Sunset

I WAS still very close to Mataji, and in the evening, as always, I looked into her room from the street and could see her large bed covered with a piece of hand-woven green sheet and sagging from being too often sat upon. The bed was placed in front of the only window in the room, and from the street I could see Mataji’s strong back bent over the spinning wheel, a staff resting under her left arm, the spindle on her thigh, and both her beautiful hands rising from her lap with lengths of yarn. With each motion of her hands her body gently swayed to the rhythmic clack of the wheel, which spilled into the street like an old grandfather clock, ticking loud and endlessly but never striking an hour. Apart from the bed and the cedar chest of drawers, grandmother’s room was furnitureless, and seen through the low window, it was an extension ol the quiet street. I shed my shoes under the window and stepped onto the bed, which was piled with ten or fifteen children. Almost forty of her grandchildren were there, and many were iorced to sit on the matted floor and compete for chin rests on the bed. “Be blessed, child,” she said, and tried to guess my name. “My Sohan has come and the voices ol the other children sang out in a chorus, “No!” “Then Mohan.” “No!” “The little one with long legs?” —and all the children clapped with delight as I took my place on the bed. She patted me and said, “Be blessed.”

She always said at meeting, at parting, and often during talking, too, “Be blessed.” From her lips, “Be blessed” never seemed repetitious. It was just a pause, a stutter of thought. It gave her speech stillness, a quality of timelessness, her bedtime stories the assurance that darkness would never dare intrude itself in her presence. With open mouths and half-open eyes, we heard her stories, some about good sentries and bad thieves, about Ram, archangel among kings, and Raven, fallen angel among kings, about fairies in glass coaches and goblins cloaked in monstrous spells. We basked in the gentle drone of her voice, which stretched into the night like the sound of a timeless spinning wheel. The tales were perfect, tested and improved during centuries of telling; all mothers and fathers had been brought up on them. We who had exhausted our restless energy during the activity of the day rushed to Mataji like birds going to their nests. When she finished, we straggled home heavy with sleep, unaware of the darkness around us.

I was the oldest of Mataji’s grandchildren. My voice was breaking, and my Ayah, who had come to us as a child herself and had been more an older sister than a governess to me, stopped me in the cornfields as I was rushing to Mataji. “You are too old for Mataji’s stories,” she said. “You will soon be a man.” She did not know how long it would be, but she reckoned two or three monsoons, for it would take the gods some seasons’ labor to change my voice. “If you don’t talk too much, your voice will ripen quickly like the corn in the fields. But if you do,”she threatened, “you will be scorched by the sun.”

“It is easy for me to keep silence,” I said, “because my croakings pain my throat and ears, and grate upon the nerves of the family elders.”

“By the bye,” she said, “I have good news for you. You have been elected to sit with the family elders. You must not speak in council for many months, but just sit and listen.” She sighed. “Go now. You are out of my hands. They are waiting for you.”

I could not take my eyes off Ayah. Her thighs were strong, her breasts relaxed and bent like mangoes, and she had a pretty, full mouth. I had often seen her cleaning her teeth with a twig, but until now never noticed the tint the twig gave them. She motioned me to my uncle’s house and turned away. I stood there watching her walk toward Mataji’s room for long, delicious minutes. It was the beginning of summer, and between the winter day and winter night, the summer had added another period of light, not so clear as a sunny day nor so grim as the dark night. Something in between; something neither pleasant nor terrifying, but absolutely calm. The long sunset over the top of the trees, the soft light in which all the birds darted from tree to tree, the quiet before the storm, the dusk before the night — none of these explained die moment. It was nothing and all: as swift as the walk of my Ayah, and yet as reassuring and wonderful as the daylight which allowed me to see her disappear across the cornfields. I pictured her sitting on Mataji’s floor with her feet tucked under her, children crawling over her lap and shoulders, pulling her plaits of jet-black hair.

