The Death of Vishnu (4 page)

“Do you have one for me?” Vishnu asks.

“This one’s almost done,” Kavita says. “You can have it.” The phuljadi goes out just as the wire stem passes from her hand to his.

“Take this one, then,” she says, “quick, before it goes out too.” Vishnu takes the sparkler but it too burns out. The wires glow orange in his hands, he holds them up to peer into the darkness. The movement on the walls has stopped, the shadows have fallen back to rest.

“It’s dark,” Kavita says.

There is a flash from the window. Rockets begin to bloom in the night, they color her face green and blue. She turns around to stare at the sky. The shadows stir a little to life again.

Vishnu gazes with her at the garden unfurling above them. “It’s never dark on the night Lakshmi is around,” he says.

The years pass, and every Divali, she graces the landing. She gives Vishnu phuljadis, whole ones sometimes. He uses them to light strings of red and green patakas, the ones she likes so much to watch, but is herself afraid to light. They burst in long volleys on the landing, and Vishnu looks at the flashes in her eyes. Always, he sees both fear and fascination. Sometimes he holds on to the top end of the string, and the explosions climb the red and green rungs, creeping closer and closer to his fingers, until she screams for him to let go. Then he tosses the string into the air, the crackers turn fiery cartwheels over their heads; Kavita covers her eyes with her hands, and the shadows are forced down to the floor.

“Kavita.” The Divali comes when Kavita descends without phuljadis. Vishnu notices she is wearing different clothes now. He notices her body is different too, it is fuller, with an allure he has not suspected before. He notices many things about her that year. “Kavita,” he thinks, as she negotiates the stairs in high heels, trailing a group of laughing friends, their perfume sweet in the landing air. “Kavita,” he wants to say aloud, as she passes by, her eyes in a dream, her lips in a faraway smile. “Kavita,” he wants to say, and reach out his hand and touch, as she glides by on an invisible plane, the edge of her sari undulating like a wave behind her.

He says it one day, “Kavita,” and doesn’t realize he has uttered it aloud. She stops, as surely as if he has physically intercepted her. She stares at him uncertainly. A smile plays at her lips, and Vishnu sees the mischief seep into her eyes.

“Kavita
memsahib
!” she says, and looks at him daringly, to see if he will contradict her. Her hands are on her hips, and Vishnu can see the skin of her midriff exposed between her blouse and petticoat.

Vishnu looks into her face, past the defiance, and is struck by her vulnerability. His need to touch her has never been stronger. “Kavita memsahib,” he whispers, and folds his straying hands together.

Delight springs to her eyes. She turns from him to hide her smile. “Salaam, memsahib!” Vishnu salutes, as Kavita raises her head, tosses her hair, and begins to ascend the stairs triumphantly.

T
HE FIREWORKS FADE
from the night. In their place are hundreds of bulbs, wrapped in squares of colored cellophane. They light up the sky in bursts of red and blue and purple.

He stands with Padmini at the entrance to the fair. It is two months since the first time he has been to see her. He cannot believe she has come with him. How has he persuaded her to leave her room?

“I love melas!” she says, as they enter the city of stalls made of cloth and rope and bamboo. The lights blink on and off all around, the loudspeakers are blaring an old Shamshaad Begum song. Ahead rises the giant wheel, lifting laughing fairgoers into the sky.

“Look! Carrots!” Padmini says, pulling Vishnu toward a gunnysack stall. A man sits behind a mound of vegetable scraps. He is inserting carrots into one end of a shiny tube and they are emerging in an unbroken spiral at the other end. “And potatoes! Look! Look!” The potatoes have been forced through a slicing machine, a stack of ridged ovals lies spread out before the man.

“Come right up, memsahib, see what the wonders of science can do for you. Every husband should buy one of these for his wife, yes, you too, sir.” He points at Vishnu with the implement. “Make your shrimati happy!”

Padmini has put her elbows on the wooden platform on which the man with the vegetables is performing his magic. “Does it do mooli too?” she asks, leaning forward and resting her chin on her palms.

“But of course!” In goes a long white radish; it, too, emerges as a spiral.

