Umbilical cord

All that is living and all that is dead lie here as silent as the Supreme Self.
 
Seventeen human bodies are burning. Not on seventeen pyres. Like winter’s small coils of fire, the corpses have been divided into many parts and are burning apart, giving off heat in silence.
 
So many bodies, burning in a thousand pieces—yet no crowd has gathered to bid them farewell. Nowhere around is there any loud weeping or sniffling.
 
There is no one here. No one anywhere along the riverbank. Not a single soul. No one lives here. Not a single one. Here the dead have no right to flare with sound. A soundless, hushed everywhere. In this warrant of secrecy the flares of fire climb into the sky without a sound, to offer the dead their final salute in silence.
 
All around—a gleaming darkness. No one knows where the invisible eyes keep watch. Someone spits from far away. Someone whispers: “Not a single bone must remain whole. Grind them to pulp. Then cover it with sand on the river shoal. Or you can float it away. Let it be so we never have to come back.”
 
The whispering stops. Another whisper flares, louder: “Down with the enemies of socialism, enemies of society.”
 
Under the heat of the fire, bones crack without a sound. The sardar whispers, “Don’t forget to bring out the naikund. We want all seventeen. Tomorrow take them to the party office and hand them in. The rest we’ll float down the Ganga.” Then everyone chuckles in a whisper.
 
Bones burn. Black smoke flies who knows how far through the dark sky. Time is close to new moon. Who can tell where the shard of moon has hidden? Across two or four bright clouds, packets of black smoke march toward outer space.
 
Skulls split with a sound like burning bamboo slivers. Anukul Das’s left hand turns to smoke beside Liakat Hossain’s severed chest. One whisper thinks: is the human body, then, made only of smoke and ash? Smoke and residue. Ash-residue. Pressing his windpipe against the hollow of his throat, the man speaks in a near-soundless tongue. Then the breath presses on his chest.
 
That man. What can he be called? His skin is darker than darkness. In the dark he is a darker dark. Dano! His name is Dano. Dano has no voice. He has only two pairs of eyes like balls of fire. The basins of those eyes are smooth, oil-bright, harder than death, unfeeling. Even if the world is swallowed in final deluge, those eyes do not blink. It is said the lids of those eyes vanished long ago.
 
This riverbank. A long, sandy shoal. Dense, tight forest. Its contractor is Dano. The chief has boundless trust in him. “Finish the job in quiet, then give the signal, hai. Don’t make such noise in this village.” The whispering starts again.
 
In the darkness the wind moves—ragged, unruly air. A wind thrust forward by the discipline of a harsh summer; whoever it strikes feels how hot that wind is, how the future waits, hard with time. Seventeen phantoms lift into the sky. The people’s skin crawls. The man stares with white eyes.
 
Watchfulness is named Dano. He is the contractor of corpses. In his eyes: a cautious stillness. An unspoken warning is lodged in every nerve. City babus, police, spies, newspapermen, human-rights groups—all are hunting them. The seventeen bodies are “missing villagers” in the eyes of the administration. Sharecroppers of this other socialist realm, a kingdom of tenancy without landlord or share-lord. In the panchayat the red flag flaps and flutters against the blue sky.
 
Darkness is a great ally—a great ally of village life. Night after night, to stand with weapons against the class enemy is hard work. In coppery faces a sheen of sharp rays. Upon the muscles an astonishing compactness of strength. Bodies as tireless as bullocks at the yoke. Nurtured by long oppression. If one could count the streams of blood under the flesh, one would see the leaping tongues of many silent nights’ fires still burning there—gray in memory, or living. When that fire does blaze, whom it will sweep away, he does not know in detail. Under his fingertip is only the charge of the last task.
 
Down with the class enemy. In Dano’s voiceless throat a tune rises. In this tract, the theory of every class enemy’s corpse passes through the hollow of his palm and dissolves into the five elements. With deft hands he cuts the bullet-riddled bodies into pieces. Then he erases every trace. From the skin of the water he can remove even their names. Not even the records can know by which road of great time the troop of bodies departed.
 
This soil loves a blood-fertilizer. And upon that ancient blood-manure, the contractor’s gun fires, and his muscles grow hard and strong.
 
The whispers have ebbed away—as they do. Amid the jubilee of the dead he stands alone. The tongues of fire sway in the wind. In a solemn hush Dano lights a bidi. He tests the wind’s direction. And waits for the fire to die.
 
