The Royal Ghosts Read online

  “And why’s that?”

  “She’s too young.”

  “What if I help her?”

  “Then it’ll take me five seconds instead of one to beat her.”

  “Did you hear that, Shailaja?” Pitamber said loudly. “I think your son is getting arrogant. I think it’s time he challenged some real players at the chess club.”

  The sound of spinach frying in oil filled the flat, and he heard his wife chatting with Kabita.

  “Come, daughter, I’ll teach you how to play chess,” Pitamber said, and Priya came to his side.

  He set up the pieces and began teaching her the rules. But she was more interested in admiring the pieces than anything else, and after a while he sighed and gave up. Sumit, who was sitting next to them doing his homework, laughed. “She’s too young, buwa. I told you.”

  “Why don’t you two play a game that she’ll find more interesting?”

  “But I’m doing my homework.”

  “Do you like to listen to stories?” Pitamber asked Priya.

  Shyly chewing the hem of her dress, she nodded.

  “Then I’ll read to you. Come.” He searched in their bookcase for one of Sumit’s old children’s books and found one about a cat and a rabbit. Priya sat on his lap, and he began reading. Her eyes followed his finger as it moved across the page. Soon Sumit abandoned his homework and sat next to them, and Pitamber felt a strange happiness come over him, as if somehow his family was expanding. He and Shailaja had both wanted a daughter after Sumit, but despite years of trying, Shailaja hadn’t gotten pregnant again. In time, they’d become grateful for at least having had a son.

  After dinner, they settled down to watch television. Shailaja turned on some comedy show, and soon Pitamber lost interest. Surreptitiously, he watched Kabita, whose eyes were steadily focused on the screen in front of her. What was going through her head right then? he wondered. Did she think about the killers? If she did, what kinds of things did she think? Kabita appeared to sense him watching her, for she quickly glanced at him. He felt something transpire between them, something he couldn’t quite define.

  He and Shailaja had decided that Kabita and Priya would sleep in Sumit’s bed and Sumit would sleep on a mattress on the floor of their room. But when everyone began getting ready for bed, Sumit balked. “I want to sleep in my own bed,” he said to his parents. “I don’t want to sleep with you two.” At twelve years old, he’d already begun acting like a teenager, Pitamber thought and sighed. Kabita said, “Why should Sumit babu relinquish his bed? We can easily spread our mattress right here.” She pointed to the living room floor. Pitamber tried to reason with his son, saying he should at least let the guests spread their mattress on his floor, but Sumit stormed off to his room and closed the door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with your son,” Pitamber told Shailaja, who retorted, “Yes, when he doesn’t obey he’s my son, but when he wins at chess, he’s yours.”

  “This is how it is in our house,” Pitamber said to Kabita, trying to smile, and quickly helped her set up her mattress on the living room floor.

  Later, in their room, Shailaja said, “Poor thing. With everything that’s happened, she’s still maintaining a good attitude.”

  “She seems to be a strong woman,” Pitamber said.

  “That kind of tragedy—I mean, what did she do to deserve it? And here we are—we still believe in God.”

  Shailaja regularly worshiped at the city temples, and her words surprised him. “I’m not sure I believe in God anymore,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “But you just said it.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t believe in God. I meant that we must believe in God no matter what. You know that.”

  “So adept at twisting your own words,” Pitamber muttered.

  After a moment she said, “I want to do a puja at the Maitidevi temple.”

  “Why?”

  Her face was very serious. “Why do people do puja? To ask for God’s protection.”

  “Nobody is threatening us,” he said. Then, noting his harsh tone, he said, “Okay, go ahead and do it, that’s no problem. I was just asking why.”

  “There doesn’t need to be a why when praying to God,” she said, and turned off the light.

  The seamstress was more than happy to hire Kabita. “These Maobadis! They should all be burned alive for everyone to see,” Ratnakumari said to Shailaja and Pitamber when they went to her.

