Fiction
The Golden Deer
Continued from last week
With the month of Ashwin, the time for the festival of Mother Durga arrived. From the fourth day boats from far and away were arriving at the river port of the village. People, who worked in other places, were returning home. In their baskets there were gourds, pumpkins, dry coconuts; in their tin boxes they brought shoes, umbrellas and clothes for their sons, and for their beloved wives perfume, soap, new story books and scented coconut oil.
Like the upcoming merry festival, the sunshine of the month of Sarat spread all over in the clear sky; the nearly ripe rice plants were trembling in the breeze; the monsoon-washed leaves of the trees were shivering in the new cold wind blowing on the onset of winterand wearing homespun China coat, sporting well-folded shawls on their shoulders, holding umbrellas over their heads, the people were returning to their homes by a shortcut through the fields.
Watching these home-coming people from his verandah, Baidyanath couldn't but suppress a deep sigh that wrung out of his heart. Comparing his joyless house with thousands of gleeful houses in the Bengal, he thought to himself, "Why has God created me such useless?"
His sons woke up at dawn and rushed to Adyanath's house to see the making of the idol of the goddess by the potter at the yard. At the mealtime when the housemaid had to capture the children to drag them home, Baidyanath was ruminating over his futile life in the midst of this bustling festive world. Rescuing the boys from the housemaid, he sat them on his lap, and drawing the elder one close to him, said, "Okay Obu, what do you want to have for this Puja?"
Obinash replied instantly, "Give me a boat, father."
The younger one thought, it was useless to be less than his brother in anything. So he said, "Give me a boat too, father."
Like father like son! They don't want anything else if they get some useless art work to accomplish. The father said, "Okay."
In the meantime an uncle of Mokhshada had returned from Kashi on his yearly visit during the Puja holidays. He was a pleader by profession. For sometime, Mokhshada was seen visiting him frequently in his house.
At last, one day, she came over to her husband and said, "Dear, you have to go to Kashi."
For a moment Baidyanath thought perhaps she had found out from some astrologer that his death was near and she was, therefore, keen on providing him the last rite of absolution.
Later on he came to know about the rumour of a certain house in Kashi under which a hidden treasure was to be found, and he had to buy that house in order to retrieve the treasure.
Baidyanath said, "Holy God, I can't go to Kashi."
Biadyanath had never gone anywhere out of his house. But the ancient pundits had long ago written about the remarkable 'uneducated' skills of the wives in sending their hibernating husbands away from homes. Mokhshada could of course have burnt the house to cinders with her words, at which the unfortunate Baidyanath would only have awashed himself in tears but would have never mentioned of going to Kashi.
Two or three days passed. Baidyayanath spent his time laboring after chiseling and spiking and joining some pieces of wood into making two toy boats. He set a mast on them, put up the sail, hoisted the flag, and fixed the steering pole and oars on them. Puppet boatmen and passengers were also fitted into them. In fact, he expressed much innovation and wonderful skills in the making of the boats. Seeing those boats that a young boy wouldn't be stirred to excitement was rare to see nowadays. So when Baidyanath handed over the boats to his sons into the seventh day of the festival, they jumped up in joy. Where the mere hulk of the boats would have sent them to cloud nine, there in that place like bonus came mast, sail, oars, boatmen and passengersthey were simply awed by such decorations.
Attracted by their noise, Mokhshada walked in to see the Puja gift of the poor father to his sons.
The moment she saw the toys she flew into a rage, gave out a shriek, slapped her forehead and grabbed the toys and threw them out of the window. Oh God, she wailed, let alone a gold chain, or silk shirts, or even embroidered caps, nothing of the sorts, and the unfortunate father had finally decided to cheat on his own sons by gifting two toy boats, and that also not spending two paisa to buy them, but making them himself!
The youngest boy started crying at the top of his voice. Calling him an idiot boy, Mokhshada gave him a resounding slap on the cheek.
Having a look at the face of his father, the eldest son forgot his own grief. Pretending to be unperturbed, he said, "Father, don't worry, I'll retrieve them tomorrow early morning."
And on the very following morning, Baidyanath agreed to set out for Kashi. But where is the money to come from? His wife sold her gold to get the money. The gold jewellery was ancestral assets coming down from Baidyanath's grandmother's time, and such pure and heavy gold was not easily found at the present time.
Baidyanath felt as if he was taking this journey to die. Taking the boys on the lap a few times, kissing them farewell, he finally left his house in tearful eyes. Then Mokhshada also started crying.
The owner of the house at Kashi was Mokhshada's uncle's client. Probably for that reason the house was sold at a much higher price. Baidaynath took possession of the house as the sole owner. The house was on the very bank of the river. The river flowed washing at its foundation.
As the night descended Baidyanth felt cowed by a creeping sensation. In the empty house he lay alone wrapping himself up from head to foot in a chadar (bedsheet), and kept a candle burning by the bed near his head.
But sleep was not coming to him. At the deep of the night when all sounds stopped altogether, Baidyanath was suddenly startled by a metallic sound coming from somewhere. It was a mild but clear sound, as if the treasurer of the king of slaughter was sitting in the underworld and counting his coins.
Though much scared, Baidyanath became curious too, and an invincible sense of hope filled up his mind. He took up the candle in his trembling hand and searched the house room by room. If he came to this room, it seemed as if the sound was coming from another room, and if he went to that room, the sound then seemed to be coming from yet another room. All night Baidyanath had only walked from this room to that room. At daytime the earth-shaking sound got mixed up with other sounds and couldn't be identified separately.
When the night was into its second or third phase, and the world went to sleep, that sound again recurred. Baidyanath felt extremely restless. Tracking the sound, which way he should go he couldn't yet decide. It was like the sound of water coming from the midst of a desert, but from which direction there was no way to know! He was afraid too lest he took a wrong step and the stream of the hidden treasure got lost forever. Baidyanath's condition was like that thirsty traveler who stands still with sharp ears to locate the source of water, while his thirst goes on increasing.
Many days passed in great uncertainty. Only insomnia and false hopes wrought sharp lines of anxiety on his otherwise calm face. His eyes in their sockets from time to time in a restless look expressed the burnt heat of the sandy desert.
At last one day at noontime he closed all the doors of the house and started tapping on the floor with a pickaxe. In a small adjacent room at a certain spot the sound from the floor echoed back empty.
In the deep of the night Baidyanath started digging the floor at the chosen spot all by himself, which got completed when it was almost dawn.
Baidaynath discerned some kind of a room underneathbut he didn't dare step into it as it was still dark. He rather laid his bed on the face of the hole and slept on it. But the sound grew so persistently clear that he left the bed in fearthough yet he couldn't think it wise to leave the house unguarded. Both fear and greed pulled him apart from opposite directions, and thus the night passed by.
Today the sound could be heard even at daytime. He didn't allow the servant to enter the house but took his meals outside at the verandah. After eating, he entered the house and locked up the door from inside.
Chanting Goddess Durga's name he removed the bed from the top of the hole. The water beneath squabbled and the metallic sounds of something could be clearly heard.
(to be continued)
Mohit Ul Alam, PhD, Professor and Head, Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.
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