An Obedient Father (27 page)

"Mausiji, will you tell him for me?" Anita held Shakuntala's hand and looked into her aunt's eyes as she asked this. "I don't want to cry anymore."

Shakuntala gazed at Anita sadly for a moment. "What's the use of telling him, daughter? It will only make it harder to convince him to let you live with us."

When I saw the surprise on Anita's face, I knew she had not believed my warnings. I felt a little relief Perhaps this confirmation of what I had said would cause Anita to stop. Shakuntala went and let in her husband, Mr. Sharma.

During lunch I talked the most, trying to keep the conversation off why the three of us had suddenly appeared in Morris Nagar. To talk and pretend nothing had happened filled me with energy. The excuse we used was that Asha had been sleeping a lot and we wanted Mr Sharma to examine her. Mr. Sharma had bought a doctor's certificate a few months earlier as a source of income after retirement and had begun building a practice by writing the first prescription free.

Asha was woken to eat, and after she finished, Mr. Sharma asked a series of questions, most of which Asha answered no to. He wrote Asha a prescription and left for work.

Anita told Shakuntala she wouldn't stay in Morris Nagar. "I only wanted to let you know what he did." Shakuntala answered she was glad to learn and made no further offer of help.

I was amazed to leave the house and see the world still there and hear the birds.

We went to Bittu's house next. Bittu, Radha's brother, lived in Sohan Ganj, a ten-minute walk from our home. He had two rooms in a three-story building which had been built by his grandfather. The house was divided among him and the several sons of his father's brothers. His two rooms were shared with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law.

Bittu was asleep in one room, and in the other, the three members of his family were sitting on a bed drinking tea and playing cards.

Anita interrupted the offers of tea that greeted us with "I have a serious thing to tell."

Bittu's son, Rohit, woke Bittu. He entered the room sneezing. He wore a kurta pajama and carried a string of worry bends in one hand. Vibha, his daughter-in-law, brought him a chair. We also had chairs and were sitting in a row in front of the bed and Bittu's chair.

"I must tell you something," Anita said.

Bittu looked at me, as if to ask what it was about. I gave no response.

"When I was a child, he raped me." Anita turned toward me so that there would be no mistake as to who "he" was.

"Remove the child!" Bittu's wife, Sharmila, shouted. Rohit immediately stood and took Asha out. We all waited in silence. I wondered what would happen if I got up and left. In a day of impossible things, this appeared no more unlikely than anything else.

The story was told again. Sharmila kept interrupting with questions, because she found everything so unbelievable, and Bittu repeatedly told her to hush. Nobody said anything to me, though they watched me with such attention that I began looking at the floor. The floor was made of a yellow stone with green specks in it. I wondered what would happen to Anita. Nobody was going to take her into their home after this rumor spread, and it would spread, because scandal always did.

At some break in the story, which had been going in circles, Sharmila said, "Bring the older people. Something must be decided."

"Yes," Bittu agreed, and went to collect the men of his and my generation and the one person, his father's sister, surviving from the previous one. They gathered, one by one, in Bittu's front room. These were Radha's cousins and they had known me for thirty-five years, during which, just because I was the family's son-in-law, whenever we met in the street they felt compelled to buy me a cup of tea or a cold drink.

Anita told the story again. It was late afternoon. The audience was louder now. "In the old time we could have killed him," a man said. The members of the group egged each other on.

"The police would not care if we did."

"Look up," shouted Koko Naniji, Radha's aunt. I did, and the glares made my head drop again.

Anita looked with great concentration at whoever spoke.

"What were we thinking when Radha was married to him?" someone asked.

"Poor Radha," people periodically said. I wondered whether Anita realized that the loyalty of Radha's family was to Radha, not to her. Sharmila and Vibha made tea and began passing around teacups. I was given one also, which I found comforting.

"Get the girl away from him."

"Who, Asha?"

"Asha also."

"Anita needs a home of her own."

"Homes don't grow on trees."

"Neither do daughters."

"She needs protection."

"We are here."

"She can't live with us forever."

"Why not?"

The decision was made by acclamation. Marry Anita. Then people began murmuring about the dowry. "In this bad world no one will marry a widow, especially one who doesn't work and has a child, without a dowry."

"Will you give her a dowry?" Koko Naniji asked.

It took a moment for me to realize that the question was addressed to me. I looked up to say yes, and this time my head did not fall. If Anita got married, my responsibilities would end.

"I don't want to marry," Anita said.

The voices trailed off.

"What do you want, daughter?"

"I don't know."

"Think of Asha," Sharmila said.

Anita looked at the faces watching her. Evening had come and there were shadows in the room. Soon the lights would be turned on.

