Wax House

The moment Jayanta awoke, he felt there was no longer any need to go to the office. Last night had been restless. Two reasons for that: first, the oppressive summer heat at the very mouth of the season; second, a nightmare. The heat was a daily affair in this city, not something that troubled him much anymore. But the dream—that haunted him.

 
He could not recall whether he had dreamt it while asleep or half-awake. Perhaps, in the midst of it, he had opened his eyes once. He remembered clutching the bolster in both arms, even kissing it. That was his nightly habit.
 
Now, rising from bed, he began to brood over those broken fragments of dream. Grinding his teeth, twisting his face in an expression of torment, he tried to recall every detail.
 
The first act of the dream unfolded thus: Jayanta, chasing after a girl, managed to catch a bus. But as soon as he boarded, a crowd of men surrounded him. They demanded his identity card. Panic-stricken, Jayanta searched his whole body, every pocket, every fold of cloth. Surely, in just a moment, he would pull it out and startle them all. Yet, he could not find it.
 
All of them, he knew, must be thinking that this whole tale of the missing card was something he had carefully fabricated at home. Just then he noticed the girl inside the bus. A light emanated from her face—yet the light was not hers, it was flowing in from outside the window. Moonlight. But there had never been a window on that side of the bus. The window had always been at his feet. The other three sides were sealed in darkness. And now he found himself collapsed upon that window—his feet twisted toward his head, his head toward his feet.
 
At that very instant, he awoke, sweating. From somewhere beside him a voice said, “We should hand you over to the police, mister. Because of you we’ve all been delayed.” Jayanta understood then: the second act of the dream had begun.
 
Within the dream itself he sank into a deep remorse. He had lied about himself.
The girl was gazing at him with a calm face. A moment later, she turned her eyes away, toward the world outside. The men, however, went on pouring their anger upon him. Jayanta grew increasingly frantic; it seemed to him as if he had slipped on a wet monsoon road, and cars were crushing his body beneath their wheels. Blood streamed down his limbs.
 
In agony, stripped of his proof of identity, he writhed, while the passersby walked on indifferently.
 
Startled, Jayanta opened his eyes. His whole body was drenched in sweat. He sat up on the bed. The ceiling of the mosquito net brushed against his head. Mosquitoes whined incessantly near his ears.
 
From the ceiling fan came a mechanical groan. On the floor, his stout wife snored heavily. The room reeked of human sweat—dried, stale sweat, swirling in the fan’s air. His plump wife no longer cared to sleep beside him. She complained that his body burned against hers. A sudden urge seized Jayanta to wake her then and there, drag her close, and force her to lie beside him. Yet, he did nothing. He lay as if dead, silent, motionless.
 
There was an itch on his back. He scratched it with a dry rasping sound, imagining that the noise might disturb his wife’s sleep. Her snoring continued, yet he scratched harder, digging into his skin. The pleasure of scratching his own back was so intense that it made him forget the earlier longing for his wife’s nearness. Indeed, it struck him that he had almost forgotten his very identity for a long time now.
 
His limbs seemed shriveled, desiccated. He thought of going before the mirror to see what remained of him. Then dismissed the idea—such childishness. Better, perhaps, to go to the bathroom. But where had he kept that book from the banyan-tree stall? Could it be that his wife had unearthed it from its hiding place? If she had, surely he would have noticed. Suddenly it occurred to him: perhaps the book lay in the trunk in the ceiling-loft bathroom, buried among certificates. That box swollen with proof and memory—endless papers, old documents, love letters crumbling at the edges, cash memos, guarantee cards, account books, receipts, diaries, report cards, even his original appointment letter. The very thought of that trunk smothered his desire.
 
Dust clung in layers atop it, and within—an empire of cockroaches and rats. It wasn’t as if Jayanta’s life held nothing now except that book from the banyan-stall.
 
He still possessed a whole life. Why flee? He was a solitary being in this world, but self-reliant, surviving, even perhaps a little content. What cause for agitation then? Jayanta’s heart clapped within him like a pair of cymbals. He lay back on the bed again.
 
Then he felt a pressure in his belly. Yet he knew he could hold it till morning. He had that habit.
 
