Before We Visit the Goddess (14 page)

Sabitri's village was small and old-fashioned, and so were the cremation grounds. Unlike in the electric crematoriums in Kolkata, here the body would be burned on a funeral pyre in the open air; then Sabitri's ashes would be scattered in the sluggish brown river that ran by the cremation grounds. A deep tiredness overtook Bipin Bihari as he climbed down from the back of the lorry where he had accompanied the body. His bones ached, and the fillings in his teeth seemed to vibrate, giving him a headache. Still, he stood next to the pyre to make sure that the workers placed on it the right amount of sandalwood (for which he had paid extra) and that the corpse, draped in Sabitri's best sari and covered with garlands, its face now uncovered so that the spirit might leave more easily, was handled gently.

When the priest asked who would light the funeral fire, since Sabitri had no blood kin in the village, he stepped forward. He had thought he could do it, touch the flaming brand to the body, but when he looked into that face, rigid and bereft of its humanness, his hands shook so much that the priest had to help him. He was an old man; it had been a long day; the few neighbors gathered around the pyre thought nothing of it.

By the time he got back to the house, it was dark. He would have to stay over and return to Kolkata in the morning. There was only one bed in the house. Sabitri's. Rekha had made it up for him to sleep in, but he told her it would be disrespectful to the dead.

“Ma would not have minded,” Rekha said, cocking her head stubbornly. But he could be just as stubborn, so finally Rekha laid out a mat and bedsheets for him on the floor of the sitting room. He bathed and ate the food that she forced upon him: overcooked rice and dal that, in her distraction, she had salted twice. Before he retired for the night, he reassured her that Ma had made certain she would be taken care of. He knew this to be true because Sabitri—a planner, like him—had years ago shown him a copy of her will, of which he was to be the executor. Finally, he asked Rekha if she knew what had brought on the heart attack. Had Sabitri had been ill?

“Ma was just fine,” Rekha said, “and happy, too, until Bela Didi called.” Her face twisted and Bipin Bihari could see that she (like him) had never forgiven Sabitri's daughter for the grief she had caused Sabitri when she eloped all those years ago. For a moment he gave in to his resentment of Bela, remembering with dull anger how he had tried several times to befriend the girl as she was growing up. But she had been suspicious and thorny, treating him as though he had an ulterior motive.

“Bela Didi was crying loudly—even I could hear it. That one, it was problem after problem with her. She never cared how much she upset Ma with her news. After she hung up, Ma got real quiet. So many times I asked, but she refused to eat dinner. In the night, she started writing something. A letter, I think. She wouldn't go to bed. I told her she must lie down, her pressure would go high otherwise. She shouted at me to leave her alone. To go to sleep. But I shouldn't have listened to her.” She dissolved into tears again.

Bipin Bihari waited until Rekha was done sobbing. Then he asked where the letter was. She led him to the table where Sabitri had been sitting. He picked up one of the sheets of notepaper that lay on it. It struck him that this was the last thing Sabitri's hands had touched. He wanted to raise it to his lips, but Rekha was watching. The desire to know Sabitri's final thoughts swept through him like fire.
Dearest Granddaughter Tara
, he read.

But no, he could not invade her privacy this way, now that she was powerless to stop him. He gathered all the sheets, even the ones thrown on the floor. He smoothed them out and put them carefully in his bag. Here was an envelope, addressed in Sabitri's handwriting, which he knew so well, to Bela's daughter at her university. He took that, too.

Upon his return to Kolkata, Bipin Bihari would mail the entire packet to Sabitri's granddaughter. He would put in his own address and a phone number, in case someone called him from America, wanting details. He would wait a long time, hoping for that phone call. He wanted Sabitri's family to know that she had spent her last hours thinking of them, trying to communicate something so crucial and difficult that it had caused her death. With a fierceness that was rare for him, he wanted them—especially Bela, who had so summarily abandoned her mother—to feel guilty. But no one ever contacted him. Had the letter even reached Tara? There wasn't any way for him to find out.

After the cremation, the pyre workers had scooped up Sabitri's ashes in an earthenware pot and handed them to Bipin Bihari. There was an old motorboat waiting at a makeshift dock. It would take him to the middle of the river so that he could scatter the ashes. Three other men with the same mission were in the boat already. This annoyed Bipin Bihari, who had hoped to perform his task privately, but there was nothing to be done. The boat chugged ahead in jerky spurts; something was wrong with the engine. From the water, looking back at the cremation grounds, he noticed for the first time vultures, circling, swooping down once in a while like black arrows, more graceful than he would have ever believed birds of prey could be.

The boatman slowed the launch and told them it was time. One of the men—a young fellow with a shaved head, which indicated the death of a parent—began to weep, not caring who watched. There was something infectious about his unselfconscious grief; Bipin Bihari found himself close to tears. But Sabitri had hated displays of emotion, so he gazed into the distance with a stern expression.

They emptied the ashes overboard and set the containers afloat. The boat began its journey back to the shore. Bipin Bihari kept his eyes on the pot that he had been holding. It seemed important, somehow, to be able to distinguish it from the others. But his eyes were no longer as sharp as they had been; soon he could not see any pots at all.

