Short fiction: A man and his mother simply wait as persistent pain eats away at his body

As the sky opened its eye, Umed emerged from a deafening dreamscape to the silence of the morning around him. Earlier, it would have been a relief to wake up. Earlier he would have worried about what the visions might portend. But in the past few years he had begun to savour the adventure and excitement his nightmares offered as the unchanging nature of his life had lulled his anxieties. He knew the details would slip away soon, so he closed his eyes again to recollect them.

He was looking down at terraced fields of jet-black crop that swayed ever so slightly. A white gleaming path wound around the fields, forming a sort of maze – his dreams were usually in black and white. Ija was in the fields trying to ask him something, but all he could hear was the faint whisperings of the crop. His sister was calling out to Ija from the other end of the fields. He looked up to see a thick sheet of water rolling down towards them from the top of a mountain, making a loud grating sound … or was that from another dream … he was not sure. They needed to run, or they would drown in the river that was filling the valley. But he could not move. Someone was pulling him into the house which was like a cavern. He turned to see that it was his beautiful daughter who had clasped his hand. Next to her stood her toad-like husband. Even in his dream he had thought ruefully that she deserved better, and a deep sense of regret continued to linger when he woke up.

The end of the dream was a jumbled-up profusion of images and emotions, and with a sigh he let it fade away. Even though the settings of his dreams were usually around his house, the details of the landscape and, more importantly the light, was dramatically different from one dream to the next. He pondered over this unresolvable mystery as he looked out of his window at the familiar fields, at the unchanged panorama on this side of the mountain.

As he hobbled down to the courtyard, the pain in his leg returned immediately. He opened the bandage and saw that his big toe had turned black. He tried to move it, but it was numb. He pulled at it, and it came right off in his grasp, black and rotting.

For a long moment, he simply stared at that piece of himself unbelievingly, his breath trapped in his throat, and then with a gasp he jerked it away. The toe landed under an orange tree. There was a putrid smell in the air. I must go to the hospital in the next town immediately, he told himself, as his breath rasped through flamed nostrils. But the hospitals have long queues, and it will take me at least four days to get back. How can I leave Ija by herself and … what if the doctor decides to cut off the leg? Umed took a deep breath and calmed himself. It’s just a toe, he reasoned, I can do without it. I’ll put a bandage of turmeric on it tonight and now that the rotten bit has fallen off, it will heal. He said nothing to Ija and headed out for work at his usual time.

The hot sun made Umed dizzy, and he had to step out of the human chain hauling sacks of limestone into a truck. He began to stagger up and out of the pit using a shortcut, but the loose earth made him slip down back into the hollow. He used the path that led out of the pit and, half-crawling, half-walking, managed to reach a stony unshaded rockface and collapsed onto it. Sick to his gut, he tried to catch his breath and get a hold on himself, using his hands to shield his head from the cruel sun. The pain ate into his leg, right up to the hip. He pulled up the pyjama leg to see that the skin was bubbling, fermenting and the rot was seeping up. He gulped down hot air through his gaping mouth, squinting at the workers milling far below him in the wide festering pit. Like a squad of trained ants carrying the flesh of the earth. The overseer, wearing a helmet, was talking to one of the labourers and pointing at him. He could feel the accusatory look from afar, and Umed knew that his wages would be docked if he didn’t get back to work immediately.

But as soon as he gathered himself, he found himself rolling down the slippery limestone slope, coming to a stop only when the workers ran towards him and held him. He had a fever and was asked to leave. He had no memory of how he got home, only of the sympathetic voice of a fellow labourer assuring him that some rest would cure him.

Umed lay down on the cool courtyard stones and fell into a tired slumber. He woke up to the sound of a blast in the quarry. He raised himself on his elbows to look at the limestone dust in the sky and the pain shot up his leg, a thick hot rod grinding into his knee and then dulling into an ache as it moved up. His breath was burning and he was unable to pick himself off the floor immediately. He dragged himself to the ledge and propped himself against it. He looked for his toe under the orange tree. He did not spot it immediately but then there it was, standing up against the dark trunk, alive with ants crawling all over it. He managed to stumble up to his room and lay down on his bed.

Ija hadn’t realised he was home until late in the evening. She put a cold compress on his feverish forehead and tried to fuss over him as best as she could. She wondered about the putrid smell. He said nothing to her, but she investigated and discovered the missing toe. He appeased her, saying he would go to the hospital as soon as he was better. She brought out the rum and they both took a shot of it. It made him feel better, and he splashed some of it on the wound too. Later, Ija covered the wound with turmeric paste. He urged her to watch some television and go to sleep. He slept better that night, the smell did not bother him anymore; he had grown used to it. But the next morning the fever was back. He convinced Ija to go to the fields and work, and that he would be fine.

