Banquet on the Dead (7 page)

‘The policeman again?’ she said coldly.

He looked up at her and nodded. ‘And a friend.’

She had heard voices downstairs when she was making dinner, when he had been in the room taking a nap. She had heard Raja laugh; she had heard Karuna’s admonishing tone; she had heard her mother-in-law’s defensive pleas. She had known something had happened, that somebody must have come to upset the apple-cart again, but now she knew that it was her husband who had been behind it.

She felt angry at him suddenly, for again stirring the waters that were just beginning to calm. He had been so distant these past few days, ever since that day—yes, ever since that day he had not even looked her straight in the eye; she had been discouraged from broaching the topic at all, let alone demand explanations—and now he had gone and called the police for a second look;
by himself
.

‘Must you, Kotesh?’ she asked wearily. ‘Can we not just let the past lie?’

He held her gaze for minute, looked down at the newspaper, pursing his lips, then looked up at her again. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She might not have meant anything to you—’

‘Kotesh!’ she said. ‘Do you really believe that? You know that among all your family, she was my favourite.’

He meant to say something more, but stopped himself and said instead, ‘Right. So be it. I just wanted someone professional to come and have a look. It just doesn’t
look
right to me.’

‘Kotesh, we’ve talked about it. We’ve agreed that it doesn’t look right. But what good will come out of—out of all this?’

He shrugged. ‘The truth will come out.’

‘And then? Once the truth comes out, what then?’

He looked puzzled by that. He said, ‘It is enough that the truth comes out. And the guilty will be punished.’

‘But what of the remaining?’

‘Those remaining will get along just fine. The truth has to come out.’

She sighed, but low and softly so that he would not hear. ‘So this has got nothing to do,’ she said, ‘with what Raja said?’

A tightening of the lips, a clench of the jaw muscles, a little rise and fall of the temples. She had seen enough. She went on: ‘Raja says a lot of things he doesn’t mean, Kotesh. You do
not
have to prove your innocence to anybody.’

‘It is not what Raja said. The truth has to come out.’

She bent her head. ‘There are only two people capable of killing her. You and I both know who they are.’ She saw him nodding at her. ‘We have talked about them before.’

‘We have no evidence it was Lakshman. Or my aunt.’

‘True,’ Durga admitted. ‘But they’re the likely ones, you agree.’

‘They are the only ones I thought had the nerve to kill her, yes.’

She felt vaguely that something was not right about that sentence; then she got it. ‘You say “thought”—in the past tense. Does that mean you have changed your thinking?’

‘Maybe—maybe—I’ve been thinking a bit—maybe.’

‘Who do you think is likely now?’

He averted her eyes. ‘I—don’t know. All that talk of psychology and temperament that we had the other day—it seems not so important anymore. We should be going by hard evidence, should we not? Not just some psycho-babble.’

She still did not understand. He was saying these words to her, but she felt he was not making any sense. If he really meant what he said—no, he couldn’t possibly. ‘You do know,’ she ventured, knowing that she was on shaky ground, ‘that these investigations are not foolproof? That the police and detectives make mistakes too?’

He looked up with—what was it? Hope? ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

‘What if they examine all the hard evidence that you speak of, and they mistakenly conclude that it is a murder while what really happened was an accident, say?’

His gaze dropped from hers, and returned to the newspaper lying under his forearms.

‘Oh, Kotesh,’ she said again, ‘must we? Can we not tell them that we don’t need any of this? Can we just not let it go? She is gone. What does it matter now?’

His eyes met hers, to lock together for a moment. Then he looked away and said, ‘No. No. It must come out. All of it.’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it your way. But if that is the case, Kotesh, will you promise me something?’

‘Yes—yes, of course.’

‘Will you promise me that you have not killed her?’

He looked shocked at the question, and she searched his face. By all the signs, it was genuine shock. He nodded, slowly at first, then with increasing intensity. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Then I am happy.’ She got up and turned to go into the kitchen, towards the sink where the dishes lay. His voice came to her when she was in the doorway.

‘Will you?’

She paused. ‘Will I what?’

‘Promise that you—’

‘Did not kill her?’

