The Lake

(A STORY)

Sambu lyer sat like an inscrutable Buddha, his eyes closed and his mouth speeding over the evening prayers to the various deities of. the Hindu pantheon. The sinking sun, as a last act of defiance, threw up a foam of orange’ on the liquid blue of the sky, and was caught up by the dark, low-hanging clouds which broke the flame into myriad strangely-beautiful colours. The lake played with the shore with its monotonous murmur. Sambu lyer sat, his mind concentrated on propitiating the various gods and goddesses who rule the world and sport with men’s destinies.

The lake lay like an emerald sheen. It was the most prominent feature of Sirur, a small town thrown between two districts. Of an evening it was there that people met and gossip floated about the daily doings. The lake meandered outside the town until its impetuosity was checked by low hillocks that stood frowning at the flirtation of the water. Abashed, it lay low, making obeisance to the angry gods of the hillocks, and like a shy maiden was prepared to immolate itself at the foot of the conqueror.

Sambu lyer opened his eyes, weary of the unseen angels that flitted through his mind–and looked about in the vague, uncertain way of a man who had just woken from a dream. His eyes roved from the distant paddy-fields to the shore of the lake. Amidst the noise and confusion of the men and women, who floated about like animated dolls, a girl was standing, her saffron sayee catching the farewell glow of the sun. She was preparing to fill a brass pot with water. Sambu lyer’s wandering mind was arrested, and he looked at her, first with faint interest and then with an ever-growing sense of affinity.

She was slim, with blue-black hair loosely knotted over an ivory nape. The broad forehead sloped towards two eyes that burnt like burnished coal, and her nose was straight and small, subduing the coral lips of a humorous mouth. Sambu Iyer gazed at her, and noted in a vague way her cotton saree and her gold ornaments unrelieved by any gems.

Something moved in his entrails at the glorious vision and he felt an inchoate leaning towards her. In spite of himself, he longed to go near her, speak to her and stroke the abundant hair.

He nudged his Vengu Iyer. "Who is she?" he whispered.

"Who?" Torn from his private world, Vengu Iyer opened his eyes.

"That girl over there," Sambu Iyer pointed the girl out to his friend.

"Oh, that girl!" Vengu Iyer peered at her. "I don’t know." He closed his eyes and was again with his dreams and desires.

"Vengu!" Sambu Iyer’s voice was sharp and edged with exasperation. "I want to know who she is."

"Oh!" Vengu Iyer’s eyes were suspicious. "And why do you want to know?"

"Never mind." Sambu Iyer was impatient. "You must find out who she is. It is easy for you. You are the most influential man here, and I am only your guest. Find out."

Vengu Iyer was not satisfied. "At your age, Sambu, really! I am ashamed. You must be forty if you are a day."

"Does age count?" Sambu Iyer retorted. "I must get to know her, do you hear, or... or..." He trailed off into an eloquent silence.

Vengu Iyer knew full well his friend’s impetuosity. But he returned to his attack. "What about your wife and children?"

"Bah!" Sambu Iyer brushed them away with a wave of his hand as if they were just some annoying trifles. "I tell you I must know that girl."

Vengu Iyer knew it was useless to argue with his friend when he was in that contrary mood. He had been the same since childhood, he reflected, irresponsible and turbulent.

The girl, unconscious of the desire and arguments which she had evoked in the bosoms of two elderly gentlemen, placed the pot gracefully under her arm musical with glass bangles, and prepared for her departure. Sambu Iyer and his friend noted this and with unanimity rose and dusted their clothes.

They followed the unknown maid, silent, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. One was prepared to fling away his life, sacrifice it at the altar of an inchoate desire with all the care-free idealism of a youth at his first approach to the realities of the world. The other was suspicious and distrustful, the crust of age and experience smothering the boyish feelings like a blanket.

With a graceful swing the girl turned into a narrow street, gained a house and passed into it. Sambu Iyer and Vengu Iyer came to a halt before the door, Suddenly Vengu Iyer said, "You go along, Sambu, to my house. I shall follow you quite soon." He left his friend and walked into the house which the girl had entered.

Scarcely an hour had passed before Vengu Iyer returned to his impatient friend.

"I have fixed up everything, Sambu," he announced with a grin. "Though the price is stiff."

Sambu Iyer indulged in his favourite gesture. "The price doesn’t count."

"I shall tell my servant to prepare my bungalow in the extension–the one near the lake, you know. You can go there at ten, and the girl will join you about half-past ten. I have arranged for the car to pick her up and go to the bungalow." He paused a while out of breath. "Though, I don’t know," he added, "why, at your age, you should be doing this, and why, I should be helping you. Still you have always been like this, and I have always helped you."

