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Poetry & Prose
The Good Priest’s Death
"Not too tight, now!" her voice almost rose to rage, as if her commands hadn't been satisfactorily obeyed. She regarded her husband with two blind eyes squinted hard behind improbably thick spectacles. Her pupils magnified thirty times and flitted across dirty, dense glass. Then she turned her attention to the men who were strapping her husband onto the funereal ride. They wanted to secure him to the bamboo structure: it was an hour downhill to the nearest confluence of rivers, the men were tired from waiting overnight, and they wanted to return before nightfall. She didn't want him too uncomfortable, or she didn't want him too comfortable before he was placed on his pyre, it was difficult to tell, but there was no ambiguity on her eighty year old voice. Her husband still had some breath left, and he rasped and sputtered as the men tenderly tried to strap him down, but she went about without once pausing to answer to his darting pupils.
"Where is the yellow silk?" someone asked, and the old matron jumped to the task, animated beyond reason, hobbling from this chest to that cupboard, peering under mattresses and picking out forgotten bundles under sooty rafters. She was blind, this woman. But now she saw everything, and the piece of yellow silk appeared just as the piece of sandalwood had appeared, just as she had found vermillion to rub, almost with glee, on her protesting husband's face.
Her husband, the Good Priest, waited on his funereal plank as she ran around to pull off the speediest creamtion in any of the six villages to which he had been priest and teacher. She hadn't missed any of the steps. The Good Priest waited with his legs over the threshold of the house, partially departed, as she hovered over the hearth and filled a clay pot with glowing embers.
She stood by the only glass window in the house—their grandson and his wife had wanted to make use of the curtains they had received as a wedding gift. There was enough light in the house until one day she blacked out the window, because the glare was so bad, because people heal faster in the dark. The Good Priest had been sick for over a month.
Stuck on the pane were numerous x-ray negatives in various stages of decay; the pictures were faded, they were no fun. Without turning to look at her husband being hoisted on the shoulders of his nephews and cowherd students of a long time ago, she attacked the x-ray negatives. She snatched one and the bright sun of early afternoon jabbed a box of mote. She snatched another, and another, letting in strong light made stronger with every jab of the old arms, expelling the dimness in which her husband had tried to die.
Somebody blew the funereal conch outside. She stormed out to the yard, yelling, and cursing the inauspicious scoundrel who blew the conch even before her husband died. "Your maggoty face, may it rot into a swine's behind! Can't you wait a little longer? Can't you wait until he is dead?" The solemnized children fled from her reach—what is it to be spitted on by a woman about to be widowed?—men who had been sitting on their haunches overnight stirred a little, and for no apparent reason there soared an ululation of women mourning the Good Priest's death.
"Mothers of whores!" screamed the old woman, but her daughters and their daughters didn't seem to hear her. "Can't you wait till my husband dies?"
Comments
To add to the irony…(;-))
The Good priest (thinking, since he is too weak to speak apparently): Besharam Randi!, after all that I have provided and done for you, you can’t wait to get rid of me? Abbo ta arko junima talai ta haina baaru arkai budhi lyauchu! Thuika!
Haha, you give voice to the voiceless GPK. Very noble indeed! hehe
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Ha, the irony of premature planning!