by Susan Oleksiw

Anita Ray turned toward the road on the other side of the compound wall as the sharp insistent sound of the bicycle bell grew louder, its ringing alternating with the high-pitched, sharp-toned call of “Paper! Paper!” The way the syllables were broken up made it almost impossible for all but the most practiced ear to recognize the word, but it didn’t matter. Out here in the hills of South India, everyone knew what the man wanted—old newspapers, to be purchased for a few paise and sold for a few more to local shops for wrapping paper.

Right now Anita found it hard to appreciate the details of village life. She didn’t even want to lift her camera for the obligatory shot of bougainvillea tumbling over a compound wall, or goats cavorting down the street. Not even for a woman carrying a large plastic bucket on her head, her colorful sari billowing in the breeze. She was too worried about her cousin Sheela. Two days ago her Auntie Meena had staggered into the office of Hotel Delite, which she owned and where Anita lived and ostensibly helped out, with the news that cousin Sheela had fallen into a deep depression that was ruining her marriage, and no one could shake her out of it. Her mother was desperate, and would Anita come for a visit and talk to Sheela?

“I thought she and Bharat were the perfect couple.” Anita’s cousins were being married off with disturbing regularity, but at least the older generation tended to pick good spouses.

“I am hearing it is not so. But you will help her, yes?”

“Really, Auntie. I had no idea you thought so much of my counseling skills,” Anita said.

“I don’t. I am thinking you are so outrageous in your thinking that merely listening to you will bring poor Sheela back to real life and her own sweet self, as she was before she married.”

Anita didn’t think this was a realistic plan, but then Auntie Meena was never realistic. Reluctantly Anita agreed.

Married less than a year, Sheela and her husband, Bharat, had set up in a modest home barely half a mile from her parents’ house, with three servants. But all had not gone smoothly—Sheela’s first child was stillborn at only five months. That was almost two months ago, and Sheela’s mother had taken to hovering and fretting. Sheela had taken to sleeping.

Bharat, for his part, seemed to be content to go to work, chat with visitors in the evening, and read his newspaper. He stared at the new television set as though he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about it, and grew animated when he could turn it off. He and Sheela were not much younger than Anita, but already life wasn’t working out for them. Anita arrived expecting a somewhat long and directionless conversation with Sheela, a few deep sighs of disappointment, and then a shopping spree. As a single woman, Sheela hadn’t been known for her depth. But this scenario was proving to be difficult to instigate—Anita couldn’t get her cousin alone. Frustrated, Anita tried to keep the focus on doing her duty, according to Auntie Meena.

“I thought we’d have a quiet cup of tea,” Anita said after corralling her cousin in the hallway.

“Yes. My good friend is coming also,” Sheela said, leading her into the front parlor. The heavy Victorian furniture, with its ornate carving and gold cushions, had been a gift from her parents. After the stillbirth, Sheela’s mother, Remy, arrived daily with another gift, but nothing seemed to help. “Do you remember meeting Parvati at the wedding?”

Anita thought back to the crush of guests in the marriage hall, a large room filled with folding chairs, one side of the room for men and the other for women, almost all of whom Anita was related to, to some degree. She had spent a good part of the wedding avoiding relatives who wanted to help find a suitable husband for her.

“She’s very beautiful,” Sheela said, “probably the most beautiful woman in the room.”

“Yes, of course, I remember her.” And Anita did because she was indeed the most beautiful woman in the room—and she seemed to know it.

Whatever Parvati felt about Anita was concealed. The other woman greeted Anita warmly and Sheela more warmly still, even though they had probably seen each other just a few days earlier. The two chatted amiably as Sheela led the way to a side veranda with a cool breeze and spectacular view of the mountains. The one thing Anita did like about this area, though it was far away from the hustle and bustle of the resorts and city, was the view into the valley and up to the mountains, the sense of expansiveness that must compensate for a life geographically circumscribed.

“You are better,” Parvati said, tapping her friend’s knee. “I can see it. Isn’t she well?” Parvati said, turning to Anita.

