Lands We Don’t Return To | Joseph Antony Protus

With mist and darkness stagnant through the roads, dawn sought refuge on generous leaves and roofs atop the houses. People pacing to work never noticed the man lying on the grassy side of the road. Wounds on his chest, on each of his wrists and feet, drew the crows to peck on him. When the tea shop opened, and few eyes saw him, mist and the crows had flown away without a trace.

“Have you seen him before? Doesn’t look familiar to me at all.” 

“Never in my life. Seems like a homeless drunkard.” 

“He is sleeping as if he renounced this world feeling nothing, not the wind and not the sun. I have never been in such a state all my life,” Stephen’s words longingly brimmed with envy. 

“Go, drink some liquor, and lie down beside him before Cathy comes and knocks some sense into you. Christ! He wants to lay drunk on the road like a miserable drunkard! I wish they lay another path to the Church, and I don’t begin my day seeing you.” 

“No, he is not drunk,” stopping his contemplation, he continued, “You are too anxious for such a refreshing morning and, with Easter around tonight,” he patted and squeezed Robert’s shoulders which evoked a breath of cuss words and a relaxed giggle. 

“I must finish up the church decorations. Much to do today,” he quickly slurped the tea. 

“So, only for next Easter, we could lay the other path to Church. Till then, you will have to go past us if he ends up here regularly.” 

“You are not going to the factory today?” 

“Cathy took leave, also asked me to but I am going.” 

“You could take some rest. Don’t waste your minimal leaves.” 

“Will encash them. What can I do other than work?” 

Stephen lit his first cigarette for the day. 

As Robert gestured to Stephen and stood up to leave, people started gathering around the man lying on the road. As he neared them, he stood along to see Cathy trying to wake him up. A few voices floated to refrain her from touching him. 

“He’s breathless,” Cathy half sitting on her knees with the man’s long-haired, lifeless head resting on her lap.  

“Let your hands off him,” only a voice emerged from the gathering. 

With a closer look, Robert did not smell any liquor but the smell of wet grass. As if approving him to leave, they urged him to inform Father of the stranger’s death, and he walked away acknowledging them. 

With the ashes of his cigarette shattering on the warm grass, Stephen, in disbelief, followed them to his house where they carried the man. 

*

Stephen stood watching the dead man being laid on the charpoy, which he and Cathy sleeps on. Cathy washed his wounds of dry blood as rain would do. Sweat stains of her and Stephen resided over the charpoy left its place, and settled in the mud, losing its odour along with the man’s stench. Cathy’s voice cut through the mumbled noises. 

“I saw him once outside the Church,” her gaze fixed and thoughts wavering on his pale face. 

“So, he lives in our parish?” Stephen asked. 

The men and women around glanced at him again and tried to remember whether they had seen him before or not. 

“No one had seen him except your wife. I don’t think he is from here. An outsider,” a man decided. 

“Let him be from here or somewhere, but what to think of those wounds. Does it look like animal bites to you all? We don’t know if someone had killed him. We can inform the police once Father arrives,” a woman said after closely examining his five wounds without laying a finger on them. 

“Who would stab a man in our hill? Seems he had walked so long to reach here. Who would do it to such a miserable-looking man?” Cathy caressed his sore feet with water. 

By the time Father arrived, some people had gone back home, saying to no one that they had to take care of the chores for the day. 

It took some explanations and his thoughts clouding up to recognize the man. 

“Had seen him when he came to donate some weeks back, and that’s the only time.” 

*

“Father, I heard your announcement on Sunday mass that the parish needs contributions to renovate the Church, and I came here to give what I got.” 

“That’s good for God. You look so familiar, yet I couldn’t recollect?” he took a receipt book and waited for my name. 

“I live here and roam around this and the nearby towns. I reap tea leaves, fish in the lakes, do whatever feeds me, my friends, and the people they bring,” I gave the money and wished that it would be of use to house the people whose sweat and blood had imprinted on it. 

“Don’t you have a family? You look not too old.” 

“Mother and a brother. Have been years since I saw them.” 

