by Akhtaruzzaman Elias

After many days of drought, it has rained wonderfully today—here in this snug, little monotonous town. It’s past 11 at night now. The rickshaws are still running and the sloshing of their wheels on the rain-clogged streets sounds like distant oars rowing in the fens of Gotia. “Quick, brothers, be quick! The train to Dhaka must be off by now!”
   The raging beauty of the rain beating out a frenzied chorus on my windowpane; the row of the wet-smelling potted plants, and even the dreary walls, make me feel better today. This musical night, this lonesome moment was made just for me. I’ve missed it for so long . . . ever so long that it seems like never. I just can’t sleep on such rain-woven nights when the rain sounds like an alien sigh. On nights like these I can’t read anything either. The book lies open, but the words flow along hopelessly, they’re like blood-soaked newborns delivered by a void and destined to remain chaste forever. The three broken leaves on the teacup have become the hands of a clock slowly marking out the time. A wet light shimmers on a sixty-watt bulb. All of a sudden, it begins to waver . . .it’s been many days since Ashik and I returned from Azimpur in the midst of a downpour. We’d listened to seven Tagore-songs that evening. There’d been one—“Who’ve you left behind, O my mind, my soul?” That obscure dream, from those golden days of my childhood wavers like an illusion before me.
   I remain awake in the light, unable to find sleep. That evening, the sky darkened when I was going to Mom’s room. The streets were devoid of people, two speeding Volkswagens had devoured the shadows of our potted-plants on the four windows and made a quick gateway, and the crows and bats all had shrieked in agitation . . . I realize now that I won’t have a wink of sleep tonight. After half an hour spent in solitude, when I’d been returning from Amma’s room, it had begun to rain in earnest. I don’ feel so well anymore, I really won’t sleep at all this night. I’ve left something behind in my Mom’s room. Ronju got up to go to his mother’s room. Just as he got to the door and put up his hand to unhook the latch, he found that the door was locked from the outside. There was another room behind his and his mother’s. But he still pouted his dry lips, pressed them to a small hole in the door and whispered hoarsely, “Amma! Open the door, open the door!”
   The rain had been lessening gradually; Ronju stared out the window and saw that it had now stopped completely. The sighing of the Bokul leaves sounded so doleful! Rows of raindrops hung on the electric wires of the lamppost, gleaming in the wet light. And in the wink of an eye they dropped to the ground one by one like fragments of a song. Where’s my Kajladidi amongst these stars? By whose bulb does she shine now? Where is she?
   Can’t sleep for the fragrance of flower
    I remain awake alone
   O mother, where’s my story-telling
    Kajladidi gone?
   
   At this point Ronju began to feel terribly sad for his poor Kajladidi. He banged on the door with desperate urgency and yelled out tearfully, “Amma, ma, open the door! Open it, Ma! Open up this door! Hurry up, please unlock it! Open this door, now!” He kept calling out like this between irregular intervals of a few seconds. He had to call out four or five times until finally, in the middle of a particularly long silence, Ronju heard a pair of voices:
   “Who is it? Isn’t someone calling?” Amma’s breaking out of her dreams now . . . my poor Ma.
   “Ronju.” After a short pause, Abba said again, “Is that Ronju?”
   “Ronju?”
   “Hasn’t slept yet, it seems.”
   “Isn’t he asking you to open the door?”
   “Yes. Didn’t the doctor say yesterday that if the weather changed we’d see some improvement? Well, do you see any?”
   “Hear that? He’s calling again. What should I do, eh? Should I unlock the door?”
   On hearing the panic in his mother’s voice, Ronju felt a little scared too.
   “The door? Go on then, open it. Otherwise it might get worse.”
   “What if he tries to go out?”
   “Let him. I just can’t stand it anymore at this hour of the night. Just go and unlock it.”
   “Let’s go then, you come along too.”
   “Afraid to go alone, eh?” Abba laughed mockingly.