She really is beautiful, Anita thought, wondering what it was about the other woman that triggered a sense of uneasiness. Perhaps it was only her looks, but Parvati seemed to grow even lovelier while Sheela grew duller. But aloud Anita only said, “Very well, I think.”

“You see. There is nothing to worry about, nothing.” Parvati reached her delicate hand to the tray and claimed a tea biscuit. She had small white teeth and bright, shiny lips that looked as though she used lip gloss. Anita tried not to stare but felt her makeup was worthy of study, so artful and expensive that it seemed out of place in this little village.

“It is good of you to visit these days,” Sheela said without much enthusiasm.

“Nonsense! What sort of friend would I be if I put only my happiness ahead of your needs? We are friends, are we not?” Parvati sat up straight in her rattan chair, her elegant neck stretching upward like a swan’s, long and thin and swaying.

“Parvati is so recently married,” Sheela said to Anita. “Only four months past, isn’t it?”

Anita looked at Parvati with renewed interest. She seemed hardly the type for this remote village—her new husband must be attached to one of the plantations.

“He is most understanding,” Parvati said. Sheela nodded without much energy.

“Yes, well, friends are certainly important,” Anita said, and moved the conversation away from the topic of marriage.

* * * *

By the end of the afternoon tea Sheela had retreated to her room for another nap. Anita had never thought of her cousin as drab, but drab she had become. Anita went in search of Remy, Sheela’s mother.

“Obvious, isn’t it?” Remy said. “She’s dwindling to nothing.”

“Is there a medical reason for this? Has she seen a doctor?”

“Meena warned me you’d start digging.” Remy gave a sigh and heaved herself out of her chair. She walked over to a small glass-fronted armoire and pulled a key from the collection hanging around her waist. She opened the door and reached down to the lowest shelf, extricating something from the back of a pile of goods. “This is the reason.”

Anita took the small, roughly carved wooden object—the figure of a woman with a number of iron nails driven into it. She turned it over in her hands, studying front and back, top and bottom. It was an odd-looking figure, a folk art object Anita had never seen around here. She looked up at Remy for an explanation.

“Parvati’s husband, Karunkar, gave it to Sheela’s husband a few months back. He said it was an antique he came across and hoped it would turn out to be profitable for them someday.” Remy returned to her seat and curled her legs beneath her. She had long, strong limbs, muscular hands and fingers. Looking at her, Anita had the odd feeling that her daughter, Sheela, was incomplete, as though nature hadn’t given her a full complement of parts and energies. Certainly compared to her mother, Sheela was missing a lot of the elements of life.

“This looks like a sorcerer’s figure,” Anita said.

Remy shrugged. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“And Sheela does?”

Remy began to squirm in her chair, resettling herself, the smug annoyed look fading for one of worry and embarrassment. “I didn’t think so—she always told me she was part of the new world—but I was wrong.”

“And do you believe in this now? After the baby?” The flash of pain across Remy’s face gave Anita her answer. She turned the figure over in her hands. If she looked at it from the perspective of a personal relationship, then it was obviously ugly, with its round eyes with vertical slits, a flattened face, a slash for a mouth, and limbs barely distinguished from the torso. “Have there been other things Sheela is connecting to this figure?”

Remy’s face collapsed, her facade of the sophisticated Indian woman crumbling in seconds. “It is not to be believed.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Remy studied Anita for a minute, and Anita knew what was going through the other woman’s mind—the embarrassment at having to admit that such images had real power for some, and perhaps even for her, the confusion that such a thing should happen to her family, the helplessness, not knowing what to do.

“When did Bharat get this figure?” Anita asked.

“Perhaps three or four months ago,” Remy said.

Anita struggled with her next question. If it had been anyone else, or at least anyone not a relative, she would have simply blurted out the question, but relatives required a certain delicacy; whatever she did tended to take on a life of its own as it worked its way back to Auntie Meena. Anita could understand why her mother had moved to America with Anita’s father at the earliest opportunity. “Have there been other, um, reversals?”

“Reversals? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, yes, I guess you can say this.” Remy stirred in her chair again. “Um, well, Bharat didn’t get the promotion he was expecting, and a modest investment went sour. And the rent on the cottage has gone up just as they were saving money for a new house of their own.”