Sambu Iyer watched his friend with a smile. Now that the affair had started well and his anxieties were lulled, he could afford to smile. Vengu always grumbled, he thought, but helped all the same.

"The mother of the girl–oh, yes, the girl’s name is Padma–is a widow, I think," Vengu Iyer said in answer to a question from Sambu Iyer. "Very poor, and but for the payment, I suppose, she wouldn’t have agreed. It is funny but she hopes to put this money as dowry for the girl." He laughed, scarcely realising the horror of it, and Sambu Iyer smiled, a little wanly.

The mocking moon was riding high in all her naked serenity, as Sambu Iyer slowly walked towards the lake. His mouth was full of pan-supari, and there was a suspicion of a rare Indian perfume about his person. Conflicting emotions were surging in his breast, the chief one being a blend of anticipatory delight and regret that it would be evanescent. The sense of possession received fresh impetus, and it was with an almost youthful jauntiness that he directed his steps towards the lonely bungalow where a solitary light competed feebly with the moon. His thoughts ran riot and a delicious shudder shivered down his spine.

He looked up and saw Ashtoreth laughing her way. A man of classical learning who delighted with an insane passion in the mythologies of the various ancient civilizations, he prayed, perhaps improperly, to the mother of a thousand breasts and to Aphrodite. The moon smiled and it seemed to whisper to him, "Go ahead, my friend, I am with you even if the other gods and goddesses may look askance at your adventure. Go, enjoy the moments, for they are fleeting."

"Padma, Padma," Sambu Iyer chanted to himself, suddenly glad that the moon-goddess was with him. The name of the girl was a charm to him, and his lips clung sensuously to the word.

His pace slackened as he reached the compound and passed into the garden heavy with the perfume of roses and jasmines that hung in clusters and whispered to each other. He opened the door slowly, and went upstairs to the open terrace to spend his time in communion with the moon-washed night, until the girl came–as the prelude of a solitary flute awakens the violins, the ‘cellos and lastly the cymbals, when passion runs riot and nature shivers with the onslaught.

He had not long to wait. There was the siren of the car round the bend of the road, and soon it swung clear of the gates and stopped before the house. A girl got out and hesitated near the steps, uncertain. Sambu Iyer called to her from the terrace. "Come up, will you? The stairs are on your left."

The girl looked up, a wry smile flitting across her face, and was soon upstairs by the side of the man who had dreamed of her ever since dusk. Sambu Iyer waited near the top of the stairs. Padma came near him and stopped. a sudden shyness overwhelming her. He looked at her keenly, analysing her features one by one, delighting in the arrangement. Suddenly he took hold of her hand which she surrendered without resistance. He searched for her eyes while she hung, suspended. Her innocent eyes, troubled, glanced at him, just for the shade of a second, and looked away again.

No words came to break the heavenly stillness of the white night. Sambu Iyer drew her to his breast and his lips blindly searched for hers. The girl still hung, suspended. But slowly, she felt herself dissolving into an agony of delight, slowly drowning in a pool of ecstasy. She tried to steady herself and resist the strange man who attracted her in a vague, indefinable way, but she was slipping down in spite of her efforts. She was clothed in golden garments, and she melted in his embrace, her eyes closed, her body intensely alive. But she felt herself dying by inches–dead.

The moon coursed through the vaults of heaven, and looked down on the strangely-assorted couple. She glittered and glistened, and suddenly a malicious laughter broke from her lips. Ashamed, she withdrew behind a dark cloud. The breeze also died away, and there was a breathlessness in the air. But the malicious laughter grew like the final crash of a symphony. The violins and the ‘cellos were soon silenced, but the cymbals and the drums grew mad. The symphony was finishing–but on an ugly phrase. The gods smiled invidiously, satisfied with their malevolent sport, and beckoned to the goddess Nemesis to begin her divine retribution.

Sambu Iyer looked at the girl lying there in his arms, her eyes closed, her breath slowly subsiding into normality. Love smothered him, and he buried his face into her hair. A sigh and a whimper escaped him. The girl opened her eyes and smiled at him, sudden love flooding her body. She shivered and drew close to him.

Sambu Iyer stroked her hair and began a conversation. At least he wanted to lose himself in the silence, but Nemesis bade him talk.

"Won’t you tell me something about yourself, Padma?" he asked.

"About myself?" Padma’s voice was musical, though slightly frightened. "What is there to tell?" A bitter laugh trembled for a moment on her lips. She was silent for a minute. "I am just an ordinary Brahmin girl forced by circumstances to be what I am not, to do things I hate." A cloud crossed her face, and she sighed.

