Free I Am an Executioner by Rajesh Parameswaran

such a journey conceivable? What if the girl demanded conversation and attention? I had resolved to impose strict limits on her behavior, but really, I hoped to have very little to do with her whatever, and that, like new household help, she would be the sole province and responsibility of my mother.
    It was with all of these worries and pressures building up inside me and compounding themselves, and with my mind clouded in a kind of fog and gloom, that I thought to write again to my supervisor and formally request some days off, to give me time to attend to myself, to clear my mind and rest properly before and after my engagement ceremony.
    Sufficient time had passed that R.’s previous lapse scarcely passed through my thoughts when I called to him to take down my words, and as per normal usage, I asked to review the document only after I had finished the dictation.
    He put the paper in my hand and when I turned down to look at it, I felt something collapse inside me, as if a heavy stone had tumbled from a chamber in my heart, to land with a thud in my stomach. R. had not completed even one neat and elegant line when the page again became suddenly filled with the same … outrageous and unintelligible … the same inhuman scrawl and monstrous gibberish. Like a toddling child on his first day in classroom, I stared at the page and could make no sense of what I found there. How can I give you a picture? These were not the random markings of an animal or an imbecile, no; there seemed something purposeful about what he hadput down. It gave me pause. I fleetingly wondered: Were these dense markings a somehow accurate transcription of things I had unwittingly uttered? Did the garble on the page represent a garble that had come from my own mouth? Of course not, I quickly concluded. But what if the words were perfectly legible and English, and it was I who had turned idiot, and lost my ability to read them? On further study, I determined that this awful letter was written neither in English nor in any language. It was entirely inhuman, illogical, and unfamiliar, and it gave me a twisted feeling inside to look at it.
    “R.!” I called, I bellowed. “R.!” I could scarcely speak. I only held the paper before me, hoping it might speak for itself.
    He observed the letter meekly and in silence.
    Finally, I was forced to ask, “What does it … what does it mean?”
    “What does
what
mean, sir?”
    Now I felt the first tickles of rage. This chap was taking me for a fool. I saw it clearly now: I was the butt of some elaborate joke. But I could not understand the joke, nor even articulate its scope and purpose, precisely, and this agitated me all the more. Certainly, whoever was behind this joke—whether R. himself, or some enemy I had unwittingly made here at the Railway, who was using R. as his agent, some secret inspector—whoever it was could not have found a more straight-faced jokester, for R. was not in the least perturbed by my alarm. The bold chap looked at me with a quizzical, altogether innocent expression.
    “Don’t test my patience, R. Tell me, what is the meaning of this? What are you up to? What is going on? I will not be made a fool in my own office.” Now he took the offered paper from my hand and began to read it, calmly and with interest. After waiting some moments in silence, I asked, “Do you still not see what I am referring to?”
    R. did not answer—he seemed lost in the perusal of his creation, as if those bizarre markings held some deep, engrossingsignificance, and although he had written them, he was being edified by them anew.
    “Come on, R.,” I said. “You can pretend that you are reading something there, but I won’t be duped.” But he still did not look up from the page. I laughed, and in my unsteady laughter I heard my own uncertainty and growing terror.
    In the ensuing silence, I knew I should throw him out on his ear, but he seemed so transported with his letter that I admit I