"What do you expect from us?" Bittu asked.

Anita did not answer.

"Rahul is a widower," someone offered. For a while names and suggestions were exchanged. It seemed Anita's desires had been ignored.

People began dispersing back to their rooms. No one made Anita an offer to let her stay with them. Koko Naniji was the only one to even acknowledge we were leaving. She did this by giving advice. "Lock him in his room at night. Give him a bucket to piss in."

The stars were out as we walked through the narrow alleys that connect Sohan Ganj to the Old Vegetable Market. A wind carrying dust and bits of gravel coursed around us. The sounds of people leading their lives, cooking, talking, listening to the radio were everywhere. I wondered if Anita's anger had at last eaten everything it could reach.

I opened the flat door and let Anita and Asha enter before following. "Go take a bath and change your school uniform," Anita said. Asha left to do so. I realized with surprise that I would sleep again on my cot tonight.

I sat on the sofa in the living room. Anita went to the phone and, after looking something up in the phone directory, began dialing a number. I did not dare ask whom she was calling. The fluorescent light above me thrummed.

"Hello, this is Anita. I'm Mr. Karan's daughter. Yes. Is Mr. Mishra there?"

The phone is black, heavy, with a metal bottom. There are brown stains on Pitaji's scalp. I wonder whether they mark where his skull is softest, like bruises on a cantaloupe. The triumph of telling the world faded when I sat in Bittu Mamaji's rooms. I smelled masala roasting, somebody's dinner, and thought. What now? Calling Mr. Mishra is joyless. As I explain to him what Pitaji did, fear for the future clambers into me. Pitaji wheezes while I speak.

"Do you want to talk to Pitaji?" I ask when I am done.

"No," Mr. Mishra says. He stays on, and I have nothing to add. I put the phone down without saying goodbye.

Pitaji stands and, looking at the floor, walks to his room.

Asha is asleep on our bed. The side of her face is pressed into her pillow while one arm stretches ahead as if she were swimming.

After half an hour, I shake Asha's shoulder and say, "The whole world is dying for you and you're asleep." She opens her eyes immediately, as if even in sleep she is waiting. "How old are you that you need this much rest?"

I decide to clean the flat. It is my flat, too. I mop on my knees. Asha dusts. I want to punish Asha for sleeping all day. She had slept while sitting on a chair at Bittu Mamaji's and almost fallen off. I suffer and she cannot even watch.

As I swing the gray rag from side to side and crawl over the floor, I keep thinking, I have nothing to threaten Pitaji with. To be angry without power is to be ridiculous. Asha finishes before me because dusting is easier. She does not thank me for doing the harder labor. She goes to bed again. Kneeling in the common room, I call out, "If it weren't for your school, I would live with Rajesh." The words shame me. I stop working and stand. To be hopeless means believing there is no future different from the present. I leave the bucket and rag where they are and go to Asha.

I lie beside her. I ask Asha to drape herself over me. I used to ask Asha to do this sometimes when Rajinder was alive. I repeat my request until she complies. Asha smells like sugary milk. I smooth the back of the gown she is wearing. "This flat is mine. We are going to live here forever," I say Her breathing does not change and I realize that I can offer her no safety.

Pitaji stays in his room that night.

I worry over my choices.

I cannot marry. Marriage would mean having to share what little I have with a stranger.

No relatives will keep me in their home for long. I lived with Rajinder's family for a month after he died. Even to think of being homeless, of remembering to put back in your suitcase everything you take out, is exhausting.

In the morning and during the day I think. If Pitaji tries to force us from the flat, I will stand on the gallery yelling his crimes to the compound till he relents. I know this is not a good plan.

Pitaji does not leave his room.

At night I keep a hammer beside me. Several hours after going to bed I hear water splashing in the latrine bucket. It is a hollow sound at first, and then, as it thickens and my mind rouses, I know Pitaji is no longer in his room. I had expected Bittu Mamaji and Shakuntala Mausiji to come during the day and see what was happening. Again I count the money I have taken from Pitaji. If I did not have to pay for housing or Asha's school, we could live on it for a year.

In the morning Asha goes to school. I spend the day waiting for Pitaji. He does not appear. The next day also passes this way. At night the refrigerator door opens and closes and the water bottles clink. I grip the hammer's wooden handle. Pitaji bathes. Like a child afraid of moving in her bed for fear of attracting the ghost that is in the room, I lie still. Once, I squeeze Asha's hand so tightly that she wakes hitting me. A week goes by without my seeing Pitaji. One morning I find his undershirt bunched on a chair in the common room. I become so panicked, I throw it into the squatter colony.

