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  Her embrace grew tighter as she prayed to Ram, repeating the name over and over again, pleadingly, in my ear. One of the uniformed men said something about “the son” to the other, and I was drawn away from Mrs. Nair and propelled in the direction of my home. There were other neighbors gathered on the street as well, and now it was Mr. Nair preparing to intercept me. At a slow pace, he approached until he was standing before me. Then he wouldn’t let me pass by. I heard one neighbor say to another: It was her heart, but when I turned to see who had spoken, it could have been any one of a handful of people, all eyeing me solemnly. I understood what Mr. Nair was going to say and that nothing I did would stop him from uttering the words, from changing what was now true. Still, I wanted to delay his speech. I wanted to tell him that the neighbor had been mistaken. I wanted to ask why anyone would say such a thing about my mother. Didn’t I know her heart better than anyone?

  1993

  I

  In the darkness of that first, early morning, Birendra opened his eyes to the surroundings of the Nairs’ home once again. Mr. Nair continued to snore loudly. The unfamiliar noise had woken him up half a dozen times throughout the night. But because he was lying on his own mattress, for just a moment each time he forgot where he was, and why. Then he remembered: his mother was gone. And he heard that treacherous refrain: It was her heart.

  His neighbors’ house might as well have been fifty miles away from home, not fifty feet. Without his mother, it no longer felt like he was next door to the house he’d grown up in, the only home he’d ever known. And he was left with so many questions and no one to ask. Was his mother going to the same place as his father? Had his father known what was going to happen? Would he be waiting for her somewhere, perhaps along with his brother and parents? And her parents? Had his father asked her to come? And what if she couldn’t find him? And if she did, and they were reunited, would they then send for Birendra as well? If his mother’s atma remained close by, it provided no answers. And now it would fall to Birendra, Mr. Nair had said, as her only son, to set her soul free.

  The night before, Mr. and Mrs. Nair had gone to his house. Mrs. Nair had taken his backpack and returned with it full of clothes, his toothbrush, pajamas. Mr. Nair came with Birendra’s mattress and placed it in this unused room. Birendra declined dinner and lay on his mattress while they ate, arguing about him in hushed tones. Mr. Nair did not want Birendra there. He did not want to invite death into their home. Mrs. Nair said they had no choice. Where else would the boy go? “It’s done now, anyway,” said Mr. Nair. “He’ll stay for his mourning, unless his family comes first, but not a day longer. Is that understood?” Birendra thought he heard Mrs. Nair crying, then Mr. Nair confirmed this by telling her to stop. Crying wasn’t going to help, he said. “We’ll have the priest come in the morning to instruct him. I suppose we’ll have to pay for that as well.” Birendra was ashamed and felt like a burden, but Mrs. Nair didn’t seem to think so. She was upset and had spoken then as though she were scolding her husband. How could he count rupees at such a time, she wanted to know, and for the small amount it would cost them? The boy had lost his mother. And they were like family, she said. They’d watched the boy grow since he was hardly bigger than a cashew. “Yes,” said Mr. Nair, “but he’s not family.” Birendra hadn’t wanted to hear any more. He brought his backpack close to pull out his pajamas. The library books he’d forgotten to return earlier in the day were gone. Mrs. Nair must have left them next door to make room for his clothes. They still needed to be returned. Perhaps she put them on his bookshelf alongside the other books he’d acquired over the years, gifts from his mother or from his aunt and uncle, sent all the way from West London. He’d also forgotten to ask Mrs. Nair to pack a fresh shirt to complete his school uniform, for he had stained the one he’d worn that day at lunch. He could have explained these things to the Nairs, but he didn’t. In fact, he’d not yet spoken a word since arriving home from school.

  Now he looked out the window and sighed into the darkness. Without his mother, he feared every moment would pass this slowly. He put his fists to his eyes but couldn’t keep the tears from escaping. He wanted to scream until his mother came to his side to comfort him. A snort, followed by a long nasally exhale, from the other room reminded him cruelly of all he’d lost. He needed his mother, but he could not have her. And surely Mr. Nair would not like to see him crying, either. He’d told Birendra he would have to be strong; there was much he would have to do now so that his mother could be at rest. But Mr. Nair had not said how Birendra was to accomplish this. His mother always taught him how to do something whenever he was faced with a new task.

  He opened his eyes, blinking a few times to clear away the tears. There was just enough light outside now to distinguish between the shadows of the trees and the darkness of dawn. He would have to go back to the house for a fresh shirt. He could get the library books. It was a dreadful task, but there was no way around it. He moved quietly through the kitchen toward the door. He could barely make out the edges of his house through the trees, and the thought of entering it, alone now, was suddenly terrifying. Even as he wanted to be close again to his mother’s room, her notepad, her sewing things, her scent—everything he’d woken up to only the day before—imagining those same things now without her scared him; everything had been tainted by whatever had happened to her. Their house was no longer a home.