“As long as even a single opponent lives in this land, we will have no peace. Nor will you have leave.” The deputy head of the gram panchayat spoke, pushing a finger into the muzzle of a rusted gun. Long ago, while hauling a heavy corpse from a pit, half his finger had sunk into a mass of rotting flesh. Dano remembers clearly.
 
Human bone is as cold as a gun-barrel. The human body—made of a mixture of earth and water. Sun-baked, it grows hard in age. After death it becomes smoke and ash. Only the umbilical cord remains.
 
Still, the heart no longer takes to it, Chief. The heart no longer takes to this work. Will this quarrel never end? Dano speaks a big thought with a small mouth. Dano wants to speak. He thinks. But how can he have words? He is a comrade too. The deputy looks upon his sturdy, middle-aged body.
 
Someone to the side laughed. The village is dark. Only the panchayat office glows with electric light. The city telephone rings. “They want Dano’s receipts, Chief,” the laughter said. Then he laughed again.
 
“There are no receipts in revolution,” the deputy said. “Until the enemies of socialism are completely wiped out, there are no receipts. ” He looked at Dano. Then said, “You’re a low-caste man, Dano. You people—why, you are the chief limb of this society. You are our strength. Ahead lie many dangers, Dano. Don’t sit hand in hand in silence. This is no time. We must stand together and fight. Reactionary forces circle above your head. We must pull them up by the roots.”
 
“No question of rest now. Much work remains,” someone said from the side. Younger than Dano, he addressed him with the familiar tui.
 
A haze came into Dano’s eyes. How much harsher is a rat’s life than a human’s. Tunneling through earth, it darts through dark gutters from one end of the world to the other. That path is dark and secret—a maze of innumerable tangled cuts and crossings. Humans alone see the world from highest above.
 
The bodies of seventeen sharecroppers turn to ash and ride the sky. In this village, in the end, only seventeen opponents had remained. They had tried to till the fallow land without panchayat orders. They knew the danger—mortal danger. They had not gauged the fight. Yet the hope to resist lived in them.
 
—“We must drive the opponents from their homesteads.”
—“We will not let rice fill their bellies.”
—“No right to farm fallow land without panchayat’s command.”
—“The women of their houses are near naked.”
—“The children are hungry—no grain in their bellies.”
—“No food for the enemies.”
—“Why won’t they join our party? They’ll get rice, land, cloth for the women. How long must we frighten them with a white sari?”
—“How can we trust them?”
—“They are with the country’s external foes, cudgel-men funded by imperialists.”
—“Those who came before have turned traitor at election-time.”
—“They begged pardon, they begged—”
—“No pardon. No pardon for the enemies of the people.”
 
The panchayat office-house is hushed. In the distant bamboo grove, around the pits of fire, rows and rows of heads. No pardon. No pardon for the class enemy.
 
The fires are sinking. Around midnight the party committee meeting ended. Over there, night fell; the pyres still burned. With iron tongs Dano poked and searched for the naari—the cords. Even he is startled by how skilled his accustomed hands have grown. Tonight, on his two wings, there is a strange disgust. He wants to spread them and fly.
 
Not in the blood of estate-holders, contractors, landlords, moneylenders—but red with the blood of sharecroppers—the red flag flaps and flies. The earth is streaked with the silent tears of peasant women. With the fire of children’s hunger.
 
Our day will come. Our morning will come. Our time is passing. A hard time. Does the chest of the stable earth swell with pride? With astounding skill Dano brings out the cords from inside the burned bodies. Dawn’s tide is not far. All ash and residue must be given to the river’s womb. The last trace must be erased. As though, for each soul to find release, Dano must pay the ferryman’s cowry coin. He takes every cord. No one finds them. Letting them float in the water is sin. Accidental death. Besides, there is an order. Carelessness— thrusting proof into the river. Who knows at which ghat what kind of water arrives.
 
Into an iron cauldron Dano lays the hot cords. One, two, three, four. Numbers only. The eastern sky turns red. The river is swelling. The elderly man collects the certificates of seventeen corpses. Yet today, somewhere, Dano’s fluency has torn. Before his eyes he had seen two hundred surround the seventeen—running, screaming, from one end of the fallow land to the other under noon sun, to save themselves. One of the seventeen was Dano’s neighbor, a kin-brother. One, a daughter’s husband. One, an affine. One, the elder brother of a son-in-law. They were running, crying out, while the crowd of hundreds tightened into a ring around them. In those hands: cleavers, spears, guns, sickles—and red flags. Cries of Inquilab Zindabad filled the mouths of the masses. The final screams of the seventeen sank into that roar.
 