Padmini claps her hands. “Here, you try it, memsahib,” the man says. People stop to watch. Padmini takes a carrot and puts it into the metal tube. She turns the handle, but nothing happens. A hush passes over the spectators. “You have to push it through,” the man quickly says, and shows her how. The carrot emerges in a spiral, Padmini laughs, and a sigh of relief is heard from the crowd.

“It’s so easy!” Padmini turns around and exclaims. Dazzled by her endorsement, people surge forward to buy the carrot cutter. The man sells so many that he gives her a new one, still wrapped in plastic, and tells her she can keep it.

“I’ve always loved kitchen things,” she says, as they walk through the gunny-lined corridors.

Vishnu looks at her silver-sandaled feet treading delicately around the puddles of mud. He looks at her dress, studded with sequins, sees the layers of red, red lipstick on her lips, the kohl applied so skillfully, stroke by stroke, that her eyes seem to float white and free. He is still amazed, amazed to be walking with this exquisite creature next to him, this woman with the stainless-steel gadget held so tightly against her sequined bosom. He still cannot believe that she has agreed to be with him today.

“Guddi ke baal!” Padmini points. The cotton candy does look like pink doll’s hair, it appears from nowhere, spinning itself into a giant pink puff around the stick waved around inside the bowl of the machine.

“Would you like some?” Vishnu asks, and Padmini nods shyly. Vishnu buys it for her, and they continue.

“Look at that! What a motor!” They are passing a photographer’s stall, lined with all sorts of painted backdrops. There is a horse, standing up on two legs, perilously close to the edge of a cliff; an aeroplane with painted-on wings, obviously airborne, as evidenced by the clouds behind; even a crescent moon surrounded by stars, a rocket spaceship about to land on the surface. But Padmini is pointing at the bright red car painted on a wooden cutout, with yellow headlights, and a plate lettered in English, which the man reads out: “Good luck. Made in USA.” She runs to the seat hidden behind and leans out of the window. “How do I look?” she says, as she presses on the painted-on horn.

“Only three rupees for a picture,” the man says, so Vishnu pays him. He begins to sit in the seat next to her, but she stiffens. “No, just me,” she says, “just me, or just you, but not both.”

She begins to rise, but Vishnu stops her and gets up instead. There is a flash as the photo is taken.

They have an hour before the picture will be developed. They come to a canvas tent outside which a man stands. “Come see the film!” he shouts. “Cabaret dance by Reshma! Very hot! Up next, five minutes!”

“Let’s go!” Vishnu says. “I love seeing the films here.”

Padmini is unsure, but allows herself to be led through the tent flap. Inside, wooden benches face a sloping white sheet that has been sewn to the tent. A naked bulb swelters at the end of a wire. The heat has built up with every show, the air is now thick with the smell of perspiration and warm canvas. Vishnu and Padmini join the audience, which waits listlessly in the heat, scattered around the benches like victims of a carnage.

“I’m not used to this,” Padmini says. “Usually I get taken out to proper cinemas. Taj, sometimes even Novelty.” She shifts around, displaying obvious discomfort on her wooden seat. “And mai, it’s so hot!” She tries fanning herself with the carrot cutter.

“It’s going to start in a second,” Vishnu says. Outside, the ticket seller is making a last all-out attempt to attract customers. “See Reshma’s body sizzle like a pataka in the most passionate and revealing dance of her career! See her bare all, her youth, her beauty, her all!”

The light finally goes off, and Reshma appears on the screen, her head unnaturally elongated. She pouts and prances, and boasts that her body is so intoxicating she could even make the priest in the temple worship at her feet if she wanted. Although the promised revealing of her youth does not materialize, the audience is quite satisfied, and there are whistles and catcalls at the screen.

“That fat cow!” Padmini snorts after they have exited. “All she ever does is wriggle that big stomach of hers! Why did you take me to see her?”

“Because you dance so much better than her,” Vishnu says quickly. “You should be the one up there.”

“You really think so?” Padmini wants to hear more. “But she has bigger breasts than I do.”

“Yes, but your face. There’s no comparison.” Padmini is pleased at this.

It is late by the time they get back to the street where she lives. There is music and light everywhere, young girls and women beckon from windows, from doors, from balconies.

“Can I come?” he asks.

“Depends,” she answers, rubbing her thumb and fingers together. “You know what you need if you want to come in.”

I
T IS LATE
afternoon when he awakens. The tide has come in and receded while he slept. The sand stretches to the water’s edge, gleaming in the sun’s rays as if painted with silver.

