Truth Lake (29 page)

Mr and Mrs Hàrélal came out to the porch to wave their daughter off. There was a flurry of humid breeze and dust swirled along the quiet lane where they resided. A white dog with a tooled-leather collar and a wagging tail sped out of a gate on the far-side of the lane and stood panting, gazing at their flowerbeds. It was followed out by a little boy, bouncing a ball. Casting an envious look at the gleaming Honda, he sketched a wave at his neighbours and then ran off, whistling for his dog to follow.

Neither Tanya nor Karmel saw the knowing look the older couple shared when their daughter hefted herself onto the bike. Nor did they witness the relief with which Mrs Hàrélal touched her husband's arm on re-entering the house. Outside, as the powerful engine snarled into life, Tanya placed a hand on Karmel's shoulder, her curls hiding her ecstatic smile.

Some months later Karmel was cleaning his bike in the smoky winter sunlight when he heard the gate open. He looked up with shining eyes, expecting his beloved back from the library, and found himself facing the postman instead. The man hovered, glanced up at the house a couple of times, before turning away.

'Looking for someone?' Karmel went towards him, wiping greasy hands on his shirt. The man hesitated. 'Do you know any Doshi living round here?' Karmel shook his head. 'I thought not.' The man smiled; 'It’s just that some yokel has got the idea that a Doshi lives here. Another letter for the bin, I expect. We get thousands like these every day. I wonder what they say.' Karmel laughed, catching a glimpse of a tattered yellow envelop, sheets of paper already protruding through one torn corner. About to go back to his task, he remembered Arun, the man he had been so many weeks ago. He was Doshi too. Perhaps the letter … 'Hoy!' He gave a shout. 

The postman turned. 'Yes?'

'Me! The letter's for me! I'm Doshi.'

'Aw, sir! I know that trick … but there's no cash in it, I promise! We check that every time!' The postman let out a guffaw. Karmel felt his temper rising.

'Look, it's
my
letter. I don't want any money. Here.' He took a hundred rupee note from his jeans. 'Take this and give me the damn thing.' Shaking his head in astonishment at the foibles of South Delhiites, the postman grabbed the note and dropped the letter into Karmel's eager hands.

Upstairs in the gloom of their apartment – Tanya insisted on keeping the curtains closed most of the time in case their landlady tried to peer in as she had done that first day – Karmel unfolded the coarse sheets of paper with shaking hands.  There were four in all and each one was closely written in tiny Hindi characters; even the margins had not been spared. Trembling so much he could barely keep his balance, Karmel looked to the last page and read the name at the end. 

Gauri. 

              His hands ceased shaking abruptly. His pulse returned to normal. It was not from
her
. A letter from Gauri could mean anything; she was scribe to the entire community. Maybe she was writing to thank him for sending the doctor up to Thahéra's sister's place. Maybe she was asking him to help her son in some way. He took the letter out onto the bright terrace with him and sat on the parapet to peruse it, glancing towards the gate expectantly. But as soon as he read the first three lines, he was gripped and could think of nothing else. In a swirling rush, he was back in Saahitaal. He slid down towards the terrace floor and started the letter again.

Arun Sahib – I call you that in respect, for that is how I recall you despite your other name – snow lies once more on the ground in our village, as I write, and trees, burdened with it, droop down to our frozen lake. Like them, I too feel the weight of this cold. In my lungs and in my bones. I feel that if I do not shed this burden soon, it will be the end of me.  And deservedly. As I have fought long and hard to build a life here, somehow, I am not ready to quit yet. So Arun, I have been forced to take up my pen to put right an injustice that allows me neither peace nor rest. 

              After you left, some men came to Saahitaal. You knew of it, I am sure.  Perhaps that was your doing. And they removed from our midst the body of the young foreigner, which had lain so long neglected to our shame. This shame I speak of, however, is not equally deserved, nor equally felt.  There are many in our midst who do not share it. Thahéra is one of those people.

