The Comeuppance | Sneha Choudhury

I sinned, Mani. There is no going back and undoing what I did. The woman who was once so dear to me, who for my sake left her family and found in me her only solace has to forgive me for me to leave this grotesque body. I seek comeuppance.
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He was lying there for weeks after his kidneys gave way, on that same unchanged white, now pale yellow, sheet, his granddaughter’s tattered Barbie doll lying next to his. The last time she visited him with her mother she refused to take it back with her, what with all the nauseating smell of medicine engulfing her pink doll. The nurse had spilled syrup on it while trying to put the liquid through his feeble mouth which he could hardly manage to open.
‘It smells of pee, mother,’ she said and ran out of the room to join her father. Mani followed her a while later.
You knew who I was, how I was, yet you decided to marry me. It was not my decision altogether.
She gazed back at him, her deep-set eyes, watery and playful, never failed to gore his insides. They always gave him the impression that this was not enough; he has more suffering in store.
She has been there since the day she died. Never moved. Her long hair tied in an ungroomed bun, half of her hair spilling out of it like hay stuck in a dried dung cake, plays in the wind; occasionally a few strands find their way outside the window but held tight to her skull like she is being held back by the worldly force. Her eyes staring at the shady bower beside the pond (her favourite spot during her living days too), she sits there in the same world-weary posture, waiting for something to happen.
Thirty years ago he was 31 and she 22. He was a somewhat successful businessman and by then had thought of giving up his flirtatious habits; while she could sing, knit and cook well. He was a charmer. She was the prettiest woman in her college. They could not have asked for more, but their parents did. So after promising her he would give up all his ‘immature boyish fun’ (as he liked to call his numerous short-term sexual affairs), and a short courtship period of 6 months, they eloped. The first winter with him in their two-room apartment was more than she had wished for. She thought that was love, love which even her parents could not provide her, love that she had only seen in movies or observed between a pair of geese. Her lovely voice singing in the kitchen or in the bathroom resounded in his soul and mind. It was her he thought about all day – be it on the toilet seat or in bed. It was her face that popped up in the register while accounting his daily profits. By summer her thoughts visited him less often and her face on the register grew faint. She found in him a grumpy man she was never introduced to. He blamed it on his thinning sales. She blamed it on his work.
Next winter she was big with their child growing inside her and he was growing hard inside other women. His business too, did not fail to keep up with them. He had hired a man for his accounting purposes. So there was no question of her face popping out of the register. Thoughts in bed and on the toilet seat were spared for his random escapades. He had a wife who he knew would not and could not leave him for the world. He had a job that yielded him gold and plenty of women who he could still charm with his talks and good looks. She only had her sister who came to help her during the pregnancy, for most of the nights he would stay out citing ‘too much work’. He thanked his stars for his way with excuses. She blamed his job and waited for the child, hoping that would bring him close to her again.
Drunk to the bones one night he had held her 17-year old sister from behind, cupping her unripe breasts in his hands. The young girl, nervous and embarrassed, let out a rasping cry making her sister rush to the kitchen to see if she was all right. He turned back and fleetingly let the matter go, saying, ‘I thought it was you, love.’ She convinced herself with much difficulty that he was not lying. He smiled to himself for his craft.
***
His body, which had shrunken to only bones and moist-paper-like skin, grew repulsive to the eyes; he who was always complimented for his excellent sartorial taste, in that dim yellow light looked like a serpent breathing its last while making a final attempt to shed its skin. Her eyes staring at his every thought and the cannula boring further into his body at the slightest movement were no longer his only dread. Ants which had found their way to the spilled syrup on the bedside table had finally found their way into his body through his slackening skin, giving him a horrible tingling sensation in his almost dried-up bones. He moved his neck to see his hand through which the ants made a gateway to his body, and the sight washed over him a feeling of nausea and a wish to end his horrible existence. Looking up at her face which was gazing out of the window he thought he saw the corner of her lips twitch in a smile as if taking pleasure in his misery.
***
His nightly adventures had come to a halt after Mani was born. He started coming home early from work and except for a few friends coming over for a drink, there was no taking him away from his daughter. She was back to her chirpy old self, singing and knitting little sweaters for the new-born. He was happy with the new-found distraction in his life.
Another year passed with Mani distracting him with all her firsts – her first crawl, first word, first solid food – instilling in him a sense of maturity and responsibility. As time rolled on there were no more firsts and before he knew it he found himself shrouded in monotony and boredom which, no matter how desperately he tried to shake off, would not part with him. He resorted to his old habits; this time bringing a new item with the package – abuses. He blamed it on his decision to marry. She blamed it on him. This time they accepted reality.
***
I am only a bundle of bones now. I loathe my body. I loathe myself for what I did to you. Let me die.