During the day, when I am alone, any unexpected sound can cause my heart to thump. At night I dream regularly that my hammer is being wrested away I put a knife under the bed. Sometimes I wake to find the light from the common room bleaching the darkness on my face. Another week goes by.

When Asha is at school and Pitaji is behind his blue door, the idea that there is no one to help me makes me so lonely and afraid that I begin boiling sheets or washing all the walls with soap. By working hard I can prove the flat is mine.

With Asha home, I feel better, even though we hardly speak. She often goes to the roof with her schoolbooks. Asha never mentions Pitaji's absence. Once, I ask her what she is thinking. Asha answers, "I didn't say anything."

Waiting distorts time. I sometimes imagine I will get white-haired and Asha will leave home for college and then one day Pitaji will emerge from his room unchanged.

But I know Pitaji will reappear soon. To delay this, I begin preparing elaborate meals for Pitaji before going to bed. I hope that if he has good food he will be less likely to reenter the world. Every morning I also slip the newspaper, unfolded till it is thin enough, under his door.

Weeks into this strategy, its purpose changes. I now cook as a bribe, to diminish the anger he will feel when he finally starts living in the day Perhaps we can return to where we were. We could live together again. The purpose alters, because I realize Pitaji cannot stay in his room forever. When he comes out he might force Asha and me to leave the flat.

One morning, while I am in the kitchen cleaning the breakfast plates, Pitaji's door opens. He is wearing pajamas with an undershirt. His face is gray with beard. My blood fizzes from adrenaline. My hands become numb. Pitaji stares at me. His beard makes him look dangerous. As his mouth twists to speak, I run to the balcony, up the ladder, to the back of the roof

My fear is so basic that I do not understand it. Until I saw Pitaji, I had been willing to live with him. I take small breaths. Delhi's roofs line all the horizon. Pitaji had said that if I told people, in a year or two he would forget his shame and repeat his crime. This I know will occur. This is his nature.

I come down in an hour. Pitaji is back in his room, his door closed.

Later, I am kneeling on our bed, ironing a sari, when Pitaji reappears. My back is to him as he enters our room. I spin around. I consider leaping to the gallery and then down the stairs. Pitaji has shaved. He stares at me. He has on pants, shirt, and shoes. His lips are parched white. I had wanted to wall him from the world by revealing his crimes. His leaving the flat means I have failed and shame has no power over him.

"I didn't do anything to Asha," Pitaji says.

"Enough. What you did."

Pitaji stands and watches me for minutes. I cannot look away. All the weight he has lost makes his face drape. Pitaji touches a cheek with his fingertips. This is a new mannerism and I wonder if it comes from being alone too long. Pitaji appears to shake before me, like broken film fluttering in a projector.

"You don't have to leave," he offers softly.

"I wouldn't. Even if you tried. The flat is mine."

Pitaji is quiet, as if he is planning. After a while he says, "I'm not so bad a man."

I laugh. In my fear I had forgotten how strange he is. He keeps looking at me. I wonder what he is thinking. Pitaji goes out into the sun.

I continue to press the sari. Pitaji will attack Asha someday. This is as likely as gravity I must now leave these rooms and live the rest of my life on other people's kindnesses. Maybe Kusum can give me money, but I cringe at the thought of her resentful generosity.

The hot press releases a sweet soap smell from the clothes. I was the first person in our extended family to own a press. Rajinder bought it for me. Rajinder was hard. Once, when we were robbed by a cleaning woman, he demanded the police beat her till she showed us where she had hidden my bracelets and Rajinder's watch. I do not have the courage to go to the police and make up a story that Pitaji tried to rape Asha.

Perhaps an hour later, as I put the clothes in their cupboard, I hear a neighbor outside say, "What are you thinking, Karanji?"

"Nothing," Pitaji answers. I peer into the gallery. He is standing at the very end, near the steps to the compound. His back is against a wall and he is looking straight ahead, with his shoulders hunched and a hand on his cheek.

Pitaji returns. He walks past me without meeting my eyes, goes into his room, closes the door.

Pitaji's room can be bolted from the outside. The bolt makes a scratching noise when I draw it. I do not think about what I am doing till the bolt is at rest. Pitaji must have heard me, but he does not ask me to unbolt the door.

I then take Pitaji's medicines, his diuretics and beta blockers, his brown glass bottles, orange plastic vials, two cardboard boxes, one of pink tablets and another of blue, from the refrigerator and throw them in the dustbin on the balcony. I do this and go to the living room. I stand there shifting from one foot to the other. I enter the common room briefly and see Pitaji's locked door. I go to my room, where I sit on my bed and look at the floor while gripping my knees. Ten minutes later, not certain whether I am hiding my act or keeping Pitaji from saving the medicines, I shake the dustbin into a polythene bag, race from the flat, down into the alley, throw the bag into a garbage woman's wheelbarrow.

