The sun had not yet slipped behind the ridges when a stir ran through the village of Khaurgali, and men, women, and children all came pouring from their houses to look. Badlu Subedar and Soma looked that way too. A whispering started among the women.
"It's her — the very same! Three years it's been since she ran from Badlu's house."
"Oh, how could it be her? Before she ran, when was she ever this filled out, this hale?"
"She's grown bold now — look at that walk of hers! Not a trace of fear that the Subedar will break her bones for it."
"Break her bones — why would he? He's the age of her father. Did the wretch feel no shame, buying a girl who could be his own daughter?"
"Look at the airs of her, Auntie — in that blue silk suit."
"Three years, girl, and heaven knows what gutters she's been dragged through. It was the greed for these silk clothes that took her from here in the first place."
"No, Janaki," said an old Thakurani, "the grace a sutthan gave her isn't there in this salwar. Badlu has nursed this grudge for nothing. How is he ever to keep this Lightning? She ran off back when she'd seen nothing of the world; now she's come back having seen and learned every vice of the towns. Badlu has reared poison for his own self. He grieves over his money — but Soma is past any cure of his now. Mark me: beat her as he will, she'll not lie beside him of a night. It will be a watch over her, day and night, and nothing else."
Badlu Subedar had brought Soma home at last. He was a Thakur of good standing, retired on a pension after serving as a Subedar in the army. Three years ago Soma had trodden all his honour into the dust and run off with Bhimu, a young man of that same district. It seemed to Badlu that the poison of that disgrace had dissolved drop by drop into his very blood. Through these three years he had lived a deeply shamed life. When he had come home from the regiment on his pension, what dreams he had carried! His first wife had been dead five or seven years, and he was childless. There was the dread of dying without an heir and turning into a ghost; but stronger still was the longing to save his ancestral acres and the name of his forefathers. So, spending seven or eight hundred rupees, he had made this arrangement to set up house afresh. But in truth he had made one mistake: he had taken no account of his own age, and had let himself be tempted by Soma's beauty. Where was her youth, her lightning-bright form — and where his own declining years! He had caught the doe; and in two days she had snapped the tether and bolted.
Eight or ten days had passed since Soma's return, and she marvelled that Badlu had neither cursed her, nor spurned her, nor beaten her. Youth is given to straying, she thought — but Badlu has seen the world; perhaps that is why he holds such patience and calm. Yet the secret of his silence was soon out. Soma had come up from the plains hale and strong, but within a week or ten days she felt her appetite ebbing. In Badlu's house she had not eaten a proper meal twice over before her insides began to burn with hunger; she had gone into the orchard and eaten raw pears on the sly and drunk water, and a small ache had griped her stomach all night. For the next week or ten days she cooked and ate by her own hand. There was no want of anything in the house — so what was this, now, coming over her? It was as though someone had laid a heavy stone on her heart. And her legs — what had got into them? Her calves throbbed and smarted without let. Never in her life had she so much as caught a cold, and now this headache would not go; she would bind the corner of her veil tight about her brow. A week or ten days she fought it, and felt her strength draining away by slow degrees. Her colour turned sallow. Once she sat, she had no will to rise. A suspicion struck her: had Badlu fed her something, to be revenged? What could he have given me? she wondered. Some herb? Some slow poison that works by inches? Helpless now, she had taken to her cot — which Badlu, against her wish, had set in a corner of the veranda. Two or three times a day he came to ask how she did, and each time he smiled. Coming and going, he watched her fret and gasp, writhe and twist, and went in again, shaking his head. Soma remembered: when her father was selling her, he had let fall that Bhimu, from across the stream, often came to meet her — and Badlu had boasted then, "My name is Badlu — Badlu! This Lightning will go nowhere now from Badlu's cage." Does a man ever boast beyond his measure? Did he truly think to keep me bound? Even in that state, a flicker of laughter rose in Soma.