And all of it, Anita knew, attributed by Sheela to the presence of this ugly block of wood.

“Why do you have the figure now?”

“Sheela won’t have it in the house. She’s very afraid of it, but Bharat doesn’t dare give it away because now Karunkar is his boss at the plantation.”

“So you keep it.” Anita couldn’t miss the way Remy’s shoulders stiffened and her hands clenched the chair arms. It was obvious her aunt didn’t want it either, but probably felt she had no choice. Anita certainly wouldn’t want it living in her own flat—even as an art object.

Anita stared past her aunt, working out the sequence of events in her mind. “What’s Karunkar like?”

“Oh, a very nice man,” Remy said. “Very good man. We long considered him as a match for Sheela, but she had met Bharat a couple of years ago and they grew very fond of each other.”

* * * *

Late in the afternoon Anita went looking for Sheela, hoping to learn more about her views on the strange antique figure. She went from room to room to room, finally ending up in the first of the two cooking rooms.

“Not here,” the maidservant said as she looked up from chopping vegetables on the floor.

“I thought I would take a walk with her,” Anita said. “Do you know where she’s gone?”

“Already gone walking.” She gave the onions a few deft slices and six perfect wedges rocked across the cutting board.

Since there weren’t many places to go in this small village, Anita decided to set out and find Sheela. In the twenty-four hours since she had arrived, Anita had drastically changed her opinion of her cousin. Sheela had seemed fine, just a bit tired, on her first night, but now Anita could see the other woman was drifting dangerously close to serious emotional problems. She visited with friends, ate her meals, and the rest of the time retreated to her bedroom to sleep, with the door shut. Keeping the door shut was such an unusual step in an Indian household that Anita felt it was time to address Sheela directly on her peculiar and unhealthy behavior, and find out what was really troubling her.

Anita took the path into the village, skirting the occasional cardamom grove and hoping she wouldn’t be hit by a bus careering down the road behind her. She reached the village center, which was a crossroads with a few shops at each corner, none more than two and a half stories tall, with storage being the main purpose of the top half story. The shops were those she expected—coffee, cooking equipment, fancy goods such as children’s clothes, notebooks, sweets, toys, and the like, a newsagent no larger than a tea stall, and a garage for all sorts of repairs. The shops were separated by narrow lanes that ran off into small neighborhoods or the fringes of the surrounding jungle. Anita wandered down one, around the corner of a compound wall, and along a row of small houses with low sapling fences—probably all belonging to a single family, she thought. As she turned the next corner, heading back to the main road, she stopped at the sound of voices. Nearby a man and a woman were talking. She stepped into the shadows of a hibiscus tree and waited. A moment later Sheela hurried by. After waiting another minute or two, a tall man with a white shirt tucked into dark pants came down the same lane and turned left, away from Anita and onto another path leading away from the village center.

The family liked to sit out on the veranda in the evening, a way to endure the nightly loss of electrical power and still enjoy the evening. After a late meal and storytelling to entertain some visiting children, Anita at last found herself alone with Sheela.

“I took a walk into the village this afternoon,” Anita said.

“Hmm.” Sheela leaned back in her chair and might have been asleep except for the dreamy look on her face as she stared up at the stars blinking through the trees. “Sometimes the stars are so thick and bright the night sky looks like a piece of lace.” She tilted her head a bit more and continued to stare upward.

“Do you walk into the village every day?”

“Me? No, sometimes.” Sheela didn’t take her eyes off the stars.

“Bharat is a nice man,” Anita said. “I’m glad of a chance to get to know him better.”

This seemed to get her attention, and she rolled her head until she could look directly at Anita. “Yes, a nice man.”

“Do I have a smear of something on my face?” Anita said.

“Huh?”

“I thought perhaps I had some dirt smeared on my face, the way you are staring at me.”

Sheela managed a little giggle and looked away. “So sorry, no. I am not myself these days.”

“So your mother has told me.”

