, and I am sure that when he walks out of the airport building and sees his son standing there alone, his heart will break into a thousand little pieces, and maybe he is walking out just now, at exactly this moment, but even if I could not receive him at the airport, when he walks into his house today my husband will receive the grandest welcome from his wife. So the police will have to wait. If I call them just now, my husband and son are not going to get their dinner, and my husband has been waiting such a long time for this, and I don't like it when Bobby doesn't eat at the proper time. This man lying here will also have to wait because my husband and son will be here soon and they will be hungry, and even though the paneer and vegetables and dal are ready, and the dough is kneaded, I have to go into the kitchen now and make some more rice. This man will have to remain here lying quietly in the prayer room while we sit together, my husband and Bobby and I, after such a long time, and eat this delicious food that I have made.