Dancing Shadow
Said goodbye to the sky---didn't even feel like looking at it, at all that light. It startled me---to look into the face of that naked light---that huge sky...
Windows and door shut tight.
Lying in my bed.
Reba is massaging my temples.
I had asked her to do it. I do wheedle her a lot.
Even if there is very little response nowadays.
"It won't do if you massage that gently."
Reba doesn't reply.
"Try a little harder.'
"Yes, just like that."
I look at her face.
By twisting my neck.
"Yes, just like that, right...that feels good---ah, yes..."
When, twisting my fingers, I fill the glass with whiskey---that too feels good---to me.
If you want to wring something from the earth, first you have to tear open its bosom. Never did get anything there---well, maybe two fistfuls. But the cost to get that, the hurt---the wound still gapes!...Suddenly I don't like getting my forehead massaged anymore. The more she expends of herself, the bigger the risk of my getting bankrupt.
"Stop---you don't have to do it anymore."
It is as if she hadn't heard me.
"Reba---that's it."
Only now does she get up.
Stands---winding her key-chain;---relieved at having been spared further massage?
I too am spared. I am a little breathless.
Looking from behind the thick lens of my spectacles at Reba's face I feel a jolt of recognition---I and she.
How we are getting tangled inside a web of trivia.
Will it ever end?
I force myself to sit up.
The veins in my forehead throb. As if my whole head is being torn off. I tie the handkerchief very firmly around my head. As soon as I open the window a shaft of light from the street outside hits my eye.
I can't look out---have to step away.
Unbearable, that much sky.
Tiptoe over to the bed.
Reba is not there---when she left I don't know.
And doubtless is not returning.
Unless I call for her, she doesn't come much---even this little tidbit of information I find tiresome to think about.
What cannot be---I love to dwell on it.
Unless I first mix daylight into the colours of darkness I can't bear to look at it.
Reba does not come.
I sit up.
Go over and stand in the verandah.
She is giving the beggar-boy a bit of hot, starchy, freshly-cooked rice ladled out on a freshshaalleaf...hot, white-foamy rice, along with a bit of unsalted curry.
Well---very good!
Stare at them for a long time.
One who is so kind---everything is possible with such people!
The beggar-boy eats---Reba stares at him fixedly.
The Reba I had glimpsed inside the dark room---I liked this Reba infinitely more.
Standing there I get pins and needles in my legs.
I limp back into the room ...
... Okay, can't this woman be freed---from this cage of a house!
Of course---of course! ...
But the bars of prison have been constructed out of my own ribcage.
My skull throbs. I can't think any longer.
Don't even know when I fell asleep.
The night lengthens.
Moonlight through the crack in the window.
A plate of covered rice on the floor.
Feel very hungry---get up. Slowly lift the cover and peek inside. Such a neat arrangement! The shiny plate. The glass gleams. The floor sparkles---the sitting area swept so clean!
Who has done all this, I know.
Why has it been done, that too I know.
Yet it doesn't raise my hopes---in fact, deepens my fear.
I start to loathe myself.
Even if I did make it out of my ribs, yet a cage is still a cage.
I eat.
In the next room somebody's breath rises and falls, very evenly!
I don't feel like eating anymore.
Sounds as if somebody is scratching at the ear of the earth.
But not finding the courage to speak to Man, with Man more rotten than dirt!
I get up while still eating. Stand at the window. Even that late at night somebody enters the room! Indistinct figure.
...peering through my thickly-lensed spectacles it seems to be---
kunimashi. Her shadow came to a dead stop on the moonlit floor.
'Mashima---'
'Yes, I came to speak to you. What's going on, all this eating this late at night? And on top of that, so much left over---you didn't eat much, did you?'
A very distantly-related mashi.
Reba's mother---kunimashi.
She is looking intently---at the leftovers, mumbling mantra-like to herself---this sixty-year-old woman.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. 'Mashima'---I am startled by the sound of my own voice. What I wanted to say---Mashima said it herself.
'Reba won't have a roof over her head ... Ugh! A man and a woman living in the same house, yet the priest won't come to bless them! ... Sleeping next door to each other---night after night! ...'
Somebody has cut off my tongue. I am not allowed to speak.
Mashima drones on ... of so many things ... no way anybody can remember all that. After a long time I say 'It cannot happen.'
That I manage to say this much is enough. No need to talk anymore ---
Mashima replies, 'We'll leave tomorrow --- go wherever the eye goes.'
And just the way she came in, she tiptoes out.