WHEN I reached Big Uncle’s house, all the sons of Mataji except Rajan, the youngest, who was in the army fighting the Japanese in Singapore, were sitting in a semicircle on wicker chairs, and their sons, some my age and some older, were grouped around them on the floor. Everyone was talking with forced lightheartedness. My Big Uncle — that is what we called him, because he was the eldest of Mataji’s sons and, next to her, the head of the family — sat in the far right-hand corner, grim and taciturn, countenance growing darker. He took his old and battered watch out of his pocket three or four times and finally cleared his throat, and all were silent. He held the watch in the palm of one hand, and with the other took a paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and then, with short, gasping words, he started speaking. “I have bad news. Rajan is dead. Confirmation is in this telegram from his commander himself. Rajan was not taken prisoner, as we had hoped, but tied to a tree and riddled with bullets.”

Rajan dead! Big Uncle’s words fell like shots. There was so much about Rajan which was living. He dominated the cornfields, the surrounding houses, and Mataji’s room, where he always preferred to sit on the floor rather than on her bed, even though he was the oldest among us and our uncle. Everyone older was either brother, cousin, or uncle and demanded his title for its measure of authority; that was the custom, but Rajan did not want any part of it and insisted on being just Rajan to everyone. Before Ayah grew up to take the position of our governess, Rajan was everything to us. He was the kindly peacemaker in any quarrel. He was our best appeal to the elders, and even when he became a family elder, he remained accessible to us.

Sometimes in the evening, when Mataji was busy, Rajan told stories and made us forget her absence. He wove in and out of the cornfields without trampling on a single stalk. He called out the names of birds and told us about them until we learned to know them. He had long legs and could run faster than any of us, but he preferred to come last in the race with the youngest and the slowest.

It was some time before my uncles straightened their backs and lifted their heads from their hands. I stood up from my place on the floor and heard my voice, shaking and hoarse. “I will join Rajan’s regiment and fight the Japanese.”

“We’ll all go with you,” supported the young voices from the floor.

Big Uncle stared and motioned me to the floor. I sat down and saw rows of feel before me. “I knew nothing good would come of Rajan’s going into the army,” Big Uncle went on. “When our father died, Rajan was barely walking. I brought him up like my own son.”His eyes wandered over the heads of all assembled. It was sunset over the trees. I felt sorry for Big Uncle. “I must put a question to you,” he continued. “Should we or should we not tell Mataji about Rajan’s death? Her eyes have been failing, and, as you all know, among our ancestors that is a sign of coming death. I’m afraid news of Rajan’s death will kill her.”

Some uncles were against the idea of deceiving Mataji; others were for it, but their voices were listless. I thought of Mataji’s strong back, straight as a board, and her clear stories. I again stood up. “Mataji can always tell the truth from a lie. She is stronger than any of us. She will guess the truth about Uncle Rajan.”

Fathers and sons shifted nervously, and I was forced to sit down on the floor. The elders voted not to tell Mataji about the telegram. Big Uncle closed the meeting. “I will tell her that Rajan was taken prisoner and will return after the war. By that time, she will be accustomed to living without him. We must all help her to get used to his absence.'’ The meeting broke up. Big Uncle put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It takes a lot of wisdom to judge the question of life and death. When you are as old as your uncles, you will understand.” I went to bed thinking of Mataji, Ayah, and Big Uncle. They merged into one another and got confused in the process of thinking.

FOR days Rajan’s death remained a silent darkness with us. The elders never talked about him, not even among themselves, because the telegram had to be concealed from the children and Mataji. My croaking voice grew worse, and I began to feel awkward in Mataji’s room, but I still went there. Rather than listen to the stories. I watched Ayah, my little cousins climbing on her, using her now as a tree, now as a pony. Between the stories, she made baby sounds, pouting her lips, and the children would chirp and hiccup with excitement. Sometimes I stayed after Ayah and the children had left, but conversation with Mataji did not flow easily. I found the room barren and felt intimidated by my voice. But Mataji did not seem to notice anything different.