              Karmel started and dropped the letter. Tanya had come silently onto the terrace and was holding out a book towards him, a serious expression on her face. The shawl she wore didn't quite cover her burgeoning stomach. Blinking, he waved her away and took up the letter again. 

             
How was it that we came to mislead you so? How was it that we allowed an innocent woman to take the blame for things she had not done? These are questions that you must be asking yourself now, as you read. Or perhaps you do not believe me. Perhaps you think I am defending her simply because she is my friend and I cannot bear to see the way she cries when she believes she is alone, heartbroken for all the losses she has endured?

Then read on and you will find the answers to your questions.

              Not long after the foreign man came into our midst – Camran, his name, yes I knew it all along – he began an affair with Thahéra which would have been the talk of Saahitaal but for his discretion. As it was, she constantly chaffed against the secrecy we imposed on her, unable as we were to comprehend Camran's motives or his character. Thahéra has always been bold, daring, known in our village for her strength and humour. Taking the blame for things that others did, rarely flinching from the punishment. After I fled my marital abode and returned to reside in the village as a lonely outcast – to be near my son, you understand and for no other reason – above all the women in this village, I was honoured to have
her
as my friend.

I cringe with disgust that you will read how false I was to her, how my actions belied the friendship between us.  But I must hurry on now, for a storm is coming and I wish to send this letter with my son to Bhukta before the blizzard breaks.

              Of Thahéra's father, Devsingh, and his temper you are not unaware. Of the way the old man died too, you are surely cognisant. I will not bore you by repeating the truth: he was a devil in human shape and no one will ever fully comprehend the things he did to his wife and to his long-suffering girls and any who dared thwart him. He was born mean, the way some people are. I do not speculate on why this was so. He is gone now and no one mourns him, save perhaps my own pathetic son. Nevertheless, in all the things the old villain had done, he had not committed outright murder.  So you can discount him. We would not have lied to protect Devsingh or his foul soul. Who then? 

              This will come as a surprise to you, perhaps, but Camran was not in truth an honourable man. He teased us all – ah, even me, and you have seen my ugliness – he played games, he was quicksilver in his caresses and lightning in his retreats. He told us that we could all learn to have and give love. He laughed at our conventions.

Many here desired him.

Thahéra gave her body to him, for she delighted in his interest. In secret, her sister too, gave her heart and soul to this man. 

              Does it shock you – a union between such a faded village woman and a bubbling youth from a different world? Probably not. Thahéra tells me that she thought you the wisest man she had ever known, wiser by far than her foreign lover.

              When she thought he was leaving, it was
Thahéra's sister
who followed him out to the clearing. She went to beg him to stay or to take her with him. And I, fool that I am, followed her, through curiosity and pride, for I wished to witness her humiliation.

Why did I feel like that? I guess that her nature had never appealed to me – secretive, hard, mistrustful – she was everything I was not and I thought she was trying to steal a man from her sister. But the main reason, I weep as I write it, is that I had hated her for many years, hated her for knowing what her husband was doing to me when I still lived with their family, and taking no action to stop it, just as she took no action to stop her father when he hurt her mother, just as she allowed Thahéra to be punished when it was she who had burnt down that cowshed. Ah, you are truly shocked now. No courage, she had. No loyalty. The opposite of Thahéra. I do not even have to tell you about all the other times in her childhood when she deflected anger or blame onto her sister, knowing the girl was ready to take it; or implicated her in some ‘crime’ which she knew would drive their father into a frenzy. She reasoned that if she kept him busy hunting out the faults of others, then she would suffer less. She simply watched her own back. Always. Which is why it took their father so long to find out about her and Camran, even though my poor, foolish son watched and reported with great accuracy and care.

              The rest you must already know, Arun – the tension in the clearing that morning, the leaves, silent with anticipation, even the river utterly subdued. But I will repeat it anyway. 

As they spoke together in front of the other foreign man,
Thahéra's sister
became more distraught than I'd ever seen her. She was desperate and begged him to take her away. She had no grasp on reality, no sense that for him she was merely a passing fling, a pleasure not a passion. He was gentle and tried to explain to her that he was to be married, that he was leaving in a few days but that he would be back in years to come to continue work on his project – the great hotel that he had planned for our village.

