Read The Death of Vishnu for Free Online Page B

fingers together. “You know what you need if you want to come in.”

    I T IS LATE afternoon when he awakens. The tide has come in and receded while he slept. The sand stretches to the water’s edge, gleaming in the sun’s rays as if painted with silver.
    He tries to remember the night before. Standing on Padmini’s doorstep after the mela. Telling her how much she means to him, telling her how much he loves her. Trying to find the words into her room, into her heart.
    Padmini smiles her half-smile. “Wait here till I am done,” she says, and runs her fingers lightly across his lips. He tries to catch them, to kiss them, but only her attar remains.
    He cannot remember how long he sits outside her building. Listening to the music float by, watching the people file in and out. He gets up when the sound of the ghungroos chiming inside becomes too much to bear.
    Is the sky still dark when he makes his way to the beach? Are the stars still out when he lays back his head on the sand? He lies by the water and thinks he has not felt this way with any of the other girls. This desire to be consumed with Padmini in one fiery instant, this feeling that he wants them to spend a lifetime together.
    But now the sun is up, and the day demands more practical pursuits. He watches a seagull making its way across the beach in search of food. It hops through the sand, stops to peck at a piece of plastic, then hops on. It stops each time it sees something yellow or orange, and tests it with its beak. A wad of paper, a cigarette butt, a dried mango pit—everything inedible is spit back out.
    The bird gets closer and Vishnu sees how ugly it is. The head is dark and shiny, as if dipped in oil. The feathers are streaked with black and look oily too. Gobs of brown cling to the legs.
    The gull walks up to where he is sitting and lunges at a crust of bread in the sand. Vishnu watches the bread disappear into the beak, and imagines it traveling in one large piece down the bird’s gullet. His own stomach rumbles its emptiness.
    The bird stares at his toe, and Vishnu wonders if it will peck at it. He sits completely stationary, tempting the bird with his stillness, hands poised at his sides, ready to twist the white-and-black neck. The bird lifts its head, looks beadily at his face, then turns and hops away.
    The sun hovers above the water. The hunger in his stomach rises, a roiling tide inside. He tries to remember when he has last eaten. Did Padmini tear off a bite for him from her cotton candy?
    A small boy walks up to him. “Would you like some crabs?” he asks, holding out a bright yellow plastic pail with a toy spade in it. Vishnu notices the boy is wearing bathing shorts made of striped red nylon. They look expensive.
    “I caught too many of them,” the boy explains, “and Mummy said we can only take one of them home. Would you like the rest?” The boy stirs the spade in the pail and Vishnu hears the contents scrape against the plastic.
    “How big are they?” Vishnu asks, looking skeptically at the pail.
    “Oh, all sizes,” the boy says, and lowers the pail, so that Vishnu can peer inside. “See this one?” He points with his spade at the largest crab, only a few inches wide. “That’s the only large one. I’m going to add it to my aquarium.”
    Vishnu shakes his head and mumbles no. The boy stands there, surprised. “You really should take them—they’d make great pets. Besides, I spent all afternoon looking for them.” His voice has an injured tone.
    “Go away,” Vishnu hisses at the boy. “I don’t want your crabs, they’re too small!”
    The boy goes running toward a man and a woman. They are also wearing swimming clothes. “Mummy,” he cries, “the man says my crabs are too small!” Vishnu turns away.
    When he looks back, the boy is emptying the pail into a hole dug out in the sand. Vishnu watches as he straightens up and goes running after the couple, the pail swinging by his side.
    A fresh knot of hunger