One day, after some difficult minutes with Mataji, I was going home across the cornfields and met Big Uncle on the way. He looked grim, as he did at the council, and his torchlight threw eerie shadows against his face. “I am going to Mataji,” he said, with too much ease, and beckoned me to come with him. He started walking toward the room, not looking around to see if I followed. I fled toward my father’s house, and then the nature of my disobedience stopped me. I turned around, panting. I could barely make out Big Uncle’s frame slowly walking into the darkness in the direction of Mataji’s house. He vanished and reappeared like a bobbing ghost, and I was frightened.

I wanted to consider whether to follow Big Uncle or return home, but there was no time. He would soon be out of sight, and I would not dare go across the fields alone. I shouted at Big Uncle to wait, but my words came out in a whisper and were lost in the night even before they were spoken. I began running into the darkness toward Mataji’s room. Very much later I reached Mataji’s window and had a clear view of her and Big Uncle sitting on the bed. Her back seemed a pillar of strength, and I was reassured. I waited to catch my breath and then went around and entered through the door.

Big Uncle held in his hand a telegram identical to the one he had read at the council. He had changed his mind, I thought, and I wanted to throw my arms around him. Mataji said. “Be blessed, child; come and sit down beside me.”

I did, and listened while the telegram was intoned. It was all made up— minute details from Rajan’s commander about how Rajan was taken prisoner, how no one knew when and if he would return. In the past, it went on, sometimes wars had lasted for a hundred years. The commander, however, had utter contempt for the Japanese and thought it would take only a few years to knock them out of the war. But, of course, one had to face the worst.

Mataji fell back onto her bed, defenseless. Big Uncle tried to raise her, supporting her back with his hand, but her body crumpled. She shut her eyes, and for some time she was silent. Then she moved to the edge of the bed and sat with her usual strong and graceful posture. She fired a battery of cpiestions — about war, about prisoners, and about the chances of Rajan’s returning home. With each insistent question, Big Uncle changed the tone of the telegram, and before she was done with him, he had virtually rewritten it. Rajan was coming home. Big Uncle’s head dropped to his chest. Mataji revived and vowed she would pray for Rajan four hours a dav until he returned. She brought out wooden prayer beads from the chest of drawers and started going through them one by one. When we left her she was lost in her prayers and barely looked up to say, “Be blessed.”

Big Uncle silently walked me home with his torch lighting the way, and when our eyes finally met, at the door, there was more pain in his than I had ever seen before. I went to bed puzzled: whom did I love more, Mataji or Big Uncle? Was Big Uncle right to lie about Rajan’s death, or was I right to object to his lie?

I wanted Ayah’s help, but when I found her alone in the fields and forced my secret on her, she looked pained and distracted. “You will never get your voice,” she said, “if you don’t learn to keep your counsel. You must follow the example of elders. You must learn by listening and looking. There is no other way.”

I walked the fields with my head hanging low. Rajan’s was the first death I was involved in. It was different from other deaths. No one wore black, though some of my aunts said that Mataji was really color-blind and we should wear mourning clothes, at least for the sake of the neighbors. But Big Uncle wouldn’t have any of it. My mother tied a black thread under my shirt sleeve, and now and again I ran my finger over it and knew Rajan was dead.

When I looked into Mataji’s room, it seemed someone other than she lived in it. She had stopped spinning altogether because she was tortured by the sound and because she had vowed to pray four hours a day for Rajan. Without the staff under her left arm and the spindle on her thigh, she looked ten years older. I had never noticed her baldness before. She was bent over the wooden beads like a hunchback, and for the first time she looked her seventy years and more. I started rubbing Mataji’s back. Her wrinkles were deep, and she felt numb to my hands.

Mataji no longer had her back to the window; she faced it. She prayed with her failing eyes open. A little sound startled her, and her face became expectant. We learned to tiptoe into her field of vision so that she saw us before she heard us and recognized us as her grandchildren and not Rajan returned from war. She still told her stories, but she ran through them rapidly and was easily fatigued. Children begged for more stories and resisted going to bed. She would agree, only to say, “It’s getting too dark.”