At that moment, Devsingh, her father, broke through the trees, pulling along my unfortunate son and shouting foul abuse; he was threatening them both with his stick – ah, his words stick in my mind even now. He taunted his eldest daughter for being a miserable creature, fit only for such dirty work as servicing a foreign man; and finally he told her that just as he had preferred her sister to her from their childhood, so had this foreign man chosen Thahéra over herself. Just as her husband had wanted Gauri – me, you understand, the old bastard was referring to the times her husband had molested me – more than he wanted her, so too did this foreigner desire other women
far more
than he desired her. He even desired
men!
Yes! Didn't she know it?

– Arun, her face was livid; but her father was implacable.

The boy in his spying had seen the two white men doing unspeakable things together, things fit only for devils and foreigners to do.

Devsingh was sneering in a frenzy of victory, for with each of his words Thahéra's sister was shaking more and more. You know what she normally looks like, cold as ice and as upright as a mountain. As he spoke she was utterly transfigured, broken, stooping like an ancient crone. Then he told her that he had always thought her the clean one, unlike her bastard sister, but now he was convinced that his blood did not run even in her veins. 

It happened so fast, I didn't have time even to step out of the trees. She straightened up, snatched the stick from his grasp – her strength formidable, made greater, perhaps, by humiliation and anger. I thought she would kill the old man and I screamed to Camran to step aside for to me the old devil's death would have been a relief.

But she
did not
aim for her father.

Camran, turning to move out of the way, he never really had a chance.  And so it happened. I deceived you and shamed myself.

The foreigner's death was no accident.

              Devsingh made off, smirking to see his handiwork. And to my knowledge, he never spoke of that day to anyone, preferring to hold that knowledge to his chest like a weapon to be drawn at will … now he will never use it.

I persuaded my son to hide Camran's body and his things; I calmed the wretched murderer and took her home.

Thahéra, pitiable girl, never knew what happened to her lover. She simply waited day after day for him to return from what she thought was a brief trip, thinking that he would, at least to bid her farewell. And he never did. She felt somehow tortured by her experience of him, perhaps by the desires he had awakened; she came once to discuss with me how she was feeling and I, vile liar that I am, simply nodded and told her that someone else would come along to satisfy her body and her heart if her husband would not, or that she should leave the area, take her children and go to some city to build a new life there.

But to her that was cowardly. She loves this village and her nephews and her sister and me – she wouldn't agree to leave us. She tolerated the old man in whatever way she could and protected her children from his wrath.

And then, weeks later, you came along, asking questions – the very thing Thahéra's sister had been dreading. She sought my help. We wished for you to go away. The night you came to question me, she attacked you – I beg your forgiveness, I did not know she would be so enraged. I was sickened by her after that and thought I would simply let things take their course. Which brings me to the last question –
why
did I deceive you?

              I said I hated Thahéra’s sister; that is true. But I also shared with her a certain knowledge of life. I knew what it was like to be betrayed – and used. I knew what it was like to suffer for no fault of your own. And she had two beautiful sons, whom she cherished. What would become of them if your men took her away? They had already lost their father to the plains. They couldn't lose her too. So, when I understood that you were smitten by Thahéra, by her dignity and her form – Stitching Woman informed me of that, she knows us better than we know ourselves – I was sure that you would not wish to see her come to any harm. And when Thahéra's sister came to me, sobbing that you were indeed a policeman and that you had asked her son to help you find the killer, I suggested a plan to her.

I had made sure Thahéra was willing to defend herself – for your sake, she wanted to be with you so much that she was even willing to poison the old beast – and everyone reacted as expected, with horrific precision, including you, Arun, when you suspected Thahéra of harming Camran. She
was
guilty – of her father's death, yes, so were we all: Stitching Woman’s daughter supplied the poison; I mediated the plan; Thahéra added it to his food – and that guilt Thahéra did not wish to hide. But she could not understand why you were so angry with her about that if we had told you
everything
.