   The quivering shadows of the curtains sometimes seem like human beings, sometimes like apparitions.
   
   Under the Lime tree
   Where the pond doth lie
   Glowing groups gather
    Of many a firefly.
   The sound of the murmuring of lime leaves made Ronju feel despondent once more: I’m trying to conjure up illusions of some antipodal being . . . all in vain. He heard the padlock being unlocked outside and yanked the bolts open. Those absurd images are now shattering into numerous fragments on waves of the billowing curtains.
   “It’s so late, son! Haven’t you slept yet?” After the rain, Abba’s hair has turned white, forlorn and shrunken. His dry voice sounded as charged with pity as if Ronju’d heard some bad news on a long-distance phone call.
   “Haven’t you slept yet, son? It’s quite late now, go to bed.” Amma’s words tumbled about clumsily on her drowsy tongue and rolled exhaustedly out of her mouth. Amma was short, fair and plump. Ronju was a little amazed to find that Amma and Abba’s shadows were quivering too. Why did this happen?
   “Amma, I’ve left something in your room.”
   “In our room? What’ve you left there?”
   “Just this evening, when it was about to rain,” it feels wonderful to say the words so right: it’s like painting a picture with words and hanging it in the air. “The sky was quite overcast, and you said then, “Onju hasn’t returned yet, wherever can he be?” A huge branch broke off from the palm tree and flew down to hang on the wires; there was dust everywhere; and that’s when I’d left it in your room.”
   “What, son? What did you leave there?”
   Ronju looked apprehensively at his reluctant shadow and found that it had begun to quiver violently. He stared vaguely in the direction of the cold floor, the dark brown legs of a chair and the hanging edges of the tablecloth.
   “What’ve you left there, Ronju? What?”
   Suddenly, he burst out guiltily with a confused plea of desperation, “I can’t remember, I’ve forgotten . . . I’ve left something behind.”
   “All right, let’s go there together. We’ll see what you’ve left behind.”
   Abba laughed impatiently. “Let’s go. Come on, quickly now.”
   On the other side of the curtains, there was neither light nor shadow. Onju and Monju slept peacefully in the two beds, snug in the gratifyingly soft, dreamy darkness. The books lay like rows of coffins on the bookshelf. Abba, Amma, and Ronju went past all these to a bigger room beyond.
   On the wall, there were white cotton butterflies that’d never fly and an amorous green-thread peacock had turned reddish. Perched atop the audacious “Bernard Shaw” which lay on the broad arm of the easy chair, Abba’s thick spectacles stared covertly at the mosquito net.
   “Where? Can you remember what you left behind?”
   In the evening, when the sky had still been quite overcast, it had been getting darker and darker; that’s when I left something in this room. The wall behind me was just a white insipid reflection on the long mirror of the steel cupboard. Someone’s voice was trapped within the sponge of the telephone near Abba’s bedstead; it’d spring out as soon as the receiver was taken off the cradle.
   “Where, Ronju?” Abba had sounded very manly in the evening, but now he was so trite; Ronju felt a bit sorry for him. Abba is turning out to be quite homely and ordinary.
   “Now, can you remember, where?”
   “What’ve you left behind? Tell us, what.”
   “Think, son. Can’t you remember?”
   The deadly night’s stretching into eternity. Ronju blanched and produced a wan smile of self-pity. He whispered faintly, “I just can’t remember, Amma. I’ve forgotten it completely. I keep forgetting what it is. In the evening when it had all gotten darker and darker—but it may have been some other time I’d left it behind . . . I just . . . don’t remember what it was . . .” Then, an eternity of astounding darkness gradually dawned like a sunrise within the pupils of his eyes.
   Ronju stared imperviously at the obscurity and distortion, and mumbled through the viscid, salty redness of his vocal cords, “It must be somewhere else then.’ Further inside him, an indistinct echo reverberated of the skin of his heart and abdomen; I have left it behind somewhere.