  A routine was soon established. Kabita would leave for the seamstress’s house early in the morning, around seven. Pitamber would entertain Priya, who inevitably cried and whined after her mother left, while Shailaja cooked the morning meal. Soon it was time for Sumit to go to school, then for Pitamber to head to work. Kabita returned home at around one or two, depending on how busy things were with Ratnakumari. Pitamber left his office at five. In the evening, after dinner, they all sat around the flat, talking or reading or watching television.

  Over the days, Pitamber and Shailaja learned more about Kabita. Both her parents had died of illnesses soon after she got married. Her in-laws lived in another village, in Gorkha, which was also subject to attacks by the Maobadis, so she couldn’t go there after her husband was killed. She had a sister who worked as a hotel maid in the Indian state of Bihar. Kabita had very little contact with her—they’d never been particularly close—and most likely she wasn’t aware of all that had happened to her sister. No one knew for sure why her husband was killed, Kabita said, for he was only a schoolteacher and had no political affiliations. Whenever she mentioned her husband, she grew restless.

  “It won’t always be this painful to think about,” Shailaja frequently consoled her. “You have to focus on your new life here, and your daughter’s.”

  Kabita usually nodded, looking at the floor. Sometimes she pulled her daughter to her side. In these moments Pitamber found it hard to look at Kabita and Priya without something roiling in his stomach, without vividly recalling the photographs of the Maobadi leaders that had recently appeared in the newspapers. The confounding thing was that these men looked so ordinary, like the men he worked with, the men he saw in tea shops across the city.

  As it turned out, a school for Priya was hard to come by. She was too young for kindergarten, and preschools were very expensive. “I have no problem looking after her,” Shailaja insisted to Kabita. “Look, she’s already taken a liking to me.” It was true. Priya now clung to Shailaja as much as she did to her own mother. “Auntie,” she called Shailaja, and followed her around the house.

  Sumit seemed to be the only one having difficulties adjusting to Kabita and Priya in the flat. He hardly said anything to Kabita and never played with Priya. Once Pitamber saw him push the girl away as she was attempting to get something from the floor near him. Pitamber took him to his bedroom and said, “You should treat her like your younger sister. You should be nice to her.”

  “Don’t call her my sister,” Sumit said sullenly.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re not part of our family.”

  “Well, while they’re here we have to treat them that way, understand?”

  “When are they going to leave?”

  “Soon. Now go play with Priya for a while.”

  But Sumit stayed in his room alone and shut the door. When Pitamber told Shailaja about his talk with Sumit, she said, “This is normal for someone his age. He’ll get used to them.”

  One morning, right after he reached work, Pitamber heard that Mr. Shrestha had called in sick. Because of the man’s grouchy demeanor and strict rules, the employees treated this day as if it were a holiday. Some signed in and went home, others sat around and chatted and made personal phone calls. Mr. Shrestha hadn’t said anything to Pitamber the morning he arrived late after searching for Kabita, but Pitamber hadn’t risked being late since then. Today, though, he and his colleague Neupane decided to go to a restaurant nearby. There, over samosas and jalebis, Pitamber told Neupane about Kabit
a.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Pitamberji,” Neupane said. “I’d have done the same.”

  “Can you believe they’d murder a schoolteacher?” Pitamber said.

  “Well, the police and the army are just as cruel. Haven’t you heard how they raped and killed those two teenage girls, then accused them of being Maobadis?”

  Pitamber grew silent, then he said, “Do you suppose Kabita thinks about revenge?”

  “Revenge?” Neupane raised his eyebrows. “Do you expect a young widow to go searching in the hills for those men?”

  Pitamber gazed out the window. People were walking, laughing, swinging shopping bags, hailing taxis. Across the street, a teenage boy appeared to be teaching another boy some karate moves.

  “God will punish them, Pitamberji. God is watching all of this.”

  He turned to Neupane. “I don’t really like thinking about God anymore.”

  Neupane laughed. “But where would we be without God, eh? Seriously, though, she has a new life, and she should let the past go. And you should stop thinking about it all so much.” When Pitamber said nothing, Neupane added, “Thinking about revenge just puts us on their level.”