‘Yes.’

She looked back at him over her shoulder and smiled. ‘Of course, dear. I promise.’

In the other wing of the house, in the first-floor living room, the television was blaring. Kamala sat in her chair, one leg folded, foot thrust under the thigh of the other leg, and balanced a big bowl of rice on her lap. With deft, practised movements of her fingers, she flicked at the grains of rice, separating the stones and casting them away. After each flick she looked up and surveyed the television screen before lowering her head again. In the chair opposite, leaning over the glass coffee table with a sheaf of papers underneath his arm, Venkataramana sat, scowling from behind his glasses.

‘Are you listening?’ said Kamala. For years now, wife and husband had come to agree upon that question as a conversation starter.

So Venkataramana said, ‘Hmm?’ without looking up from the papers.

Kamala’s fingers did not stop while she spoke. She said, ‘Have you talked to Swami saab about the old woman’s will? The plot near Vijaya Talkies ought to be ours by right. Did you tell him that?’

‘Hmm,’ said Venkataramana, and adjusted his glasses so he could read the print better.

‘If you continue to be like this, brother and sister will put in your hands the worthless land in Pegadapalli and keep the Vijaya Talkies plots for themselves. Did you ask them who is going to keep this house?’

‘Hmm.’ He scrawled something on the paper and scowled at it again.

‘Are you listening?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Koteshwar Rao and his family have come and settled down in this house. Who is going to drive them out? You? I won’t stand for their getting a single part of the old woman’s wealth. As if it isn’t enough with the three of you, now we have Prameelamma clawing for a share, and as if that is not enough we have Kotesh as well.’ She popped a few grains into her mouth and chewed intensely. ‘Are you listening?’ Her eyes darted between the television and her husband.

‘Hmm,’ Venkataramana said, and started folding the sheets of paper.

‘And then there is Karuna. Wherever there is money being divided, she is there, shameless woman. She doesn’t even have any right to Prameelamma’s property, let alone the old woman’s. And yet here she is, striving away in the kitchen—anyone who looks at her now would think she loves all of us with all her heart. I wonder how much Swami saab is going to give her.’ Then, after another bout of chewing, she said: ‘Are you listening?’

Venkataramana put the papers away, folded his glasses into his shirt-pocket, and said, ‘Kamala, I know you did not like my mother. But can we not wait until the tenth day is finished before we bring up matters of property?’

‘There you go. I am just asking you to be careful and you’re telling me to shut up.’

‘I am not telling you to shut up,’ he said patiently. ‘But there is a time and place for everything. Now is not the time. Let’s wait till the function is finished on the tenth day—it is no more than a week away—and then we can talk about this.’

‘By then all the decisions will have been made and you will be left with nothing.’

Venkataramana smiled at his wife. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because Prameelamma and Karuna are already here, spinning their webs around Swami and Raja. They’re already forming a group, and we’re being excluded. Don’t you see? You and I and Lakshman and Praveen—’

‘Nobody,’ Venkataramana said, raising his voice just enough to subdue his wife’s, ‘nobody can influence Mother’s will. It is made, and no matter what ploy Karuna comes up with, she cannot change a made will.’

‘That is what you think,’ said Kamala. ‘These people are charlatans. These people—’

‘These people,’ said Venkataramana, ‘are my family’.

‘They’re not the only family you have! What about Lakshman and Praveen? What about Narmada? She’s— she’s pregnant now. What about the unborn baby? Are we all not your family as well? Do you not have a responsibility to us as well?’

‘Lakshman and Praveen ought to look after themselves.’

‘Ought to, ought to, ought to! You and your “ought to”. Some things—many things—are not as they ought to be. Lakshman doesn’t have a job.’

‘Is that my fault now, Kamala?’

‘I don’t want to argue about whose fault it is. It is your duty as a father to provide your sons with a livelihood.’

Venkataramana pointed at the bundle of papers on the table. ‘Here is my livelihood. This is what I have earned. They’re welcome to take a share in this.’

She leered at it. ‘Agricultural land! Peanuts!’

‘That is where that rice you’re eating comes from, Kamala. Don’t forget that.’