I OFTEN stayed when the other children had gone home, impatiently waiting for the knot on the prayer beads to pass her bony fingers twenty times. The beads rattled softly into the darkness, measuring time. Her concentration kept her dropped eyelids open, and only her stubborn will made her stiffening body supple. I often rubbed her back late into the night. Sometimes I fancied I saw Uncle Rajan from the window, a shadowy figure trying quietly to slip into the room and take Mataji by surprise. She would die of surprise and joy, I thought. Then the spell broke, and I was reminded that Rajan could never come home. 1 wondered if somehow the secret would escape from my fingers and imprint itself on her.

When the beads were pul away under the pillow, Mataji asked me about die latest news, and I read her the Hindi newspapers, with headlines of German losses and Japanese gains, retreat of the European front and advance of the Asian, bombing of Berlin and bombing of Bombay, surrender of Italy and attack on India, blackout in Munich and curfew in Calcutta. The headlines upset her, and she fetched the beads once again, but I persuaded her to go to bed. By and by, I learned to disguise headlines, to retouch them, to dull the sharp edges of the news. When it was brutal, I falsified it. But her eyes and health went from bad to worse and she developed a new symptom, of hearing and not hearing, of being more anxious to go through the ceremony of listening than of being interested in the newspapers. Her voice became more and more distant. Her eyes frequently remained closed. She brought tears to the eyes of the children.

But Ayah, whom I met mostly in the cornfields, remained unimpressed. “You are not in the wicker chair yet,” she said, “so you cannot judge.” She brushed my cheek softly, as though to wipe away tears, making me think perhaps she felt more deeply about Mataji than she showed. It seemed to me silly of her not to be more open — to pretend sometimes to be a baby by pouting her lips, and other times an elder by being mysterious and unfeeling. But she was too engrossing, too engaging, both when away and close to me. Her vision drew a curtain across the mind. The mystery of Ayah, the wish to unravel her, to understand the motion of her beautiful hands and arms, burned like a candle in the wintry nights.

And the wintry nights were harshly upon us. The sunny days shrank and shriveled to half their summer size, and more than half our life was lost to the night. Daily blackouts became a matter of course, but newspapers explained that India was not in any immediate danger and blackouts were only precautionary measures. Children were put early to bed, and some evenings they were not told any stories, because the elders decided it was safer for children to stay at home than to be out even in Mataji’s room.

Ayah conceded that since Rajan’s death everything had changed; days and seasons ran into one another, and soon it was summer again. She added playfully, slightly embarrassed, “But you should be happy that the time passes quickly, because then your voice will ripen quickly, and before you know it you will be in the wicker chair telling me what to do rather than me telling you.” Mataji defied the blackouts. She prayed and slept with her window open. The daylight kept her up late and the birds woke her up early.

One August day when Ayah was sitting with Mataji, I rushed into the room and flung my arms around her and said, “Japan has surrendered. The prisoners will be returning home any day.”Mataji’s eyes opened as wide as in the days of the spinning wheel. I swept the prayer beads onto the floor, and Ayah caught my foot just as it was crashing down on the beads. “Grow up. Get hold of yourself,” she snapped.

Mataji had noticed and not noticed. “Child, you are my messenger from heaven.” Straightening her back, Mataji went on, “You must help me to look well again. I don’t want Rajan to come home and not recognize his mother. I want him to look exactly the way he did, and he would wish his mother to be the same, too.”

Ayah stared at me with horror, and I was ashamed and terrified. “You are the same as always, Mataji,” Ayah said.

Excitedly, Mataji began to map out her time. She was going to pray four hours a day and still find time to watch for news of returning prisoners. She took new interest in the newspapers. With unwilling voice I read them from cover to cover, and sometimes, when there was no news about the returning prisoners, she was so disheartened that f was forced to make some up.

