As we crossed the door and stepped into the main hall, I heard some laughter coming from a room on the right-hand side. The door of the room was locked. When we came to this building, just minutes ago, I had not heard anyone there, and I had not seen anyone come down the staircase. I would have overlooked the matter if the laughter had not turned into an intensive coughing fit. Someone was choking in there.
I looked at Abdul Ali enquiringly. ‘You don’t want to see this, Khaleque bhai,’ he said, sadder than he had been before. ‘You really don’t want to see this.’ He came back to me and pulled me by my hand towards the fence. ‘I am surprised that he lingered so long. He was not supposed to, judging by the way he was when I last saw him.’
I pulled him back. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s happening here. What’s the problem?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘He’ll be silent soon. Just give him a few more hours.’
The coughing became deadlier now, and then stopped, and turned into laughter.
‘Who’ll be silent soon?’ I asked him. ‘Who’s there?’ Abdul Ali began to walk away but I said I would not leave until he had opened that door for me.
‘You’re very stubborn,’ he said. ‘Very stubborn and sensitive. A handful of trouble. Not like the man I thought you would be.’ He returned and reluctantly opened the door with a key from his key ring. ‘You go in, I’m not coming with you; it isn’t going to be a pretty scene, I can tell you that,’ he said, but followed me slowly when I stepped inside.
There was a small middle-aged man there, bound to a chair. He had blood coming out of his mouth. There was blood on his naked chest and on the lungi at his waist. He felt shy seeing us and kept looking at the ground.
‘Don’t ask me anything,’ Abdul Ali said. ‘I know nothing.’ But when I insisted, he opened his mouth.
Construction workers had caught this man last evening. They had their building materials in a van parked outside the gate. This man came from nowhere and started eating tiny iron screws from a box. When they chased him he started gobbling those shiny screws faster than before. His throat was jammed; so they brought him within the boundary and hit his jaw to release the screws. Then they used a knife to prise open his teeth. They removed some of the screws while most of them went down his throat. Upon the instruction of Moina Mia, he was bound to a chair and left in the building for the night.
‘The end of the world is here,’ said Abdul Ali. ‘When men become too powerful, God stops thinking. What can we do? Look at him. Look at his face. See how he smiles, how he enjoys the last few moments of his life, as if he is his God and he has unearthed the final secret of his life. I don’t think anything human is left in that face.’
The man raised his head. He quietly observed us. He had no complaint about being bound, I imagined. There was no sign that he would be grateful to us if we volunteered to untie him.
‘Bhaijan, mone kichhu koiren na; boro bhok lagchhilo, ja paichhi khaichhi,’ he said, without any visible distress. My brother, don’t take it too hard; I was very hungry and I ate whatever I found. ‘It was not meant to be dramatic. I’m not a thief. I’m not mean. You see, I couldn’t stand on my feet only because my stomach was empty. It had been dry and light for quite some time. I ate from the workers’ lunch but soon realized I needed to have something heavy in my stomach, something heavier than regular rice and egg and potato and milk. I did not want to go to bed only to wake up a hungry man in the morning.’ He coughed and spat blood on the floor. Then he smiled. ‘I can tell you this: those screws were really delicious. They were exactly what I needed. You can imagine, if I don’t have anything to eat for the rest of my life, I will still be able to stand straight and walk tall and pass a beautiful evening watching a sunset over the Buriganga.’ He lowered his head to get a view of his stomach. ‘God knows I’m feeling so good now; I’m feeling wonderful since last evening. This is blood, I know, and I am coughing, I know that too, which may sound terrible to you, but believe me when I say there’s no pain in my stomach. It is all quiet now; I’ve satisfied it for a long time to come.’ He blushed for a brief moment; but then the coughing began again, twisting his thin body, and more blood came.
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you have bound him to a chair instead of cleaning his stomach.’ I took a step forward to release the man, but Abdul Ali stopped me. ‘Don’t, don’t,’ he cried. ‘You can’t help him. Nobody can help him. He is not any more in the land of men. Those screws were sharp. I guess they’ve already cut through his stomach. They’ll cut everything as far as they go and as deep as they go, unravelling all his mysteries. Relax now; he’s done; no sympathy is necessary. He’s done and he knows it. That’s why he doesn’t care, don’t you see it? Let him enjoy his peace.’
Hearing this, the man smiled at us before lowering his eyes once again.
That was his last smile that day and forever.
Abdul Ali released the rope. The body fell from the chair with barely any noise.
‘So this is what famine does to a person,’ I thought as I walked back home. ‘It does not bring one to his knees only; it eats one alive. It is hungrier than a hungry man.’
My confidence was shaken. I could not stop staring at people on the way. Most men and children were not wearing shirts. Their scrawny stomachs, determined to expose their ribs, looked ugly in the beginning, but then when I thought about a stomach with dozens of sharp screws in it, they appeared beautiful. They were real; beyond enigma. They shone in the daylight, every one of them, though I knew they were empty or half-empty, or dry, as the man had so compulsively said.
‘Images are everywhere,’ I said to myself, as I entered the gravel yard. ‘Live, concrete images that cannot be misinterpreted or denied or eliminated or undermined. They are dancing and lustfully winking at you. They do not believe in a man’s capacity for idling. They are sharp. They love blood. There is no good or evil in the world. Only images. Learn, Khaleque Biswas, learn; learn and face the truth. Do a necessary service to yourself. Or this is your fate, this sickening trap, this absolute dark, this moment of never coming back, this irrational game of unconditional, slow but certain disappearance. You will break. Choose before it is too late; choose. Set a goal. Set another goal beyond that goal. It isn’t time to be gentle and contemplative or likeable or to wander without purpose. It isn’t time to be innocent. The famine has shot a dart aimed at you. Learn and live.’