The hush of Badlu's house, far from lifting at Soma's coming, only deepened. In the house were Badlu and his two servants. When Soma took to her bed, the cooking fell once more to Chatru — an old servant of the house, and of an age with Badlu Subedar. They say he had counselled Badlu, "Be not greedy. Bring home a widow. Households run by fortune, Subedar; a man should lift only the load his shoulders can bear." But Badlu was puffed up, on the one hand with his money, on the other with his rank; old age had crept into his body, yet he kept the conceit that an army officer never grows old. Chatru pitied Soma; he still thought her blameless, being himself versed in the hardships of hill life. Morning and evening he would ask her about her food, and urge her not to give up eating — to take a little milk, at least. But Soma would say, "Uncle, there's no hunger in me at all. I don't know what sickness has come into my sound body! But, Uncle — let me ask one thing. How did Badlu come to learn of me?" Chatru flung a fistful of curses at her ill fortune. "Ruin take that — that wretch! He'd seen you somewhere in the city, and came here and said to the Subedar, 'What a state you've let yourself fall into, Subedar! You Hindus, you grieve far too much over your women — but I'll bring you word of your Soma.' Ruin take him! Else the Subedar had been sitting quiet enough. That old jackal blew on the dying embers and set them alight again. Where's the bravery in being revenged on a helpless woman, daughter! But who knows what sins of some past birth have cast you into a butcher's hands. What is Badlu, and what your father — that drunkard Triloku! The one had money, the other had need of it, and you were the price, daughter! Well — let me fetch wood from the orchard. The Subedar's gone over to the far hamlet today."
Chatru had barely crossed the threshold when Badlu's cough was heard. Soma turned on her cot and lay staring at the wall; she did not want the Subedar to catch the tears in her eyes. Some spider had been at its wandering on the wall, who knew how long. Her gaze sank so deep into that soiled white sheet on the wall that it began to seem to her the very rolling of clouds, the very flashing of lightning. In three short years, Soma thought, how everything is changed! But why — why did it all come to pass?
"Soma, have some sense — keep this house. Live like a queen. Why have you made such a sight of yourself?" Badlu had once tried to reason with her.
"Keep your house? You, of my father's age — and am I not your daughter? Can you sing with me? Can you pipe a flute the way he did? You paid the price of my life, so keep me for a servant — but never tell a soul that Soma is Badlu's wife. Sooner would I set fire to these rooms and burn in them myself." And then how Badlu had beaten her with a stick — her whole body one welt upon another. If she had not run, what else was she to do? And whose fault was it? Hers? On the wall before her she began to see her own self: Soma by the spring, grazing the goats and cattle, hand to her cheek, singing the folk songs — Chann, and Kunju. The sweet notes of the flute came ringing again in her ears. And what had been Bhimu's crime? Only that he was young and comely and could play the flute? He would cross the mountain to come and meet her. Poor man — where might he be wandering now? When had the two of them ever wished to leave these hills and forests and come into this treacherous country? But what could they do? What other course was there?
She saw two lizards halt on the wall, face to face. A bright, restless, lovely butterfly drifted near, settling on the wall and lifting from it by turns. Oh, mother — what a beautiful thing it is! But what has it left the flowers for, to come here? In the wink of an eye one lizard had it in its mouth. The butterfly struggled hard, but little by little the lizard swallowed it down. She remembered the day she was sold in this village — her drunkard father Triloku on the one side, Badlu Subedar on the other. What a wedding that had been! That dusk, when Badlu had come with the patwari, the watchman, the Pants and Shahs of the district, not one soul there was her own. Save herself, there was not another woman present. Badlu Subedar had brought silken clothes for her and sent them by her father's hand. Had she put them on, there would have been little to tell her from that butterfly. But she had flung the clothes down and told her father: "For how many rupees did you barter me away, Father? How many days will your liquor last on them? If it was only money you craved, you might at least have asked me, Father. Bhimu, poor as he was, could have scraped that much together from somewhere. This Subedar is your own age, Father! To strike a bargain over your daughter — did neither of you feel any shame? You took the money, and your faith is finished, Father — but what of mine?" Soma wiped her eyes with the corner of her veil and turned over. Lying toward the wall, she felt as if her breath were being stopped.
