Banquet on the Dead (4 page)

Hamid Pasha ventured, ‘It was not a happy time for you?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, usually when people talk of their childhood, they do so with fondness in their voices. But not all of us were fortunate to have happy childhoods.’

‘You’re wrong. I had a happy enough childhood.’

‘Ah, okay, then.’

Nagarajan stole another glance at his companion. His eyes were mirthful, and he was staring at the woman’s waist.

After a pause he asked her, ‘What is it that is wrong with your legs, memsaab? Arthritis?’

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘It’s a chronic pain disorder. Hereditary, they say. My brother has it too.’

‘Who, the doctor?’

‘Yes.’

They approached the main door of the house from the right. They climbed onto a concrete ledge by means of a short flight of stairs on which the house had been erected. The door looked onto the front yard and the main gate, the same one beyond which Hamid Pasha and Inspector Nagarajan had stood a while back.

‘Now,’ she said, turning to face them. ‘Here we are. I suppose you will take a room and want us all to come in one by one?’

Nagarajan said, ‘That won’t be necessary, madam. We just want to talk.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Now that we are here, memsaab,’ Hamid Pasha murmured softly, ‘may we talk to you for a while?’

She looked at him and smiled. ‘Yes, of course, sir. I suppose you want to know where I was when the old woman fell over?’

‘Actually, memsaab, I was going to ask you how long you have been affected by this—disorder, you call it?’

Taken aback for an instant, she looked down at her feet and said, ‘Longer than I remember, sir.’ Her voice went down a couple of notches. ‘I was fine when I was in college, even after I got married. Yes, it started around that time.’

‘Must have been a big blow, memsaab, for a lady as young and as active as you must have been.’

She stared at her feet for a long time. ‘There are some things best not talked about, sir.’

‘I understand, memsaab. May
Khuda
cure this disorder of yours soon so that you can run and prance about as you wish.’

‘There is no hope of that now, sir. Anyway, I don’t think you came here to talk about my condition.’

‘Ah, no, memsaab. I did not come here to talk about anything in particular. I came here... just to observe and ask questions. I observed your condition, and I asked questions. That is all.’

She gave a short laugh. ‘This is so not the “routine formality” that I expected. Aren’t you even going to ask me my name?’

Nagarajan said, ‘I sort of guessed who you might be. You’re Prameela’s daughter, aren’t you? Karuna Mayi?’

‘Ah, Karuna Mayi, the kind-hearted one.’

‘Ha,’ she said, sneering. ‘Yes, kind-hearted. I will let you talk to everyone in my family and
then
tell me if I am kind-hearted.’

‘They don’t like you, memsaab?’

‘I will let you figure that out for yourself, sir,’ she said.

‘But maybe you could tell us what
you
think of
them
?’

‘Louts, all of them,’ she said flatly. ‘Not one of them amount to anything as men.’

‘Ah,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘I take it you are talking of the sons?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and looked through the window adjoining the open door. Hamid Pasha and the inspector could see the shadow of someone fidgeting about on the bed inside. Karuna looked back at them and said in an even louder voice, ‘Not worth the food that they eat. Not one of them!’ She smiled; a thin, derisive smile. ‘As you will see, the dislike is mutual, sir.’

‘It is so in all families, memsaab,’ Hamid Pasha said, stroking his beard and staring at the window. He asked, ‘And your mother is not “one of them”, as you say?’

‘Oh she is no good herself. But she is a woman, you know. A woman can only cause so much damage.’ Her face darkened as she finished those words. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘that’s not quite true...’

‘Indeed?’ said Hamid Pasha. ‘I wonder—’

A sound came from inside; the sound of steel utensils dropped on polished granite and clattering away. Karuna waited until the clanging died down, and told Hamid Pasha apologetically, ‘It sounds like I am wanted in the kitchen, sir. We will have to continue our conversation later.’

She turned and hobbled away, hands on hips.

They stood at the entrance for a minute, looking in. Then, after throwing a glance at one another, they took off their sandals and walked in, tentatively moving in the direction in which Karuna disappeared. But a voice from the adjoining room, heavy and unsteady, stopped them.

‘Come in,’ the voice said.