He came out into the courtyard in the hot afternoon, shivering and feeling confused. He noticed that his toe had disappeared from under the orange tree. After he had soaked in some sun, his skin began to burn and the blasts in the quarry set off a severe headache. He dipped his head into a bucket of cold water. The hospital was fifty kilometres away, and it was a long walk to the roadhead where he would get a bus or a jeep. Why did I stay back in this god-forsaken place? Someone had to be with Ija, didn’t they? He could still see her looking at him from the window as his father’s dead body lay in the courtyard. It had been a relief for Umed, that death. His father had a frightening temper and was urging Umed to join the army like him. But Umed never wanted to leave Ija, never wanted to leave the village. His thoughts wandered as he continued to sweat onto the courtyard stones.

It seemed like someone else’s life that he remembered – another person in another time. The place was unchanged but time had moved through it. His wife lay in the same courtyard, her face beautiful even in death, his young daughter clinging to her mother’s lifeless form. She looked like him, the daughter, sharp and tall. No, he had no vanity for himself but often regretted giving his beautiful daughter to that ape of a man just because he had a government job. And that ape was ashamed of them, never visited them anymore, and told everyone that his father-in-law was the quarry contractor. At least the grandchildren had his daughter’s looks, all except the youngest.

He turned his head towards the hot fields, hoping to catch a whiff of breeze to ease the suffocation he felt. But the only movement in that stillness was his own burning breath. He felt a knot in his stomach as he spotted a python wrapped on a birch tree about fifteen metres away from him, its pale body well camouflaged on the white bark. Unblinking marble eyes watched Umed, its scales heaving almost imperceptibly as it strengthened its hold on the tree. Then it went as still as death and waited patiently.

Umed let the cuckoo calls put him to sleep that day. When he woke up, he was in extreme pain. He peeled back his pyjama leg. Bits of skin were stuck to the cloth. He ripped his shirt off, tore away a sleeve and tied it tightly just above his knee. As the pain subsided, so did the ringing in his head, and the racket of the crickets took over as evening fell. The snake was gone. Had it crept into the house? Umed looked fearfully at the long columns of darkness that the doors opened into. He dragged himself to his room, pulling his numb leg behind him.

He heard Ija’s soothing voice and opened his eyes. The pitch-black night outside startled him. He panicked and told her to shut all the doors and windows. But she was far away; only her hand at the end of a long arm was caressing his forehead. Her distant voice whispered endearments into his ear… her handsome unfortunate son … he must not work in the quarry anymore … if it was winter it would have been alright, the wound would have healed. Umed refused to eat, and finally Ija left the room, not able to tolerate the stench.

The calm morning had a feeling of finality. It felt like the day his daughter got married … like the day he himself got married … like the morning after his father died. As he got off the bed, his right leg just sank into the ground, completely numb. He dragged it down the narrow wooden staircase and into the courtyard. He laid it in front of him. It had turned a deep blue up to his knee. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled at it – and with a squishy sound, it came off in his grasp, right off from his knee. He looked at that rotten piece of limb he was holding. He was seized with real panic for the first time – perhaps it had gone too far. Then came a feeling of defiance, and he cried out aloud, “Let it go; I can function with one leg.” Almost choking from the stench, he flung it as far as he could with all the might left in his body. He inspected the wound left behind, a yellow, festering wound with raw pits of blood. A vulture began to hover above the field where his leg lay, gliding smoothly in wide circles. Umed’s eyes followed it.

He crawled into the cowshed so Ija wouldn’t see him and get terrified. He lay in the dry hay with nothing to mark the time except the coming and going of a fever. It will all be okay, we have Ija’s pension to fall back on, he thought over and over again. His head sank into the haystack. A loud blast went off in the quarry. He lay there all day and night. He had a flash of himself going over the hill to collect firewood with his little sister. They went deep into the thick forest where the quarry now was. They caught ladybirds and put them into a steel tumbler stuffed with nettles. His sister collected juicy hishalus, yellow berries from laden bushes, and they ate them sitting next to the stream, the stream that had disappeared, the forest that was erased. Before going home, they released the ladybirds, but most of them had to be coaxed to fly away.

The next morning Ija found him dead. She walked all the way to the market to call the villagers. They looked hard for the missing leg but could not find it. Many suggested that the soul would not find peace if the leg was not burnt along with the body. Lyat tried to talk to Ija about leasing out her land to the quarry contractors, but she simply responded by repeating over and over again that if it had been winter, the wound would have healed.

In the months that followed the blasts from the quarry continued to ring in the valley through the day. At night Ija started keeping the volume of the television very low so that she could hear the sound of the foot that paced in the courtyard.

Excerpted with permission from ‘Gangrene’ in The Tree With Eyes and Other Stories, Bela Negi, Westland.