Even demons could not have engaged in such a violent coupling. He tore the clothes off Saroja and fell on her, shrieking and moaning. The way in which he took her was meant to destroy the cold untouched core of her, that unearthly indifference which negated him. That she did not suffer like he suffered, that her eyes did not flare in anger, that she endured him as if all his tantrums were irrelevant — all this fed the demonic rage in him even more.
But he has wondered over the years whether at the last moment, somehow, she could have given way …
Now, getting down from the car at Radha's house, this is what came from nowhere into his mind.
8
It was a terrible moonless day. That day he killed Saroja. Or so he had thought for forty-five years, until he saw the amulet on Dinakar's neck.
Pundit had begun to come every evening. He seemed to have no inhibitions on account of propriety. That he was teaching music to Saroja was some sort of excuse for him. Also, he was growing medicinal plants in Shastri's backyard, where there was a deep pit of red earth. Even after digging up to a man's height, there was still fertile red earth left in it. Pundit himself had dug some up and kept it at the edge of the pit, using it for planting his new medicinal plants. He had given Saroja the job of watering the newly-arrived ones.
Shastri even saw her carrying red earth on an iron pan. But the great noise within him which had pierced him in his swollen fury had settled gradually to a tortured pitch, a quiet, tormented moan that stayed with him constantly, like a pulse-beat.
Then one evening, in the backyard, Pundit had his dhoti tied up around his waist and, as if no one else existed, was explaining to Saroja, ‘This is the scent of Vishnu.’ He stood close to her, giving off his fragrance. He had put the leaves and roots of the plant on her palm, crushed them, asked her to smell them, and helped her hand to her mouth so she could taste them. Even when Shastri came and stood in front of them like a devil, Pundit took no account of him. Seeing Pundit's straight hairy legs, Shastri's heart began to pound, his whole body reverberating and wailing like a tamboura.
He felt he was growing impotent. Sometimes he would get sexually aroused when Pundit sat in the puja room and joined his pitch to Saroja's, intensity growing wave after wave, the two bodies, male and female, joining in alap — and then he would go to Radha's house. But even with Radha he remained impotent. Radha had taken to lighting ghee-lamps for the gods, and she also prayed to a private spirit in which she believed. She prayed that Shastri should be blessed with a child, that the ghost which haunted his house should leave, and that Saroja should be liberated from her coldness and flower into womanliness — that her hostile womb should welcome Shastri's seed. Shastri knew all this.
‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’ he would tell himself, ‘I will denounce the evil enchanter, I will spit in his face,’ and he built up courage talking to himself like that. But he became timid again, while that Pundit, with his hairy chest and hairy legs, grew like a great-striding Trivikram. Yet when he saw the two of them in the puja room, he would say to himself, ‘Let him go to hell and teach her music,’ and abandon his resolve.
One night he came home very late and saw that Pundit had parked his car in Shastri's accustomed place and was sleeping in his office. And in the bedroom Saroja slept, looking peaceful and remote.
Shastri became excited, imagining how Pundit would have had Saroja — if he did — and then he woke her up and took her. After it was over, she went out, took a head-bath, and came back. That made Shastri want to kill her. Unable to sleep by her side, he went and lay down on a mat in the room where Pundit was asleep. All through the night he ground his teeth, thinking that he had become a ghost in his own house. He watched every small movement of Pundit's as he slept, spent the whole dark night in this way.
Saroja probably gave coffee to Pundit when he was still half asleep in the morning. The bedding on which he had slept was neatly folded. Saroja must have done that. By now Pundit must have reached Udupi, bathed, applied sandal-paste on his body, and begun meditating on the art of seduction.
At the back of Shastri's house was a big hill, and on the hill was a jungle with leopards. In front of his house was a large veranda. Half a mile away was his nearest orchard. He owned many other orchards, and he also owned paddy-fields. Even his workers did not like to come anywhere near his house. The manager who looked after his estates had a plain tiled house near the workers' quarters. Shastri now went to these hutments, sought out the manager to scold him for not sending the men to work, and then went to oversee his other estates.
He visited Radha's house, ate some bananas, and drank hot milk. When he said that he would eat the dosas which she had made, she laughed, saying, ‘Such a thing is not permitted here.’ Shastri, observing the way she guarded his orthodoxy, forced a smile, thinking that he had not yet completely become a wraith. When she saw him smile so disturbingly, Radha went to the puja room, adjusted the burning wick, made the light burn brighter, and prayed for protection.
Shastri didn't feel like eating more than he had eaten already. So he wandered here and there, then came home at about three o'clock in the afternoon. He saw a pariah in the veranda and scolded him, ‘What work have you here? Go and graze the cattle.’ The pariah bowed and said, ‘Mother said she would give me the leftovers.’ Just then, Saroja came out and gave the pariah the lunch she had cooked for Shastri.
Shastri, waiting for Pundit's arrival, became aware that he was wailing again inside. He sat in his office, looking for the wailing to intensify, and willed, ‘Today should be the end.’ He received an omen from a lizard on the wall. It was then that the big clock struck and drummed its four hours into his brain.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of retching in the bathroom. He went to look and Saroja was there, trying to vomit but unable to do so. His vision darkening, he intoned like a wraith, ‘Have you become pregnant, whore?’ Afterwards, he often recalled the way she moved her neck as she stood there, bent over: was it to bring out the vomit, or to say ‘Yes’? That day, he had thought she was saying yes. Then Saroja stood straight, took water from the pitcher, and washed out her mouth. And the way she stood in front of him!
‘O you adulteress, have you become pregnant from that bastard Pundit?’ The demon inside him began to wail and laugh grotesquely. Didn't Saroja then stand calmly, unmoved, the amulet lying on her left breast as both breasts heaved with her breathing?
‘How could I have completely forgotten myself at that moment?’ he wondered. ‘Was it because I could never bear how her beautiful eyes looked at me with such indifference? Or did I imagine then that those eyes were saying, “Who are you, bastard, to ask me such a question?” Or did this bhava of mine cause itself to think so, in order to prepare itself for what was to follow?’
Shastri lifted the heavy wooden cover of the big brass pot that was kept for hot water. Saroja had put both her hands on her head and bent it, but it seemed to him that her gesture was not from fear or pleading for mercy. It was more like a cow shaking its head, struggling to free itself when you are about to untie its halter. Before realizing that he would do it, he had smashed her head three times with the wooden lid. He felt her blood splatter his face. Lifting her slumped body, he strode like a gloating demon on his two great legs, from the bathroom to the backyard. She had seemed dead, and he had thrown her into the red earth pit. Then he had come inside, wailing; had changed his clothes, thrown his blood-soaked clothes into the red earth pit on top of her, and driven away quickly in his car. ‘Why didn't I suspect that Saroja might not have died? I had beaten her only at the back of her head,’ he thought. But then he realized that if such an idea had come to him, he would have beaten her further and made sure to kill her.