Sheela sat up in her chair and this time gave Anita a terrified look. “You have been talking to my mother about me? But you are my sister cousin. You are my friend. Why are you doing this?”

Interesting, thought Anita. If I found someone had been talking to my mother about me, I might be amused, Auntie Meena’s daughter, Asmita, would certainly be annoyed, but frightened?

* * * *

At breakfast the following morning, Anita tried to make up to Sheela because it was easier to visit with someone she was on speaking terms with than with someone who sulked and gave her the cold shoulder.

“Anything interesting in the newspaper?” Anita said, even though she knew Sheela wasn’t one to pay any attention to political life.

“That’s not the news,” the maidservant said as she put another bowl of idlies on the table. Anita loved the steamed cakes, like little flying saucers, and drew the bowl toward her. “A man has been murdered.”

“What?” Both Sheela and Anita spoke at once.

The maidservant smiled, pleased with the effect her secret was having on her employers. “Down by the tank for the Devi temple.”

Anita hated to do it, but she pushed her chair away from the table, left the idlies on her plate, and raced down to the tank.

* * * *

“I just want to look,” Anita said to the constable as she swerved past him.

He reached out to grab her, but Anita was too quick for him and leapt to the side of the corpse, just as the assistant was about to wrap a woven mat around the body. Shiva ayoo, Anita thought when she saw the body. A man perhaps in his fifties sprawled on the grassy verge, his white shirt caked with drying mud. His face was contorted, his eyes staring upward in horror, as though helpless to stop what was happening to him. But it was his mouth that held Anita’s attention—his front teeth were shattered, but there was no blood on his lips and teeth. As the assistant waved her back, Anita knelt for a closer look. His throat was covered with mud, and his mouth seemed stuffed with it.

“Who is he?” she asked the constable when they pushed her away.

“A local man. His name is Champe,” the constable replied. “Just one of the sorcerers around here.”

“Who owns this tank?” Anita said, stepping carefully along the muddy bank. The tank seemed to be an old paddy field fallen into disuse, and now used as a local bathing place.

“You have a reason for wanting to know this?” the constable asked.

“Just curious,” Anita said, looking around, trying to get a fix on the landscape. To the north was Remy’s house; to the south was Sheela’s house. And to the west? “Who lives over there. See? In that large pink house?”

The constable peered in the direction Anita was pointing. “That’s Karunkar Menon’s house. He’s the new overseer at the plantation. Fine home he has.” The constable straightened up as he spoke, as though Karunkar was about to pass by inspecting the troops.

* * * *

Anita meandered back to her cousin’s house, lost in her own thoughts. It was a very odd death—the victim looked like he’d been drowned, but he was still dry below the waist, like he’d been slogging through a swamp, though there wasn’t one nearby. And it looked like he’d been in a brawl, but his hands were unscathed. The constable had dismissed the dead man as an insignificant sorcerer.

Anita turned off the lane going to Sheela’s house and instead walked through the village. When she heard the painful sound of wailing, she followed it to an alley. The narrow lane was paved with cement and ran between two large homes. Anita stepped into the shade of the overhanging trees and entered the small cluster of close-set homes sharing walls, spigots, front walks. A songbird hung in a cage outside a door, cooing to passersby. The front of one home was lined with small potted plants. At the next corner the wailing grew louder.

“No troubling, Missi,” a woman said to Anita as she paused at the corner. “This crying is a new widow. It is Champe’s wife—she has just learned her husband is dead. The constable has come to tell her they have found his body by the tank.” The woman nodded to the house at the end of a short side lane. “Now she is a widow, poor and alone. It is well that she cries out.”

“Does she know how it happened?” Anita hoped that the constable might have said something to the widow. The other woman shook her head. “Not even how he died?” Again the other woman shook her head.

Anita made her way back to the main road, turned right, and soon found herself at the lane she had taken the day before. She followed it through a well-tended neighborhood of small homes, turning right and left, and ending once again at the corner where she saw Sheela and Karunkar separating and going in different directions. It was the only time since Anita had arrived that she had seen Sheela animated, enjoying life.

