The Rabbit
R K Biswas
The night he died, Ratnankur Roy-Dewanji saw the rabbit he had killed
more than sixty years ago. His head was not playing tricks. He was not
dreaming. Nor was it the effects of the drugs they’d been feeding him. His mind
was lucid. Clearer than it had been in the past two years. He was certain. The
rabbit was real. He saw it as clearly as he had first seen it hopping across
the road in front of his father’s car on that long ago rainy night. Ratnankur
had just learnt to drive, and often used the excuse of running errands in order
to take the car out for a spin.
Ratnankur’s father had bought the Rover from a Scotsman departing from a
newly independent India. The car shone like a new penny and purred like a just
fed cat on a warm lap. Ratnankur’s father always gave his long and luxuriously
bushy moustache a twirl before turning on the ignition. And another when the
car hummed into life and rolled forward. Ratnankur merely sat straighter when
he was behind the wheel; he didn’t have his father’s moustache. And the car
didn’t purr as much when he drove.
Ratnankur took the short cut to town past a quiet stretch with thickly
growing deciduous trees on either side. The rabbit hopped ahead, and kept at
it. Not once or twice, but almost every time. It had an unmistakable coat –
brown with a large scalene triangle of white fur on its back. There was a spot
of white on its left haunch, and its tail was brown on top and white
underneath. The rabbit ran ahead, then stopped to twitch its whiskers and
look at Ratnankur provocatively, with a gleaming black bead of an eye, before
kicking its hind legs backwards and vanishing into the undergrowth. The rabbit
was challenging him, perhaps even calling him names in his cheeky lagomorph
way.
Ratnankur was not sure when the idea first came to him. It was a thought
that quickly translated into desire and then into strong need. Before he even
realised it he found himself chasing the rabbit whenever their paths crossed.
He reasoned that the rabbit had thrown a silent challenge at him. He began
driving down the rabbit’s road regularly only for an opportunity to blossom.
But the little fellow was always a step ahead. In rain or shine, windy weather
or sultry stillness, the rabbit stayed ahead.
Ratnankur grew angrier with every failed attempt. Initially he had
thought to only scare the rabbit. He had read or heard that rabbits were easily
frightened and could even die of heart attacks. The thought of his tormentor
freezing into shock and then toppling over with the quick twitch of rigor mortis
sent a thrill down Ratnankur’s back. But the rabbit was proving to be too fast.
Or plain lucky.
Fate favours the patient. And Ratnankur managed to get the rabbit one
day. Perhaps it had grown tired of the game. Perhaps it had grown old. Or
injured. It did look like it was slower than usual, and Ratnankur thought he
detected the hint of a limp in its gait. Whatever the reason, the rabbit could
not hop away from the Rover’s wheels in time. A mini fountain of blood shot up
staining the wheel. A few drops reached the fender and one of the
headlights. When Ratnankur returned home, his father asked him about them. The
old man shook his head disapprovingly, saying that now, since Ratnankur had
given the car a taste for blood he had no desire to drive the Rover or even sit
in it. Ratnankur was welcome to drown the damn machine in the Ganges for all he
cared. Ratnankur was pleased that his little tryst with the rabbit had ended up
making him the car’s de facto owner.
Ratnankur reached for the bell. He was thirsty. The night nurse took her
own sweet time to respond. And when she did come in she was sloppy with the
water and spilled some of it on his quilt. The room was air conditioned so the
damp patch became almost instantly cold. She tucked him in a little roughly.
Then she turned away without making eye contact, and shut the door after her
with an insolent click.
Ratnankur rolled the cold part of the quilt away from him. But he felt
chilly. They hadn’t bothered to adjust the temperature to his liking. Ratnankur
pulled up the quilt again. The rabbit hopped around in the soft smoky blue of
the night light. It sat down and scratched an ear with its hind paw. Then got
busy grooming itself. It fixed an insolent black stare upon the prone man once
it finished.
