The elders used to say that when the burial is done and the people go back, the dead man hears the sound of their shoes. It is true, but not the whole of it. How many feet in this village have shoes on them? What I heard was bare feet, on the wet earth of Shrabon, going away one pair at a time. Bare feet are easy to tell apart. Shoes all sound the same; the sole of a man’s foot is his own.
Karim chacha went first, that heavy tread of his that comes down on the heel, thud, thud. After him Mamud, who never in his life walked slowly. Then the rest, in twos and threes, some of them slipping in the mud. Rashid was last. I went down to the low country to cut paddy with Rashid twelve years running; I could pick out his feet in the dark in a crowd of a thousand. He stood there a long time. Standing has a sound of its own; the way the earth quietly takes the weight underfoot, that is how I listened to him standing. Then he went too, and after the sound of his going was finished I went on listening for a while to the silence that comes after a sound ends.
What I died of is a short story, not worth telling. That year I came back from the low country with a shivering on me, and the shivering never came down. The story of the dying is shorter than the story of the listening. It is the listening I will tell.
The eyes finish first. Under the earth there is no such thing as darkness; to have darkness you must remember light, and that goes one day too. The nose went after that. The ears stayed. Earth carries sound well, better than air does; the living do not know this. Sound that touches the earth is mine: footsteps, rain, hooves, the weeding blade, the tearing of roots. Sound that does not touch the earth, that goes about in the air and is spent there, is not mine. I no longer get the calling of the wind; I know the wind when a branch breaks, when a dry leaf comes down. Weeping that is loud does not reach me; what reaches me is what a person says with the mouth brought down close to the ground. All this I have learned lying here.
And I have learned that people sit at the head. Nobody sits at the feet. Whatever anybody has to say, whatever prayers, whatever silence, all of it comes down into the earth at the head of me. The earth at the head hears everything first.
In the next grave there is an old man. How long he has been there I do not know. On the first night he asked, Who’s that?
I said my name. He was quiet a long time and then said, Which Majid?
I said my father’s name, my grandfather’s name. He said, Don’t know you. Sleep.
There is no sleep under the earth, but I understood later what he meant. Keeping quiet is what is called sleep here. The old man does not talk much, and when he talks it is in short pieces, and everything he says sounds as though it has been said many times before and worn down in the saying.
For the first forty days somebody came every day. The humming of the milad came down into the earth, the prayers of people sitting low came down, the small scratch of incense sticks being pushed into the soil came down. More on Fridays, less on other days. In those days I still thought this crowd was my due, that this crowd would last.
The old man said one day, First year they come every day. Then Fridays. Then Eid, then the night of Barat. Then they don’t.
I said, Mine will be different.
The old man said nothing more. There is no arguing under the earth; time settles every argument by itself, and asks nobody.
Johura came first on the thirteenth day, towards afternoon, with Tuni. I have known her feet since long before, since before the marriage. There was a path to the ghat along the fence of my uncle’s house, and she used to go along it with a water pot. The feet under a full pot and the feet under an empty one are not the same; with an empty pot the feet fall as they please, with a full one they fall measured, balancing the weight of the water at the hip, every step as though it asks the ground first. I used to sit on my side of the fence and listen to that measured sound. Before I saw her face I knew a girl by the sound of her feet. I never told Johura this. I kept meaning to and did not, and there are more things like that, whose account I will give later.
She sat at the head. When women sit down by a grave there is a sound of cloth, the drawing of the anchal, the tucking of the sari under the knees. Then a long silence. Whether she wept I do not know; weeping that stays above the throat does not come to me, and Johura’s weeping always stayed above the throat, it never even came down as far as her eyes.
Then she pulled up a blade of grass.
That was the first time I heard the sound of a root tearing. Thin, small, wet, as though the earth were letting out thread from inside itself unwillingly. On the loose soil of a new grave the grass takes fast. She began to weed, one pull, two pulls, tidily, and it seemed to me that a floor was being smoothed, a yard plastered, and that I was lying under the floor of that house.
Before she went she brought her mouth down close to the earth. She said, Tuni’s fever’s gone. There’s a hole in the thatch at the back, Rashid bhai says he’ll bring some straw.
That was all. Two things. Johura was never a woman of many words. While I was alive I used to think her silence meant she had settled into the household. Since dying I think that I never once asked what her silence meant. Silence is like a house; you can see it from outside, and to see what is inside you need a door, and the thought of the door came to me after the door was shut.