PERHAPS it was because ol her growing anxiety that Big Uncle chose that winter for her cataract operation. For some time the doctors had advised the operation, but the elders had all been against it. “She will never survive the ordeal,” one said at the council. Another remarked, “We can be her eyes,” and he added in a soft whisper, “Why does she need eyes as long as she has us?” The other uncles seemed to agree with these feelings, and they eagerly applauded an elder who suggested leaving the decision to Big Uncle. He pressed his brothers to be more definite, but they shunned his attempts, and Big Uncle put off the operation season after season. Now, in the third winter since the doctors’ advice, Big Uncle chose to act. For a long while he talked with Mataji about the need for an operation. She did not wish to go into the hospital just then because her Rajan was coming any day. But Big Uncle explained that it would be months before prisoners found their way home and the operation would take only a little while.

Before she went to the hospital she asked everyone, “Will the doctors make me look myself again?”, and everyone said, “Yes.” She seemed to take their reassurances as a promise of recovered health, and she went gracefully to the hospital. After the operation her eyes were bandaged for days, and we all took turns staying with her. She talked of Rajan all the time, and the thought of his home-coming made her convalescence shorter. When her eyes were unbandaged and the operation was clearly a failure, her sons were disappointed much more than she. She showed surprise at their apologies, as though to say she had gone through the trial just to please them. She refused to acknowledge that the operation had weakened her, and returned to her prayer beads. She was more resigned than in the days of the blackout, but she needed much more looking after, as she was all but blind to the light and tired quickly,

The news of the trainload of prisoners arrived too soon after the operation, striking like a cannon ball and leaving the elders dumb with horror. There was a long piece in the newspaper telling how all the released prisoners of our village would be arriving midnight Sunday from Calcutta. It gave their names and descriptions of their heroic deeds and bestowed ecstatic encomiums on the parents who had produced such valiant sons. It said war was won at home as well as at the front and that there would have been no front without brave citizens like those in India.

I was forbidden by Big Uncle to read the awaited news to Mataji, and the council of elders was called once again. The debate was embarrassed, because some uncles held that the train should be kept a secret and others argued for a complete confession to Mataji. The decision was a sort of compromise — to tell Mataji about the train of returning prisoners, but not to say anything about the details of the article. Once the trainload of prisoners had arrived, she would guess soon enough that Rajan was dead. But no one was to confirm her suspicions. Because, as Big Uncle said, “The uncertainty of Rajan’s death has kept Mataji alive all these years.” I stood up and choked tearfully, “You mean it has killed her.” But I sat down under darkening frowns.

Mataji’s reactions to the coming train were restrained. She tried to appear very excited, but there was something forced about her response which showed under her tired eyelids. But that Sunday Mataji and a few of us went ceremoniously to the station. All the neighbors were there, and as we led Mataji into the waiting room the station was hushed silence, interrupted by pathetic jerks of tongues. I heard one woman whisper, “Why is she here to rob us of our joy?”, and I was thankful that Mataji was already in the waiting room. She waited patiently with her eyes shut and her hands still in her lap, her face relaxed. Two kerosene lanterns from the ceiling pierced the wintry darkness and gave enough light for us to hide our faces in trying to read the newspapers. The window looked out on the neighbors and the rails. There were also cartloads of flowers, which seemed to be as much for Mataji as for the victorious soldiers. The train thundered in, pouring forth a circle of smoke which blackened everything — the neighbors, the flowers, the window-panes. The sounds multiplied, the train roared and cracked, the whistle hissed and screamed, but the neighbors were oblivious. They shouted and danced with improper delight. When the train finally exploded into view, making its darkness visible through outwindow, the prisoners jumped off into the arms of the bystanders. The coolies darted back and forth, tossing the cartloads of flowers at the prisoners, but Mataji sat dead to the sounds and excitement.

Big Uncle went out and came in and said in an anguished voice, “Rajan is not on the train.” But Mataji did not ask if there was another train to come. She said quietly, “Shall we go home?” We led her out of the waiting room and took her home.