   He returned to his room with his parents, as the darkness came to a boil on the stifled kiln in his eyes.
   “We’ll be off now. You should go back to sleep, OK?” Amma pulled a quilt over him and glanced at Abba. His eyes were brimming.
   “Ronju!” Ronju was surprised to hear the change in Abba’s voice. His voice had now become soft, low and gruff. “Go to sleep now, son. We’ll keep both the doors unlocked. If you feel bad, you can go to the veranda, but don’t go out into the street. The sky’s quite awful tonight. Back to sleep, OK?”
   “I can’t sleep,” Ronju began to mumble
   “Just shut your eyes and lie still. Imagine in front of you, a large field with a lot of sheep wandering around it. Countless sheep, hundreds and thousands of them grazing around. Keep counting them, count them in your mind—one, two, three, four, five, six . . . “
   I’ve seen a meadow like that somewhere. On one side of the meadow, there was gray mountain; on the other side, behind thousands of sheep, an imposing figure of a man stood in silence. When did I see it? When? In which life-time?
   “Keep counting like that for a while and you’ll find yourself so tired that you’ll feel sleepy.”
   “Does tiredness make one sleepy?” I’m always so tired, an ever-tired soul . . . then why can’t I sleep?”
   “Yes, my son. Shut your eye and keep counting for a ling time. You’ll see, you’ll sleep well. I myself often fall asleep like that.”
   Even after they’d left, the dreamy smell of Amma’s sari continued to linger in the room. The faint smell of the blue light mingled with the cloying odor of the damp soil outside, the defused smoke of Abba’s cigarette, the back issues of The Statesman, the dust-covered slippers and the eternal fragrance of Schopenhauer on the table. Ronju curled up on the bed, inhaling the air of the room with deep sighing breaths.
   This room’s smell is changing with every passing day. In the past, it used to have a fresh, new picture-in-the-poem smell, every early morning. “Me thought a voice said, ‘we’re all gone’”—these words were printed on a page with a lovely acrid smell. I used to feel sleepy just looking at it. Sometimes I would wake up to the smell of Amma’s blue Georgette sari. That sari used to have a lovely seasoned smell. Its combined odor of naphthalene and leather and trapped air had kept me awake on many nights.
   “Amma, are you off to see the movies?”
   “Oh goodness, haven’t you slept yet?” Amma would finish straightening the folds of her sari and look up tenderly, “Go to bed, son. These pictures are meant for grown-ups. You can’t watch them.”
   Back then the Rupmahal theatre ran only Bengali films. Sometimes Amma used to take me too. One of the movies was called Shetu (Bridge) and there were many others—Sansar (Family), Nioti (Fate), Putulnacher Eitikatha (Tales of the Dancing Dolls) Babla, and a whole bunch of other titles I can’t remember. Abba would get a little angry, “These pictures aren’t for you. I’ll take you to see Tarzan, okay?”
   Shonju and I once went to see with Abba to see Tarzan at the New Picture House. Back then I think smoking was allowed at the theatres. Abba had lit a cigarette, I remember. During the interval, Abba said loudly to someone in the front row, “Oh, no, he’s flunked again.” Some one had probably failed in some exam. Who could it be?
   Suddenly, on hearing a fast and continuous ringing, Ronju got up and rushed to the window in some confusion. The coverlet was flung off. It was frozen in suspension flowing down to the floor from the end piled on the bed. A red fire brigade, ringing its bells, went panting past. Who’d been ruined this late in the night; for whom had the bell tolled? Whose home had been ruined; where could a fire have caught on such a wet night? Leaving an illusion of light on the thin film of water veiling the night, the car melted away into obscurity. Dispirited, he then walked out of the room. A little blue ray of light from the room had seeped out here; the sky was dark with cloud, but the rain had stopped, the soaking wet darkness glistened through the foliage. I feel uneasy amid this play of shadows and the reticence of Mother Nature.