In the afternoon Chatru said to the Subedar, "Soma's state worsens by the day. You ought to show her to someone. If you've pulled her out of that filth, then get her some medicine. Why ruin your own afterlife with her curses, Subedar!"
"Will her curses kill my children, Chatru? Where did she come by the holiness to lay a curse on anyone? This is the fruit of her own sins, Chatru! You doubt me?" Badlu smiled. "Well, go — fill the hookah with tobacco. You're forever at your charms and spells; why not try a remedy of your own?"
Meanwhile Soma, borne up on the wings of her own fancy, had come once more to the brink of that spring.
"Soma! What magic there is in this beauty of yours! I could look at you forever and never have my fill." Soma felt Bhimu's warm, fragrant breath against her cheeks, her eyes. She laid a hand on her breast; her heart was pounding. In the mirror of the spring's clear water she found her own face, and gazed at it a long while. Lord! Why did you give me so much beauty?
Thunder rolled loud across the sky. "Thank God!" said Soma. "Rain down, you clouds of my mountains — let some coolness reach my smouldering heart." Lightning flashed. Soma was glad. It will surely rain. So heavily had it rained that day too, when she and Bhimu stood drenched beneath a tree.
"The whole world has turned against us, Soma. These clouds along with it." "No — that isn't so. Were it not for this downpour, how should we ever have got away? Under its cover we travel at our ease. Every soul is shut in its own house; no one watches, no one comes to meet us. It is all the great kindness of these clouds, Bhimu-ji."
Right there the thread of memory snapped. And then the pictures of two years' degradation began to rise before her mind's eye. In these three years, the memory of the days of toil with Bhimu in Kangra, in Palampur, and then a whole year in Manali, still tasted sweet. But the two years she had spent after that, in a living hell — the memory of them set her body shaking. Those terrible faces, terrible moustaches, the reek of liquor, the smoke of cigarettes and bidis, and the insults — O God, what a hell it was! Soma tossed her head, trying to break free of this cobweb of memory. A jolt — and she saw the contractor steadying her by the arm. "Walk carefully, Soma, lest you stumble." A new master! To a bird in dread of kites and crows and hawks, that cage had seemed at first a place of comfort. But the contractor too was of Badlu's age, a man who blacked the hair at his moustache and temples every week. Soma could have laughed at the weaknesses of men. The contractor's wife was living, and he had sons — but the sons had broken from their father and lived with their mother. Where, Soma wondered, might poor Bhimu be? The contractor had any number of silk suits cut for her. From a little bottle he would dab who-knew-what upon her clothes, so that all day a sweet scent rose from them; and after a few days the scent grew hateful to her. What is this counterfeit show? Bhimu used to say, "Soma, the fragrance of flowers comes off your very soul." What was that fragrance? Where has it gone?
"How are you?" Badlu asked. Soma gave no answer. "The clouds are at their thundering again today. The lightning's aflash."
Soma understood: Badlu was needling her — that the day she ran off with Bhimu, the clouds had stood just so. Yes, they did — catch me now, then! The words all but escaped her. She remembered how, the day she fled with Bhimu, the lightning had once cracked so loud along the way that she had clutched him in fright. "Why, you're no less than the lightning yourself! What is there in it to fear? If you are the lightning, then my heart, this love of mine, is as plain and clear and holy as these clouds — and so you are gathered up within it."
"Shall I have the cot moved inside?" said Badlu, with a touch of pity. "No, it's well enough here. At least the gusts of cool air come through."
Badlu settled in the room beside the veranda, cleaning his double-barrelled gun. Then, at some thought, he let out a guffaw and said: "Are you watching this game in the heavens, Soma? See how the flashing lightning torments the cloud! The poor wretch makes a hundred entreaties, weeps, thunders, runs along behind her — and she flashes for a single instant and the next is gone, vanished. 'Catch me — and how will you catch me?' And see how that fool fawns and flatters, as though life itself were not possible without her." Badlu cast the cloud another taunt: "You wretch! Come to me and learn — come, let me show you how a flashing bolt of lightning is mastered."
Soma looked at Badlu, seated on the doorsill, and hearing this she could not hold her peace.