As he thought or seemed so to say something to me, I left his room, and he didn’t say anything, or I didn’t hear it. 

*

They were still debating my death. He cleared the air by deciding to confirm, with the doctor in town, whether I had a natural death or not. I was not killed as some among them were thinking, but to say it was natural, would I comply with that, or would nature? More than my state, I pitied nature and how it’s easy for people to unload everything on her shoulders. 

“He died of fatigue and maybe around last midnight, not the age for it,” the doctor said after examining me and issuing the letter of conformance. 

“Why did such a death happen on the day of Easter night? Now, to get a place for him in the cemetery, to take care of the burial, who would do that amidst all the festive mood? It’s noon already, and somehow, we need to do all that before the day ends. If he is not from our parish, we could have informed the police. I would try to find the whereabouts of his mother and brother. But let’s not wait further.” 

“We will take care of the arrangements, Father, whatever that’s needed.” 

“It’s so good of you, Cathy, coming to do that. Stephen, talk to the Church committee and see to it that they arrange and clear out the place by evening.” 

“At which cemetery would we bury him?” Stephen asked back. 

This hilly town has two cemeteries, one where only the people from the discriminating, quasi-privileged caste would be buried. And it costs almost double that of the other Anglo-Indian cemetery, which housed people from the same parish but of oppressed caste along with the settled foreigners. Both are managed by the Church. Father asked Cathy and Stephen to bury me in the one that would cost them less, but that was not the prime reason for him to say so. Maybe he never wanted the people raising questions about my birth; to unearth my body and throw it out if they buried me in the other cemetery. He also said that he would give them whatever they spent once these festivities subside, but they never insisted on anything. Having decided on my burial, he was on his way to the city in his bullet to shop for the festive night. 

*

As Stephen returned home after meeting the people to sort out my burial place, he saw me wrapped in a pure cloth of dhoti and inhaled the fragrance of incense burning around me. I heard him saying to Cathy, sitting at the doorstep and looking at me, that they need to pay 20,000 rupees for my body to rest under a piece of land.

She decided to pawn her only pendant to pay for the land and coffin and he didn’t refute. Buying a coffin and digging the grave, they were frantic about doing it all before the night ended, as no one except the gravedigger would be there to do all this tomorrow as everyone would be celebrating Easter. 

“I don’t mind us doing this, but it never occurred to me that you would come to accept it.” 

“This is for our son. Our son who died after I birthed him.” 

“We will build the tomb for him if you need it, and if that helps you, Cathy. Maybe his mother, if she is alive, might come for him if she knew.” 

“We couldn’t even afford to bury him then. The flame, that had his tender body, is still burning through my womb. What do we have that reminds us of him but the ashes they gave in return for him? Won’t his ashes turn into flesh and blood, as once he was inside me?” 

Her words lost into a wail. I prayed that I shall resurrect in her womb tomorrow. Stephen sat near me unable to console her. He stared at me trying to resist his tears or to let it flow. 

*

 Around dusk, the coffin arrived in a minivan that carried me to the cemetery. Robert helped to fit me inside the coffin, and they placed it in the rear. Stephen accompanied me. Cathy and Robert walked along as the cemetery was not far from home. 

There were some men from the town in the cemetery already, and they carried me to the burial spot.  

“They charged you 20000 for this place?” someone sighed. It was the farthest spot and muddy with bushes all around. 

“I asked them for a better place, but they said no one will visit him and for this money, this is all they can give.” 

 Fear of me belonging to the discriminating caste but being buried here, and the catastrophe that would follow pierced their mind and mumblings. The land was dug deep and was waiting for me as we reached it. Before sealing the coffin, Cathy placed a bottle-which had the ashes of her lost son, beside my hand. When they lowered the coffin beneath the ground, the Church clock struck eight, and the words it echoed were the last I heard. 

“Foxes have dens, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 

Joseph Antony hails from Tamil Nadu and is a Data Engineer by profession. He writes fiction to remember the land and the times he lives in.
Reading poetry and non-fiction on anthropology, political history & folklore is his favourite literary pastime.
His work has been featured in XinSai and Qissa.