   The old, small wooden gate had become wet and spongy. Ronju scraped out a bit of wood with his fingernail. He sniffed lightly at the faint sodden smell. The electric wires, the overcast sky, and the humbly bowed head of a lamppost quivered in the slightly murky puddles caught within the gaps between the little red pebbles on the street. In the little shadow of the dimmed light, Ronju saw the midday sun blazing down on the time-worn tranquil fields of Nischindipur. There, casting little shadows around him, he and Durga have set off on a long trip to see the railway tracks. Ronju felt rather sorry that Durga had stolen a jar of vermilion and hidden it on a shelf. “Didi, why did you steal the jar of vermilion?” Determined to demand an explanation from Durga, Ronju focused on the sight ahead and found that Nischindipur had sunk into oblivion in the darkness and water. Leaning on the lamppost, Durga gazed eternally at Ronju. Durga’s body had become a perfect epitome of all of Ronju’s memories. Overwhelmed with sorrow, Ronju exclaimed, “Didi!”
   Then a hushed, deadly numbness settled over him; his throat seemed to protract and the cold knifeless blood within his spine stood shock-still—it’s been so long since Durga’s death. Ronju felt numb as if drained of all emotions and sensations, he watched Durga approach. She was wearing rubber boots and a raincoat, and she was holding ahunter in one hand.
   “Who’s there?” Not getting a reply, the man came up to him. Oh, it’s youMister Elias’ son, aren’t you? Where’re you off to?”
   “Nowhere.”
   “Why’re you standing here so late at night?” the policeman asked him, “Go on home. You shouldn’t be outside on such a night.”
   Ronju said, “I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep on rainy nights.”
   “Can’t get to sleep, huh? Take a walk on these streets and you’ll feel better, you’ll see.”
   It was not raining anymore, but the sky was overcast with blinding black clouds that had snuffed out the last of the stars. Ronju walked along beside the policeman, listening to the sound of water dripping from the trees on both sides of the street.
   “Do you study at college?”
   “No.”
   “You work, don’t you?”
   “No.”
   “Why? Don’t you do anything?”
   “I don’t feel like it, that’s all.”
   “Don’t feel like it?” The policeman looked at Ronju, “How’s your grandpa these days?”
   “Do you know my grandpa?”
   “O yeah,” the cop laughed a little, “do I ever! I’d just been made constable back when your Dada was in Katihar. Then we were together at both Habra and Shantahar. Your father was just a kid back then.”
   “Do you know my Abba?”
   “Know him from before you were born, sonny—known him a long time now.” The joy in the cop’s voice bubbled like boiling milk. Ronju stared intently and wistfully at this man so obviously caught up in his memories. When your dada had been back there in Katihar, he made quite a name for himself. I’ve never known such a boss since.”
   He stopped walking and stood arms akimbo, with the hunter propped against one knee. He fixed his gaze on the lamppost near the bend at the end of the road on the left, and began to recount the details like an authomated robot. “Back then your father was studying in Calcutta and organizing protest meetings with other students.He’d be in Ranaghat one day, Dhaka the next day, then Bordhoman the next, then back again to Shirajgonj, sometimes he’d be off to Patna, Delhi . . . he’d just keep moving around organizing one rally after another. The boss used to storm at him, “How will you get any studying done if you waste all your time on these things?”
   Ronju felt his heart twitch; those days were gone so long before my birth. Why should I feel like this for those bygone days? Perhaps borne by the blood from Abba, those times still course my veins. I really wish I could reach out and feel them. The thunder boomed somewhere in the distance. Suddenly the policeman spoke up in his usual brusque tone once again. I’ll be off strolling this street now. A rainy night like this is just right for those thugs. You go on home, son. There’s the thunder again, and lightning too—it’s sure to rain again.”