‘Yes, yes, when other people’s lands are yielding money, you spend your whole life growing rice in your land. And you proclaim that as an achievement!’

‘Agriculture is no easy business, Kamala. You know how tough it has been these last few months. Even now we’re not out of the rut—’

‘That’s why!’ Kamala sat forward eagerly. ‘Lakshman needs money, very badly. He has been asking me for my gold. God knows what he has done now. Praveen needs money to set up his practice. You need money too; you admitted it just now yourself. The old woman has died at just the right time—’

Venkataramana silenced her with a glance. Then he said, ‘You could not respect her in life. At least do so in death.’

She lowered her head in silent shame for a while. But then she raised it again, saying in a low voice, ‘I did not mean it like that—I am not glad that she’s dead. But you have to admit that the death
did
happen at the right time for us...’

The lines on Venkataramana’s face softened. He nodded slowly.

‘And now these two men have come—’

‘What two men?’ he asked, frowning.

‘One of them is the policeman—the man who came on the day after we found the body. Now he has an old, lame Muslim man with him; must be his assistant or something. I saw them walk toward the well just before, and they were talking to Ellayya...’

Venkataramana said, ‘Let them. They won’t find anything.’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘You know,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I am scared’.

‘Scared for what?’

‘You know, Lakshman...’

Venkataramana sighed and rubbed his eyes.

‘You know what he is like—you know what horrible things he says when he’s angry. You remember what he said that day...’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Venkataramana hastily.

‘You—you don’t think—’

Venkataramana shook his head to stop her from speaking further. Then he shook it again, with more force and more passion. But when he looked up at her his gaze was still uncertain, still vague. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

She looked at the television, her eyes vacant, as though the sounds no longer reached her. ‘I am scared,’ she murmured. ‘Scared for all of us.’

Seated in the wicker chair of his first-floor office, Praveen blew the dust off the top of an old ledger and opened it. He turned to face away from the dust particles, and in so doing, his eyes caught the marble bust of Raj Kapoor that sat behind the glass panes on the shelf. He stopped to look upon it for a minute, and sighed. Soon he might have to sell this too, this most prized of all his possessions. If his practice continued to be so dull, he might even have to agree to what his father had suggested, and look after the land in Puthoor. But that would mean he had accepted defeat. He pulled his gaze away from the shelf and to the book in front of him. For a while the numbers kept him from drifting away into his thoughts; but only for a while...

I could go to Mumbai, he thought, now that Grandmother is no more—and even as he thought that, he felt a tug on his heart—that he had come to wish death upon her in some of his wilder moments, that he had been so unkind to her—to her who had been nothing but the most loving of maternal beings, to him and to the entire family. He looked down at the curling dark hair on his forearms and thought: Yes, I could go to Bombay now. I am not that old. I could still find something there—if not in the movies, maybe on the stage—but even that thought was not comforting to him. There had been a time when the thought of being an actor) had his blood racing; when a mere mention of Mumbai or of the Film Institute in Pune would make him grin stupidly and float him along into a land of fantasy and colours; but now, after a mere two years of what Grandmother had termed ‘earning his keep’, he had seemingly lost interest.

No, he thought, and at that one word he felt rebellion rise within him. He had not lost
all
interest. Maybe the day-to-day drudgery of coming here to this office every day and peering over sections and torts and loopholes had somewhat dulled his sensitivity to the arts; but he would not—never!—lose his love completely. Yes, maybe he could go to Mumbai and try his luck; maybe after the dust had settled on Grandmother—and again he felt a rage within him—why did he always think of her in such bad terms? Had he really hated her so much?

He heard steps on the stairs and signalled his boy to open the door. Praveen had heard it said that there were too many lawyers and too few clients in Warangal. Apparently, the ratio was better in Hyderabad. Maybe he could go to Hyderabad and set up an office there, earn some money, and then maybe he could go to the Institute and try his luck. Now that Grandmother wasn’t there... he stopped that thought.

The boy had gone out and was looking down the flight of stairs. He smiled and saluted the visitor. Someone he knew, then. He raised his eyebrows at him.