~Prawin Adhikari~
Binod couldn’t think straight anymore. He couldn’t decide if it was his negligence or an occult power that kept him from finishing Smriti’s portrait. He could paint fine; there was nothing lacking in the thought and skill he put into the picture. Yet, whenever he left the easel to mix paint or smoke a cigarette, something always changed. Smriti’s left eye fell to her chin once, for instance, leaving a gash on her forehead. Binod found a palette knife on the floor, fallen from the top of the easel where he had left it, and it must have, somehow, dragged the eye down, intact and still piercing, to Smriti’s chin.
On this morning alone, the painting had changed twice while Binod was out of sight. He had left the room to make tea, lingered in the kitchen wondering about what he should eat for lunch. When he returned, the right half of Smriti’s face was missing. For a while he was furious at himself. Had he made changes, impulsively erased two days of work, and forgotten about it? He searched the brushes and palette knives and rags for the paint that had been on the canvas. He opened the windows because he felt desperation tighten its noose around the crowd of his mind’s thoughts. He searched and he searched. Binod was splashing cold water on his face when he saw his sleeve in the mirror: the under-layers of Smriti’s face—charcoal outline, viridian and ochre base—were printed in reverse; an eye and half of a smile discernible under layers of thin paint.
What am I forgetting? Binod asked. Have I fallen into a habit of forgetting the changes I make? I could be changing things, but wouldn’t know until I fell into the pits their absences leave behind. Have I forgotten to take the kettle off the stove? Binod paced through the rooms, checked if the sugar jar was as full as he remembered from a few minutes before, checked the calendar, looked at himself in the mirror. He leaned close and tried to look past the pupils, into the brain, to catch any mischief there might be lurking in the folds. This is ridiculous, he thought. I can’t be prisoner to this.
Binod returned to the painting and found another patch of paint missing. He replayed in his mind the extreme care with which he had left to inspect the rooms. There is no winning against this! He threw his hands to his head and let out a pained growl. Something moved in the corner behind the desk. Binod threw himself at it. A small bird with blue breast and grey wings flapped in cobwebs and dust. With each flap it stamped the trim or the floor with paint from Smriti’s unmade face. Binod gently dropped the bird outside the window after watching the new riot of color stuck on its feather. It isn’t all me, he thought. There are birds, too, that unmake Smriti.
Binod pulled out the .22 caliber rifle from under the bed. He had successfully hidden it through ten years of insurgency, and now that local commanders of both armies knew him well, he had fitted it with a scope and started taking it out to shoot pheasants and quail. Chitra’s teashop under Binod’s rooms was empty. Will you watch the door? Binod asked Chitra. I will bring back a bird or two. Don’t hurry back, Chitra said. I won’t come empty handed like yesterday, Binod laughed.
He crossed the highway and scrambled up a ridge towards the edge of the forest. The village was sunk between the highway and a whitewater river in a steep valley that benched into a dry plain after a few hundred feet. Cowherds brought their cattle here and women foraged in the tall grass for fire wood and fodder. Binod always waited behind the same rock instead of tracking game. Just a few feet near his spot were two bird traps skillfully hidden in the grass. He settled with his back to the rock and started outlining lichens with his penknife. He gathered his focus and set the barrel on a rock and started scoping. One sweep to the left, counting each plant, each shadow, each fleck of sun falling through the brush, each dart of bird or insect. One sweep to the right. Another to the left.
The space was condensed for one eye, edges blurred, but whatever fell on the cross-hairs jumped out, begging to be shot at. He had five bullets with him that morning and he wanted to shoot all five bullets. So long as he shot a few minutes apart he would be fine. Binod searched for something worthy of the power he wanted to unleash. Twigs; a tree impossibly far, for which he would have to adjust the scope; a mongoose dragging without hind legs; a neat standing pile of pebbles. Something moved to his right, a dark shape that glided behind a line of rocks sixty paces ahead. Binod controlled his breathing and relaxed his trigger finger.
Sun fell on a clump of grass on the rocks and flecked the dark shape like the wings of a quail. It kept still, moved to the edge of the stones, retreated. Binod followed its every move with the barrel. Another shape slid in line, followed the first, touched and separated. The first shape moved into the open. It was the dark head of a young woman. Binod traced her profile with the crosshairs; the gun checked her forehead, nose, eye, smiling mouth, curve of chin and throat.
A hand reached around her and touched her belly; she disappeared behind the curtain of rocks. Binod’s instinct swung the gun wildly, trying to catch birds rushing out of trees and brush shaken by the girl’s laugh. A second face joined her. When the wind didn’t bring their low whispers, he heard only the rustle of grass and insects. Binod swept from the girl’s head to the other. His finger caressed the trigger, squeezing it knowingly, delicately, until it reached the soft catch beyond which was fire and blood.
He controlled his breathing and started to count. The heads weren’t bobbing. He counted to ten with one head and again with the other. A good-sized pheasant pecked on a worm twenty paces to his right, but Binod kept looking at the heads. Another laugh. An ant climbed up his right elbow, through arm hair, past the knuckles, searching sometimes for its own trail. Binod blew on it gently and the ant was lost to the ground beneath.
Binod stood up, climbed on top of the rock, realized he still had the young pair in his scope, lowered the gun and coughed loudly. The girl stood, saw the gun and reached for her friend. Binod knew the boy from Chitra’s tea shop. Any luck today? The boy asked. Binod smiled knowingly. No. No luck. Like yesterday, the boy said. Like yesterday, Binod said and walked past them. From the ridge Binod saw shadows pooling behind river rocks below. In a few hours they would bring an early evening to the valley. No luck again, he thought. Just like yesterday.
Binod reached Chitra’s teashop and sat in a corner. His despair was a familiar: its shape and shades were known to most who frequented the shop. He was ignored in the way reserved for those who, even then, remain at the center of interest. Then he left his seat and climbed to his rooms. The smoke from Chitra’s fire followed him. On his tongue was the taste of the sun and the ant that had walked his arm and the alarm in the eye of the discovered girl and the ease on the boy’s face when Binod was recognized. These seemed to weight him down, these things, individually and in concert, tearing and pounding at his unseeable second body that nonetheless carried the burden of all experience. He opened the door to the room where he expected the canvas to be unweaving itself, sliding stitch over old stitch, sending back the light that poured in from the north.
(Source : Jan-March, 2008 Read Tri-monthly Magazine )
