∗
‘Soon Pundit will arrive, see what has happened, and inform the police,’ Shastri thought. Then he decided he would kill Pundit too and throw him into the pit. After that, he would go to Kerala for a few days. So, although he had set out for Kasargod, he turned the car around and when he reached home again it was eight o'clock, with the oppressive darkness of a moonless night. In his frenzy he had left without locking the door, and when he entered the house it seemed frighteningly silent. Had Pundit already come and gone? Or was he about to come just now? Fearfully, Shastri made his way in the dark to the pit, took a hoe, and dragged all the dug-up earth back into the hole. Breathing heavily, he worked for an hour. ‘Tomorrow morning I will get up, level this place, and plant a jackfruit sapling there,’ he told himself. He sat on the steps of his house with a sickle in hand, waiting to kill Pundit. But Pundit did not come. ‘Arrey, has the enchanter come and gone? Has he already complained to the police?’ Without sleeping, Shastri waited. But nobody came.
In the morning he added more earth and levelled the pit. Then he left, this time not forgetting to lock the door. He drove to Mangalore and stayed in a hotel. After two days of fearful waiting, surprised that he was still safe, he returned home.
The red earth pit was just as he had left it. But in front of the house there were tyre marks from Pundit's car. ‘Were those marks left behind by Pundit after I killed her and drove away in my car?’ he wondered. Then he went into the puja room and saw the door of the iron safe standing open. The trunk full of gold was gone. All at once, the horror of having done murder vanished in the rage against Pundit that began to howl in him.
‘O the enchanter robbed me and ran away! His eyes were not on Saroja, but on gold. Yet he even made her pregnant.’ Calculating, considering whether he should report to the police that Pundit had killed Saroja and run off with the gold, Shastri drove to Udupi and stopped the car in front of Pundit's shop.
Pundit's door was locked. Shastri, widening his bloodshot eyes, asked the neighbouring shop owner, ‘Where is he?’
‘Ah, yes. One evening, it must have been three days ago, yes, on the new moon day — Wednesday evening — he left and has not returned since. I thought he had perhaps gone to your house.’ Did the shop owner Kamath smile falsely, as if there were some hidden meaning in his words?
‘No, he's a householder like me,’ Shastri told himself. ‘He is my age, has children, and he even keeps a lorry.’ Shastri felt fully reassured that Kamath did not see him as a murderer but only as a customer when Kamath said, ‘I have got excellent toor dal from Hyderabad, only one bag left. Shall I have it put in your car?’
Refusing the dal, Shastri had gone to Radha's house. He had not seen her for some days. She touched his forehead and said, ‘Ayyo, you are feverish.’ She opened a bedroll and made him rest on it, and for the first time ever he told her a lie.
‘That useless one ran away with Pundit three days ago. The whore also took the trunk of gold.’ His scheming mind had decided not to complain to the police and risk getting into a criminal suit.
He went back home, took more earth from the paddy-field, and added it to the pit. In the center of the pit, he planted a jackfruit sapling. He told people that the fruit would be as sweet as honey, and people were surprised at the unfamiliar friendliness in Shastri's hostile, ever-burning face.
9
Shastri got down from his taxi and asked the driver, who was whistling away merrily, to wait. He went into Radha's house with his bag.
‘Look, here is a Madras sari for you,’ he told her. Although Radha was pleased, she knew there was something else on his mind. ‘What is the matter?’ she asked. Shastri was surprised by the relief he felt when he found himself replying, ‘I believed I had told you a lie. But after forty-five years, I see that what I told you may be true.’ Then, in great detail, he explained to her his present state of uncertainty.
‘I had last seen the amulet on Saroja's neck when I was in a state of utter fury. When I saw it yesterday, it seemed to me a sign that I could die and be born again’
‘But how can I say whether he is my son or Pundit's? When Mahadevi had a daughter from me, I realized that Saroja too might have been pregnant from me. Then I feared that I would rot eternally in hell for killing not only Saroja but my own child, so I began to work off my life in this new costume of reciter of Puranas. Yet it seemed this body into which the demon had entered has never learned anything. Had I not felt that very same kind of rage towards my own daughter? I might have killed her, but she escaped. Now Mahadevi feels rage like that, and wants to kill me. And I feel the same. But am I, speaking to you now like this, the same person who felt my heart turn over as I watched someone who might be my son eating the food I gave him?’
Shastri's throat choked with emotion. But then he chided himself, ‘I should not seek sympathy from Radha so that I neglect to observe my own hell.’
He looked at Radha, waiting for her reply.
‘I have not told you this,’ she said. ‘The servants here always gossiped that you killed your wife and buried her in the pit. They say that is why the jackfruit tree you planted there does not bear any fruit. I didn't tell you lest it would give you pain.’ Radha sighed, adding, ‘God has saved you.’ She went inside and brought milk and fruits, then sat down and pressed his feet. But Shastri drew his feet back.
‘Do you think Pundit lifted her from the pit, when she was half-dead, and then took the gold from the safe? Yet it doesn't seem he was a thief … when she was washed away in the river, all the gold she had brought with her was still untouched. But then why did he leave her? Or did he die, and did she take refuge in Tripathi's house because she was alone? She must have lived with Pundit at least until her son was five years old. And I heard that she had kumkum on her forehead when she went to Tripathi's house, so she didn't go as a widow.’
He fell silent for awhile.
‘I don't want to care whose son he is, yet that is how I feel. Couldn't he be Pundit's son? But then, I might have created him when I was howling like a demon. Now I am sure of nothing. Was it really Saroja herself who went to Tripathi for shelter, or could it have been someone who resembled her?’ Shastri began to pray, ‘O God, save me from these tormenting doubts which make me like a ghost in limbo.’
Radha came, sat by his side, held his hand tenderly, and said, ‘Believe that he is your son.’
‘One moment I believe so, but the next moment I think that Pundit made him, and I feel fire burning in my stomach.’ He got up without drinking any of the milk she had brought him.
When Radha asked why, he said, ‘Hereafter on Ekadashi I will not even drink milk.’