In the darkness of that first, early morning, Birendra opened his eyes to the surroundings of the Nairs’ home once again. Mr. Nair continued to snore loudly. The unfamiliar noise had woken him up half a dozen times throughout the night. But because he was lying on his own mattress, for just a moment each time he forgot where he was, and why. Then he remembered: his mother was gone. And he heard that treacherous refrain: It was her heart.
His neighbors’ house might as well have been fifty miles away from home, not fifty feet. Without his mother, it no longer felt like he was next door to the house he’d grown up in, the only home he’d ever known. And he was left with so many questions and no one to ask. Was his mother going to the same place as his father? Had his father known what was going to happen? Would he be waiting for her somewhere, perhaps along with his brother and parents? And her parents? Had his father asked her to come? And what if she couldn’t find him? And if she did, and they were reunited, would they then send for Birendra as well? If his mother’s atma remained close by, it provided no answers. And now it would fall to Birendra, Mr. Nair had said, as her only son, to set her soul free.
The night before, Mr. and Mrs. Nair had gone to his house. Mrs. Nair had taken his backpack and returned with it full of clothes, his toothbrush, pajamas. Mr. Nair came with Birendra’s mattress and placed it in this unused room. Birendra declined dinner and lay on his mattress while they ate, arguing about him in hushed tones. Mr. Nair did not want Birendra there. He did not want to invite death into their home. Mrs. Nair said they had no choice. Where else would the boy go? “It’s done now, anyway,” said Mr. Nair. “He’ll stay for his mourning, unless his family comes first, but not a day longer. Is that understood?” Birendra thought he heard Mrs. Nair crying, then Mr. Nair confirmed this by telling her to stop. Crying wasn’t going to help, he said. “We’ll have the priest come in the morning to instruct him. I suppose we’ll have to pay for that as well.” Birendra was ashamed and felt like a burden, but Mrs. Nair didn’t seem to think so. She was upset and had spoken then as though she were scolding her husband. How could he count rupees at such a time, she wanted to know, and for the small amount it would cost them? The boy had lost his mother. And they were like family, she said. They’d watched the boy grow since he was hardly bigger than a cashew. “Yes,” said Mr. Nair, “but he’s not family.” Birendra hadn’t wanted to hear any more. He brought his backpack close to pull out his pajamas. The library books he’d forgotten to return earlier in the day were gone. Mrs. Nair must have left them next door to make room for his clothes. They still needed to be returned. Perhaps she put them on his bookshelf alongside the other books he’d acquired over the years, gifts from his mother or from his aunt and uncle, sent all the way from West London. He’d also forgotten to ask Mrs. Nair to pack a fresh shirt to complete his school uniform, for he had stained the one he’d worn that day at lunch. He could have explained these things to the Nairs, but he didn’t. In fact, he’d not yet spoken a word since arriving home from school.
Now he looked out the window and sighed into the darkness. Without his mother, he feared every moment would pass this slowly. He put his fists to his eyes but couldn’t keep the tears from escaping. He wanted to scream until his mother came to his side to comfort him. A snort, followed by a long nasally exhale, from the other room reminded him cruelly of all he’d lost. He needed his mother, but he could not have her. And surely Mr. Nair would not like to see him crying, either. He’d told Birendra he would have to be strong; there was much he would have to do now so that his mother could be at rest. But Mr. Nair had not said how Birendra was to accomplish this. His mother always taught him how to do something whenever he was faced with a new task.
He opened his eyes, blinking a few times to clear away the tears. There was just enough light outside now to distinguish between the shadows of the trees and the darkness of dawn. He would have to go back to the house for a fresh shirt. He could get the library books. It was a dreadful task, but there was no way around it. He moved quietly through the kitchen toward the door. He could barely make out the edges of his house through the trees, and the thought of entering it, alone now, was suddenly terrifying. Even as he wanted to be close again to his mother’s room, her notepad, her sewing things, her scent—everything he’d woken up to only the day before—imagining those same things now without her scared him; everything had been tainted by whatever had happened to her. Their house was no longer a home.
The crows had never before sounded so angry. They seemed to be shouting at him as he made his way to his front door. The house was unlocked and eerily dark inside. He moved quickly to his bedroom, even averting his eyes when passing his mother’s room. He hurried to his closet but closed his eyes once he was in front of it, trying to find the courage to reach inside. He held a deep breath and reached a timid hand out, feeling for the collar of the shirt he needed. Then he ran back down the hall and out the front door, stopping only once he’d reached the center of the yard. He turned and looked back at his house. Why had it been so terrifying? A creaking door in the distance made him spin again, and now he saw Mrs. Nair’s figure begin to approach, like an apparition, glowing in the faint gray light. He held his shirt up to explain why he’d left the house without permission. As he did, he realized he’d forgotten the library books yet again. When he lowered the shirt, Mrs. Nair was standing before him, her hair long and silver and loose around her shoulders, over her nightdress, in a way he’d never seen it before. She shook her head and took the shirt from him. She spoke in a whisper.
“Come, you dear boy. You won’t be needing that for now.”
Birendra wanted to object, to tell Mrs. Nair that he would need his uniform. That he had to go to school; his mother would want him to. He longed for the bus that would, at least for a few hours, take him away from Varkala and the house that now made him feel so afraid. But he remained silent, overwhelmed and defeated by the upheaval of his life, school taken from him as well.
As he walked with Mrs. Nair back to her house, she reminded him that today the priest would come to guide Birendra, that his mother was waiting to be set free. Suddenly, he thought of the small portrait of his father, dressed up as a noble lord in Kathakali costume, on his mother’s bedside table. If he closed his eyes he could feel the touch against his cheek of the dangling beads that hung from that headdress, just as he could smell the faint doughy scent of the makeup on his father’s face. And beyond that the familiar smell of the sea his father used to swim in every morning, the same sea that one day swallowed him whole.
For the rest of the day, Birendra did what the Nairs and the priest told him he must do. He let Mrs. Nair fix his white dhoti with a red strip of fabric at his waist and fashion a ring made of grass to wear on his right hand. There was just one thing he couldn’t bring himself to do. The priest said they must respect the departed by laying eyes on her body, but Birendra could not find the courage to lift his from the casket in which his mother had been laid to rest. He was too afraid to see her in death. He stared at the box and listened to the priest chanting, and the women singing, and the neighbors paying their respects, and then he accompanied the men who carried his mother’s casket to the pyre they had built beside his old house. Holding the clay pot on his head as instructed, he counted as he made each tour around the pyre, allowing the priest to pierce the pot and free the holy water inside. He hoped he’d never get to three rotations, but he must have because he was then handed the fire, and he let the pot fall from his head and break behind him. He turned his gaze to the light of an oil lamp the priest had said was there to guide his mother’s way, and he thrust the torch until it hit the pyre. The flame rose quickly, high above the casket, and he knew there was no risk of seeing her now. Still, he watched in the space above the flames, in the flickering sparks and smoke that danced there beneath the trees, hoping to see some sign of her there. He watched until he forgot where he was, and what was on fire, until time left him there, alone. Until the flame slowly fell into embers that folded into ash. He dreamed of a great fire that night, and he still felt the flame when early the following morning he awoke, once again on a familiar mattress in a strange home.