Yes, of course, Mrs Verma said.
He nodded weakly. The world has come full circle, he groaned. Carbolic acid has become holy water.
Mrs Verma dropped her bucket, went up to his chair, and stood over him, arms folded. What does it matter? she cried. What does it matter whether it’s Ganga-jal or carbolic acid? It’s just a question of cleaning the place, isn’t it? People thought something was clean once, now they think something else is clean. What difference does it make to the dead, Dr Mishra?
For a microbiologist, Dr Mishra said, wiping his eyes, you’re not very rational, Mrs Verma.
Mrs Verma pulled her sari tight around her waist. Shall I tell you something? she said. I hate microbiology, I hate it.
Is a microbiologist who takes a bit of someone’s piss or pus and runs tests on it really so different from a mechanic who takes a crankshaft or a spark-plug out of a car and checks it to see whether anything’s gone wrong: whether the steel’s rusted or the porcelain’s cracked; whether there’s grime or dust somewhere in the machinery?
The specimens even come to you in bottles, labelled with names or numbers, like so many dirty spark-plugs. It’s not even like being a surgeon: at least the surgeon sees the whole machine, even though it’s all shrouded and chloroformed, face covered and weeping mothers hidden away, every trace of its humanity blanketed. The microbiologist has only her test-tubes. At least the surgeon can see how the parts mesh, how the crankshaft connects to the gear-box. And at the end of it, after he’s done all his oiling and his tightening and his replacing, he can, if he wants to (though he doesn’t, of course) go and take a look at the entire contraption lying dead in the morgue, or ticking away in its room. What does the microbiologist do? Where does she go to see whether all her shelf-fuls of piss are clearing up or dripping blood?
And when you do find something in a specimen can you really help wondering sometimes where all those microbes and bacteria and viruses come from? Whether they can really, all of them, be wholly external to our minds?
And just as you let yourself wonder whether sometimes they are anything other than a bodily metaphor for human pain and unhappiness and perhaps joy as well you cut yourself short, for it dawns on you yet again that ever since Pasteur that is the one question you can never ask.
Then you feel exactly as you did when you once helped in a general practice and found people straying in, all through the day, with nothing wrong with them — nothing that a mechanic could have repaired at any rate — complaining: I have this pain, Doctor, and that pain, Doctor, and I think this or that has gone wrong here or somewhere else. Then, too, you almost began to speak till you realized yet again that the tyranny of your despotic science forbade you to tell them the one thing that was worth saying; the one thing that was true. And that was: There’s nothing wrong with your body — all you have to do to cure yourself is try to be a better human being.
The phone rang an hour after the police had come and gone, when Mrs Verma and Zindi had almost finished with the cleaning of the corpse.
Dr Mishra managed to get to it first. It’s the police, he hissed at Mrs Verma with his hand on the mouthpiece. You’ll see, they’ll never allow your cremation. I told you, there was no point wasting your time explaining to them. Why should they allow it? Why should it make any difference to them whether some passing Indian tourist happens to die here? Why should they agree to bend the rules?
Mrs Verma smiled: Why don’t you hear what they have to say first?
They all gathered around to watch as Dr Mishra listened to the voice at the other end. He said nothing beyond an occasional oui and startled mais peut-être. Gradually his face fell and when he put the phone down it was with a grimace, half-rueful, half-angry.
What did they say? Mrs Verma demanded.
I don’t believe it, he said, shaking his head. They’re not in their right minds. They’ve made a mistake.
Tell us what they said, Mrs Verma cried.
They said it’s all right; they’re willing to look the other way. Only, we have to cremate her quietly, somewhere in the dunes, and quickly.
Mrs Verma bit back a cry of delight. You see, she said, they know how important it is to die properly. Haven’t you heard how during their war of independence the French used to blow up the bodies of the Algerian dead to demoralize the guerillas, because they knew how important it is to Muslims to be buried with their bodies whole and undesecrated? I knew the Algerians would understand: if there’s one thing people learn from the past, it is that every consummated death is another beginning.
And wood? Dr Mishra cried suddenly, when Mr Verma was about to leave the house to fetch a land-rover from the hospital.
Where are you going to get wood from? You have to have wood if you’re going to cremate her. Or do you think her body’s so pure now that it’ll go up like a lump of phlogiston when you put a matchstick to it?
Mrs Verma fell into a chair. That’s true, she said, biting her lip. That’s going to be a problem.
Delightedly, Dr Mishra called out after her husband: Stop, you don’t have to go now. It’s all called off.
But Mrs Verma waved him on. Nonsense, she said. Of course we can find the wood if we try. Go on, get the land-rover; we’ll arrange for wood somehow.
All right, so what’s your plan now, Mrs Verma? Dr Mishra said. Are you going to send us out to chop down date palms?
Mrs Verma laughed: No, no, Dr Mishra, you won’t have to do anything. Mr Das and Mr Bose can do it. It’s quite simple: there’s that old table in the kitchen — the top’s plywood, but the legs are good, solid wood. Then there’s that huge crate-like thing the refrigerator was packed in. I’ll ring up Manda-bahen, too; there’s bound to be lots of wooden boxes and things lying about your house, considering all those expensive things you’re always buying. I know old Miss K. has some termite-ridden old boxes she wants to get rid of.
Dr Mishra shook his finger violently in her face. You can’t do it, he cried. You just can’t do it. I won’t let you. You can’t put that poor woman on some termite-ridden bonfire and set her alight. That’s not a cremation; that’s like roasting a tandoori chicken.
I don’t see what’s wrong with it.
There’s everything wrong with it. You can’t do it like that. You have to have the right wood.
What wood?
I don’t know, Dr Mishra snapped, flinging up his hands impatiently. There has to be some sandalwood; I remember that.
Sandalwood? Mrs Verma said. Come with me.
She led him across the drawing-room and knelt beside Hem Narain Mathur’s old bookcase. Reaching into the gap behind the books she drew out two battered sandalwood bookends, carved like elephants. One had no trunk and the other lacked a leg.
Since they can’t be used for beautification purposes any more, she said, they might as well be added to the pyre.
Dr Mishra stormed out of the room without another word.
Mrs Verma rang Mrs Mishra and Miss Krishnaswamy and then sent Jyoti Das and Alu to their houses. Over the next couple of hours the two men carried a number of crates and several pieces of old furniture into Mrs Verma’s garden and chopped them up. When Mrs Verma went out into the garden later, there was a sizeable pile of wood chopped up and ready.
That’s plenty, she said. We won’t be able to fit any more into a land-rover. She noticed Alu standing beside her, shuffling his feet awkwardly. Yes, Mr Bose? she said.
He began to say something, but his voice sank into an inaudible mumble. What’s the matter? she asked a little impatiently. Do you want to say something?