Nayanchara

Artwork by Mustafa Zaman

But when the torrents of sleep retreat from the sandy land of the mind, it drily laughs: Mayurakkhi! Where's Mayurakkhi? What sort of humid, hot air blows here? How can the air that criss-crosses the river's breast be this hot?

They lie sprawled on the footpath like scattered straws. Having eaten a bit around noon at the gruel-kitchen, they now sleep the sleep of the dead--insensible, motionless. But in Amu's eyes there is no sleep, just the fog of slumber thickens sometimes; and even if sleep does come, it's in his body, not in his mind. Which lies awake beside the river familiar to him, drifting between imagination and certainty, listening to her untiring, soft murmuring, brooding over the distant fishing boats. Thinking that during this lull the belly of the boat is full of big, glittering fishes--glittering fishes that will transform themselves into gleaming coins on the morrow, will come back to fatten the fishermen's bodies. And then perhaps--but no, perhaps what?

That Bhutuni coughs too much, long hacking coughs. Once it starts, it doesn't want to stop, keeps on coughing until it seems that it will never end. Yet, amazingly, stop she does. And afterwards pants. She coughs, also cries out, in her sleep, yet sleep sticks to her like a leech. True, Bhuto, Bhutoni's brother, does not cough, but instead makes a long hollow sound in his throat, as if after getting into sleep's car he's off on a journey--and on and on he goes making noises on the wheel of his dreams. Other than these two, it is peaceful, with silence having folded back its wings, and the black night like a mountain: gigantic, enormous and insurmountable.

This time as Bhutoni coughs loudly, the fog over Amu's mind lifts. He looks upward--up at the stars, and in sudden astonishment wonders whether these stars are the very same he used to see from his home. But beneath those stars were the outspread fields, broken earth, grass, crops, and the Mayurakkhi. And underneath these stars there is nothing to eat, no compassion or affection, only malevolence, cruelty and intolerable hostility.

All the same, they are stars. One likes them. And after looking at them something unknown suddenly comes--an all-pervading something that comes spreading its arms wide. But in a split second it goes away, leaving a void behind. Nothing remains...Sleep too is absent. And for that reason one wishes to drift away somewhere else. Is the river in tide or at ebb? It seems to be at ebb, and he wishes he could float away. He would be floating, floating away, this wide river would float him a long way off--but where to? Where was peace?

But here is the noise of footsteps. And this is the city. The noise of a pair of feet moving slowly through the narrow street, and when the man arrives at the street broad as a river Amu sees in astonishment that the eye of Satan is burning in him, an eye of the meanest and the angriest kind. Perhaps it is not the eye of Satan, perhaps it is only a biri. A biri waving to and fro, dangling from the hand of Satan. It is astonishing to see Satan, the eye is stupefied to see the fire glow in the deep darkness. But astonishment only; no fear. It is as if he has been waiting all this while to come face to face with Satan. In fact, when from the other side of the road a bright and slender beam of light lengthens from the closed window of a house, when that ray of light is still, and fire burns in the hand of Satan, it makes people angry. As though the fire is not dangling, but laughing: While the Amus of the world groan from pangs of hunger--it laughs like the people walking the streets laugh at the tales from a separate, unfamiliar world. Why should it laugh? Isn't it afraid of that long ray of light? Doesn't it know that it's God's eye--an unperturbed, straight, certain eye? Yet the jot of light laughs, keeps laughing, and behind it laughs the black Satan all black. Let him laugh, laugh in that different world, no objection, but in this world--the world where people have left their homes to lie on the banks of a black river waiting to float away on its tides--in this world he will not be allowed to laugh.

Nonetheless the black Satan advances mysteriously, gradually, as if floating on air--how surprising--then crosses across the line of light fearlessly, and that motionless ray of light does not obstruct him. Fog falls on the riverbed: defeated, sleep descends upon Amu's eyes. He finds peace in having accepted defeat.

The sun-burnt day is cracklingly dry. (An astounding fact: dogs in the city lack malevolence in their eyes. Here malevolence is in the eyes of humans, and in the village in the eyes of dogs). Still, that is good.

The flies buzz in the confectionery shop. The eyes of the confectioner possess nothing of the softness of cream, instead brim with brutal ferocity. so ferocious that it seems as if two dangerous eyes were burning fiercely in the deep darkness. One's eyes are drawn to where bananas dangle in a shop. They seem not to be bananas but hanging yellow-colored dreams. One feels afraid for them--what if they suddenly fall to the ground? Damping down the fear, Amu's mind cries out looking upward: O where, where is the village Nayanchara?

