The Death of Vishnu

struck the wall and overturned, emptying its contents on the landing. Walnuts spun across the floor and clattered down the steps.
    “No more signs,” Mr. Jalal shouted. “No more religion. No more nonsense. It’s all a hoax. One big giant hoax.” He raised a fist above his head and shook it in the air. “I’ve been at this for months, and I’ve seen nothing. One big giant hoax against all of mankind, I say.”
    “Ahmed.”
    For an instant, Mr. Jalal did not know where the voice came from. Then he realized that Vishnu had risen as well, and now stood face to face with him.
    “Look, Ahmed,” Vishnu said, holding up a walnut in his hand. “A final one. That I’m going to break open. For you.”
    It was strange, very strange, to hear Vishnu use his first name. Had he completely forgotten his place? Surely such familiarity should not be allowed to pass unreprimanded. Mr. Jalal was debating what to say when Vishnu brought the walnut closer, until it was touching the center of his forehead. What does the fool think he’s doing now? Mr. Jalal wondered. He could feel the individual bumps on the shell press against his skin. “Take that away at once,” he began to say, but before he could get the words out, there was a blur of motion, and Vishnu’s fist swung up through the air and smashed the walnut into his skull.
    “Now look at me and see who I really am.”
    The first thought that occurred to Mr. Jalal was that Vishnu had gone insane. What kind of person would drive pieces of walnut shell into someone else’s brain? Then Mr. Jalal realized that the walnut had opened up a hole in his forehead, a hole that was like a third eye, through which he was seeing intense light. Mr. Jalal saw a sun emerge from behind Vishnu, and was surprised he could look straight into its molten white center. As he watched, he saw two suns, then four, then eight, and sixteen. The suns kept multiplying, and rising into the air, until the sky was covered with suns, and there was no more blue to be seen, just the brightness of incandescent discs stretching from horizon to horizon and pouring their brilliance down on him.
    When Mr. Jalal looked back down from the sky, Vishnu’s body was metamorphosing. Into something liquid and luminous, that sucked the light from the air and released it back with a concentrated intensity. Limbs started appearing from all around Vishnu’s perimeter, and at their ends Mr. Jalal saw exquisitely carved conches and fabulous jewel-encrusted maces. Some of the hands that emerged held lotuses, which opened to reveal enormous anthers poised over their centers. Limbs kept emerging and Vishnu kept expanding, until he was touching the suns above and Mr. Jalal couldn’t tell where he started and where he ended. A sweet fragrance, like that of incense, but with a perfume that smelled of no flower Mr. Jalal knew, began filling the air.
    At each point of contact with the suns, heads now appeared, wearing the suns as crowns and stretching down for many miles. Giant eyes opened in the heads, and Mr. Jalal drew back in fear, as they blinked in unison and looked down at him. The mouths flew open, and in them were visible teeth and fangs and long lines of spurting flame, some of which leapt out and scorched the ground at Mr. Jalal’s feet. There were serpents in the mouths, and skulls too, and Mr. Jalal saw human bodies being crushed and popped between the teeth.
    As Mr. Jalal looked on, Vishnu kept expanding, with new heads and appendages being generated in his insides and bubbling up to the surface. Smaller forms detached and reattached themselves along his periphery, like tongues of flame at the edges of a fire.
    “Who are you?” Mr. Jalal stammered. “Tell me, who are you in this terrible form?”
    “I am what you taste in water, I am what you see in air. I am the breath in every flower, I am the life in every creature. I am all living things, I am creation itself. Look at me and see in my body the whole universe.”
    A huge mouth opened up and snapped at the air near Mr. Jalal’s head. Giant fangs snaked out to blow fire at his face, and Mr. Jalal felt the hairs in both his eyebrows become crisp.
    “I encompass the sun gods and the moon gods, the wind gods and the fire-eating gods of the world. I am the aging of time, the beginning and the end of the universe. As each day ends, all creatures are destroyed and renewed in me.”
    Mr. Jalal saw demons take shape and break free from Vishnu’s boundary. The