AFTER the eye operation the doctor had expected her to live only a few weeks, but she dragged on. Every time the council met it talked about her in impatient tones. No one was happy with what had happened, but everyone was wrapped in decorous feelings. After the midnight train, no one mentioned Rajan by name. Mataji still sat with her face to the window, prayer beads in hand, but her face now was expressionless and the beads were held stiffly. Sometimes it took two or three days for the knot to pass her bony fingers. She tried to revive the institution of the storytelling, but the children were uncomfortable in her presence. They resisted going to Mataji as they balked at going to bed. The council thought the children were frightened by the enveloping darkness — the wintry nights which enclosed the fields and Mataji’s room — and I was asked to escort the children with torches. But they remained stubborn and unfeeling. The scoldings at home, the attentions of Ayah and me did nothing to bring them closer to Mataji. And, worst ol all, Mataji became aware of the distracted children. She made Ayah and me carry her sweets, which she stocked for her little visitors, and while telling stories she put out her hand, groping for her grandchildren. But her grandchildren, who no longer remembered the days of the spinning wheel, shrank away. Stretching out her hand again, Mataji would force expression into her stony face and say, “Would you like to play hide-and-seek with my hand?” But her audience remained reluctant.

I learned to daydream and tried to shut out the voices of the elders. I became sullen, and even began missing the council meetings. I took long walks. The rotting lie about Rajan was an obsession with me. I lost Ayah as a friend. She shied from talking to me, avoided my eyes, preferred spending all her time with the children. I hardly ever saw her alone. Once, when I did find her alone, she admonished, “You are an elder now. Your voice is as ripe as the corn in the fields. Like others, you must learn to live with your own unhappiness.” She blushed at her words and quickly said, “I am just your servant. I feel as you do. The difference is, you lose all sense of perspective.” She said I acted as if Rajan had been the only one to die. I could only force her to admit that some of the time she did too. I shamed her by my sharp memory of our childhood Mataji.

We started keeping a day-and-night watch on Mataji because the doctors gave her only a week to live. I sat with her for hours, eating and sleeping and working in the room. She now needed continuous attention. One evening I was dozing beside Mataji’s bed. I woke with a start. She was calling for me in a distant voice. The room was dead quiet, like the time before the corn ripens, but nothing happened. I shouted, “Mataji, Mataji.” And then she turned in the bed, her eyes barely moving, her voice a breath. On a childish impulse, when I wasn’t certain whether she had already died or was about to die, I blurted out, more to myself than to her, in what I was certain was no more than a whisper, that Rajan had been dead countless winters, that from the start I had been against telling the dark lie, but nevertheless I begged her forgiveness for my part in it and for the million needless prayers she had said for Rajan’s return. I had to put my ear to her lips to hear her. “I knew about Rajan’s death long before my sons thought I knew it. You must never tell your elders. They were trying to be good to me.” She put her hand on my head and blessed me. She said some words for her sons, but I could not hear them. The voice stopped. I shook her again and again, trying to wake her, and then I knew.

I rushed out in the dead of night. I screamed in waking sleep. The fields were familiar. I ran automatically. I dimly noticed something darting out of the cornstalks. From a distance it looked like an animal, yet its form was larger. I sped away from the vague outlines of the form silhouetted against the darkness. Then I crashed to the ground and it was on top of me. From the hollow of the night I heard Big Uncle’s voice and cried out for help. And then, as in a waking nightmare, I became aware that I was not pinned by an animal but by Big Uncle. “She’s dead, she’s dead,” I sobbed. “I saw her die. I was there, and she knew it. She knew it. She told me she knew it.”

He lifted me from the ground and took my hand. He walked me around and around the fields and brought me to my senses. The wintry stalks of the corn were short and made him appear very tall. Big Uncle said, “Mataji’s last wish was that you should not tell anyone her dying words.”

“But don’t you see?” I cried. “You were wrong about Mataji.”

“I don’t know,” Big Uncle said, with tears in his eyes.

As Big Uncle and I walked toward Mataji’s room, overhead the crows were cawing in their ugly, monotonous, hungry way. The pigeons stirred, and the sparrows, hugging their nests, twittered of daybreak.