The Memorist

Chapter 52

Indus Valley, India-2120 B.C.E.

Stealing from the dead was a crime, stealing the dead themselves was a sin, but her desolation was stronger than her fear of the punishments, so Ohana hid behind the trunk of the tree as the sun set the river on fire, shielded her eyes and waited for the funeral service to end.

The combined cacophony of lapping water, bells clanging and cows mooing couldn’t cloak the widow’s bitter wailing; Ohana’s painful reminder that she had no right to be here at Devadas’ Asthi-Sanchayana ceremony, that there was no one she could turn to for solace, that her mourning was the last secret in a series of secrets she would have to keep.

Yesterday, two men on their way to morning prayers had found Devadas’s body by the riverbank, the flies buzzing around her lover, already attracted by the pool of blood that seeped from his head gashes. Other than Devadas’s brother, Rasul, who pressured the lawmakers for an investigation, no one seemed to care who the killer was or how to find him. The two brothers, instrument makers by trade, had been labeled as heretics for claiming certain music played on their flutes and drums could heal and soothe. They were a threat to the old customs and much reviled in the town. And now one of them was dead.

As the wailing intensified the wind picked up, and Chandra, Devadas’s wife, gasped as some of her husband’s ashes blew on her. Stunned, she stopped sprinkling his cinders with milk to touch the powder on her cheek with her fingertips. A fresh tear fell from her eye, leaving a track in the dust.

It was hypocritical the way these women were carrying on. Devadas’s wife had exiled him from her home a year before because of his rebellious ideas. His own father had called both his sons insurgents. Yet now they were all prostrate with grief.

While the women continued to wet down the pyre, a second, more violent, gust blew ash into Devadas’s eldest daughter’s face and she coughed as some of the debris got in her mouth. She spit once. Twice. A third time. If it had happened to her, Ohana would have accepted the ash gratefully as if it had been a sacrament.

“Now the water, hurry,” Devadas’s elderly mother admonished, talking her three granddaughters through the next step of the ceremony. “Hurry, before the wind blows him away.”

Once the girls emptied the second jug and there was no water left, Chandra took up the scarred wooden staff and sifted through the muddy mixture separating the bones from the ash. Like a ragpicker the older daughter collected the bigger, wet cinders-the residue of his flesh and muscle and sinew-filling an earthenware bowl with them, and his youngest daughter picked up the bones that were no longer hot.

From her hiding place, Ohana watched Chandra take the bowl and throw the ashes into the rushing river while the others gathered around the bones and waited. Even though they were not supposed to show grief, all but the old woman continued wailing.

“He is traveling by the Path of Light,” Devadas’s mother admonished. “Many tears,” she said, “burn the dead.”

Each of the seven women tied the fruit of the brhati plant to her left hand with a deep blue thread the color of the night sky and a red thread the color of flowing blood, then one by one they stepped up onto the stone pyre, wiped their hands with apamarga leaves, then closed their eyes and stood in a circle, swaying to the river’s music.

“Arise hence and assume a new shape,” the matriarch intoned. “Leave none of the members of your body. Repair to whichever place you wish-may Savita establish you there. This is one of your bones; be joined with the third in glory; having joined all bones be handsome in person; be beloved of the gods in a noble place.”

As the women washed Devadas’s bones one last time, Ohana shivered remembering the feel of them, covered by muscles, pressing against her body. It was wrong that they were allowed to mourn him in the open and she had to hide in order to honor him.

Chandra filled a terra-cotta urn with the bones and then took it over to the sami tree. Stretching, she hung the urn from the highest branch she could reach.

Finally, the women left.

Ohana watched them growing smaller and smaller in the distance until they were gone. The sun slipped below the horizon. The moon would not rise for hours. A gray wash settled over the evening as the air chilled. The water still lapped the shore but the bells were silent and the women’s crying was too far off for her to hear anymore. This horrible day was at last over. The death ceremony was almost complete, except for one last visit when, two days from now, the women would return to take down the bones and bury them.

Knowing she was veiled by the twilight, Ohana crept up to the tree, reached into the urn and felt all that was left of her lover, this calcified measure of one man. Her hand came out clutching what she’d come here to get. Smooth and pale, the bone glowed almost incandescently in the evening light. Then, holding it close to her breast as if it could speak to her, as if it could save her, as if it could offer solace, she crept away into the lonely night.