THE CONSUMPTIVE

(A Story)

By S. K. Pottekkat

(Rendered from Malayalam by Chitrabhanu Nambudripad)

FOR a patient to know that death is certain and at hand, to be helpless in bed staring and waiting for it every moment, alas, what is more pitiable, more horrible in life!

Jayaram was like that. What could he do? A consumptive, considerably weakened and reduced to a skeleton, pale and voice gone–in such a state he lay on his back silently, solitarily on a bed, always dreaming of death.

Death! O, its chilliness and iciness, the unknown depths of its abyss and the endless darkness of its cavern, the filthy stink from its rottenness–everything! It is a huge stone tied round the neck of life, pulling it down into the unfathomable depths of forgetfulness. Jayaram was terrified. When, with closed eyes, he saw his own dead body being taken away and washed by some strange people, his pale, shrunken, stiffened body being washed hard with mashed horsegram, he was so terrified. He saw his own glazed glassy eyes, the twisted blue lips, the bluish grinning teeth and the stiffened neck–all. Suddenly he would want to scream aloud. Terribly frightened and panting unceasingly he would open his eyes and stare around him doubtfully. When he had made sure that it was this world itself that he was seeing, he would tenderly, lovingly look at his own body and enjoy its sight. He would stroke his own chalk-white hands again and again. With a child’s curiosity and pleasure in listening to the ticking of a wrist-watch, he would watch and feel the beating of his own pulse. Again he would close his eyes and stroke his chest–the arch-shaped bones–lovingly and long.

Jayaram considered it a great blessing to live. Even a moving ant aroused his envy.

Still, at times, death used to take a beautiful form in his thoughts. When seized by a terrible fit of coughing–coughing which made the metallic sound of an iron rod striking the bottom of a copper vessel–choking and gasping, eyes protruding out of their sockets, pressing down his chest with both hands, he spat out a big fleshy mass of shell like phlegm, when life and death played a tug-of-war with the veins standing out on his temples, when he felt as if the whole weight of this earth were pressing down upon his chest, when his life-breath was twitching, wriggling and running up to the top of his cranium, when he felt as if someone were scratching his throat with a vegetable-scraper–ah, he used to yearn with a terrible longing for an embrace from that charming figure of dark-clad death.

All his friends deserted him, almost. He realised that friends were some instruments of loving only, and it was a mere folly to expect help from them. Some stopped visiting him altogether. Was not consumption an infectious disease? Some left him, afraid of his poverty. But his nineteen-year-old sister Santha and a friend Sreedharan did not wash their hands of him.

Jayaram’s cough–that drumming of death–daily increased. One day he spat out blood. Santha fainted when she cleared the spittoon.

Jayaram and Santha were renting half of the upper floor of the building. Its owner had divided the house, the compound and the garden into two by a thick wall. They had for themselves one half of the verandah, three rooms and a kitchen.

One day, when Sreedharan visited them, Jayaram was sleeping. Sreedharan took a seat at the head of the patients’ bed. After a while Santha came in.

“He’s sleeping, tired out. Last night, he spat blood,” she said and began to wipe her eyes with the end of her sari.

Sreedharan glanced towards the bed. Mathrubhumi and Viswamitra, two dailies, were lying in it. But there was no appearance of a human figure lying beside them. It looked only like a blanket thrown. Looking at each other, they sat in silence for a long time.

At last Sreedharan said, “Santha, I’ll still do whatever I can.”

“But brother has no more faith in treatment. Now-a-days, he is always mute, thinking and thinking. When I see it....” Santha broke into sobs.

Sreedharan also felt quite like crying. He longed to save his friend even at the cost of his own life. But that stage had passed away. In grief and despair, he again glanced towards the bed.

Jayaram opened his eyes and saw Sreedharan sitting by his head. But he did not say anything.

Suddenly, a melodious song from the next-room floated in softly, caressing their ears and sending a thrill through their hearts. Like a snake attracted by music, Jayaram lifted himself upon his elbows and listened. His sunken, saucer-shaped eyes opened wide; his face stiffened into an ugly pose of wrapt attention.

The song gradually thinned and changed into a long wail of infinite pathos and slowly, very slowly, died away in the atmosphere.

It touched a chord in the heart of Sreedharan also. He looked into Jayaram’s face. There were tears in his eyes.

“Who’s it singing?” Sreedharan asked.

Jayaram did not reply, but merely stared at his face. In a short time a strikingly beautiful girl appeared at the opposite window, combing her hair. Both of them saw her the same moment. But she immediately vanished as she saw Sreedharan.

