The Dark Room by R. K. Narayan

Author:R. K. Narayan [Narayan, R. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80381-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

She walked all the way to the north end of the town and reached the river an hour later. Sarayu was flowing in the dark, with a subdued rumble. Summer was still a few weeks ahead, and now the water was fairly deep in some places, though in a few weeks’ time the river would shrink to a thin streak of water furrowing the broiling sands.

Her mind was numb. Otherwise she could not have walked through the town at midnight. Nothing seemed to matter now, not even one’s children. They were after all a husband’s … Couldn’t she just go to the office, drag the other woman out, gash her face with her finger-nails? Wouldn’t it be interesting to wait and see if he would still grovel at the feet of that slut whose face was gashed and whose hair was torn out?

Savitri sat on the last step with her feet in the dark moving water. ‘This is the end,’ she said to herself, and felt very strange. So strange indeed did this statement sound to her that she asked herself: ‘Am I the same old Savitri or am I someone else? Perhaps this is just a dream. And I must be someone else posing as Savitri because I couldn’t have had the courage to talk back to my husband. I have never done it in my life. I couldn’t have had the courage to walk through the streets at midnight. I am afraid to go even a hundred yards from the house unescorted; yes, afraid, afraid of everything. One definite thing in life is Fear. Fear, from the cradle to the funeral pyre, and even beyond that, fear of torture in the other world. Afraid of a husband’s displeasures, and of the discomforts that might be caused to him, morning to night and all night too. How many nights have I slept on the bed on one side, growing numb by the unchanged position, afraid lest any slight movement should disturb his sleep and cause him discomfort.’ Afraid of one’s father, teachers and everybody in early life, afraid of one’s husband, children, and neighbours in later life – fear, fear, in one’s heart till the funeral pyre was lit, and then fear of being sentenced by Yama to be held down in a cauldron of boiling oil … ‘How many sins have I not committed?… Not many, I have always performed my daily pooja without fail. I’ve never lied in my life, except a few uttered in childhood. Didn’t I and my sister finish off the honey in the bottle and then swear we didn’t know what had happened to it? And then that scuffle after which I said that my brother had flung the ball at the glass chimney. Poor fellow, bearing patiently all our anger and vileness and never lifting his hand on us because we were girls. What ages since I saw him, never been the same man since he married that girl from Tayur, a vicious slattern.

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