Fiction
The Golden Deer
Rabindranath Tagore
Translation MOHIT UL ALAM
(Fourth and final part)
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.
Slowly in great trepidation he brought down his face to the mouth of the hole, and saw the water of the river flowing in the low-height room. He couldn't see anything much more because of the dark.
He probed with a long stick that the depth of water in the room was only knee-deep. Taking a match and a lamp with him, he dared to jump into the room. Lest all his hopes should blow off in a moment, his hands trembled as he tried to light the lamp. He destroyed many a match-stick before one could ignite the flame to the lamp.
What he sighted inside the room was a big narrow-necked jar made of thick brass tied to a fat iron chain, and when the flow of the water rose up, the impact forced the chain to hit the body of the jar, and thereby the metallic sound was produced.
Baidyanath waded into the water to go near the jar. He found the jar empty.
Still, not believing his eyes, he held the jar up and shook it vigorously. Nothing was inside. He held it upside down. Nothing dropped out. He discovered that the neck of the jar was broken, as if once upon a time in the past its mouth was closed, and somebody had broken it.
Then Baidyanath, as if he went mad, started searching into the water with his two hands. Something hit his hands into the muddy water. Picking it up he saw it was a human skull. That too he took close to his ears and shook it. No nothing was inside it either. He threw it away. Searching more into the mud he found out nothing but the bones of the skeleton.
One part of the wall to the side of the river was broken and water entered through that crack. And he guessed as much that the person who had tried to enter the room before him probably had come in by that crack.
Then, reaching the nadir of his frustration, Baidyanath uttered the word 'mother' releasing a heart-rending sighand the echo of the sound resounded in the hollowness of the room as if the past failures of the previous attempters were mixed up in his grave sigh.
With his body all rubbed in muddy-water, Baidyanath came out of the hole.
The crowded noisy world outside looked to him to be as empty as that broken empty chained jar.
That he would have to pack up his things again, buy the ticket, get into the train, return home, and argue with his wife, and carry the burden of life again everydayall these seemed too intolerable to him. He wished, instead, that he had fallen into the river like the loosening muddy banks.
Nevertheless, he packed his things, bought the ticket, and boarded a train.
And one day in a wintry evening he arrived back home. But this kind of return on this evening was not anything like he had ever thought of in his dream, when in the month of Ashwin, with the onset of winter in the Sarat morning, he kept sitting at his verandah and eagerly watched people coming home from distant lands on Puja holidays, and he secretly desired so much to be like one of them.
Returning home he sat on the wooden bench in the yard and didn't go inside the house. It was the housemaid, who happened to see him first, and in joy she raised a great hue and crythe boys came rushing too, and his wife called him inside the house.
As if a spell had gone off from him, Baidyanth felt being restored into his old family life again.
With a dry smile on his face he carried one son in his lap, and led the other by the hand inside the house.
In the house the lamp was lighted, and though it was not yet night, the wintry evening became silent like the night.
Baidyanath remained silent for a few moments, and then in a soft voice asked, "How are you?"
The wife, making no reply to that question, asked, "What happened?"
Saying nothing, Baidyanth slapped on his forehead. Mokhshada's face hardened very much.
Sensing some ominous shadow spreading up, the boys slowly deserted the place. They went to the housemaid and urged her to tell the story about the barber. Then they went to bed.
The night was advancing far. But they spoke no word. Something like a creeping fear pervaded the house. And Mokhshada's lips gradually tightened up like an angry ball of thunder.
After more time, saying nothing to her husband, Mokhshada slowly entered their bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Baidyanath stood silently outside the room. The night guard cried out the time of the night. The weary world surrendered itself into the ease of sleep. From someone very close to him to the stars of the infinite sky, nobody had asked this humiliated, sleepless Baidyanath a single question.
Further into the night when Baidyanath's eldest son, probably having his sleep broken by a dream, woke up and left his bed and came slowly to the verandah and called out to his father, "Baba," Baidyanath was not there anymore.
In a louder voice now he called at the closed door, "Baba". But no reply came.
In fear he went back to his bed again.
Following the past tradition, the housemaid prepared his tobacco in the morning and searched for him, but she didn't find him anywhere. As the day progressed the neighbors came to see their home-returned friend, but Baidayanth was seen nowhere.
(Concluded)
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