The meeting could have been a coincidence, Anita reminded herself, but she didn’t believe in coincidences. No, the two had met on purpose. Anita walked on past the last house, until she came to a small temple that seemed abandoned. She walked around the small building. In the back was a tiny shed for storing gear for a festival, but this too had fallen into disrepair. Anita stepped inside and looked around. A broken plastic chair leaned against a small wooden stool in one corner, a rotting coconut husk lay nearby. Beneath a rickety table lay two more coconuts, but these were relatively fresh, chopped open the day before, for their sweet milk. Two plastic straws were stuck in the woven mat walls, awaiting use on another day.

Anita pulled out the stool and sat down. To her, it was obvious what all this meant, but she didn’t like it and part of her even felt resentful. Sheela was turning her family upside down with her behavior. But was there anything Anita could do about it? This was a dilemma, all right. After being casually promised to Karunkar since childhood, Sheela had married a man of her heart. Bharat had taken up his career in a plantation, but his fortunes had declined almost at once, with the loss of promotion, pay raises, and then a child. His troubles seemed to begin with the gift of the wooden figure, and now a sorcerer was dead.

Karunkar and Parvati lived in a house that seemed to grow pinker the closer Anita got to it. She took the final turn in the lane and arrived at the front gate, which consisted of two large metal swinging doors with bright green curlicues on top. Anita rattled the latch, which was chained on the inside. A maidservant appeared in the doorway, then retreated, presumably to report Anita’s presence to the owners.

“Ah, how wonderful of you to come to us!” Parvati sauntered down the stairs with a key in her hand, unlocked the gate, and pulled it open. “Please, come, come. Karunkar will come shortly, after his morning puja.”

The home was recently built, with marble floors, high ceilings, and several built-in display cabinets throughout, showcasing small collections of brightly painted figures of the gods and goddesses, teacups, and photographs. Parvati led her into the dining room, called for tea, and ushered her to a chair. It was still quite early, but not too early for visiting.

Parvati concentrated on her hostess duties and began chatting about the neighborhood, who lived where, what they did, where they came from if not from here, the next trip they might take to Chennai or perhaps Mumbai. “I do love Mumbai—so many interesting shops, don’t you think?”

Actually, Anita didn’t think so—she thought Mumbai was insane, crazy with traffic, dirt, pushy millionaires and wannabes, and worse—but instead of saying that, she politely agreed, and Parvati went on to talk about her visits to Philips Antiques, which Anita knew to be somewhat pricey.

“Ah, talking about shopping, isn’t it?” Karunkar strolled into the room, dropped the newspaper onto the table, and called out an order to the maidservant. He smiled down on both Parvati and Anita with a certain patronizing air that might have been no more than well-earned self-confidence, but it caught Anita’s attention.

“Back for lunch, Parvati,” he said.

“I’m glad to have a chance to meet you again,” Anita said, extending her hand. He took it and they shook. “We’ve certainly changed since we were children, and I’m always curious about how my old friends turned out.”

Karunkar gave a good-natured laugh. “Good to see you here, Anita.”

When he was gone, Anita said, “Is Mumbai where you got that figure, the one studded with nails?” She wasn’t surprised to see Parvati blanch.

“I don’t mean to be offensive, but have you noticed how moody Sheela has become?” Anita asked, changing the topic.

If Anita had wanted to shut down Parvati, there could be no better way. Instead of a flash of anger or resentment at being asked to feel sympathy for the woman her husband had intended to marry, Parvati withdrew emotionally, her face turning blank, then cold. “She reacts too strongly to things.”

“Really?” Anita leaned forward, hoping for more.

“That figure. It was only a folk art piece, but instead she blames it for everything that has gone wrong in her life. She would blame my husband, Karunkar, for it if she hadn’t known him since childhood.”

“Why blame Karunkar?”

“I bought it for a gift sometime in the future, but he gave it to Bharat on a whim.” She shrugged, then, unable to hide her feelings any longer, moved to sit sideways in her chair to look out the window.

“So Karunkar took it there?” Anita said more to herself. “You are not from here, are you?”

