The Death of Vishnu

and kill him, when he heard the voice. It was a thin bespectacled man beckoning to him from the Irani hotel. “Why don’t you come in, join me for a cup of tea?”
    “Pathak sahib, it’s you.” The surprise showed in his voice. “I’d love to, but I have to catch the bus.” What could Mr. Pathak want? On amavas, no less!
    “Yes, yes, I know, the 81. Well, you might as well rest a little, two of them just went by, completely empty, it’s going to be a while.” Mr. Pathak beckoned to the hotelwalla. “Two more teas please. And a packet of your special cream-filled biscuits.”
    Warning signals were flashing in Mr. Asrani’s head as he entered the hotel and sat down, and a cup of tea was placed steaming before him. They grew stronger as Mr. Pathak pushed the cream biscuits toward him, but subsided somewhat as the crunch of the biscuit was followed by the oozing sensation of raspberry filling against his tongue. Although Mrs. Asrani often sent him downstairs to purchase cream biscuits, they were always for the children, and he rarely risked his wife’s disapproval by reaching for them himself. It had been so long since he had tasted the raspberry ones—though his favorite had always been orange. What happy memories it brought back of all the different flavors with which his mother would ply him every evening after school.
    “About this morning…” Mr. Pathak began, and Mr. Asrani looked up in alarm from the biscuit he had split open to lick the cream out. How could he have forgotten the scene with Mr. Pathak and Aruna so completely? He quickly tried to mend the two halves together, but it was too late. The taste of cream was already on his tongue, the incriminating smudges conspicuous on his lips. Mr. Asrani’s neck flushed raspberry with guilt.
    “Pathak sahib, I don’t know what to say,” Mr. Asrani started, but Mr. Pathak cut him off.
    “No, no, these things happen. The important thing, I think, is not to let them upset us. Or even more important, not to let them upset our wives.” Mr. Pathak’s pupils seemed to radiate understanding from behind their lenses. “Really, why bother them with such matters, which, really, we should be handling anyway? It’s not as if we need permission from them or anything.” Mr. Asrani winced at the emphasis Mr. Pathak put on the word, and did not meet his eyes.
    “Allies, that’s what we should be,” Mr. Pathak said, and Mr. Asrani wondered why, against his best instincts, he had stepped out on this noxious day. “Friends, really,” Mr. Pathak continued, peering through his glasses, and the cream and biscuit began to form a knot in Mr. Asrani’s stomach, ready to reemerge as a raspberry bolus. “Friends who can settle things amicably, between themselves,” Mr. Pathak purred, and Mr. Asrani looked hopelessly at the packet of biscuits lying on the table. And as he found himself nodding to all the things Mr. Pathak was suggesting, found himself agreeing they should share equally in the cost of the ambulance, even found himself standing next to Mr. Pathak as he spelled out both their names on the phone to the ambulance clerk, Mr. Asrani thought to himself that this was the dearest biscuit he had ever eaten, and wasn’t he glad he had only taken one.

    T HE RED HAS receded into darkness. Light is beginning to appear again, flecks that emerge through the shimmer of gauze.
    “Eight,” he hears himself saying. “Nine.” Through the veil he sees her come.
    “Ten,” he says. “Eleven.” The dupatta she has wrapped around his head is slipping off. “Twelve. Thirteen.” She is trying to tiptoe down the stairs past him. “Fourteen,” he says. “You know you can’t hide down there, you’re not allowed down the stairs.”
    “You looked!” Kavita cries.
    “I didn’t! Not through my good eye!”
    “You looked! Even after I tied the dupatta! What’s the use? I’m going to take it off!”
    The gauze begins to slide against his eyelids, it quickens and he feels the burn against his skin. His eyes open as it alights from his face and shoots into the air, a long, crinkled swathe, reaching up high toward the open window. The light streaming in sets it ablaze; suspended in the air, it sparks and crackles, like a canal for lightning, like a conduit for the sun, capturing light and energy from the universe and funneling them into her hand. Slowly, she turns, there is gold cascading around her, she turns round and round, and the dupatta floats in spirals