Free Two Short Novels by Mulk Raj Anand Page B

fear that had kept me from telling him openly about things . . . fear and his ignorance, for how could I have explained to him that Darwin said there wasn’t a God, and Huxley was an agnostic. What was Darwin to him and who was Huxley . . . ’
    But he felt he was being naive, thinking like that. Only the blows rankled.
    ‘Oh! God, oh! My God. Oh! My mother, my mother, come and take me . . . I am burning, I am bursting, I am torn . . . . Oh come, they have crushed me, they have ruined me, they have broken me, they have made me ill, they have destroyed me, your son, and there is none in this hovel, there is none who loves me at all . . . . Oh, I was an orphan, my mother, I was an uncared for orphan when you died . . . . Why, oh why did you have to bring me into the world if you had to leave me . . . ? Oh why did he have to have me if he had to loathe the very sight of me . . . ? Why did he have to do that, why . . . ? ’ But he couldn’t go on. His cries were becoming louder and the reiterated hiccups of his sobs were choking him so that he would have to shriek to be heard even by his own ears. And he didn’t want the women upstairs to come down, because he would be too ashamed to face anyone. And yet he could not control the passion that he had let loose in himself, the anger, the resentment, the grief and the longing that lay choking him now . . .
    He turned on his side and suddenly, his whole form was numbed, as if he had been struck in the heart.
    For a moment he writhed in a paroxysm. The frenzied fire in his head drummed through his temples, the hot tears of remorse ran from his eyes, and his hard teeth ground a swooning sigh.
    His throat suddenly brought up a profusion of saliva rich with blood and he lurched over to throw it into the spittoon.
    He kept his head hanging over the streaks of dribbling blood and gaped weakly into the spittoon for a confirmation of his dread. The streaks of blood clotted the edge of the brass bowl. There was a coloured space before his eyes. He was sure now . . .
    ‘O mother,’ he cried and clutched the sheet tight. His brain was faint, the light of his eyes dimming slowly like an invisible anguish and his mind blended in a soundless void. He opened his mouth to call his grandma. But he felt the nerves of his body relaxing, as if the pain were being pressed out by the inexorable advance of death. ‘Nur, my child, Nur, wake up and drink this essence,’ his grandmother said, coming towards the bed. ‘Nur . . . ’
    His face looked strange.
    She stood fixed to the ground. Then she struggled on heavy feet to the bed and shook him with trembling fingers, calling the while, ‘Nur, Nur, Nur my son, awake . . . ’
    But his face turned . . . and hung limply aside.
    ‘ Hai, hai! ’ she lifted her voice and cried. ‘ Hai hai! Hai hai! ’ And she struck the palms of her hands on her breasts, on her forehead, on her face and moaned and howled and tore her hair as she fell across his neck.
    The women on the top storey came screaming down, beating their breasts, their thighs, their foreheads, their cheeks and their breasts again and cried, ‘ Hai, hai! Hai hai! Hai hai! ’
    The women of the neighbourhood rushed and, entering the room, began to beat their bodies deliberately crying and wailing, ‘ Hai hai! Hai hai! ’
    The body of death lingered on the sick bed.

Death of a Hero Epitaph for Maqbool Sherwani

Death of a Hero Epitaph for Maqbool Sherwani
    T he poplars whirred past him. And they still came towards him, on both sides of the road. Long unending lines of poplars . . .
    But when he thought about it he found that it was actually he who was whirring past them on his motor-bike.
    The leaves of the trees had been much more green two days ago, when he had fled from Baramula to Srinagar, than they were now in the light of the declining sun, while he was returning from Srinagar back to Baramula.
    ‘Perhaps,’ he said to himself in the diffused language of the wordless colloquy