Tuni came with her mother. Her feet were so light then that you could not separate them out, like the first drop or two of rain, fell or did not fall. She used to walk round and round the grave talking to herself. A small child does not understand dying; she thought I lived in a room down here and the door could not be found, that was all. She would call, Bajan, o Bajan, and I would look for a throat to answer with, a throat that does not come up above the earth.
I measured the years by the weight of Tuni’s feet. One monsoon they were like drops, the next like a myna’s hop, the one after that a rhythm came into them, the way girls walk along a village path half playing. I did not see a person growing up with my eyes; I heard it. That you can see this way nobody will believe, but I say it: you can know a person by weight, know their growing, know even their low spirits; when people are low their feet stay longer on the ground.
And I knew the earth by the rain. In the first monsoon the rain fell on the new loose soil like a drum, each drop separate, and the water came down as far as my head, cold, slow, as though somebody had come to ask after me. In the second monsoon the earth had settled, and the sound was muffled, like a husking pedal far off. In the third the grass above thickened, and the rain was only a whisper. That is how I have kept the count of the years. Drum, muffled, whisper. Then only whisper, whisper, and I gave up counting.
There was one other clock for listening, one night a year. On the night of Shab-e-Barat the graveyard fills. From dusk the feet keep coming, in pairs, in crowds, the scratching of incense sticks going in, the press of candle stubs being set down, and the earth hums with low prayers. That one night is the dead man’s Eid. All night I would look in the crowd for two pairs of feet. The first Barat I got both, at the head, for a long time. The next Barat I got them, for a short time. The Barat after that, one pair, light, with a small ringing; about that ringing I will speak later. And the Barat after that I listened all night, many feet came, many feet went, and the two I knew did not come. That night the old man said in his worn voice, Not everyone comes on the night of Barat. The earth stays awake for the ones who don’t come too.
Whether that was consolation or a dig, I have still not decided.
While I was alive I went down to the low country two months a year to cut paddy, with Rashid and ten or twelve others. I came back at the end of Kartik, late at night. Before going into the yard I used to stand outside the fence. Why I stood there I do not know; standing there I listened. The husking pedal, the winnowing fan, Tuni’s cough in her sleep, even the sound of Johura wiping her hands on her anchal — I could catch all of it from outside. When I had listened enough to know that everything was all right, I would call out, O Tuni’s mother. First listen, then go in. Lying here now it seems to me that my whole life was like that. I was never one of the people inside; I was a man standing outside a fence. Death only turned the standing into lying, and turned the fence into earth.
There is one sound I stored up while I was still alive, and it is growing now with interest. One afternoon in Aghran, in the paddy season, I was coming home out of hours, and from the other side of the fence I heard Johura laugh. An open laugh, a laugh that rolls, the kind of laugh a person shuts their eyes for. She never laughed like that in front of me; in front of me her laughter was measured, like the feet under a full pot. Who she was laughing with, I did not see. Going into the yard I found her friend sitting there, and two more women from the next house, and betel being cut. I asked nothing. There was nothing to ask. While I was alive I settled it: she had laughed at something her friend said. Since dying, the sound comes round and round, and each time the person on the other side of the laugh changes. Under the earth there is no such thing as ownership of a sound; a sound whose owner cannot be settled becomes whoever’s it likes.
My mother’s feet came in the early days, with a stick, feet of three sounds, tock thud thud. She would sit at the head and recite, and her voice shook, and a shaking voice comes down well into the earth. Then one winter the sound of the stick did not come. Some time after that I got the sound of earth being cut at the far end of the graveyard, stroke by stroke, for half a day. For whom, nobody told me; nobody brings the dead their news, we have to make it ourselves. I only reckoned up which feet had stopped coming after that day. The feet with the stick never came again. From that end to this end, twenty cubits of earth in between; and twenty cubits under the earth is twenty kos. I did not call out. Which is more frightening, an answer or no answer, I could not decide, and cannot to this day.
Johura’s coming thinned out along the old man’s rule, from Fridays to Eid, from Eid to Barat. She came, she weeded, she gave a scrap or two of news. Paddy’s good this year. Tuni’s learning her letters, she reads out loud, slap slap. The hole in the thatch is mended. The news was small, and still I ran my days on it, the way poor people stretch a little rice with more water.