Parvati relaxed at the question and shook her head. “Pune. A real city. Not like this godforsaken place.” Oddly enough, Parvati didn’t sound bitter, just hugely disappointed and resigned. “He promised me after we were married that we would be here only a few months, while he moved up the ladder, and then he would get a better position elsewhere.”

“But?”

“But he doesn’t talk about it anymore, and when I bring it up, well...” She sighed. “Is it wonderfully busy where you live, in the hotel?”

Her curiosity was intense, almost pathetic in its neediness to know about something outside of this little village. Anita told her about Hotel Delite, some of the staff members who were especially colorful, and Auntie Meena, who was right then probably hiding in a linen closet to get away from some of the more demanding guests. “Perhaps you’ll have children soon,” Anita said, feeling sorry for Parvati in her loneliness.

“I doubt it.” The other woman blushed deeply. “He doesn’t fancy me so much.”

* * * *

Anita set off for Sheela’s house before she realized she had taken the wrong path. The lanes in this area were well worn down, but they twisted and turned and crisscrossed through forests and over brooks; anyone could set out, take the wrong turning, and get lost from view—and then no one could know for sure where the person had gone. Two main paths skirted the tank, and anyone could approach it without being seen.

Anita found Sheela curled up on her bed, her eyes open. When she saw Anita enter, the other woman rolled over and stared at the wall. Anita closed the door and sat down on the bed.

“You have to talk to me, Sheela. Something terrible has happened.”

“What?” Her voice was about as dull as Anita had ever heard it, equal parts pouting and lack of interest.

“The man who was killed this morning, the sorcerer.”

“Yes, terrible. I’m sorry he’s dead. We’ll make a donation to help his wife. Now you can go away.” She pulled the end of her sari over her head.

“That’s not what’s so terrible about it.” Anita waited but Sheela continued to stare at the wall. “How long have you and Karunkar been having an affair?” Anita was gratified to hear a small gasp. Sheela rolled over and raised herself on her elbow.

“Why are you saying this?”

“I saw you yesterday, in the village, and Karunkar.” Anita watched Sheela’s pretty mocha coloring turn gray and sickly, and her eyes widen.

“Ayoo! Did you, ah, tell anyone?”

“Like Bharat?”

Sheela nodded.

“No. But that’s not the worst part.”

“What could be worse?” Sheela sat up, swinging her head from side to side. “I am glad you know. I am so alone here with this secret. It is a terrible thing I have done, but even worse is what I did before. I married Bharat on a whim, to show how modern I was, to have a marriage of the heart. But the heart is weak, the heart is unreliable. The heart has no sense. And now I have nothing, not his heart and not my own.”

“What do you mean not his heart?”

“He thinks Karunkar is trying to ruin us. He thinks there is something wrong that I have such friends. Even my mother is suspect now because she still thinks Karunkar is a good man. Everything is awful.” With no role to play, no need to conceal the truth of her circumstances, Sheela began to cry, wiping her eyes with the end of her sari.

“And everything is going to get worse,” Anita said. “Excuse me, I have to make a telephone call.” She pulled out her cell and left the room.

In the middle of the midday meal, Remy came flying through the front door. “How can you eat? Have you not heard?” Anita kept on eating. “It is horrible, horrible!”

“Calm down, Ammaji,” Bharat said, standing up and offering her a chair.

“My maidservant told me just now. Karunkar has been arrested for the murder of that sorcerer found near the tank. He is in the jail!”

“Really?” Bharat sat down, resuming his meal, as though Remy had announced nothing more than a change in the bus schedule. He selected the best portion of sambar for his idlies, his eyes on his food.

“No, Amma, he couldn’t have! He wouldn’t!” Sheela was too stunned to do anything but repeat herself.

“I’m afraid it’s true.” Remy fell into a chair, shaking her head, mumbling about the horror of it all. “They took him from his house. Poor Parvati! She must be beside herself.”

“Perhaps it is only to ask him questions,” Sheela said, growing agitated.

“You can ask them when the constables come here,” Anita said.

“Here!” Both Sheela and Remy stared at her.