Sambu lyer was touched–and felt a little bit ashamed, for he was also one of those who had dragged her further into the mire. He looked at her with pensive eyes, trying to break through the barrier set up by human beings against one another, however close they are. He had possessed her as fully as it was possible–but she had again escaped him by drawing a circle round herself within which no mortal could gain access. She lay there, abstracted, remote–far from the man embracing her, as if he did not exist.

"Padma," Nemesis in Sambu lyer urged her. "My dear, adorable Padma. Tell me about your family. Who was your father and what was he?"

"Need we talk about things beyond our control?" Padma was reluctant. "Does not the moment suffice you, but you needs must try to rend the veil and peep beyond? As I told you before, I am just what I am–and I suppose I will end up as I am." There was a suspicion of tears in her eyes.

The man was troubled–but he was insistent. He wanted to know more about her, so that he could feel very near to her. He began to plead.

"All right." Padma caressed his face. "I like you, and you have been very decent to me. I will tell you the things I have never told anyone yet–and I hope I never shall. My mother is not a widow. She is very much married, but my father deserted her when she was carrying me. I should not say ‘deserted.’ He is a man of outrageous temper, it seems, and one day they had a quarrel because of his mother–I suppose I should say, my grandmother, but I can’t, for I don’t know her. He kicked her out–that is, my mother–and asked her never to set foot in his house again. And his temper never subsided–at least not where my mother was concerned. He made arrangements with his lawyer to send her an allowance every month, a very meagre sum, on condition that she left the place where he lived. That is all. My mother agreed because of me, and she has remained loyal to his memory. And here I am."

Sambu Iyer lay rigid. There was a film over his eyes, and he felt himself choking. All the time the girl was talking, a monstrous suspicion was clouding over his brain. But a separate voice, a detached voice, was whispering to him that it was absurd, that such things could not happen in life. Coincidences happened only in fiction. Still he felt as if he were being strangled.

"What....is...your...mother’s.…name, Padma?" he managed to gasp out at last.

"Are you feeling ill? The girl leaned on her elbow and looked at him with concern. Shall I get you some water?"

Sambu Iyer shook his head. He could not trust himself to speak. "Your mother’s name?" he demanded again after some time, trying to steady his voice.

"Savitri," the girl replied. The suspicion was crystallizing into certainty. Still Sambu Iyer felt that it was monstrous. The girl must be telling a lie. But a small voice insisted that the girl had no motive, that she did not know him, not even his name.

"What is your father’s name?" he turned on her and asked her fiercely.

The girl shrank from him, fear gripping her heart.

"Tell me," he insisted angrily.

A sob escaped from the girl’s throat. She felt contracted with dread. She looked at him, fear in her eyes. But she managed to say, "Sambasiva Iyer, a mirasidar."

The last hope was also shattered. Sambu Iyer knew now that the girl, who lay by his side, was his daughter whom he had never seen or heard of until then. The gods rubbed their hands with glee, and drew nearer to see the climax and the inevitable there-after.

For a moment Sambu Iyer lay still–his mind refusing to envisage the calamity. "It could not be, it could not be," his heart was bleeding with tears. But it was so. He had played with Fate once too often, and he had lost.

He felt very much like sobbing, to get relief. But he knew that weeping was no remedy–it had gone beyond that. Reason claimed him, and he was resolved that, whatever happened, Padma should not know. But he could not help flinging her hand away from him. He felt stifled. With a sudden jerk, he got up. He must be calm, he dug his nails into the palms until they hurt him–so that he could regain control over himself, and forget the hurt and pain to his soul.

Padma looked at the strange behaviour of the man who had, but only a moment ago, been intimate with her. Fear and concern struggled in her body–fear, lest the man was mad, concern lest he was ill. She watched him pace the terrace in angry strides.

"What is the matter?" She managed to ask him in a small voice.

Sambu Iyer ignored her. "Lucky, lucky," his mind was insisting, "she doesn’t know who I am. She does not even know my name." A flood of tenderness for her poured into his heart. God, how his wife must have suffered for her baby! And he was the cause, the cause, for his girl being what she was. He began pacing again.

Suddenly his mind was made up. He halted in his senseless march and said brusquely to hide his emotions,–for he felt, whatever happened, the girl should never know his identity– "Padma, you better get up and dress yourself. You are going home now."

"But, but, don’t you want me to stay with you? Tell me, have I offended you in any way?" The girl’s innocence only succeeded in probing the wound deeper.

Tears gushed to his eyes, "No," he shouted in his anguish. "I am sorry, very sorry," he struggled to maintain mastery over himself." I should not have shouted at you," he whispered in a small voice. "I have some business to do now, and I would like you to go. Go and sleep well, my dear."