   The constable in the raincoat walked slowly down the street all by himself; he slouched a little sagging under the weight of his memories and his grief. The houses on either side moved aside, letting him through. As he reached the lamppost at the bend, he stopped under it and waved vaguely at Ronju. Now I don’t feel like going back at all. Ronju tucked in his chin and stepped out into the darkness.
   As tiny drops of rain drizzled down on him, he looked up to find the sky so laden with clouds that it was bulging downwards.. he saw shadows everywhere. Thousands of wet leaves on the old blackberry tree dangled as if suspended in an abortive suicide attempt. Ronju felt goose bumps on his skin.
   That cop—who’d just made my ancestral blood cry out—was he really a policeman, or someone else? Was he real? What if he’s not . . .? Ronju didn’t want to think any further.; he hunched over a little more and began to walk briskly down the road, ignoring the neighborhood. This is where the town ended. Here a meadow of waves, now flattened and soggy from the rain, stretched out like a river exhaling a straw-brown sigh. An old shimul tree by the riverbank stood gazing all day and night at the other bank. As the sluggish clouds were splintered by the lightning at irregular intervals, Ronju saw in the brief flashes of light that he had come to the field many times before. Four thousand and forty-three years ago, my school friends played cricket here. I would sit on the river bank and watch them sometimes and sometimes I would spend my time scrutinizing the river in solitude. Shelley would often call out, “Hey, Ronju, wanna play?” I’d always be afraid to. I hadn’t played a single day. I’d seen the sunset so many times here. After sunset I’d still not feel like getting up. The sad moon poured out a faint beam on the smooth, dull, river. Nature loomed like a statue in the dark. The faint smell of the river would amalgamate into the heavy, solid smell that rose out of the heart of the water; I would feel strange. One day they had lost the cricket ball. They’d looked for it all evening—in the small flower bushes that grew on all three sides of the shooting spot, and in the darkness under the Shirish tree in the west. The Shirish tree held a patch of darkness beneath the Shimul tree, but no—nowhere could the ball be found. The boys left for home disappointed.
   I’ve lost something somewhere. His mind was getting very confused, and he felt terribly upset: he thought anxiously, I did leave something somewhere. But where? Then Ronju, now confused and overwhelmed, lay down under the Shimul tree and tuned his eager ears to the waters in the river.
   The rain broke through the black sky pitter-pattering briskly. He was now a little thirsty. As he licked his lips with his tongue, he listened to the still river giving birth to mad waves that were just born to die.
   A wild breeze made a place for itself in the crux of the Shimul tree. His memories coagulated—from Abba’s white joy, Amma’s ruby darkness to the meadows of Nischindipur, the river water, and the murmur of the leaves—Ronju spun all of them into a single ball which he began to hunt for with frenzied desperation.
   As he went searching from one realm to another, from one aeon to the other, Ronju’s thirst sang in his throat. Hungrily, he kept his mouth open for water. The rain fell on his face and rolled off; it bounced on the tip of his nose and bounded off somewhere; he could feel every splash on his cheeks.
   There was so much water around him but not a drop trickled down his thin lips and seeped through the row of crooked teeth, and furrowed tongue, to reach his parched throat. Ronju became so desperate for water that he began to gulp, floundering like one drowning in water. Every gulp pierced through his chest, impaling him with its sharpness.
   The storm began in full blast. And look . . .! Just then a branch of the shimul tree snapped off and came thundering down like a tidal wave, carrying all its murmuring leaves, an empty bird nest, sprays of raindrops, and a heart-full of bliss for Ronju.
   Ronju thought . . . a black, dark and unwieldy breath, shapeless as it were, has found a permanent refuge in me and within my chest. He tried to open his eyes and see it but the clusters of wet shimul flowers had piled on his eyes. He began to lift his hands to hug it; the shimul branch lay in his arms, calm, unmoving and inexorably splayed out. Ronju wished to breathe deeply and smell the flowers, but his breath was at its end; he never smelt it.
   Translated by Camellia Ahmad