Then one winter morning two pairs of feet went along the path.
The path to the market runs right against the graveyard, and its sounds are my daily bread. One pair of feet was Johura’s; that takes me one step to know. The other pair was strange. I know every foot in this village — whose is whose, whose knee hurts, who goes carefully in the mud, all of it. A strange foot means an outsider. A man’s foot, you can tell by the weight. And the two pairs were falling in step, thud thud, thud thud, in one breath.
When strangers walk side by side the step does not fall together; it stumbles, one gets ahead, one falls back. These were in step. That is true, and this is also true: on a narrow field-path two people walking fall into step by themselves, there is no help for it, or one of them has to go down into the mud. Both are true. Since that morning I have believed the two by turns, this one one day, that one the next, and I get no ease on any day.
Some months later Tuni came, and there was a new sound at her feet. A small ringing. Anklets.
I did not give her anklets; I never had it in me to, though it is not that I never wanted to. Who gave them? Her grandmother could have. Her uncles could have. Johura could have herself, saving the paddy money. And somebody else could have too. That day Tuni was going round and round the grave talking, her voice coming near, going away, like waves, and I got half of it and lost half. Bought them at the fair, I got that much. Bajan said, I got that much.
Which Bajan. I had said nothing.
That sound has been sitting on the earth at my head ever since. Bajan. A name I was called by wants to come loose from me and settle on another man, and I hold it back, hold it back every day, and holding it I find that you cannot put a hand on a sound; a sound can only be held by the ear, and the ear does not know how to stop anything, it only lets things in.
Johura was still coming then, less and less, but coming. One afternoon she was weeding, not as she did on other days, but fast, tearing the roots one after another, no tidiness in it, no measure, as though she would be free if only she could get the job done. And then a call came from the direction of the path. Getting late.
A man’s voice. Not thick, not thin, not angry, not fond; a calling voice, a voice with the habit of calling. It had come to me along the ground, or I would not have got it; the man was perhaps squatting at the edge of the path, perhaps fixing the strap of a sandal, perhaps just sitting with his hands on his knees, the way a man waits.
Johura’s weeding stopped. One moment, two. Then she got up, shook out her clothes, and went. Two pairs of feet going away, one pair bare, one in sandals. Sandals go slap, slap; they do not know how to hide the way bare feet do, they beat their own drum at every step. I listened as far as it went. Then I listened to the silence that lies there when a sound is finished.
I got that man’s cough once too, from the path, two short barks, a bidi cough. That makes three things in my capital. The sandals, the cough, and that two-word call. Out of three sounds I set about building a whole man. Sandals mean money in hand; in a barefoot household sandals come last of all. A cough means bidis, and bidis mean a place at the market, a seat on a shop bench. And getting late means that a man who comes as far as the graveyard fence and does not come inside is either afraid or ashamed. If afraid, one kind of man; if ashamed, another. I built both kinds. I build, I listen, I break it, I build again. Whatever else is short under the earth, there is no shortage of time.
On some nights I make him a good man. A widow’s thatch has a hole in it, the paddy gets wet, the girl needs clothes, there are school fees; a man comes, mends the thatch, gets the paddy in, buys the anklets; where is the harm. I left nothing behind myself, after all, but a homestead and a shivering. On these nights I get no ease, but something like peace, the way a wet cloth feels on a fever.
And on some nights the laugh from the other side of the fence comes back. That open laugh of an Aghran afternoon. And it seems to me that the man in the sandals is not new. It seems to me he was there before, that while I was down in the low country cutting paddy he was there, that while I stood outside the fence listening and thinking everything was all right, inside everything was indeed all right, only it was not all right for me. On these nights I open Johura’s old silences one by one and look inside, and inside each of them I find a man sitting. Whose face, cannot be seen. Under the earth there is no such thing as a face.
Neither of the two can I prove.
I told the old man all of it one day. He was quiet a long time and then said, What’ll you do with hearing it. Under the earth the ear’s work is hearing, not understanding.
I said, How do I hear without understanding.
The old man said, We hear, they speak. It’s been divided up. You want too much.
Wanting too much was never a habit of mine in life; it came to me in death. I did not tell the old man that. There is no use. All the old man’s answers are made in advance, worn down, smooth; my questions are new, sharp, they stick in the hand.