“Who’s it staying next?” Sreedharan enquired inquisitively.

Again Jayaram did not reply.

With a slight reproach in his voice, Sreedharan said, “Jayaram, what’s the matter with you?”

“I’m not feeling well. Please leave me alone;”

Pained, Sreedharan took leave of his friend.

The next day, as Sreedharan was coming into Jayaram’s room, he saw a girl hurriedly leaving it with a Hindi book in her hand–the same girl he had seen at the window the previous day. He stepped aside and gave her way. Then, entering the room, he was surprised to see Jayaram asleep. Only a minute earlier, when he was below, Sreedharan had heard his hoarse voice!

He sat there waiting for Jayaram to wake up. Half an hour passed. Jayaram opened his eyes impatiently. With an ill-concealed displeasure he enquired, “You’ve been here a long time?”

“Half an hour.”

“Half an hour? Haven’t you been waiting down below for the past one hour?”

Starving, bewildered, Sreedharan said, “Waiting? For whom?”

Jayaram turned livid with rage. He shouted, “Whom! Do you think me a fool? Do you think I don’t know the secret of your recent visits here? You who used to come very rarely in the past?”

“Why, what all things are you raving?”

“Raving! It’s you who are raving, you who are a lunatic.”

And like mad, Jayaram threw away the sheets from his bed and yelled: “Go, get out! Yes, get out! I don’t want to see your face anymore here. None need come here enquiring after me. I shall die in poverty and disease. What’s it to you and others?”

With demoniac fury he yelled again, pointing at Sreedharan who was standing at the door stunned, “Get out! Get out, I tell you!”

Sreedharan fled to Santha’s room, and dropped down in an easy-chair. Hearing the uproar, Santha came running up from the bathroom, only half finishing her bath. Seeing Santha, Sreedharan asked in a broken voice, “Santha, what’s the meaning of all this? How have I offended your brother? O, cursed am I that I should hear and suffer all this!”

“Why, what has happened?” Santha asked eagerly.

“Your brother ordered me to get out from here.”

Santha’s face flushed. She stood there shocked for a while. Two big drops of tears trickled down from her tired eyes. Racked by the terrible emotions inside, her sobs turned into pitiable groans and she pleaded: “O, forgive! Forgive! For my sake, forgive everything. Please don’t forget that my brother is an invalid. Ah, if only he had a bit of conciousness about him, he would never have behaved towards you like this!”

Sreedharan looked at her face. In the intensity of anguish, it seemed to him divinely beautiful. At the same moment he hated himself for such a thought crossing his mind.

Santha, till now standing at the window and staring into the distance, turned her face towards Sreedharan and said, “I know why brother has begun to hate you, all on a sudden. Recently some strange thoughts and feelings have entered his head, where before such things

had never existed.”

Without understanding anything, Sreedharan stared at her.

She continued: “My brother has become a lover!”

“What!”

“Yes, he has fallen in love with that Ramila Devi”

“Really?”

“Really. Now he has become a man tortured both physically and mentally. Not only that. Brother suspects you, fears you–simply a satanic jealousy!”

“Who’s this Ramila Devi?”

“The girl you saw just now leaving my brother’s room. She is the daughter of a Malayalam pundit, who has recently occupied the other portion of the building. She comes to my brother daily to learn Hindi.”

“Is your brother aware of the love that binds us together?”

“No.”

“Then it’s time we informed him about it.”

“No, not yet.”

“Why?”

“Because, in his present miserable plight, I’m the only support for him. Do you suppose he won’t mind if you took me away now?”

“But we need marry only afterwards. Then?”

“Afterwards? When is this ‘afterwards’? I see what you mean. After brother’s death, isn’t it? He too can understand that. My ailing brother will think of it only this way: ‘So, they’re waiting for me to die, praying for my death. Oh, God!’ You see that is how his brain will begin to work. You don’t know how much he’s afraid of the word ‘death’.”

“Then what are we to do?”

A long silence. Then Santha said, “Wait. That’s all.”

“How long?”

A sigh was the only reply.

Minutes passed. Santha was staring into the distant, vacant sky, shedding silent tears. Her rare and exquisite beauty at that time again struck Sreedharan. He stared at her. Her bath only half-finished, there were neither too much clothes nor too many ornaments to hide or adorn the extreme loveliness of her skin. Her tresses, lying loose and flowing about her as she stood there at the window, shed a glory all about her like a water-nymph.

