Two Short Stories

By “BANAFUL”
(Rendered from Bengali by Phani Bhushan Maitra)

1. INEXPLICABLE

Directly a child is born, it dies. There is no escaping this inevitable fate.

Doctors, with all their ultra-modern drugs and devices, can do but less than nothing. The swift passage of life from birth to death, is unimpeded.

When the fourth child thus goes the way of all flesh, the parents can no longer shut their eyes to a singularly strange coincidence. The features of all the babies are more than similar, they are identical. It is as if the same creature is going round and round through the portals of life and death in a seemingly interminable spiral.

Why? Wherefore is this so? What’s it the child wants? Is it not properly cared for?

Rich goods of rare luxury greet the fifth child in its lying-in chamber.

Yet, the inexorable fate does not relent. The child dies all the same.

Wise advisers next come forward with their brainy counsel. Entertainment of Brahmins is a panacea for all ills and evils.

On the day the sixth child is born a few picked guests of the holy caste are, accordingly, treated to a sumptuous dinner of toothsome courses. Even music graces the occasion.

But still death claims its victim, and has it.

There is now nothing else, and all fall on the idea or some unknown sin, unatoned for.

What the Holy Scriptures ordain, is performed with scrupulous rigidity to hold fast the seventh child to life, and to its parents.

The elaborate and expensive expiatory ritual cuts no ice either.

Deny it or doubt it if you will, but the fact is there. The same baby–sometimes it is a boy, at others, a girl–is coming over and over again to torment the ill-fated parents...To die it is born, and to be born, it dies.

In unspeakable misery the anguished mother cries her eyes blind.

“Why? Oh, why is this so?” wails its father, blindly groping for some sort of an explanation.

Who knows?

At last it is beyond the parents to stand this cruel trial any longer. Warded off the haunting apparition has got to be at any cost...Driven to desperation, the baffled father makes a grim resolve in his mad fury.

He shears off the fingers and toes of his dead eighth child, and punishes it.

The mother conceives for the ninth time, and is delivered of a child in due course.

It is a girl this time.

It is again the self-same baby–the same eyes, the same nose, and all–only it has no fingers or toes...And, Oh horror! This time it defies death.

She lives to this day.

II. INCREDIBLE

For the last few days a butterfly has been visiting me regularly. It comes and settles on the green shade of my table-lamp, and sits motionless on its perch throughout the long hours I sit reading and writing at my desk...This began from within a few, days of Asha’s death.

In comes Somesh–a pal of mine.

Of late he has been frequenting my study oftener than before. And, if I must confess humbly, I am somewhat ill-at-ease while he is here. For, the weakness I have come to feel in my heart of hearts forhis sister Bela he has shrewdly divined, the cunning devil...He has the whip-hand of me.

He hits the nail straight on the head.

“Made up your mind yet, eh, old horse?...I mean, about Bela,” he begins in a light vein.

Should I stammer, or blush, or what?

“Have her, or leave her, man,” he continues more seriously. “If wed you must–all widowers re-marry, you know–well, there’s Bela ‘Twill be taking a burden off my as well. Besides. Bela too...So, that’s that; you follow what I mean?”

I follow all right–still, words fail me and I just sit on tongue-tied.

How it shames me now to remember my empty promises to Asha while she lived!

“God forbid; but should ever cruel death do us part,” I would wax eloquent in the exuberance of my feelings and vouch solemnly with all the impressiveness of the hero of a cheap melodrama, “never again the wedding bells for me shall toll.”

But, alas, profession and practice are poles asunder.

To me it is now plain as plain can be that, most assuredly, I would marry; and marry Bela for the matter of fact.

But to own as much, is a bitter pill to swallow.

“Silence cuts both ways, Sonny...Say yes, or no, and have done with it...I’dn’t, for the life of me, force you to decide one way or the other...Dwijen’s my next choice. And, if I may hazard a guess, he’ll require but little persuasion to oblige me. Of course, should you agree, I go no farther.”

The deuce you do!

That ugly Dwijen with the tooth-brush moustache to marry Bela! The idea is preposterous...He is then angling for this covetable catch, is he? The mischievous rogue!

“To hell with him,” I snap out in execration–“Know once for all then that Bela will be mine...Still, just give me some breathing time, please, won’t you?”

“Oh, surely...As you will...I can hang on your words indefinitely.”

“Hang then, and be hanged!” I mutter inaudibly.

“You promise then?”

“I do.”

“Cheerio, laddie,” gleefully shouts my friend, and he is already on his legs, moving towards the door...“Lemme play the happy harbinger, and run up to Bela with the news. She should be the first to hear it.”...He is away before he has quite finished.

What happens next is incredible.

“Over is my task then, and I’m off.” It is Asha’s voice that suddenly rings out in the room, clear and incisive.

The butterfly flutters out of the room through the window.