  They left the restaurant and started walking back to the office, but, preoccupied and irritated, Pitamber soon decided that he’d rather go home. Neupane slapped him on the back and said, “Pitamberji, you need to relax. Everything is fine. Your job is fine, and everything is going well with your family. So stop all this obsessing.”

  Pitamber nodded. “You’re right, Neupaneji,” he said, but he still wanted to go home, so he said goodbye to Neupane and headed off. Clouds were gathering in the sky, and he recalled the morning’s weather report forecasting rain. At least the rain would be a distraction.

  On the way home, he had to pass by New Road, and he decided to pay a visit to Kabita. Four women worked at the seamstress’s shop, all busy running the machines. A steady and fast click-click-click filled the room, which overflowed with pieces of cloth and unfinished dresses. Kabita sat in the back, her eyes focused on the needle as her fingers slid the cloth underneath it. He went and stood in front of her, but she seemed unaware of his presence until he said her name. She looked up, gasped, and the stitch on the cloth went askew. “Tch,” she said to the machine, then to Pitamber, “Dai?”

  “I got the day off,” he said. “I thought I’d drop by to see how you were doing.”

  She managed a smile. The other women in the shop glanced in their direction. “Dai,” she said loudly, introducing him to them above the clatter, and they nodded, went back to work.

  “Everything going well?”

  She nodded.

  “Where’s Ratnakumariji?”

  “She’s gone to run some errands.”

  “Have you had tea?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no time for tea. I have too much work to do.” And she set her hand on the wheel of her machine.

  “How about I bring tea to the four of you, then?”

  “Dai, you don’t have to. There’s a boy from the tea shop who comes here sometimes.”

  “It’d be my pleasure. Besides, maybe the boy won’t come today”

  The tea shop was just around the corner, and the boy who was rinsing the glasses there offered to take the tea to the women, but Pitamber insisted on doing it himself. Awkwardly carrying a container with five glasses of tea back to the shop, he shouted, “Chai garam,” imitating the men who sold tea at Indian railway stations, and Kabita seemed a bit embarrassed. “I’ll just have a little tea and be on my way. Not to worry,” he said to her. He sat and chatted with them for a while, asking the other women about their lives, how long they’d been working for Ratnakumari. Kabita remained quiet for most of the conversation, offering only a brief yes or no when he directed a question at her. When Ratnakumari came in and saw Pitamber, she teased him that he was bothering her workers. He sensed that she was not entirely joking, so, somewhat self-conscious, he quickly finished his tea and left.

  Pitamber made his way through the dense crowd of New Road, where in a side alley he saw a crowd gathered in front of a wall. He went to them, peeked over their shoulders, and saw, pasted on the wall, large photos of the Maobadis who had been listed as “Wanted” by the government. People were talking excitedly, and a man next to Pitamber said, “They should all be tied together and burned in one big pyre.”

  Some murmured in agreement, but a voice from behind Pitamber said, “What are you saying? Our revolution has arrived! These are our heroes.”

  “Heroes?” Pitamber swiveled around. “Who said that?”

  Someone pointed to a boy of about nineteen, and Pitamber lurched toward him and grabbed his shirt collar. “What did you say?” He could feel the pulse in his own throat as he slapped the boy hard on the right cheek. Encouraged by his slap, other men now crowded around the boy, shoving him, punching him, shaking him. “I wasn’t being serious,” the boy screamed. “I didn’t mean it!” He began pleading for mercy.

  His throat still pulsing, Pitamber walked away. He couldn’t believe how fast his hand had flown, how thoughtlessly he’d struck the boy. He knew he ought to go back and try to rescue him, but things were already beyond his control now, and the crowd could easily turn its anger on him. He moved rapidly through the market, pushing his way past the shoppers. What did he do that for? For a teenager’s stupid joke. And now the boy was probably all bloodied and injured, perhaps left with a broken arm. Pitamber’s head was beginning to throb, and he wished he’d gone right home from the restaurant instead of stopping by Kabita’s work.