"You are mistaken, Subedar-ji! You have taken poor lightning for a snake. How shall those clouds bind the flashing lightning, when there is no sap left in them? Lightning does not flash in the empty air, Subedar-ji — it flashes in the hearts of the clouds, it plays there. It seeks out the heart that can hold it, that its burning soul may find some coolness. Is there another place in all the world that can stay the lightning of this sky? Have you never seen it strike to earth!" Soma was left breathless after all this; yet she was glad to have given a fitting answer. Badlu sprang up in a rage and went within, bolting the door, and the partition by the veranda shook. Soma understood that drowsiness had come over him; he would sleep two hours now. No servant was in the house — neither Chatru nor the other — and in this weather none was likely to come or go. The rain was falling hard. Now and again the clouds thundered, and the lightning flashed. She raised herself on the bed. This was the very kind of day on which she had once slipped clear of the spray of the Subedar's gun. That day too a longing had shown her a new world; and now such a day had come again. Again a hope was calling to her: Out of this prison! Break this cage! There is a little force yet in your wings; tomorrow even that will be gone. Then you may beat your head, then you may plead — but these clouds will not come, such a chance will not be had. Free the young Soma within you from this rotting carcass. Where are those songs of true love — and where this strangling, this fourfold watch and cage!
Soma! This lamp grows dimmer by the moment. While its light yet holds, you can reach there. I am with you. A new dawn, new tongues, new beauty, new youth — all of it waits for you. Here is the chance to be out of this hell. Here is the blessed hour to raise the heaven of love, Soma! Rise — go — come away, come away from here!
Soma did, in truth, get to her feet; but rising too quickly, a darkness swam up before her eyes, and she caught at a pillar for support. Two moments she waited for the dark to lift, then took up a stick that lay in the courtyard and, leaning on it, set off slowly outside. The rain came down harder. In a single instant her clothes were soaked — just as they had been that day. A coolness stole over her; her heart grew light. The path had turned to mud. Four steps led down; she went down them, with the further path a furlong long before her. There was a back way too to the place she was bound for — nearer, but the path ran so narrow along the very lip of the hill that she dared not take it. This way is good. By this way I shall come there. A strange, unfamiliar gladness came over her. She wanted to sing some song aloud — Chann — but there was no strength left in her chest. The wet veil, wound about her throat, began to chafe; she pulled it loose and let it fall. A streamlet crossed the path; she drank two mouthfuls of its water, for she was thirsty too.
She took the cold water of the stream and laid it to her eyes with her fingers, and was cooled. Then she went on. Ahead, the place she was making for had come into sight — that ledge.
× × ×
When Chatru came home, a load of grass on his back, he found Soma's veil lying in the path. With a shudder he caught it up and hurried home in a fright, to find the veranda empty. He called out to the Subedar.
"Who's there?" the Subedar asked, with a touch of ill humour.
"It's me, Chatru — but the Subedar's wife is not in the veranda. How comes this veil to be lying down there in the thicket, I wonder?"
A foreboding struck Badlu. In alarm he came out to the veranda. The cot was empty. "Chatru! Soma is gone — Soma has gone to the cliff. Come with me."
So saying, Badlu rushed out bare-headed, bare-footed, without so much as a shawl about him. "What did you say? Where did you find this veil?"
"Chatru — then Soma is gone. Gone to leap from that same ledge where Parsu's sister Mangi leapt, the day before yesterday. Who is that there? O God! She's standing out on the high rocks. But however did she climb up there?"
He shouts — "Soma! Soma!"
"Don't set yourself on coming near me, Subedar! Before ever you reach here, I can leap ten times over."
"Soma — forgive me. See, at this age I beg your pardon with my two hands joined! Don't lay this killing on my head — have mercy on me. Triloku's house has crumbled to ruin in these years; mine too will crumble and fall; but do not give me this punishment. I own my fault, Soma — I own myself wholly beaten."
Lightning cracked with terrible force — as though it had come down upon them where they stood. The Subedar shrank back in terror and pressed both hands to his eyes. The next moment, when he opened them, there was only black smoke, and silence.