The ban on perfumes was, for Kudra, the final straw. She found herself nodding in agreement when a delegation of village Brahmans enumerated for her the spiritual advantages of suttee. When the priests left, she ran after them to inquire how long they thought it might take for her to be reincarnated. Not wishing to interrupt their conversation, she followed them silently down the dusty road and overheard them speculating about the worth of her jewelry. Upon suttee, her personal belongings would, by law, go to the Brahmans. One priest was of the opinion that Navin, like any good merchant-class husband, had lavished gold and silver ornaments upon his wife, and that they could scarcely afford to let Kudra forgo the funeral fire.
Kudra felt her entrails turn on an axle of lead. The Sanskrit alphabet, heavy-footed and squirmy, snag itself out in her belly; a cobra's tongue swam across the waters of her eyes. As the landscape blurred before her, she could see with pristine clarity the widow in smoking sari being pulled from the riverbank and dragged, screaming, back to the pyre. And she remembered then her promise to the pale-skinned stranger that such a fate would never be hers.
That night, the eve of cremation, after the household was fast asleep, she dressed herself in her nephew's clothing. She laid out her jewelry for the Brahmans, so that they might be less inclined to pursue her. She wrapped some flat cakes, rice balls, and coins in a silk scarf. Then she undid the package and added a hairbrush and several ivory vials of perfume. Then she unknotted the scarf a second time and, without consciously thinking why, put in a small pouch of pennyroyal. As warm vanilla moonlight creamed through the windows, she knelt before her crude little personal shrine, offered a bowl of ghee to the goddess Kali and begged for forgiveness. She knelt before Navin's casket and begged the same. She kissed each of her children in his sleep. Keeping to the shadows, she slipped from the house, stopping in the yard only long enough to kick with all of her might a flabbergasted basket of rope.
“So you ran away from death,” said Alobar. He was obviously pleased. Kudra's flight brought back memories of the two times he had ducked the swipe of the Reaper's sickle. It meant that he and this woman had something in common, something revolutionary and scandalous that bound them together out on the edge of behavior where the bond is tightest and sweetest.
“No,” said Kudra. “I did not run away from death. How can a person run away from death? And why would a person want to? Death is release. I did not flee death but the corruption of the Brahmans.”
“Nonsense! Do you mean to tell me that had the Brahmans been interested in your eternal soul instead of your bangles, you would have dived into the flames?”
“Well. . I have much fear of flames.”
“Suppose they had wanted you to drown yourself, then. Would you have gone to water more gladly than to fire?”
“Yes. No. Oh, I do not know! Drowning is not such a good way to die.”
“What is a good way to die?”
“In your sleep, I suppose. When you are old and your children are grown.”
“Oh? Old and in your sleep? After a lifetime of hard work and ill treatment? And how old is old? Is it ever old enough? You could have accepted the painful life of the widow and died unappreciated in your sleep at the age of forty, you could have chosen that instead of the fire, that option was open to you, but you ran away from that, as well.”
“You are shaming me. Do you bid me return?”
Alobar put his hand on her shoulder. It was the softest thing he had touched in years. The heat of her flesh, wafting through her boy's jacket, caused fish eggs of perspiration to pop out on his palm. “Not in the least,” he said. “I merely want you to admit that you do not wish to die. You want to live and, what is more, you want to live decently and happily, you want to live a life that you yourself have chosen. Admit that, now, and you shall be rewarded.”
Kudra eyed his fingers suspiciously. They were kneading her shoulder and seemed to be of a mind to migrate south. “And what is to be my reward?”
Sensing her mistrust, he removed his hand. “The comfort and protection of a kindred spirit.”
“How can you protect me? Can you not see, I am certain to be reincarnated as a spider for what I have done. A spider or a flea or a worm.” She shuddered.
“All the more reason to live a long, enjoyable life while you are still human.”
“NowI shall probably have to endure a hundred more lifetimes before I reach nirvana and gain my final release.”
“What difference does it make if you live a million more lifetimes? At least, you can enjoy this one.”
“To believe in the reality and permanence of the fleeting everyday world is foolish.”
“Then why are you here and not in the ash heap at the cemetery?”
“Perhaps because I am a foolish woman.”
“Good.” Alobar smiled. “My own foolishness could use some company.”
Kudra smiled, too. She didn't mean to smile. It just happened. The smile was an embarrassment to her, as if she had belched or broken wind. She tried to drive the smile away with thoughts of her sorrowful experiences, her disgraceful behavior, her insecure situation, but this was one smile that didn't scare easily, it hung in there like a tenant who knows his rights and refuses to be evicted. Finally, Kudra turned away, but Alobar could see her smiling through the back of her head.
“What is your name again?” Alobar moved closer to her.
“Kudra.” The word swam out through her smile like a blowfish swimming through a crack in a reef.
“Mine is Alobar.” He slipped his arm around her and cupped her left breast. It was heavy and jiggled in his hand as if it were full of liquid. Melon water. Or beet juice. “The grass is soft here, Kudra.”
“A mattress is softer. It is not my habit to copulate in the grass like an animal.”
“Well, you had better get used to it. I mean, if you are going to be reincarnated as a bug. .”
“Unhand me, please. I am a widow and do not even know you.” The smile was gone now, although whether it had drawn back inside her head or flown off toward the ices of Chomolungma was anybody's guess.
“You know me well enough,” said Alobar. Reluctantly, he dropped the satin coconut. He imagined that it gurgled when he let go. “Did not you come up into these mountains looking for me?”
“Not exactly. Back then when I was a child, you informed me that you were traveling to the Himalayas in search of masters who had power over death. When I ran away, I had no place to go, and I thought I must make my way to Calcutta to become a woman of the streets, but first I decided I would have a look for these masters myself. You were kind to me back then, and the promise you extracted from me influenced my decision not to submit to suttee. Partly because of you I took a less virtuous path. But there is a limit to how much virtue I shall allow you to talk me out of.”
“If being alive is not a virtue, then there is little virtue in virtue, that is what I say.”
“Disgustingly enough, I am finding joy in my continued presence in this world of illusions.” She turned to face him. The smile came back, surprised them both, then left again abruptly without saying good-bye. “Tell me, Alobar, are these lamas you live with the masters whom you sought? And have they taught you the secret of life everlasting?”
“Um? Well, er, in some ways, I think. . I'm not sure. Uh. .”
“What do you mean? Are they or are they not? Have they or haven't they? They look like Buddhist monks to me, and where I come from, Buddhists die just as regularly as everybody else.”
Alobar stood up and gazed at the mountains for a while. The mountains looked like the white picket fence around the cottage of eternity, although Alobar clearly thought about them in another way entirely. Perhaps he thought of them as storehouses stocked with thunderclap hinges and earthquake parts and dusty bolts of lightning; perhaps he saw them as just another opportunity for the gods to make him seem puny and weak and mortal. In any case, he stared at the peaks for a while, and then he turned back to Kudra.