Soon after Asha returns from school, Pitaji knocks on his door. Because he did not first try to open it, I know he was aware of being locked in. Asha, still in her uniform, is drinking water near the refrigerator. I unbolt the door and step aside. Without looking at me, Pitaji goes to the latrine. I wait next to the door. I do not acknowledge Asha's gaze. When Pitaji returns, he pulls the door shut behind him.

Asha goes to the roof with her school bag.

I am ashamed of myself and want to love her. From the balcony I call, "Do you want juice?"

Asha comes to the top of the ladder and looks down. "I will forget you. Both of you. When you are dead, no one will ever think of you." I want to grab Asha and beat her till she falls to the ground crying.

I go back into the flat. The refrigerator even looks empty. I smile.

At night, before I go to bed, I unbolt Pitaji's door.

When Pitaji comes and kneels beside where I sleep, the fluorescent arms of the clock are past two. I am not afraid and do not reach for the hammer or the knife. "My medicines. They're not in the fridge."

"I don't know." I pretend to have been woken. I am on my side facing him.

"My medicines?"

"Am I your doctor?"

Pitaji sits on a chair across from the bed. I keep my eyes slitted open. He stays there for nearly an hour. He looks like a dark mound.

Earlier, he looked so weak standing at the edge of the gallery that I know I can fight him.

The next morning Pitaji goes to his doctor. I feel that I must continue my war. A few minutes after the door closes behind him, I phone Dr. Aziz. I tell him who I am and say, "My father raped me when I was twelve." He does not respond to this. I want to tell him all the details but am embarrassed. "I have a daughter who is young. Do you think he might rape her?"

"I don't know anything about that. I have never talked with him about such things." His voice is hesitant and sad.

"Thank you."

"Can I help?"

"No," I answer.

Pitaji returns and, unexpectedly, puts his medicines in the refrigerator again. When he is sitting on his cot undressing, I come and stand in his doorway. Pitaji looks up, frightened. His thinness and fear turn him mysterious.

I ask, "What did Dr. Aziz say?"

"He said I was fine and gave me new prescriptions."

"What do I care about that?" I smile to let him see my hate. "Did he tell you I phoned and told him about you? He kept quiet, so I told him about the newspapers you put under me to catch the blood. He called you a monster."

Pitaji watches me. I glare at him. He stands unsteadily and closes his door in my face. I bolt him in. I then take his new medicines, put them in the paper bag he brought them home in, and slip the bag over the balcony's ledge into the squatter colony.

My revenge begins this way.

I start cooking six rotis for Pitaji instead of four and pouring a spoon of butter on each. I am not responsible for his appetites.

Pitaji is locked in all day. At night, before going to bed, I unbolt him. He so thoroughly eats everything I prepare that I worry he is throwing away the food. I check in the latrine and I check in the squatter colony, but there is no indication of this. We rarely speak. He occasionally comes into my room and wakes me to ask where the laundry soap is or where to find a needle and thread. He does not mention his medicines again.

One Sunday afternoon, while I am in our room, Asha opens Pitaji's door and demands that he come out and watch television. She is saying, "Come here," when I enter the common room. Pitaji is on his cot staring at Asha. I grab her and hurl her away from the door. I lock him in again.

The weeks pile into months. Mrs. Chauduri from work phones. I can tell from her false solicitousness that she is hoping for gossip. "He is sick," I say, and we end the conversation. No one from Ma's side of the family tries to contact us. Krishna calls. "You have the shamelessness to pick up the phone," he says. "Bring my brother." I hang up. I am surprised that the news has taken so long to spread. He calls a minute later and, without any insults, asks for Pitaji. Pitaji says he is fine and that yes he cannot understand the lies I have told about him. Pitaji's stomach has again begun to spill into his lap. I am in the doorway to my room. After Pitaji hangs up the phone, he tells me, "I do everything you want." He appears to wait for me to say something. I do not, and sighing, he stands and leaves for his room. I bolt him in.

Perhaps three months after I first locked Pitaji in his room, Shakuntla Mausiji and Sharmila Mamiji visit one afternoon. I had stopped thinking of the outside world. I hear the doorbell and unbolt him. I often wonder how he spends his day. The only times I see him are when he wants to leave his room. Pitaji is lying on his cot in his underpants looking at the ceiling fan. He must have heard the bell, too.