He shouted, "Vela, Vela." "Yes, sir," came a sleepy, muffled voice. "Get the car ready," Sambu Iyer shouted again. "Take the lady home, and then you can go. I won’t be returning tonight."

"I am sorry, my dear." Words came tumbling out. "I am afraid you must go. Here," he took a wad of notes from his purse, "take this and go."

The girl stood there, puzzled, hurt. Sambu Iyer looked at her for a moment. Suddenly he embraced her with agony and imprinted a kiss on her forehead. He softened. "Goodbye, my dear, God bless you."

Padma said in a very inaudible voice, "Goodbye," like a child feeling sleepy, and descended slowly. She was still puzzled by the behaviour of the gentleman for whom she had conceived a liking. She did not know that it was because he was her father. She made the same misfake as Sambu Iyer earlier on in the evening when he had felt drawn to her. His parenthood, to his confused senses, had appeared in the guise of a sexual attraction–and he was even then paying the penalty for his mistake.

Dally he heard the car screeching its way out of the gates. Everything was dull. Even the moon that had, five minutes before, been glittering and sensuous, was now dull. There was a dull ache in his heart. All of a sudden, in a flash, he realised that life itself was dull, futile. In a short time he had aged ten years. He felt tired. Weary, he dragged himself downstairs. He trimmed the wick of the lamp and sat near a table, and buried his face in his hands. A sob escaped his throat, and his body shook with anguish and remorse. Hot tears sprang from his eyes. Slowly he wiped them away, and a sigh escaped him–a long–drawn-out sigh that dragged his soul out of him.

He picked up a sheet of note-paper and began to write:

"Dear Vengu,

By the time you see this letter, I will be no more–for merciful death would have claimed me. I have lived aeons since I saw you last, and my existence is over.

Before I continue, I must tell you that I absolve you of all blame. You did not know, and hence cannot be held guilty. The girl whom I desired was my own daughter. I need not give you the sordid details, as you already know them. She is Savitri’s child–and my own. And I have taken her.

The horror of it, Vengu! I have possessed my own daughter–my own flesh and blood! Even if I had murdered her, strangled her with my own hands, it wouldn’t have been so bad, such a sin. I feel dishonoured, tainted–and I have dishonoured her too in my frenzy and lack of scruples.

I am already dead, Vengu. Everything in me is dead. It is only the ghost of a lingering sense of my obligations that is driving my benumbed hand onward. And when I have finished this letter, I am going out to my peaceful rest. Heaven forgive me for my life and for my death, and purify me!

You know where Padma lives. I will soon be in the Land of the Dead, and I have appointed you in my will as the executor for my estates. Divide my property equally between my two wives. See that Padma marries well. I charge you with that. And let nobody know about my shame–it is Padma’s shame as well. She does not, however, know who I am.

Goodbye, my friend, and may God guide you. Remember me in your prayers.

Sambu."

Sambu Iyer finished the letter and put it in an envelope and addressed it. He placed it in a prominent place where no one would miss it. He looked round for a moment unseeing and then extinguished the lamp. He carefully shut the door behind him.

The lake was only a hundred yards away from the gates, but it took the world-weary man nearly fifteen minutes. The moon hung low in the west preparing for her sleep, after having been a witness to the tragedy of one soul. In the east, Ushas was rising from the connubial couch of the Sun, blushing with pride and shame. The birds had begun the aubade, heralding the advent of another day.

Sambu Iyer stood on the shores for a long time in a reverie. Vaguely he knew that another day was dawning, and that he must finish the last act of his life soon. He looked at the moon who was rapidly losing her youthful brilliance. His hands linked themselves, and he prayed fervently.

"Oh, moon, goddess of the star-lit heavens, heed the prayers of a sinful man and make him whole and pure again with your naked white light. Wash me clean again with your healing rays and let me go to my death, unashamed, full of peace and joy….." He prayed to her and then he turned east, and prayed to the god of day pleading for his forgiveness. Then he turned towards the lake again. Looking at the sluggish waters, he murmured, "Oh, goddess of the lake, Varuna’s satellite, soon I will be committing myself to your tender care. Wash me with your own hands and bear me in my childhood purity to God."

He stripped himself to the waist, and whispering the name of Narayana, he plunged into the cold depths. The water whirled and eddied round his disappeared form. Thrice he came up and thrice he went down. The lake received him in her infinite mercy, and grew peaceful and gentle again.

The sun peeped over the eastern seas, and the birds grew noisier. The world was again astir. Another day had begun.