Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1 by Khushwant Singh

Author:Khushwant Singh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2012-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

F I F T E E N

It Was Dark

SHASHI DESHPANDE

‘Are you awake?’

I came out of an ugly dream, in which I was wandering all over an unfinished skeletal building, looking for someone...

‘Yes.’

At first there was only a relief that I was in bed, not on a scaffolding, hopelessly searching for something.

‘Will you come and have your tea?’

‘In a minute.’

As I spoke, I felt the foulness of my mouth, both the smell and the taste; it brought me out of a hazy world of blurred details into now and here and today. Waking, the whole burden of my grief came on me in an instant. I was not in my own bed, I was in the child’s room, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. The feeble early morning light could not pierce the drawn curtains, and I could only just see her, sleeping in a foetal position, on her side, knees drawn up. I had an instant’s longing to get away, anywhere, even back into that ugly dream. But it had already retreated from me.

‘The tea’s getting cold,’ his impatient voice reminded me when I was brushing my teeth. He hadn’t come in here, into her room, since we brought her home yesterday.

‘Is she sleeping?’ he asked me, when I joined him. He had made the tea but waited for me to pour it out. He had taken over some of the household chores from me since the day it all began. Strange, how even sorrow imposes its own routine. We were now used to this – his participation in my tasks, the silence in the house, the feeling of isolation.

‘Yes.’

‘Did she sleep well?’

‘No.’

He stared at me, as if expecting me to say something more.

‘What does she do?’ he asked impatiently, finally.

‘She lies in bed and stares at the ceiling.’

‘The ceiling? Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

He gave me a strange look, as if I was evading him, as if there was something I could say and didn’t. But there was no more to say. She just lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. I had found myself staring at the spot her eyes were fixed on, as if I could find it there, the thing she wasn’t talking about.

Now his tea over, he pushed his cup away and slumping slightly into his chair, began tapping on the table, a rhythmic tattoo.

‘Don’t.’

‘What?’

‘That.’ There was something about those fingers...

‘I’m sorry,’ he said absently. Then, turning his gaze on me, he spoke abruptly, as if this was what he had been thinking of all this while. ‘What if something happens?’

‘Something?’ I stared at him blankly.

‘I mean,’ he went on, anger touching his face as he realized he would have to put it into words, ‘I mean... suppose...’ He stopped and stared at me, looking for something, help maybe, or comprehension. Then he went on, more firmly, ‘After all, she was with him three days....’

‘No!’ It came out as a cry for help. Involuntarily his hand reached out to me. I drew back my own and looked at him in anger.

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