FullReads

Sripati replied: “The woman you have taken into your house is not your Kadambini.”

Hearing this, she was greatly annoyed, especially since it was her husband who said it. “What! I don’t know my own friend? I must come to you to recognise her! You are clever, indeed!”

Sripati explained that there was no need to quarrel about his cleverness. He could prove what he said. There was no doubt that Jogmaya’s Kadambini was dead.

Jogmaya replied: “Listen! You’ve certainly made some huge mistake. You’ve been to the wrong house, or are confused as to what you have heard. Who told you to go yourself? Write a letter, and everything will be cleared up.”

Sripati was hurt by his wife’s lack of faith in his executive ability; he produced all sorts of proof, without result. Midnight found them still asserting and contradicting. Although they were both agreed now that Kadambini should be got out of the house, although Sripati believed that their guest had deceived his wife all the time by a pretended acquaintance, and Jogmaya that she was a prostitute, yet in the present discussion neither would acknowledge defeat. By degrees their voices became so loud that they forgot that Kadambini was sleeping in the next room.

The one said: “We’re in a nice fix! I tell you, I heard it with my own ears!” And the other answered angrily: “What do I care about that? I can see with my own eyes, surely.”

At length Jogmaya said: “Very well. Tell me when Kadambini died.” She thought that if she could find a discrepancy between the day of death and the date of some letter from Kadambini, she could prove that Sripati erred.

He told her the date of Kadambini’s death, and they both saw that it fell on the very day before she came to their house. Jogmaya’s heart trembled, even Sripati was not unmoved.

Just then the door flew open; a damp wind swept in and blew the lamp out. The darkness rushed after it, and filled the whole house. Kadambini stood in the room. It was nearly one o’clock, the rain was pelting outside.

Kadambini spoke: “Friend, I am your Kadambini, but I am no longer living. I am dead.”

Jogmaya screamed with terror; Sripati could speak.

“But, save in being dead, I have done you no wrong. If I have no place among the living, I have none among the dead. Oh! whither shall I go?”

Crying as if to wake the sleeping Creator in the dense night of rain, she asked again: ” Oh! whither shall I go? “

So saying Kadambini left her friend fainting in the dark house, and went out into the world, seeking her own place.

V

It is hard to say how Kadambini reached Ranihat. At first she showed herself to no one, but spent the whole day in a ruined temple, starving. When the untimely afternoon of the rains was pitch-black, and people huddled into their houses for fear of the impending storm, then Kadambini came forth. Her heart trembled as she reached her father-in- law’s house; and when, drawing a thick veil over her face, she entered, none of the doorkeepers objected, since they took her for a servant. And the rain was pouring down, and the wind howled.

The mistress, Saradasankar’s wife, was playing cards with her widowed sister. A servant was in the kitchen, the sick child was sleeping in the bedroom. Kadambini, escaping every one’s notice, entered this room. I do not know why she had come to her father-in-law’s house; she herself did not know; she felt only that she wanted to see her child again. She had no thought where to go next, or what to do.

In the lighted room she saw the child sleeping, his fists clenched, his body wasted with fever. At sight of him, her heart became parched and thirsty. If only she could press that tortured body to her breast! Immediately the thought followed: “I do not exist. Who would see it? His mother loves company, loves gossip and cards. All the time that she left me in charge, she was herself free from anxiety, nor was she troubled about him in the least. Who will look after him now as I did?”