Inquilab Zindabad. Enemies of communism, depart. Down with the enemies of socialism. The air and sky were filled with slogans. Human wailing was pressed down beneath them.
 
—“Comrades have no mother-father, brother-sister, Dano. All people are brothers and sisters. The world, ocean-girt, is one country. Do not mourn the son-in-law, Dano. He had gone astray. He was given many chances. He did not listen. He had become an enemy of society. He had to be punished. There was nothing else we could do. For the greater good of the public, this small sacrifice of personal interest—this is our duty.”
 
At the sixteenth cord, Dano halted. The river water touched his feet. That water washed away the ash. With the tongs Dano dripped water upon the trays of charred ash. One cord is missing. Where is the seventeenth cord?
 
Where did the cord go? Swiftly Dano worked the tongs. Never before had he made such a mistake. Never before had he been so discomposed. In his eyes—an unfamiliar tear. On his tongue—a salty taste.
 
Once, over a quarrel about a chicken, a brother would not enroll in the red party and go to kill his other brother. The village has changed. Borders of lakshman-rekha have crisscrossed the region. Those of this side cannot go to that side. In one place, under one sky, upon one soil—the division of friend and foe.
 
—“Our strength is greater. Why shouldn’t we go?”
—“Going means bloodshed. Cross the boundary and bodies will fall. Ours—and theirs.”
—“We must go all the same. Take motorbikes. Ten, fifteen. Tie the red flag and hold it in front. On the pillion seat, lay a gun upon a white sari. When the men go to the fields, go show the women once. Then the work will be done. They will know in whose kingdom they live.”
—“The menfolk go nowhere. None has work. Where is the water this time? The panchayat has fixed the wholesale price of rice. Who will farm? Worms swarm the land now.”
—“That’s no argument. After elections all will be done. The rice-price will rise. The rest is upon the sky. Rain will come in Bhadra–Ashwin.”
—“Understand—the Lord is with us.”
—“Don’t talk nonsense, Haripad. There is no such thing as God. Everything is man. Whatever is done, man does. It is the weak who appeal to God.”
—“Then why so much bloodshed? In our rule what is lacking?” Dano asked the deputy. The deputy not only relied on him; in a way he loved him too.
—“We must pull the opponents into the party. Jyoti-babu has said: even if there is a single opponent, he must be drawn in. Otherwise destruction is inevitable. Written by fate.”
—“What are you saying, Chief? Can a single opponent harm this rule?”
—“A single one can.”
—“As Fate decrees. According to God’s will.”
—“What does God look like, brother?”
—“Haven’t you seen the portrait of our Leader on the party office wall?”
 
Water to Dano’s waist. On his head the iron pot with sixteen cords. One cord short. His night-woken eyes are red. His body seems about to sway and topple. With this face, how will he go before the widowed daughter? That is what he was thinking. What will he say to her? Can this face be shown to anyone?
 
Class enemies—beware. Opponents—beware. Socialism is our future.
 
A gathering before the panchayat office. A gathering before the party office.
 
Today there will be a big march. All the people of the village have assembled.
 
The area is fully occupied. Only election day remains to come. All preparations are complete. Then the rains will come. The wholesale price of rice will rise. The white sari of peace will fly as a standard over every house. Inquilab Zindabad!
 
Dano has brought one cord short. The chief knit his brow and looked at Dano. “Your heart is not in party work, Dano. Why have you sung so much lament? You have forgotten the welfare of the greater public. What were you taught all this time?”
 
Dano remains silent. He looks, unblinking.
 
“I know nothing of opponent or non-opponent, Dano. If doubt lives in your mind, your work will be shirked. We understand only numbers. Bring me cord number seventeen. Who gave you the idea to give your son-in-law’s cord into your grandson’s hands to consign it to the Ganga? When have we ever believed in God? Everything is material science—dialectical materialism. Burn, and there is ash and smoke. Bring me cord number seventeen, Dano. Otherwise we shall burn you and take out your cord ourselves. We will not tolerate any deceit with our ideals.”