When was the last time he had lain with Namita? Perhaps six months ago—around New Year. Back then her waist was slimmer, at least two fingers less than it was now. Jayanta once more plunged into analyzing the dream.
 
A girl had called him. He thought it was inside the bus. He had ignored her call and stepped down. Then came the accident. Terrible, violent. The girl had tried to save him.
 
Why is it that the incidents of a dream never stay intact? Already the young woman’s figure was fading from his memory. And yet, even now, young women appeared in his dreams. If others knew, they would brand him immoral. But his thoughts could not be tamed. His thoughts swirled with desire, with longings and aspirations.
 
If men are punished for immoral acts, why not also for perverted wishes? For six months now, each time he saw the new tenant’s wife next door, a Kamasutra seemed to blossom within him—was that not itself a crime? He was betraying his outward character. And perhaps, in Namita too, similar secret Kamasutras were germinating when she looked upon his unmarried, earning younger brother.
 
Jayanta lay in darkness, caught in the whirlpool of such twisted thoughts.
 
And then, after drifting in that spiral of thoughts, Jayanta rose again to find morning had arrived. Namita was calling him to wake up. This time he resolved not to answer her call. He made up his mind: never again would he go to the office. For life.
 
The firmness of his own decision startled him. How could such a mild-mannered man, such a pliant soul, take so severe a step so suddenly? Yet he truly had.
 
No one suspected anything. To his wife he said simply, “I don’t feel like going to office.” And so he remained home, day after day, for a whole week. Namita was baffled. She thought her husband was merely enjoying a casual leave, indulging in luxury. She held her tongue at first.
 
But on the tenth day, Namita flared up in rage. “Why isn’t this blockhead going to work? Am I supposed to go to the office instead of him now? And he will just sit at home like some idle woman? Each time I ask, he only says, ‘I don’t feel like going to office.’”
 
One day, their son Piklu asked: “Baba, why don’t you go to office?”
 
Jayanta remained silent.
 
Namita snapped: “Your father doesn’t want to work anymore. He wants to renounce household duty and become a saintly Chaitanya!”
 
Jayanta, however, had been watching her closely these days.
 
It had been so long since he had really looked at his wife. How ugly Namita had grown! Perhaps it was for this reason that he had developed such disgust for the household. That imagined young woman was still summoning him. Against Namita’s assault he was weightless, like straw caught in a gale. He had to flee.
 
If he wished to survive, he had to run for his life. But what if no one truly called him in reality? Where would the inspiration come from then? Not everything in life happens at the proper time.
 
So many times before it had been like this—people promised things, and broke them. Those who succumbed to temptation perished. Who had the courage to escape? To run—was it ever so simple?
 
In earlier days, when quarrels with Namita raged after he came home from the office, Jayanta would often storm out of the house. Aimlessly he would wander road to road, seething with anger, humiliation, grief. He would swear silently: from tomorrow I will never again live in this household. This is the end.
 
For hours he would stride the streets, burdened with such vows. Until suddenly hunger gnawed at his belly. He would pull a ten-rupee note from his pocket and head toward a shop. But then, strangely, he would put the note back and keep walking. Until at last, without knowing how, he found himself at the door of his own house. The door always lay open for him.
 
He would slip into the kitchen first, then into the bedroom, beside Namita. Without shame. This same wife had challenged him only six hours before, “Go on, let’s see which gutter will shelter you. If you have any pride, never come back to me again.”
 
Her voice then had been sharp with confidence. But when Jayanta did return—barefaced, all pride dissolved—he understood at last the mysterious source of that immense confidence women carry.
 
So this house, this marriage, held him captive. Clawing, biting, yet never letting go. Held tight. Thus his final resistance took shape: he would never go to office again.
 
That very night, the house erupted in chaos. Namita was determined to reach a conclusion—one way or another. Could a man refuse to work, sit at home veiled like some idle woman? How long could such outrage be endured?
 
So that night, there was violence. Bangles shattered on Namita’s wrists. Her sari’s pallu tore. Jayanta smashed a radio. He slapped the child. And then, clad only in a lungi, he stormed out of the house.
 
Neighbors spilled out, thronging. Namita screamed till her throat burned.
 