“Was it your wife?” one of the men in the boat asked.

Bipin Bihari wanted to say yes, to claim Sabitri in death the way he had never been able to in life. But he was not a liar. It would have been accurate to have replied that she was his employer, but that, too, was far from the truth between them. Finally he said, “She was my friend.”

“You can't do this!” Bipin Bihari exclaimed, leaning over Sabitri's desk. They were in the back office at Durga Sweets, which over the years seemed more of a home to him than his one-room flat. It was late evening. The cooks had left, and the salespeople, too, so he allowed himself to raise his voice. He held up the typed sheets Sabitri had given him and shook them. “It would be the worst mistake. I won't let you do it.”

“And how do you propose to stop me?” Sabitri asked, her tone expressing a mild interest.

He could feel the rage pressing into his brain like an aneurysm. She was the only person who could make him feel this way. He wanted to shake the stubbornness out of her. “Very well. I can't stop you. But don't you see what a terrible mistake it would be? To sell the business now, when it's the most profitable it has ever been? After we got that excellent write-up in the
Telegraph
that's bound to bring us a new, younger crowd?”

She had on her obstinate face, the lower lip jutting out slightly. He tried a different tack.

“What's going to happen to all your faithful employees, who stood by you through the hard times? Are you willing to turn them out on the street? People like Balaram and Shirish Kaka, who are too old to look for other jobs—” And what he couldn't say:
What will happen to me, without you?

“Clearly you were too impatient to read through the contract, Bipin Babu,” she said, addressing him in the formal manner, employer to employee, the way she did when he had managed to get beneath her skin. “Page four:
The first term of sale is that everyone will be kept on
.”

How well she knew him. It was true. He hadn't read past the first page of the document. He'd been too upset. But concern for the workers—or even for himself—had been only a small part of it. Mostly, he had been afraid for her. “What about you? What will you do if you sell this place?”

“I'll retire to my parents' village.”

“But you hate the village. How many times have you told me about those petty-minded people, their gossip, their backbiting. . . . And Durga Sweets is your life—”

“There's no longer a reason for me to hold on to it,” she said flatly.

Her words were like a punch to his chest. What did she mean by
it
? Durga Sweets, or her life?

“Why do you say that?” His voice was small and damp.

In response she slid an aerogram toward him. From the red and blue border he knew it was from America, from Bela. He had tried hard to be fond of Bela, had ferried her back and forth from school when she was young, had even cleared his manager's desk for her so she could do her homework at Durga Sweets, close to her mother. But the girl had been sullen and thankless.

Looking at the aerogram now, he felt a constriction in his gut. A letter from Bela—at least the ones that Sabitri showed him—meant trouble. He didn't want to read it. But Sabitri was waiting, and he knew that he was the only person with whom she could share these letters.

Dear Mother, I'm very sorry to tell you that I'm canceling my trip to India. I know you were really looking forward to it, and to seeing Tara for the first time, and so was I. But Sanjay absolutely refuses to let us go. Yesterday we had a huge fight over it. He claims that it's not safe. He's afraid that since he and I both left India with documents that weren't exactly legal, I might be detained, and Tara along with me. He's also afraid that certain parties might find out that we're coming and harm us, since he'd been on their hit list before he escaped. I'm not sure if any of this is true, but since he feels so strongly, I've decided not to argue any more about it, at least for now. It's the only thing he asks of me, and he's such a good husband, always watching out for whatever I need. Most of all, he's the best father to Tara. Helps her with schoolwork. Coaches her basketball team though he really doesn't have the time. She adores him. And you know how sensitive she is—fights between him and me always make her sick. After our argument yesterday, she started throwing up. . . .

“She's never going to come and see me, is she?” Sabitri asked.

Bipin Bihari could tell by her tone that she knew the answer to that question already. Anger coiled through him. He wished he could force Bela to see her mother—how the letter had shrunk her, making her look suddenly aged. But he remained silent. An expression of sympathy now might make Sabitri break down, and that would mortify her.

“That husband of hers—from our very first meeting he hated me. He'll continue finding ways to keep us apart. All this time, I've been holding on to Durga Sweets for Bela's sake—in case something happened to her and she needed to come back and start over. I don't trust that Sanjay. I don't. But it's no use. He's got his claws deep into her. And now he's got a new weapon—Tara. That poor, softhearted child. He'll use Tara to get Bela to do whatever he wants . . .”

She was working herself up, her voice getting high and wobbly. She was usually such a strong woman, but her daughter was her Achilles' heel. He had to stop her before she said things she would hate herself for divulging, and him for having heard them.

“I don't think Sanjay's as bad as you make him out to be,” he said. “I think he loves Bela and his daughter.”

Sabitri glared at him. He could feel her brain whirring, trying to find something suitably spiteful to say to him. He folded his arms and held her gaze. What he really wanted was to pull her close. She was a tall woman. Would her forehead be at the level of his lips, like he imagined? But he had to satisfy himself by being the rock against which she could dash her anger until it broke into harmless pieces.