There are moments when unbearable grief and pity and disappointment, all mingled together, awaken in man some wild emotions and throw him out of balance. The simple unadorned charm of Santha, mingled with her anguish, gripped Sreedharan’s heart. As he looked at her, a thrill passed through every pore of his skin and an uncontrollable desire possessed him–a desire to take her in his arms and kiss away the tears from the eyes of that ‘unsmelt wild flower’. Controlling himself as best as he could, he approached her.

Santha was still weeping bitterly. He took both her arms in his and said, “Santha, don’t cry and needlessly ponder over tragic things.”

She raised her eyes to him and said, “What’s there more tragic than life itself?”

The expression of her face and her question made Sreedharan forget himself. He bent to kiss those lips from which had dropped that question. Suddenly he was startled by a strange sound from the doorway and he turned round.

Like a propped-up corpse, Jayaram stood there at the door! He had somehow crawled up to the place. The bedsheet, which also he had dragged along with him, lay at some distance from him. His chest was working like the bellows of a blacksmith. He caught and pressed to him with his left hand the clothes which had slipped from his waist to the thighs and stood swaying and trembling in the doorway, with bared teeth and uttering curses incoherently. Pointing his finger towards Sreedharan, who stood thunderstruck, he bellowed like a buffalo: “You, traitor, thief, rowdy, get out....My sister....you swine.....dirty...you...get out...yes...get out, I say...if you stand there still...H’m...if I couldn’t kill you...I would throttle myself!”

Santha rushed to him and, putting her arms around him, said, “Brother, my brother, forgive, be patient. Calm yourself!”

He began to cough. Pressing his throat, coughing and coughing, he dropped down, tired out.

Sreedharan left the room like a ghost.

The next day Santha got a note from him:

My dear Santha,

I feel I should have a change. I have decided to go to Madras and study for Law. I shall be coming there tomorrow morning to say good-bye to your brother.

Yours, Sreedharan.”

Jayaram was lying in his bed after breakfast when Sreedharan entered his room. There was a shadow of fear on Sreedharan’s face. He could not even imagine what was going to happen.

Jayaram opened his eyes and looked at the visitor. Sreedharan stood at the side of the sick man’s bed with a slightly bowed head, like a guilty schoolboy before his teacher, and faced that stare with a sinking heart. Motionless, Jayaram lay there silently. Suddenly his eyes moistened. He burst into tears and seized Sreedharan’s arms.

For some time Jayaram could not utter a single word for the sobs breaking out from him. Tears rolled down from his eyes unceasingly like a fountain. After a while, when he had calmed down a little, he said: “Brother, forgive me. I am a sick man and a sinner. A sick man means one whose manliness is degraded. Seedhu, you’re my friend, brother, an unforgettable saviour, my life-breath and my life itself. Ah, listen to my story. I’m a lover! Yes, a hayman put up in the garden of love to guard it from harmful eyes. But I’m not a lunatic. By coughing, my chest has become like coconut pulp; my body like a flat dead fish. Still my brain and soul are quite intact. The capacity to love has not a bit diminished in me. The desire to live happily is only on the increase. Seedhu, I’m only twenty-four. My life hitherto has been an unblemished one. I can swear that my arm has not touched a girl with any desire. I’ve given up many an opportunity to love and enjoy. But love has come to me like an uninvited guest in my miserable, wretched condition. I’ve only hopeless sighs and heavy pieces of phlegm with me to offer it. Seedhu, I’ve fallen in love with Ramila. From the first time I saw that pundit’s daughter, my heart ceased to be mine. Ah, why did I become a lover?…Only to be laughed at. This love would only be a mirage which my thirsty soul sees in the helpless desert of burning disappointment. Still I’ll journey to eternity to get it. I want to satisfy my soul. I want to quench this last and final thirst of mine. I’ve got only a few more days to live in this world. Just think of the difference between our positions. For you, death is as distant as the horizon you see there. And as for myself, I’ve already entered its fortress. The dark cavern of forgetfulness stands with open mouth before me. I’ve already begun to smell the rotten stink of death. Just like air vaporizing a lump of camphor, consumption is turning me into an easy pill for death to swallow. Seedhu, I’ll certainly have to die today or tomorrow, or else in a few days. Getting down the lowest rung of the ladder of life, I close behind me the door of forgetfulness for ever...”

Jayaram began to cough. Its duration and intensity increased. His eyes bulged. His chest swelled out, stiffened and bent like a bow. Then spitting out a volume of phlegm into the spittoon, lifted up to him by Sreedharan, he sat staring at it for a long time as if it were some magical devilish creature.

He perspired all over. Sreedharan poured him a glass of barley-water.