4

T
HE SMELL OF BURNING TOBACCO
welcomed them through the open teak door into the room. Inspector Nagarajan saw two ashtrays filled to the brim with cigarette butts; one on the floor at one edge of the bed, and one by the armchair that sat next to it. The walls were littered with dark spots, and stray cigarette butts were strewn on the floor. Two of them, he noticed, had not yet been extinguished.

A third, solid red spot glowed at them from the dark corner, from within the armchair. The body that occupied it swayed and shook constantly. A neatly trimmed beard, a crew cut, and hands that groped and groped and groped...

‘Come,’ the man said heavily. ‘Come in. The servant— didn’t come today.’ His speech was punctuated by intervals where he gasped for breath. His legs lay limp to one side as he waved them inside. ‘Come,’ he urged them. ‘I don’t like the air outside. Close the door. Close the door.’ He heaved himself upward in the chair so that he could flick on the light switch. ‘Ah, that’s better.’

His was a slight but healthy body. There was an occasional trace of grey in his hair, but his beard was immaculately black. His lips played with the half-burnt cigarette, and the tip glowed to life every time he drew a breath. But for the limp, lifeless legs and the shaking hands, he looked in perfect health.

‘Has she told you about us?’ he asked.

Hamid Pasha, who had been closely examining the dark spots on the wall, turned around to face the speaker and said, ‘She has not told us much, the memsaab. She had to be somewhere. Why, miyan? Do you have something to tell us about her?’

‘Hah! The whole family will have something to tell you about her.’ His chest heaved up and down; he dropped some ash on the floor. ‘She’s a money-grabber, that one.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Listen, why don’t you sit down? Do you...?’ He held out a half-drawn packet of cigarettes, shaking.

Hamid Pasha’s eyes lit up at the sight. ‘Oh, sure, miyan. Just one.’ He sat down and motioned for a lighter.

The man in the armchair leant forward, with great effort, to offer him a light. Nagarajan sat watching them both, tightlipped, waiting for the ritual to be finished so that they could continue. He cleared his throat presently and said, ‘You’re Raja, right?’

The man nodded. ‘Yes, the lame one, they call me.’ He settled back and coughed. ‘Yes, what was I telling you? Yes, Karuna, she is a money-grabber. There are no two ways about it, I tell you. If it was up to me, I’d say she is the one who killed my mother.’

‘Is that so, miyan? So the old woman has left some money to her?’

‘Oh, hell, there’s a lot of money to go around. And my mother has always had a soft spot for her daughter. Ever since the doctor died, you know.’

‘Doctor—?’

‘Not Kotesh, he is the younger doctor in the family. There was another doctor, Prameela’s husband. Dasaratha Rama Rao. You must have heard of him, surely.’

Hamid Pasha shook his head.

‘No? Well, he was one of those people who didn’t earn anything of note and yet made a lot of name for themselves. You know?’

Nagarajan said in a low voice, ‘You were saying Kauveramma left some money to Karuna?’

‘I am sure she did,’ said Raja. ‘I would give the will a nice, thorough combing if I were you.’

Hamid Pasha leant forward and said in a delicate voice, ‘Miyan, surely if money were the sole consideration here, would you and your brothers not be bigger suspects than the memsaab?’

‘Hah!’ Raja said. ‘Hah!’

‘Hey? What do you mean by “hah!”?

‘We would, we would, sir, if only we had any manliness in us. Karuna must have told you how useless we all were in anything and everything.’

‘So you agree with her?’

Raja blew rings of smoke into the air and stared into the distance, his chest still heaving. ‘She does have a point, you know. She does. Look at Swami. Not married, no job, does no productive work. Look at me—I am in no position to be independent. I’ve always been dependent, and I always will be. I suppose you could say Venkatram is the most “normal” among us, but then you should see how he dances at the call of his wife! And his so-called agriculture in the village. Hah! Believe me, we haven’t ever seen a paisa come out of that land, and he’s been at it for thirteen years. No, sir, none of us is any good. Karuna has that right.’

‘And your sister?’ Hamid Pasha murmured.

Another line of smoke left the tip of the cigarette. The voice mellowed. ‘My sister,’ he said, and sighed. ‘What should I tell you about her? She was the only one among us who would have amounted to anything, going by what we were like as kids, you know. She would come first in class, learn her lessons, be the teacher’s pet, you know, that sort of thing. There’s always one of those in the family.’