  The crows had never before sounded so angry. They seemed to be shouting at him as he made his way to his front door. The house was unlocked and eerily dark inside. He moved quickly to his bedroom, even averting his eyes when passing his mother’s room. He hurried to his closet but closed his eyes once he was in front of it, trying to find the courage to reach inside. He held a deep breath and reached a timid hand out, feeling for the collar of the shirt he needed. Then he ran back down the hall and out the front door, stopping only once he’d reached the center of the yard. He turned and looked back at his house. Why had it been so terrifying? A creaking door in the distance made him spin again, and now he saw Mrs. Nair’s figure begin to approach, like an apparition, glowing in the faint gray light. He held his shirt up to explain why he’d left the house without permission. As he did, he realized he’d forgotten the library books yet again. When he lowered the shirt, Mrs. Nair was standing before him, her hair long and silver and loose around her shoulders, over her nightdress, in a way he’d never seen it before. She shook her head and took the shirt from him. She spoke in a whisper.

  “Come, you dear boy. You won’t be needing that for now.”

  Birendra wanted to object, to tell Mrs. Nair that he would need his uniform. That he had to go to school; his mother would want him to. He longed for the bus that would, at least for a few hours, take him away from Varkala and the house that now made him feel so afraid. But he remained silent, overwhelmed and defeated by the upheaval of his life, school taken from him as well.

  As he walked with Mrs. Nair back to her house, she reminded him that today the priest would come to guide Birendra, that his mother was waiting to be set free. Suddenly, he thought of the small portrait of his father, dressed up as a noble lord in Kathakali costume, on his mother’s bedside table. If he closed his eyes he could feel the touch against his cheek of the dangling beads that hung from that headdress, just as he could smell the faint doughy scent of the makeup on his father’s face. And beyond that the familiar smell of the sea his father used to swim in every morning, the same sea that one day swallowed him whole.

  For the rest of the day, Birendra did what the Nairs and the priest told him he must do. He let Mrs. Nair fix his white dhoti with a red strip of fabric at his waist and fashion a ring made of grass to wear on his right hand. There was just one thing he couldn’t bring himself to do. The priest said they must respect the departed by laying eyes on her body, but Birendra could not find the courage to lift his from the casket in which his mother had been laid to rest. He was too afraid to see her in death. He stared at the box and listened to t
he priest chanting, and the women singing, and the neighbors paying their respects, and then he accompanied the men who carried his mother’s casket to the pyre they had built beside his old house. Holding the clay pot on his head as instructed, he counted as he made each tour around the pyre, allowing the priest to pierce the pot and free the holy water inside. He hoped he’d never get to three rotations, but he must have because he was then handed the fire, and he let the pot fall from his head and break behind him. He turned his gaze to the light of an oil lamp the priest had said was there to guide his mother’s way, and he thrust the torch until it hit the pyre. The flame rose quickly, high above the casket, and he knew there was no risk of seeing her now. Still, he watched in the space above the flames, in the flickering sparks and smoke that danced there beneath the trees, hoping to see some sign of her there. He watched until he forgot where he was, and what was on fire, until time left him there, alone. Until the flame slowly fell into embers that folded into ash. He dreamed of a great fire that night, and he still felt the flame when early the following morning he awoke, once again on a familiar mattress in a strange home.

  II

  The front door to their flat opened and closed. Ramesh had returned. Nayana threw her towel on the bed and quickly slipped into her underwear, then fastened her bra. If he walked into their bedroom right now, what would he choose to see? Would he allow the evidence—this underwear, that dress hanging there—to finally present itself? Would he at least acknowledge that she wasn’t going to her teaching job? His voice from the hallway, though she could hear his good mood, reached her like a scolding.

  “I’ve fed Felix, jaanu,” he said.

  Ramesh continually provided these updates on the neighbor’s cat since Nayana had pawned its care off on him earlier in the week. Even when Beth had explained she would be away from London almost an entire month, working in Edinburgh, Nayana never hesitated to accept the task. She’d thought it would mean having a place to go, to be alone, to figure things out, maybe even get back on track. But having the keys to a flat downstairs had proved too tempting; she’d once picked up the phone while the cat was eating and begun to dial Daniel, intending to have him meet her there, in the same building. She’d come to her senses at the last moment and replaced the receiver. She was so relieved to find she still had limits that she almost broke down in tears right then under the cat’s scrutinizing gaze. It had come to this, to testing herself so she would know just how out of control she was. The following day, she claimed the lingering incense in Beth’s flat gave her a headache, then she showed Ramesh where to find the cat food and handed him the keys. And now Felix and he were apparently best of friends.

  I should stay home, she thought, seduce Ramesh instead. She thought of ways she might end her bad behavior. She could start by admitting to her husband that Tuesdays were no longer teaching days. She should have done that at the beginning of the semester. Instead she’d convinced herself that what she needed was more time alone. And where had that landed her? Not alone at all.