“Yes, why would they come here?” Bharat said, suddenly alert. His tone was sharp, and his look was fierce, a change in his personality Anita would not have predicted when she first met him. At their wedding he seemed such a mild, gentle sort, and she worried only that he wouldn’t be able to keep Sheela from going off on a dozen different tangents. But she had been wrong—he had depths she hadn’t imagined.

“Karunkar did indeed kill the sorcerer, but he will claim self-defense,” Anita said. The other women protested again. “And they will want you as a witness, Bharat.”

“Me? What can I tell them? If he has done this, the crime is solved.”

“Why he would kill a sorcerer, in the first place,” Anita said. Bharat began to rise, but Anita raised her hand. “I wouldn’t bother leaving, Bharat. The police will be here shortly.”

Bharat stiffened, then trembled, but slowly lowered himself into his seat.

Remy grabbed Anita’s wrist. “Tell me!” She shushed her daughter, and jerked Anita’s arm closer to her.

“It was the teeth that got me,” Anita said. “Why would anyone bother to knock out someone’s teeth after they were dead? I could see bits of his teeth on the ground and in his mouth, so it obviously happened after he was strangled. And why was he strangled with muddy hands?”

“I do not believe this,” Remy said. “I have known Karunkar all his life. He was to marry Sheela. Would we make a mistake like that?”

“You didn’t make a mistake,” Anita said. “Karunkar accepted the marriage of Sheela and Bharat, and he married as was expected of him, to a woman who loves him passionately. But Sheela and Karunkar could not ignore their feelings for each other. When Karunkar gave Bharat the antique wooden figure that Parvati found in an old shop, he didn’t think anything about it, but Bharat did. To him it was not a sign of friendship. It was a sign of hostility, a warning that a sorcerer was working against him and Sheela, and he saw all the bad things that happened as Karunkar’s fault.”

“Nonsense, Karunkar wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t.” Sheela pressed her hands against her chest, imploring Anita.

“You don’t know him in business,” Bharat said. “Look how he has taken my position, my rises.” He gave his wife a cold stare, so cold even Remy flinched.

“So you decided to get even,” Anita said to Bharat. “You hired the sorcerer to cast a spell on Karunkar that would ruin him. The sorcerer lay in wait for Karunkar at the tank where he did his morning puja, and began to do his work, but Karunkar had come to believe the figure with the iron nails perhaps was evil, and he didn’t dare let the sorcerer do even more harm. He tried to stop him, and when the sorcerer wouldn’t stop the curses, Karunkar stuffed his mouth with mud so the words wouldn’t come out; the sorcerer choked to death.” Anita paused, thinking about Karunkar’s dirt-stained fingernails when they shook hands that morning.

“And then he had to break the teeth,” Remy said in a soft voice. “The sorcerer is only as good as his words, isn’t he? And his words must be perfectly articulated. Once his teeth are broken in death, his spirit cannot torment anyone, especially Karunkar.” Remy slowly shook her head, a single tear forming and sliding down her cheek.

“You did this?” Sheela turned to her husband, “You did this to Karunkar?” and in a second she lunged at him with her hands outstretched, her nails cutting deep into his cheeks. Her wails greeted the police.

* * * *

The following morning Anita crossed the road to the bus stand and dropped her suitcase next to Parvati’s. The other woman offered an embarrassed smile and a shrug.

“My mother has insisted I return home during this difficult time,” Parvati said. “I am glad to do so. I have considered the question of loyalty, and I am concluding that I am free to go. My husband has placed his heart and his loyalty elsewhere. Besides, he has loving family here and I do not.” This was a long speech, and Parvati’s voice grew softer and softer as other villagers arrived to wait for the bus. “Is it so lovely, your Hotel Delite?”

“It will be after my Auntie Meena calms down. Auntie Remy has given her the news about Sheela and Karunkar and Bharat, and I know what Meena will say.”

Parvati arched an eyebrow. “She will be so disapproving of the good you have done?”

“She will believe I was the cause of it all, that I brought the bad luck with me.” Anita laughed. “You have to love someone who thinks I have that much power in life.”