‘You speak of her as though you pity her, miyan.’

‘What’s not to pity, bhai? These bookish people, the intelligent ones, you know, they never understand the world. They spend too much time worrying about how the world should be—not what it is like, you know. She is like that. So is that son of hers. Anyone with his practice would have at least two mansions in the city, sir.’

Inspector Nagarajan, keen to bring the conversation back on track, asked, ‘Have you ever been near the well, Raja sahib?’

The man in the chair frowned. ‘The well? No, that has been an unlucky well for us, you know. Two deaths, it has seen, and one near death. I suspect this will be the last.’

‘Why do you think your mother went to the well that day, sir?’

Raja reached into his pack for a new cigarette, lit it with the one already in his mouth, and closed his eyes at the first drag. Then he said, sighing, ‘Why does anyone do anything, Inspector? Maybe someone called her there.’

‘Did you see her leave the house?’

‘Not through this door, for sure. But she could have left by the back door. Besides, I was not home.’

Hamid Pasha considered the tip of his cigarette for a second, then flicked it free of the overhanging ash with a deft tap. He asked slowly, ‘You were saying this is not the first death in that well?’

‘Oh no, second. Prameela’s other daughter died in it too.’

‘And that was an accident?’

The grey lips parted in a smile, and dark, yellowish teeth showed themselves. ‘Yes, sir, I suppose it was an accident.’

Nagarajan asked, ‘You say you suppose. What does that mean?’

‘People always talk, Inspector. How can anyone say anything for sure? A kid is learning to swim, a harmless snake swims by—the kid is rescued, but she contracts a fever and dies a week later. Is that an accident? Some would say yes.’ His hands stayed still for a moment. ‘But some would say not.’

Hamid Pasha got up and said to Nagarajan, ‘Let us go to the well, miyan.’

‘All I can tell you, bhaisaab,’ said Raja, ‘is that I had nothing to do with any of these deaths.’ He pointed at his legs. ‘I cannot, you see.’

Hamid Pasha smiled sweetly at him. ‘Of course, sir.’ And he made his way to the entrance, Nagarajan following suit. Just as they were about to close the door, they heard the man inside mumble in a faint, tired voice, ‘Close the door. I don’t like the outside air.’

Kauvery Bhavan was composed of two wings with a common front room into which the main door opened. A gravelly path made its way out from the bottom of the concrete platform on which the building was raised, and curved away to the right before it reached the main gate and disappeared between a thicket of touch-me-nots. Hamid Pasha and Inspector Nagarajan took this path after they came out of the building. When he reached the point where the trail bent, Hamid Pasha stopped, his hands linked behind his back, and turned to look at the house.

‘Why, miyan,’ he said, ‘everybody in the house can see us now’. He stooped low, looking up at the windows that punctuated the white front walls of the house. ‘Is this the path that the old woman used to go to the well?’

Nagarajan said, ‘This is the only path from the house to the well.’

‘So even if one was to exit the house from the back door, they would have to come around to the front and take this very path?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it is this path along which they saw her—all three of them?’

‘Yes, Hamid bhai. Durga—Doctor Koteshwar Rao’s wife—saw her at twelve. Lakshman, Venkataramana’s elder son, reports having seen her at twelve-five, and his mother says she saw her too around the same time on this path, walking towards the well.’

‘Ah, that means the old lady was probably here at that time. This path is in quite plain view, is it not? And it is not likely, is it, that all three of the family members are mistaken?’

Nagarajan pursed his lips and said, ‘Well, they could all be lying.’

Hamid Pasha nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps they are, but it is unlikely, miyan. It is dangerous to lie about something so openly as this. Just about
anyone
in the house could have glanced at the path at the time, and their lie would be found out. It is a big risk to take—if they have taken it— and to what purpose?’

They walked along the path towards the bushes. The building was now completely out of view. On the other side the top of the compound wall was visible, colourful glass pieces sticking out the top.

‘What did you think of the memsaab?’ Hamid Pasha asked.

‘She has a bit of a reputation in the family of being a shrew,’ said Nagarajan. ‘Doesn’t look like anyone likes her very much. I got that feeling last time I was here, too.’

‘Ah, miyan, this is the second time you’re here. I keep forgetting that. So you have an unfair head-start over me. No matter, tell me, will you not, what
you
think of her?’