  At home Shailaja was feeding Priya, and Pitamber asked them how their day had gone, then said that he felt the need to lie down.

  “You came home because you didn’t feel well?” Shailaja asked, and he didn’t answer her, just continued on to their bedroom and lay down, trying to slow his breathing and forget what had happened in the alley. But he could still hear the boy’s panicked pleas.

  A little while later, Shailaja came to him and placed her hand on his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like you have fever. Are you nauseous?”

  “Not really. Just a bit of a headache. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  She stayed beside him, and the warmth of her body comforted him. He told her that he’d stopped by Kabita’s work. “I think I might have embarrassed her,” he said.

  “She probably liked that you went to visit her.”

  Pitamber wanted to tell her what happened next, but he knew it would upset her, and she’d be shocked that he’d hit anyone, let alone a boy. “How is Priya?” he asked instead, his eyes closed.

  “If I feed her, she’ll eat anything. But with her mother, she makes all kinds of excuses.”

  Pitamber laughed and pressed his hands to his closed eyes. Little stars burst in the darkness there, and for a moment he felt soothed. “She’s so happy with you. If we’d had a daughter, I bet she’d have been like her.”

  “No point in thinking about that now. Come, I’ll rub your forehead.”

  He let her, and her soft fingers felt good on his head.

  A while later he woke with a start to sounds of boys arguing outside in the yard. He went to the window, looked out, and saw Sumit tussling with some boys from the neighborhood. “Stop that!” Pitamber shouted. He put on his slippers and hurried downstairs. As soon as they saw him, the other boys ran away, and he grabbed Sumit by the shoulder. “Why were you fighting? What’s wrong with you?”

  “They were saying things about Kabita auntie,” Sumit muttered, looking down.

  “What things?” Pitamber’s eyes searched for the boys, but he remembered the earlier incident in Indrachowk and immediately controlled himself. “Look at you,” he said to Sumit. “Your shirt is torn.” Pitamber grabbed his arm and walked him back inside and upstairs.

  Shailaja inspected her son’s face, and thankfully he didn’t have any bruises. She too scolded him, then said, “What did they say to get you so bothered?”

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sp; “They were saying bad things about her, about . . .” He looked at Pitamber, then said, “I don’t want to live in this house anymore.”

  Shailaja and Pitamber looked at each other. Finally Shailaja told Sumit, “If they say something bad, just ignore them, okay?”

  Sumit glared at her and stormed off to his room. Pitamber shook his head and said, “I have no idea what’s going through his mind. Now I have a bigger headache.”

  “Maybe he’s having problems at school,” Shailaja said. “I’ll go talk to his headmaster.”

  Shailaja eventually coaxed Sumit out of his room for dinner, and they all sat down to eat. Kabita, who’d gotten home late from work, said, “Dai, my work friends were saying you seem like a fun person.”

  “Hmm, I don’t exactly feel like a fun person right now.”

  “After dinner, you should go back to sleep,” Shailaja said. “Then you’ll feel better.”

  Everyone ate quietly, and about halfway through the meal, Sumit stood and returned to his room. Pitamber was about to follow him, but Shailaja told him to let him be. She then began talking about how the Dashain and Tihar festivals would be more fun this year with Kabita and Priya around. “Now Sumit will have a little sister to do bhai puja with, and Kabita, you can put tika on him.” She gestured toward Pitamber.

  “I could, but it’s only been a few months since my husband died,” she said.

  “Of course, of course,” Shailaja said. “I guess it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “What harm would it do? Doing tika doesn’t mean you’re no longer in mourning,” Pitamber said to Kabita.

  “That decision is up to her, isn’t it?” Shailaja said.

  “I don’t know,” Kabita said. “It might anger God.”

  Pitamber grew flushed and said, “Why bring God into it? You are starting a new life. Your God should be pleased about it.”

  “These days the mere mention of God sets you off, doesn’t it?” Shailaja said.

  Pitamber said to Kabita, “It’s your decision. Do what you want to do.” Then he stood and went back to bed.