A red-bordered sari flashes: blood gushes. Like the blood that spurted from Karim Miah's mouth that day. The under part of the girl's throat is white--so white that the mind wants to run to affection's shade and throw itself onto the ground. Then suddenly the girl throws down two paisas and walks away spurting out blood. But just a moment: does she think that the carefully arranged hair on her head is her own? Doesn't Amu know whose hair that really is? That hair is the thick black hair of Jhira, a village girl from Nayanchara.

But how dark is this road! Strange, restless, innumerable heads; what unknown wind is stirring this black-colored sea. He has only seen this before in paddy-fields, this can only be compared to the wind-blown fields of paddy. Yet what a difference between that and this: the head is black, the land is black, the mind is black. Here there is no connection between body and land, the wind that makes them shiver and tremble is not the wind from the horizon that sets the green fields shivering. He does not know this wind.

An intolerable heat. No trees. No shade, no tender grass. What kind of a place is this: the body nearly collapsing from exhaustion but there is no shade, no trees. Even more irritating is that there's nobody to talk to--none. Here in this land of bricks there is no-one; those few who have come from his village, they have lost their minds, staring blindly, with only their empty stomachs whimpering.

Anyway, should let it go. Bhutuni is seen coming. What of it, Bhutuni? She does not answer, simply stares back, her matted hair trying to stir in the hot wind. But what of it, Bhutuni? This time, raising her nose, Bhutuni shows her palpitating tongue, then cries out. So is it that nobody gave you anything, that your stomach seems to be tearing? But you know what, something funny happened, a girl spurting blood came from nowhere, gave me two paisas and then walked away, the hair on her head the same as our Jhira--the same thickness, the same black...and the underside of her throat---. Under Bhutuni's throat filth is caked like dried mud. But no, should let it go. Oh Bhutuni, why are you crying? Bhutuni, O Bhutuni?

After muttering something, her eyes and face reddening, Bhutuni begins to cough. Bhuto, her brother, has died. Nothing new, merely a repetition of an ancient tale. He has died, that man has died, who has died or who is dying is the question, since the phrase is dying has died is a garland woven in bi-colored beads, or else the rows and rows of houses on either side of the street--those houses which are strangely unfamiliar, it seems they are not there and yet they are certainly there.

Bhutuni's crying is lost in a fit of coughing. When the coughing stops she asks: paisa? As if it were only the paisa that she cares about. Yes, true, Amu has a couple of paisas, but why should he part with them? Bhutuni's eyes are wet with tears, and blaze. And if the eyes begin to blaze, can the body be far behind: a rebellion--a razor-sharp pride can begin to burn glitteringly through the whole body. With its promise of relief in an act of lustrous vengeance.

The evening is about to descend. Wandering through unknown streets, Amu feels that these roads belong to others, not to him. Like fairy-tale monsters the people of the city throb on their evening journey homeward. Which cave is it that they are so eager to get back to ? Is it a cave with hillocks of meat, mountains of rice, stupas of fish? How gigantic is that cave?

From within Amu, under the unknown sky of an unfamiliar evening, a strange mind begins to speak. Its voice is low, yet it seems to be forcing its way past the huge waters flowing towards the cave. What is it saying? It is indistinct, but its very indistinctness is raucous: not the language of human beings but the fierce howls of beasts. What? This evening may well be an unfamiliar one; but even the evening of fairy tales is an evening, and now on this evening how cruelly have you kept me waiting in a wilderness strewn with thorns? Who are you? Do you know, with my poisonous rough tongue, I will lick this entire sky, lick it till it bleeds--who are you?

Amu's mind then lies stunned, bowed down like a penitent sinner. He begs forgiveness from the Almighty. Since the Almighty's wrongs, too, are right, it is a grave sin to commit wrongs against that right. He has committed a sin, and so begs pardon: may the Almighty pardon me by granting me a few grains of rice. All around is the deep darkness of the night, there is none to know about the Almighty's forgiveness, none to hear.

Nearby a fight has broken out among dogs. The racket jars Amu's mind loose from its momentary sacred peace. He cries out: get away, get away. Later on he comes to know that they were men, not dogs! Or dogs on the inside, not on the outside.

But Amu is a man, both on the inside and the outside. He wants forgiveness. After a while he gets up, and with a strange look on his face begins searching for something in the poor light of the road and the dimly-lit windows on both sides of the street. One storey, two storeys, three storeys--the ones higher are out of the range of those dimly-lit windows. Do you live there?