He tries to remember the night before. Standing on Padmini’s doorstep after the mela. Telling her how much she means to him, telling her how much he loves her. Trying to find the words into her room, into her heart.

Padmini smiles her half-smile. “Wait here till I am done,” she says, and runs her fingers lightly across his lips. He tries to catch them, to kiss them, but only her attar remains.

He cannot remember how long he sits outside her building. Listening to the music float by, watching the people file in and out. He gets up when the sound of the ghungroos chiming inside becomes too much to bear.

Is the sky still dark when he makes his way to the beach? Are the stars still out when he lays back his head on the sand? He lies by the water and thinks he has not felt this way with any of the other girls. This desire to be consumed with Padmini in one fiery instant, this feeling that he wants them to spend a lifetime together.

But now the sun is up, and the day demands more practical pursuits. He watches a seagull making its way across the beach in search of food. It hops through the sand, stops to peck at a piece of plastic, then hops on. It stops each time it sees something yellow or orange, and tests it with its beak. A wad of paper, a cigarette butt, a dried mango pit—everything inedible is spit back out.

The bird gets closer and Vishnu sees how ugly it is. The head is dark and shiny, as if dipped in oil. The feathers are streaked with black and look oily too. Gobs of brown cling to the legs.

The gull walks up to where he is sitting and lunges at a crust of bread in the sand. Vishnu watches the bread disappear into the beak, and imagines it traveling in one large piece down the bird’s gullet. His own stomach rumbles its emptiness.

The bird stares at his toe, and Vishnu wonders if it will peck at it. He sits completely stationary, tempting the bird with his stillness, hands poised at his sides, ready to twist the white-and-black neck. The bird lifts its head, looks beadily at his face, then turns and hops away.

The sun hovers above the water. The hunger in his stomach rises, a roiling tide inside. He tries to remember when he has last eaten. Did Padmini tear off a bite for him from her cotton candy?

A small boy walks up to him. “Would you like some crabs?” he asks, holding out a bright yellow plastic pail with a toy spade in it. Vishnu notices the boy is wearing bathing shorts made of striped red nylon. They look expensive.

“I caught too many of them,” the boy explains, “and Mummy said we can only take one of them home. Would you like the rest?” The boy stirs the spade in the pail and Vishnu hears the contents scrape against the plastic.

“How big are they?” Vishnu asks, looking skeptically at the pail.

“Oh, all sizes,” the boy says, and lowers the pail, so that Vishnu can peer inside. “See this one?” He points with his spade at the largest crab, only a few inches wide. “That’s the only large one. I’m going to add it to my aquarium.”

Vishnu shakes his head and mumbles no. The boy stands there, surprised. “You really should take them—they’d make great pets. Besides, I spent all afternoon looking for them.” His voice has an injured tone.

“Go away,” Vishnu hisses at the boy. “I don’t want your crabs, they’re too small!”

The boy goes running toward a man and a woman. They are also wearing swimming clothes. “Mummy,” he cries, “the man says my crabs are too small!” Vishnu turns away.

When he looks back, the boy is emptying the pail into a hole dug out in the sand. Vishnu watches as he straightens up and goes running after the couple, the pail swinging by his side.

A fresh knot of hunger tightens in Vishnu’s stomach. His vision swims. He suddenly sees Padmini emerge from the water and walk toward him across the wet sand. Drops of water fall from her hair, a platter piled with fish gleams in her hands. The sun blurs and lists peculiarly to one side. He wonders if he should go over to the hole and see if the boy has dumped in the large crab as well.

There is a screech from above. Wings flap above his head, and he looks up to see a blur of oily brown feathers. The seagull circles once, then lands. It hops to the hole and perches at the edge, gripping the wet rim with its claws.

Leaning forward, the gull probes deep into the hole, then straightens out. Vishnu can make out legs and claws flailing through the sides of its beak.

The gull hops back from the hole, then turns toward Vishnu. It stares at him for a second, then spreads its wings wide. Vishnu watches the feet leave the ground, watches the body ascend into the air, watches the head turn lazily toward the sea. He tracks the bird as it completes half a circle, tracks it through the sky, tracks it until it flies toward the sun and is swallowed in its brilliance.