Having come to that decision, Owen McIntosh felt better. He called for the bearer to make him a fresh pot of tea, and finally lit his pipe. He could only hope Shamol Roy’s family would agree to his plans.
Biren remembered very little of what happened in the next few days. He was told his father had died from a cobra bite in the jute mill. The house was full of strange people. They huddled in clusters; the women beat their breasts and wailed. Granny’s potted marigolds all died because nobody watered them. Bunches of tuberose lay discolored and rotting, still wrapped in newspaper and string. Granny took to bed and cried day and night, Uncle disappeared and Grandpa retreated into a stony silence while the gloomy aunt did her best to manage the chaotic household. As for Shibani, she was nowhere to be seen.
Bewildered, Biren wandered around the house looking for his mother. He had seen her last on the morning before he left for school. She’d looked fine and had been getting ready to wash her hair. That night he and Nitin had fallen asleep in Apumashi’s house. Somebody had carried them home late at night and they had woken up to find both their mother and father gone and the house full of crying people.
All he knew was his father had died and his mother had disappeared and nobody talked about her. There was a different bedspread on her bed. He looked for her sewing basket, which was full of needles, buttons and colored threads wrapped around bamboo spools. He often rummaged in this basket looking for tacking pins to bend into fishing hooks. Her basket was nowhere. Panic set in. He began to fear his mother had abandoned him and his brother. Maybe they were bad boys and she didn’t want them anymore.
Everything that belonged to his mother was gone. Her trunk of saris, her comb, her bangles, the brass container of vermillion she used for the part of her hair. Oddly, his father’s things remained exactly where they were before he had died. His lungi and vest were folded neatly over the clotheshorse. His books, English calendar, wooden clogs and even his comb with a few black hairs still stuck to them. It almost felt as if his mother had died and his father had gone away. Something was just not adding up, but Biren could not put a finger on it.
In the evenings Biren felt the urge to walk down the road to meet his father, only to realize with a stab of pain that his father would never come home again. He wished he could talk to Apumashi. She would explain everything. He wanted to go to her house, but Granny would not allow him. “We are in mourning,” she said. “You don’t visit other people in their homes for thirteen days.” In desperation he imitated his mother and rooster called to Apu across the pumpkin patch but there was no answering call back.
Nitin behaved strangely. He walked around with his hair uncombed and sucked his thumb. He started to wet his bed and after a while he stopped talking entirely. One day Biren saw him put a blue marble inside his mouth. The next thing he knew, Nitin had gulped. Biren rushed over and forced Nitin’s mouth open. He stuck his finger inside and moved it around but the marble was gone.
“Granny!” screamed Biren, dragging Nitin to Granny’s room. “Nitin swallowed a marble!” To his shock, Granny did not seem to care.
Biren wandered around in a daze holding Nitin tightly by the hand. His father and mother had both disappeared; now Nitin had swallowed a marble and was surely going to die and nobody cared. What was going on?
Then out of the blue Nitin fell on the ground and threw a tantrum. He screamed and begged and promised never to play with his mother’s sari again. Nobody, except Biren, knew what the hysteria was about. Biren knew for certain their mother had not gone away because Nitin had spoiled her expensive sari. Finally, he could stand it no longer.
“Where is my ma?” he asked his morose aunt.
“She will be here soon,” said the aunt.
“Where is Ma’s sewing basket?” he persisted. “Where are all her things?”
“They have been disposed of,” said the aunt. “They are contaminated.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. So that was the problem. His mother had caught an infectious disease and she was in quarantine, which is why nobody was allowed to see her. It was probably measles or chicken pox. Why didn’t they just say so? She would soon recover, and Apumashi would come to wash her hair again and they would laugh and eat chili tamarind in the sun.
For now, he would have to take care of his younger brother. Biren invented little games for them to play and tried to teach Nitin his ABCs. Nitin solemnly chanted in a singsong with his finger on each letter: “A for pipra, B for cheley,” substituting the Bengali words for ant and boy, and Biren did not have the heart to correct him.
The next day he combed Nitin’s hair, holding him firmly by the chin just as his mother used to do, and took him for a walk down the road.
“Is Baba coming home today?” Nitin’s small face was bright with hope.
“Not today,” said Biren. He wondered how much longer he would have to lie to his little brother. How could he explain anything when he was so baffled himself?
A neighbor they only vaguely knew hurried down the road on her way home from the fish market. She stopped to ask how they were doing, but made no mention of their mother.
“My mother is getting better,” he called after her. “Come and see her soon.” The neighbor just nodded and hurried along.
Three days passed in a blur. The house was sickly with the smell of incense and dying tuberoses. Most nights Biren dropped off to sleep from exhaustion. In his dreams he saw black twisted smoke, and smelled burning ghee. He started awake with a great choking sensation, unable to breathe, unable to cry. Every sound was amplified in the night. The soft wheezing snore from his grandfather’s room, the rustle of a mouse scrambling on the thatch. One night, late, he heard a sound. It was same sound he had heard from Apu’s house the day his father had died: the low, moaning sound of an animal in pain.
He crept out of bed, tiptoed out into the courtyard and stood beside the holy basil plant and listened. There it was again, louder this time. The sound came from the direction of the old woodshed next to the taro patch. He walked toward the shed and could see the flickering yellow glow of a diya lamp through the slatted wooden walls. There was somebody inside. The sound was a singsong moan, rising and falling, regular and monotonous, almost mechanical. Biren inched up to the papaya tree, not daring to go any farther. Someone was quarantined in the shed, and she was in a lot of pain.
Ma!
He ran across the undergrowth to the shed. The door was locked.
He rattled the lock. “Ma!” he whispered urgently. “Ma! It’s me.”
The moaning stopped. He peeped through the slats and froze in terror. It was not his mother at all but a bald old man dressed in a white cloth sitting on the floor with his back turned.
It was a ghost—the petni that Kanai spoke about!
Biren thought he would suffocate with fear. He was about to step backward when the man turned his head around and looked at him. The face was dull and white, flat as the moon with bloodshot eyes.
Biren stifled a scream, stumbled through the bushes and ran back toward the house. He flung himself down on his bed and lay there. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, his fingers dug into his palms; every muscle in his body was contorted with fear.
That pale, flat face with its red eyes kept floating into his mind. He had no doubt the creature in the woodshed was his mother. She had stretched out her hand and he’d recognized her plaintive voice as she called his name.
But