Later, smoke begins to fly inside his head. These thoughts become like smoke in his head. The unbearable heat of his belly thaws these congealed thoughts, which fly around like smoke, like steam. And as if his throat is a tunnel, Amu hears clearly a high, thin scream pushing up through that deep and hollow tunnel and when at last it breaks free into the darkness it forms waves, waves that hit the sides of the building and come back to his ears: O Ma, give me something to eat--

This road, that road: here there is no end to roads. Here one cannot go home. Even if one can see home--it can never be reached. Lights burn in the confectionery shop; who goes in there to eat, who eats, coins jangle, but over here is glass. On this side of the glass are flies, the road and Amu. Yet one wishes to stand there. But then somebody rushes out from within screaming and yelling like thunder. Aray, is that man blind? Amu laughs to himself: why would the man act that way if he was not blind? Couldn't he see that Amu, too, was a man?

Getting back on the road Amu thinks that he has heard that city people wear an artificial eye if they become blind. The man from the confectionery shop must be blind, and his eyes artificial eyes. Hearing a noise outside he must have thought it was a dog, which is why he ran out shouting. Better to let it go, but astonishing, the things that happen here. There's hardly any difference between a natural eye and an artificial eye.

Then smoke again begins to fly in his head. Fog has gathered on the banks of the Mayurakkhi. A still noon: the river calm. The clash of cymbals on a distant boat, and bodies burning at the riverside crematorium. Nothing to fear. Where is death? He has traversed across death, and wandering through narrow alleys has entered the open main street of deathlessness.

A sharp smell pierces his nose. What a tumult! People coming and going. A hotel. Should he stand here? If he so wishes--but is there somebody blind who would come charging out howling like thunder on hearing some noise outside? The smell is very nice. Then, just as an empty Boshek month's sky can suddenly become overcast with clouds, so too a deep black anger seizes him and he starts to tremble violently: he feels rebellious and keeps standing by the steps. Finally, someone from inside shouts, somebody else comes flying out and curses him in a harsh voice. Amu has been ready for this. Suddenly he jumps angrily on the man, and when after a series of storms and disasters with intolerable pain in his body he finds himself on the road again, a thought strikes him: that man who ran out, can he also be blind like the man in the confectionery shop? Perhaps he also has artificial eyes. Are so many people in the city blind? The city is indeed a place of various things.

In his excitement Amu wanders into road after road through many roads till he comes to an abrupt standstill, and thinks: this street without end, there is no profit in it. Rather let me go see who is sobbing over there, see what has happened. Near the footpath is a gas lamp, and in its hazy light a man is lying holding his stomach in his hands and moaning. A little way off, some people are squatting, expressionless, gasping soundlessly. Amu stands for some moments, then thinks he does not know them, does not feel their pain, so why should he go to them. He will not go. Then, with a sort of suppressed fear, he flees from them, running as if he had a broken leg. What kind of fear he cannot tell, he doesn't want to know, just that it has cast a fearful shadow over his mind, and to be free of it he must run back to the street without end. The shadow thickens in his mind, is there no end to it, too? Is this the shadow of death?

After a long time he notices that he is standing before a closed door, and a wail twists itself upward through the tunnel of his throat and when the cry frees itself into the void, frees itself into the huge darkness of the night, it sounds fearfully hideous. Is this his voice--his scream? Has he gone mad? Or is it some demon inside him? And yet, and yet, ignoring his own questions, cry after cry, sharp, bitter, horrid, emerges from the tunnel of his throat, as he shakes from head to foot. Finally, the door comes alive, opens, and a girl steps out and in a soft voice says: Take.

What? What shall he take? Rice. Is it rice he wants? Yes. Perhaps there are more things in this world he desires, but he cannot name them. He hastily stretches out the dirty piece of cloth and takes the rice. Then lifts his face to unblinkingly look at the girl. She seems vaguely familiar. Otherwise why can't he take his eyes off her?

--Is Nayanchara your mother's village home?

The girl does not respond. She stares at him for a few moments in surprise, then closes the door.

Famous for the novel Lal Salu, Syed Waliullah's short stories gave a new lease of life to the form in Bengali. Nayanchara was first published in Kolkata in 1945.

A. Anisuzzaman is Associate Professor, English department, at Khulna University. M. Md. Kabir is a graduate of the English department, Khulna University.