The ants continued eating his flesh, satisfying their nutritional requirements from what was left of his frail body and infusing in him a meaning of pain which he never knew existed, let alone undergoing it. Writhing in pain he kept looking at the hands of the clock which was hung above the window below which she sat, awaiting the nurse to clean the ants off him and maybe kill the ones which advanced too deep inside with some medicine.
Every passing moment left him wondering if confessing it would end his suffering. Every noise made by the wind or something wriggling at the dead of the night let a shiver run through his wasted body thinking of his abhorrent act.
He tried to clear his conscience. I was drunk…things were not going right…can’t only be my fault…
His conscience took a pillow shutting its ears against all the facade of his head as her eyes pierced deeper this time, intensifying the painful tingling sensation, like she gave all her hateful impulses to the ants to dig deeper and severe. There was no lying to her now. He could not come up with a good excuse for what he had done. He knew what he had to do – come clean. So the next day he made the nurse call up his daughter.
***
It was like any other day. He had come home after work, dead drunk and frustrated as always. There was hardly any romance left in their conjugal life and the women who used to warm his bed in the cheap hotels were not getting any younger, neither was his luck leading him anywhere with the younger lot, as in him too, age had started its promising task quite deftly. She routinely placed the plate of food on the table as one washes the arse after defecating. In that drunken state he ate half of it and generously fed the table the other half, while continuously ranting how hard he has to work and how easy her life is.
That night she did not wait for him to abuse her further; rather she went to the bower outside after looking at him with her moist eyes breathing out hatred. He saw in them his failure as a husband, a father and a human being, injecting in him the fact that his rat-like existence no longer mattered to anyone he knew. The alcohol had by then started playing with his mind and the ghouls of repentance and irritation helped him pick up the marble Ganesha from the table he was sitting next to. As he rushed outside to hit her with it, his befuddled walk spiked his bare foot with a nail that was lying on the ground. He felt the alcohol draining out of his body infusing in its place a sense of exasperation and pique. Pulling it out of his foot he advanced towards her like a raging bull, held her hair from behind and threw her to the ground, allowing her hardly any time to react. As she tried to lift herself up from the moist earth, with one of her hands almost inside the pond, he sat on her back and with the precision of a craftsman, hammered the nail in her skull in one swift motion. There was no movement. There was no blood either. He let the hammer go and slid himself off her body. As realisation of what he had done dawned upon him, he crawled to the pond and strenuously splashed water at his face hoping he would wake up from a bad dream. The cloud of rage lifted from his eyes and he saw her lying next to him, her face down, her long hair coming loose out of the bun, smeared in mud, her dusky body like a silhouette against the soil.
Lifting her uninhibited body on his still agile shoulder, he carried it inside and placed it on the bed. While trying to figure out how to explain her death he noticed a thin stream of blood, which had trickled down her head to her brow, finding its way down her cheek toward the neck. There was no sign of excess blood as the nail cemented inside prevented the flow. He rubbed the dribble of blood clean with his palm and tried to stop the little blood which was still running out of the spot where he had thrust the nail in with a vest he found on the bed.
It was already morning by the time he cleaned her body off the mud and changed her clothes. The maid came sharp at 9 a.m and was amazed to find her, the woman who she knew was always up with the birds, still in bed. Concerned and worried, she touched her forehead to check the temperature and found her stone-cold. She ran out to call her master, who displayed fake concern and called in a general physician whose decrepit clinic was cluttered with a lot of old books and cheap medicines due to dearth of frequent patients. He declared her death the result of a heart attack. Her sister and brother-in-law, Mani and her newly-wed husband, and a few neighbours helped him with the funeral rites. His attention had been occupied all this while trying to hide his crime and making preparations for the cremation. But when he was standing there at the funeral ground, looking at the fire consume her gradually with much relish, his consciousness instilled in him the certitude of her absence which could never be replaced and of his crime which would leave an indelible mark in his heart and mind.
***
I saw her on this bed the day I returned from the cremation. Nobody else saw her…I thought I was losing my mind with all the guilt playing with my conscience…but she stayed on…stayed till I broke under the constant reminder of my sin. He rambled, his voice breaking into convulsive gasps owing to the shame and the pain he felt, as each word like a nail impaled his insides like a crow gnawing the entrails of a half-dead rat.
I hope you forgive me, Mani. And hope she does too. He said as he pointed towards his wife with the finger on which the greedy ants had gorged themselves. With the burden off his chest he felt one with the melting moon behind the clouds, the pain jettisoning, settling in him a sea of composure and peace where he knew he can rest forever.

Sneha Choudhury was born in an enchantingly serene and sleepy district in Assam. She is an eternal optimist and a dreamer, and believes in equal rights for animals, women and men. A Post-graduate in English Literature from the University of Delhi, she currently is working as an editor at a publishing house in New Delhi.