By then Jayanta’s condition was like that of a madman. From the main road he slipped into a narrow alley. The lane lay steeped in darkness. The lampposts scattered dim pools of broken light. One after another he passed beneath them. Only a few days ago, beneath one such post, the corpse of a man had been found. Jayanta strode past.
 
A little further, a pond shimmered faintly. Around its edge sat groups of people—unhappy souls of the neighborhood. Jayanta walked on, staring at them. Whatever he saw, from beginning to end, filled him with rising fury. And then he thought: enough. This was the time for true awakening.
 
Suddenly, he realized he had stepped into a vast field. All around—emptiness. No sound, no stir of life.
 
And then—her voice. The girl called out to him. He turned and saw her. Yet looking at her now, it no longer seemed she was the sort who could slip in and out of other people’s dreams. Jayanta had thought her beautiful. But in truth, the memory of her dream-face had already faded. She was no less fair than Namita, his wife. And yet, seeing her, he felt no bitterness at all.
 
The girl said: “Come. You said you would.”
 
At first, Jayanta could not recall what promise he had made, where it was he was supposed to go. Did he even have anywhere to go? He said: “I have no place to go. I can only return home. But I do not wish to go there.”
 
The girl laughed softly. “That cannot be. Every human being has some place to go. No one is so cursed as to have none. Come then, let us go.”
 
Jayanta stared, astonished, into her face.
 
She began to walk forward. With a gesture she beckoned him to follow. And Jayanta, entranced, walked after her.
 
After a while, they arrived before a house. It was old, crumbling. The plaster had peeled from the walls; weeds sprouted from the cracks. Jayanta followed her inside. And suddenly, they were standing in a room.
 
In the faint light of the chamber, he lost her. His eyes searched the shadows. He thought he glimpsed a dim silhouette sliding toward a corner window. He stepped forward, trying to see her in the light that seeped through. For a moment, he thought he had found her.
 
But then—slam!—the shutters banged shut. The room fell into darkness.
 
So had she left him here alone? Or was she still within the room?
 
A thin stream of light still trickled through two ventilators. In that dimness he groped like a blind man, searching. Suddenly one ventilator shut with a thud. Then the other.
 
Revulsion twisted Jayanta’s face. A creeping pain seeped from his pores upward into his brain. His crisis of existence had begun.
 
Like a lunatic he clawed at the darkness. It felt as though a tunnel had opened upward. He was climbing, clawing his way through. Around him stretched a one-way passage, stinking, suffocating. He ran, stumbling, toward some imagined end—toward freedom, toward light, away from the rotting stench of life.
 
But the tunnel seemed endless. A labyrinth with an entrance but no exit. He slipped, fell onto a lump of slime, his body plastered with mud, sticky, reeking. The stench filled the chamber.
 
Then, somewhere—a light. A flash of lightning? Or an electric spark? A small bulb glowed. Blue light spilled into the room.
 
He woke, drenched in sweat, gasping.
 
Unlike other nights, this quarrel did not end in the usual dull routine. This time Jayanta did not walk home quietly on weary feet.
 
Instead, in the dead of night, the neighborhood boys found him sprawled unconscious by the lake’s edge. They carried him back. He had slipped into a stupor, unaware of anything.
 
Namita called the doctor. The doctor said, “He hasn’t eaten all day. His stomach’s filled with gas. That’s why he collapsed.” Indeed, Jayanta had eaten nothing since morning. He also had the habit of forming gas too easily.
 
Tears streamed down Namita’s eyes in thick rivulets.
 
She sat by the bed and tended her husband. Jayanta, soothed by her care, drifted into sleep, his face eased with contentment.
 
And then, truly, at dawn, consciousness returned to him. He awoke and gazed upon the world with the curious eyes of a newborn.
 
Namita asked softly, “Why were you shouting so much in your sleep last night?”
 
Jayanta answered, “I dreamt a dream.”
 
“What dream?” Namita asked.
 
“Oh, nothing… the sort I often see,” Jayanta replied.
 
Namita said, “Since your body isn’t well, perhaps you should not go to office this week.”
 
Jayanta exclaimed: “Are you mad? Today I must go to office!”