He drank it and wiped his face with the edge of the bedsheet and, feeling refreshed, continued:

“But in spite of all these disappointments and obstacles, I fear death and love life. I want to enjoy as much as possible this glorious twilight before darkness. I consider it a blessing to live. The murmurings of life I hear all round intoxicate me. I celebrate each moment left to me in this life as a great festival. I envy even a tiny ant because of the glow of life in it. It’s a month now since Ramila and her father began to stay in the neighbouring rooms. Sometimes she used to come and stand there at the window. But she never took any notice of me. When she sang and laughed and made an uproar in that room, she never even seemed to think that a human being was lying helpless here. Why, after all, should she take any notice of me, one who has lost every human trait? Do crows take notice of children? She would sing like a cuckoo. That song would sprinkle honey in my heart. But when the thought that she sang not for me crossed my mind, I would go mad. Wearing a silk sari and putting vermilion on her forehead, she would come and stand there at the window looking at me. But not as she would look at a human being, but at a skeleton exhibited in a museum! I suspect she even imitated my cough once! I wished: if only she would come before me at least once! If only she would adorn herself just for me to see! If only she would give me a glance, not with pity but with pleasure! If only she would sing only once for me to hear!…But, friend, all these were mere idle dreams. Even a beggar-girl won’t like to come near me. She used to come here at times for a chat with Santha. But didn’t ever peep into this room. It was then, by a marvellous stroke of my luck I should say, that she thought of learning Hindi. Santha told her that I had passed visarad. The next day Santha came and told me that Ramila wished to know whether I could give her lessons in Hindi. I cannot express with what fervour I agreed to teach her. Brother, Ramila has been coming to me for tuition for the past one week. I only want to see her at my side. But disease, poverty and disappointment are hatching up some strange conspiracy. I have become the slave of strange desires. Selfishness has already swallowed me. I’m afraid to speak out, but it’s a reality. My prayer now is that all the corpses like me…..!

Sreedharan listened to the whole of the tragic story as if to a gramophone record, giving out a pathetic song. He did not say anything. For a long time there was silence. Then Sreedharan said:

“I’m going to Madras by today’s Mail. My idea is to study for Law there. I came here today to clear some misunderstanding in your mind about me.”

“I know everything. I’ve given you Santha already. She told me all.”

Again a long silence. Sreedharan placed a bundle of notes in Jayaram’s hands.

He lay silently for a long time looking at that bundle of notes. Then he broke into tears. Sobs gripped his throat. He could not speak. Supporting himself on his elbows and shaking his head, he said:

“Seedhu, no, I don’t want this. I raved, what all things I don’t know. Ah, why do I still live on, unwanted by anybody and as a nuisance to everybody? How base and cruel are my thoughts! I’m terribly selfish–a lunatic, foolish and wicked. It’s this disease which has made me like this. It’s this disease that has gnawed away almost all my human qualities and stuffed my mind with beastliness. O, I want to die–this very moment–before I’m seized again by the desire to live. I must die in this holy hour when the loving hand of friendliness has stroked me back to consciousness. Yes, I must die. Seedhu, my dear Seedhu, kill me! If you love me, twist my neck and strangle me to death. Let this sinner and his satanic greed be destroyed...!”

Cough again. It lasted for an unusually terrible length of time. Coughing and choking, he made all sorts of ugly and horrible grimaces like a drowning man. At last, exhausted completely, he dropped sideways into Sreedharan’s hands like a corpse.

Fifteen days had passed since Sreedharan’s departure for Madras. Being fragile and weak by nature and unable to stand the daily increasing mental worries, Santha too took to bed.

Ramila did not show any unwillingness to help Santha in her household work and occasionally in nursing Jayaram. At first, she showed a dislike to nurse him and her behaviour was somewhat rude. Gradually, familiarity wrought a change in her. His limited and sweet talks attracted her. She was pained to hear his frequent autobiographical outpourings. When her first sympathy changed into pain, she was forced to think about his disappointment and helplessness, his flickering life and his fickle mind. All these lighted in her the torch of sublime love. She found happiness in nursing him.

Jayaram had a philosophy of his own. He used to give a new interpretation to life. All these pleased her and brought her closer to him. She saw in him a heart brimming over with love and a mind blossoming with knowledge.

And she would sing for him, read out verses to him.

Gradually a curtain dropped over her eyes. She did not see his body. Instead, she saw there a dream which could be felt around her and she worshipped it.

Sympathy changed into affection. And that affection too deepened and changed into something else. She realised what it was to be loved. And what was the outcome? Her soul began to live in his happiness.