Then Johura’s feet stopped coming. Out of anger, out of hurt, out of the pull of the household, out of some fault of the body — there is no way to know. On Eid mornings, on the night of Barat, I searched the crowd. Many feet, many kinds of feet, my two pairs not there. Tuni’s ringing came a while longer, alone, without her mother’s feet; she was growing, her talking was less, her going round the grave was less; one day I noticed there were no anklets, only bare feet, and even those bare feet were no longer a child’s. A girl’s feet turn one day, suddenly, into a woman’s feet, and where the days in between go nobody knows.
The last time she came was one afternoon, with several women’s feet along with her. She sat at the head, a long time, and this time her weeping came down as far as the earth. Low, pressed in, broken inside. Bajan, I got that much. I, I got that much. The rest of it stayed above, in the air, where I have no right. What she wanted to say I do not know. Before a wedding girls come to their father’s grave; I knew that rule. After that afternoon her feet did not come again. If she was married off towards the low country it is hard to come, there is a boat to hire, there is permission to get; I know, I know all of it, and it is knowing all of it that lets me cover each not-coming over with an explanation, so that I do not feel the cold.
Then the path itself moved. Which year I do not know; a big road has been made along the far bank of the river, so two cowherds were saying to each other as they passed, and I caught it between the hooves of their cattle. The drum on market days grew fainter and fainter, the running of school children grew less, the path along the graveyard must have gone over with grass; the sound of a grassed-over path and the sound of an open one are not the same. My world shrank until it came down to rain, cattle, crickets, and one night of Barat.
The old man stopped talking too. The last time he did, I asked him, Does nobody come to you?
They used to, he said. Called me by my name. Nobody says the name any more, so I don’t remember the name either.
Since then I say my own name to myself every day. Majid. Majid. And two more names with it, Johura, Tuni; the names that are lost if they are not spoken, I hold on to without a mouth. I had thought I would ask the old man his name one day, and thinking about it I left it too late; if I call him now he does not answer. Going quiet under the earth has an age of its own, and the old man has come into that age. I have time yet. How much, I do not know.
Then, how many monsoons later I could not say — I no longer keep the count of whispers — one afternoon, from the head, came the sound of a stick. Tock. And feet with it. Tock, thud thud.
It took me time to know those feet, and where to put that shame I do not know. Age changes the sound of a person’s feet, shifts the weight back onto the heel, breaks the rhythm. But it cannot do the whole of it. That measured manner of the full pot, each step asking the ground before it comes down — that was still there. No pot, the hip empty, and still the body had not forgotten.
Johura sat down at the head, slowly, with a sound of knees giving, sitting in two stages. For a long time she said nothing. Her breath was coming down into the earth, long, heavy. Then she pulled up a blade of grass. One only. That thin wet sound of a root tearing, after all these years, and it seemed to me that somebody had walked into an old house and out of habit knocked down one cobweb.
Then she said, Tuni’s had a daughter. They’ve taken a house near the ’88 embankment, they’re doing well.
A little silence. Breath.
My legs have gone, I can’t walk. I don’t know if I’ll come again.
Another silence. Longer this time. So long that I thought the talking was over and she would get up now. She did not get up. She brought her mouth closer to the earth — I heard her anchal against the ground — and she said, There’s one thing I never told you. There’s no use telling it now.
Then she got up, in two stages, leaning on the stick. Tock, thud thud. Tock, thud thud. The sound went away, and I listened, as in the elders’ saying, that the dead man hears the feet of those going back. I listened to the end. Where the sound finished I listened to the silence after it, a long while, as long as there is still something inside the silence.
She did not say the thing.
A thing not said makes no sound. And still it is now the heaviest object at the head of my grave, heavier than prayers, heavier than the earth. I build it and break it, the way I used to build and break the man in the sandals. In the monsoon I understand it one way, in Chaitra another. On some nights it seems to me that I know that thing, that I died knowing it, that the knowing was what came over me as the shivering. On some nights it seems to me that it is nothing much at all, a small thing like the hole in the thatch, like the price of paddy, not said because it was not important enough to say. Which of the two is true, there is nobody above the earth left to settle, and under the earth there never was.
That evening the rain came. Rain on the grass of an old grave, the softest sound in the world. A whisper. What it says cannot be made out. Nor is it meant to be; understanding is not my work, the old man said so. My work is listening.
I listen.