She had been coming in twenty times a day. Talking about so many things---spreading so much stuff about her daughter.
My head was drooping from this daily feminine assault. Reba had never taken part in it, though. She saw truth as much larger than lies. Perhaps that was the reason why.
The poet comes ... wearing a silk panjabi, dangling a gold chain---long locks flowing---with whatever youthful restlessness he can muster.
Don't invite him to sit down. He himself pulls up a chair.
Says, 'Which of my poems did you like the most? ... The one I wrote about---'Darkness', right?'
I answer, 'I didn't like any of your poems---the poem I'll like the most is the one I'm writing myself ...'
He leaves after attending to a few other matters---didn't seem at all fazed by what I had said.
The hunger that builds in the breast, that does not want to die easily, no, not at all ...
Yet as far as is possible I try to go about avoiding Reba. Which is why she dares to come sit by me.
How daring she has become!
Clasping my two hands in her two hands she draws me near and lays her head on my chest---if any living thing could live on unflinchingly embracing her father's corpse, it is this---nothing else.
I knew that---knew it all along.
Yet, don't like the fact that by mistake I could arrive at the wrong idea.
But over these last few days all my wrong ideas are falling away, one by one ...
And since then Reba has not been trampling on my shadow.
She never ever loved me.
Nowadays, drawing her sari veil tighter, she is edging away from me, desperate to get away.
What fear! What loathing!
The doctor comes. A lad dressed up as a sahib.
Takes one look at our home and turns his face, his eyes, away. Dusts his 'suit' seventeen times in five minutes. Sees my cheap, coarse clothes and feels shame. Rubs the sweaty back of his neck eyes, nose, face with a handkerchief, and then somehow fits himself within the narrow confines of the life he views before him.
... Yet he comes ... daily.
Right when day comes to an end and shadows darken the sky, right then.
Just as suddenly as a shadow ...
Says, 'Let me take a look at your glasses.'
Take them off and slowly hand them over.
'My God, very thick lenses indeed, your eyes must be gone.'
'What else ...' I chuckle back at him.
Twirls dances spins dangles my glasses while talking away at me, lecturing, explaining.
Don't understand.
Don't listen, either.
Just know that he's going on and on.
Just that! ...
Returns my spectacles.
I ask 'You done?'
'How did the eyes go? ... Must have gone from a very early age.'
'What's gone---!'
Looks at me as if his disgust knows no bounds. A diseased corpse passing itself off as a live human being---it's like he can barely tolerate this insult to humanity ...
Before I can say anything further, Reba comes in with tea.
Cup is cracked; the saucer, too.
Reba feels more ashamed about it than even the doctor. She can't figure out how she can possibly excuse herself from this scene.
Reba is talking a lot ...
Through my glasses stamping down my hungry soul I take a quick look at the two.
They don't see me looking.
It feels good to rest my body against the flaking-plaster wall.
Like this.
The doctor isn't getting up---nor is Reba.
He's got the prize after so many days.
They talk, talk. Interminably.
With my eyes closed I think ...'What you're saying I can say it too---everything; Far better than you ever can ... I can say it ... no matter what I've become, I can let myself go in a way that you can't ... that you never can ... '
The more they heat up, the more they naked they get---I feel the more numb they are getting.
Who are they to me! ...
This is their love! ...
If only they had allowed me to love!
...
'He's fallen asleep,' Reba whispers.
Silence for about a minute.
Then the sound of kisses...
Both fidget...
Finally, everything is silent...
Cold enters the dark room.
Whether it is terrible or beautiful.
I do not know.
I call Reba to my side and look into her face...
I have it, I have it, I now possess hope.
That day when she offered the beggar-boy the foamy rice on a shaal leaf, even that day her face wasn't as bright as it is today...no no---this cannot by any means be terrible! This is beautiful---supremely beautiful!
Reba asks, 'Why did you call me?'
Her voice--it is as if the caged bird is free. I too have gotten back the sky.
Gotten back the sky's light---all of it. Light is greater than darkness.
Much greater.
Nothing is higher than the sky except truth.
'You were calling?'
She flings herself on top of me. Fear, disgust, loathing, hatred--it is as if she has risen a good deal above these.
'Were you calling?'...two pairs of eyelashes would have become one if they were any closer.
Before they can come closer Reba has to leave... Just like this...
Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) is Bengal's foremost modernist poet. Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star. This story appeared posthumously in the little magazine Onukto, in 1956. As far as possible the original punctuation has been faithfully followed.
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