She adorned herself just for him to see! Only for him to hear, she sang! Only to thrill him, she smiled!

Jayaram did not need any other medicine. He began to recover surprisingly.

Sometimes her heart whispered to Ramila that she had begun to love Jayaram. Then with a shiver in her heart, she would groan. She would try to forget everything. That terrible secret would again tear her heart. Suddenly a slight cough or a tiny stir from Jayaram’s room would attract her to it, and with it all such thoughts in her mind would fly away.

And so a month passed, each day bringing some wonderful, unknown, new changes in her.

Ramila Devi insisted that, for his complete recovery, Jayaram should go to Madanapalle and stay in the T. B. Sanatorium there. And come since one of Ramila’s sisters was a nurse there in the hospital, he could also expect every help from her.

On the same day, Jayaram received a letter from Steedharan that he was coming down from Madras to take Jayaram to Madanapalle.

That evening had an unusual glory about it. The western sky looked like a piece of marvellous shining rose-coloured silk. The even morning sun dyed their garden gold. The tender, fresh bunches of flowers swayed hilariously. Holy hymns and prayers echoed everywhere.

Jayaram was sitting in his bed, looking outside into the garden. Sitting there cleanly shaved, bathed and dressed in a washed and pressed silk shirt and dhothi, he seemed only a boy, handsome, with no beard yet. The flush of blood had reappeared on his face after a long period give his face was blossoming with a new vitality. Hope and faith were taking root in his heart. He had some new expectations and with bated breath he looked forward to a sweet and exhilarating change.

Inside the garden, at its eastern edge, there was a partly dried-up pool. A kingfisher gave a dive into it and flew back to a rose-bush. And when it shook its dripping feathers, the small particles of water scattered from them and created a tiny rainbow in the soft sunlight. Two big yellow butterflies fluttered round a flower. A red chameleon nodded its head on the bent branch of a small plant.

Humming a tune, Ramila Devi suddenly came into the room. She was wearing a crimson-coloured silk sari. Opening buds of jasmine flowers almost hid her hair which was braided behind her neck. Her fair round face shed a glorious radiance like the full-moon and she had put vermilion on her forehead. She entered the room like a tiny wave of happiness. Jayaram glanced at her, happiness gleaming in his eyes, and she too looked at him. Their glances met and both smiled.

She went to one window after another facing the garden, and stood looking out at the new enchanting scene which nature spread before her.

Holding the iron bars of the window and swaying she sang:

“Why did the Lord give

Such sweetness to this twilight,

When in a moment,

She is to embrace darkness?”

“Excellent!” Jayaram slowly got up and walked and stood behind her.

“Repeat,” he said.

Resting both his hands on her shoulders, he put them outside through the window bars.

A sigh rose from him and he said, “Ramila, this is the happiest and the one memorable moment of my life. I never imagined that the world could be so beautiful.”

The fragrance from the jasmine buds in Ramila’s hair intoxicated him. He lightly smelt that garland and then kissed it. Then, seized by an uncontrollable desire, he kissed that lock of hair too.

Smiling happily, Ramila turned her face around. To Jayaram, it seemed that the whole beauty of the universe lay hidden in her face. He forgot all other things. He kissed her cheeks,–for the first time. His arms closed round her in a tight embrace…he forgot himself utterly.

A terrible noise from Jayaram’s room made Santha fly to it from her sick-bed.

The door was bolted from inside.

Knocking at it, she called: “Brother, brother!”

No answer.

Again she knocked loudly and called: “Brother!”

Still no answer. Silence...Then the door was slowly opened. Ramila stood in the doorway like a statue. Santa sent a glance round the room. In the bed was blood–a thick mass of blood. Jayaram lay in it on his side, his body half turned down, still and calm.

Santha ran to the bed and looked closely at him. He had been dead sometime. His eyes were half-closed and blood from his mouth had run down his chin and neck. She also observed some blood-soaked jasmine in that blood.

A dark veil seemed to cover her eyes and her head swam. Her soul seemed to be torn away from her. Rubbing her eyes and hands, she stared around helplessly with wide-open eyes.

Ramila stood there in the same position. Santha’s eyes turned towards her, and sparks seemed to fly boom them. Looking at the poor girl standing there like the very figure of sin, she uttered this single word in a tremulous voice: “Murderess!”

Next day, when Sreedharan alighted from the train, he was almost prostrated to hear these two bits of news:

Jayaram died spitting blood. Ramila committed suicide by taking poison.

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