  For years, when Nayana looked at her reflection she couldn’t help thinking of Aditi. But her twin’s likeness no longer appeared in the mirror, as if effaced by years of living in England, worn down by disappointment, failure, loss. Good Aditi. They’d promised never to miss a month’s correspondence. And yet Nayana still owed her sister a letter for October. And here it was already mid-November. She’d told herself she was delaying to time her letter’s arrival with Diwali, which had always been their holiday. Now it was her reflection scolding her in the mirror; she’d let Diwali pass without greetings at all. Aditi had always been a kind of enforcer of Nayana’s conscience. No doubt the invisible shock waves of her recent infidelity had traveled all the way to Varkala. Why was it that she couldn’t stay in tonight? Write her sister? Come clean to Ramesh? Why was she painting kohl under her eyes, running lavender oil the length of her hair? Why did she press the scent of gardenias along each forearm, along each thigh, down the back of her neck, and behind her ears?

  On these Tuesday nights, she took her time getting ready. She dressed the part she assumed Daniel liked. Tonight, she was his mistress in a purple dress, cut tight. She covered the dress now with her coat and pulled her hair up into a low knot. In her pocket, she felt for the key to the hotel room she and Daniel had now used more times than she could remember with confidence. Six? Seven? The affair had a fast and furious start. After the first time, when she was getting dressed, already late to be returning home, Daniel told her he would stay in that room until she returned to him. She was almost annoyed by so romantic a proposition. She turned to him, considered the expression on his face. His desire for her. She said nothing, picked up her bag, and walked to the door, making no promise to return or even to repeat the occurrence. His desire became a panicked need to see her again, and it was this face that brought her back the following day, and in the weeks since, days in which the two of them silently explored each other’s pleasure while Ramesh was at work or waiting for Nayana at home.

  She threw a scarf around her neck and zipped the coat closed to conceal her dress from Ramesh. But was she hiding the truth from him or did he not allow himself to see her as she walked by? Did he not notice her painted eyes? Couldn’t he smell the gardenias?

  “I’m late for work,” she said, rummaging for nothing in her handbag, avoiding his gaze, though she was already facing the door.

  “Always in such a hurry, woman.”

  His voice was slow and lilting, unexpected. She glanced at him over her shoulder. He had called her woman, as he used to. He was seated as always in his big brown chair, reading his newspaper by the light of his lamp. Maybe he does know, she thought. He’d always tried to give her freedom—he would give her anything—and this made the fact that it, that he, was not enough even harder to cope with. She scooped her house keys out of the bowl on the little table and reached for the door, frustrated by his unreproachful silence, then deeply moved by his ability to love her with such generosity. She paused in the doorway.

  “Will you be all right for dinner?” she asked, with an old tenderness.

  And then he did look at her, over the rim of his newly acquired reading glasses, and she believed he could see everything. She stood there, trying to make herself transparent. She wanted to be unburdened, to confess. She imagined him standing, finally fed up, and walking over to her, stripping her of her keys, pushing her into the landing, closing the door in her face. But he couldn’t carry this for her. He remained in his chair and looked away again.

  “I’ll be just fine,” he said, to his paper.

  “Fine,” she echoed. “See you after class.”

  “Oh, jaanu,” he said, chuckling to himself. “I think Felix prefers the kidney and liver. I might pick up some more. He was especially affectionate after his meal this evening. I could hear him purring his gratitude.”

  A new surge of affection for Ramesh was sufficiently sharp to feel like punishment for what she was about to do. She smiled—at her pain, and at the childlike wonder that occupied his face.

  “I’m glad you two are getting on so well,” she said.

  “It’s always a surprise, you know, when he hops onto your lap after he’s eaten. Such interesting creatures, aren’t they?”

  Her smile fell. Beth’s apartment never was the haven Nayana had hoped it would be. She hadn’t sat down once. She’d merely paced behind the cat long enough to see that it was eating, then left.

  “Just imagine what Mum would say if we got a cat.”

  “You want a cat?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “No, of course not. I just thought . . .” He shook his head and returned to his paper. His voice grew quiet, unsure. “It’s just nice taking care of something, isn’t it?”

  Nayana slipped out to the landing without a further word. That was their way now; they made allowances for each other’s silences. Closing the door behind her, she felt a sense of relief, but it lasted only a moment. Shame and
guilt always too close behind. The lift was in the lobby; she took the stairs, freeing her hair and letting it fall down her back. She imagined Ramesh sitting alone in their home. Her perfume might have made its way over to him. Perhaps he allowed his doubts to linger alongside its scent for a moment. But he would shake them off, fold his newspaper, and swat them both away. He might turn his thoughts to dinner instead, or find something on television. Would he check on the cat once more? Was he so lonely? Wasn’t she?

  III

  Birendra was tired of sitting still in the Nairs’ living room, tired of listening to the condolences offered by each visiting neighbor, tired of being reminded his mother was gone. He had to escape. Outside, it was mostly quiet. Other children were at school. The sounds he heard were familiar—squawking crows, the occasional moped in the distance—but their isolation, on a school day, in the wake of his mother’s death, rendered them gloomy, haunting. He took a seat under the clean linens that Mrs. Nair had hanging on a clothesline strung between two coconut trees. They’d been there since the day before. He found a shard from a burst planter and began to scratch at the earth. The Nairs had stopped bickering about him, but he’d heard Mr. Nair remind Mrs. Nair that morning, “We honor the sixteen days of mourning, and then he must go.” Birendra felt guilty for causing problems, but he’d not yet found the strength, or the words, to speak, and so he had no apology to offer.