Ratnankur wished he could prop himself against his pillows. He felt
certain he could have had a conversation with the animal. He wasn’t sure what
they would talk about though. Ratnankur, at that moment, had no intention of
apologising to the rabbit. Nevertheless, he did believe that given the same
circumstances today he would not have killed the poor creature. He would have
merely scared it off the road. He made an effort to prop himself up. But he had
no strength and did not feel like another visit from the night nurse. He closed
his eyes and hoped it would be morning soon.
He woke up to the sound of soft snorts and snuffles. It was eerie in the
gloom. The wall clock’s phosphorous-coated hands told him that it was two hours
past midnight. Ratnankur was certain it was the rabbit again. Maybe it had
never left at all. Why was the rabbit after him? What did it want? After so
many years? Did rabbits have spirits?
Ratnankur sat up in bed without effort, surprising himself. He felt around
for the light switch, pressed the wrong one and set off the red light outside
his room. Ratnankur groaned. Now one of the attendants or ward boys would
bungle in. They would insist on giving him the plastic urinal even if he
protested; there wasn’t any urine left in his bladder. The doctors encouraged
him to drink as much liquid as possible, and he tried his best. But his bladder,
which had acquired a will of its own these days, was decidedly disobedient. He
lay back in bed and waited for the rabbit.
The rabbit peeped from behind the curtain. It was wearing a collar with
a leash attached. Ratnankur was surprised. Whoever saw such a thing? It looked
cute and funny though. He was sorry he had killed it all those years ago. The
sorrow welled up in his heart, which had so far preferred to pump only blood.
The feeling pushed its way into his throat. His hands that lay limp against the
bedclothes began to shake. His lips trembled.
‘I am sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you. Kill
you like that. I’m sorry. My father disapproved. At that time I didn’t realise
what he’d meant by rejecting the Rover. That was his gentle protest. Yes.
That’s just what it was.’
Thinking of his father brought tears to his eyes. He wished he had been
a better son. But when he had the chance it had seemed like a daft idea to do
things simply to please his old folks. He had never taken much interest in his
own progeny, but when they grew up and left him alone, he felt affronted. He
had never stinted on their education and other things. Spent fortunes on their
marriages and bought cars and jewellery for them. But the ungrateful wretches had
no time for him.
Ratnankur grimaced. He tried to stop the flow of tears. What was wrong
with him? Why was he suddenly splitting up into two different personalities?
One sentimental and maudlin, and the other his usual practical and hard headed
self. But the memories came trooping in. They were not the remembrances of his
victories and conquests in business and love and life in general. They
presented events and occurrences he had never given a second’s thought to
before. They, the squeaky little losers, now twitched their whiskers and
pointed their thin furry paws at him accusingly.
Ratnankur remembered with a start that he had forgotten to scatter his
father’s ashes into the Ganges at Gaya a year after the cremation. It had been
his father’s wish. The small clay pot had stood in a corner of the old man’s
prayer room, gathering cobwebs. Ratnankur couldn’t remember for how long.
‘Why didn’t anyone remind me?’ He muttered in anger.
His wife was the one who should have. But she was missing. Worse, he
could hardly remember her face. It occurred to him that he had spent his whole
life with a strange woman. And now she was nowhere to be found, and he was too
helpless to go out and search for her. He tossed his head about on the thin
hospital pillow. Was she dead already? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. He
tried to visualise his children’s faces in the dreary air of the room. But the
images faltered. He thought of his father again, the Rover and the rabbit. They
were as real as the pain crawling about inside his torso.
Ratnankur’s father looked at him and shook his head sadly. He lit his
pipe and walked over to the car, still shaking his head. The right headlight
had some blood splattered on it. The rabbit sat impudently on the car’s bonnet.
Ratnankur hobbled after his father. A part of him was surprised that he could
move at all when just moments ago he could barely lift his hands up. It
occurred to him that a hospital room was an unusual place for a Rover or any
car to be parked in. But he dismissed the thought. He was still a powerful man,
and the room and medical treatment his money had purchased was the best the
country could offer. His sons knew how much he treasured the old Rover, much
more than his other cars.
‘Baba wait. I didn’t mean it. Look the rabbit is sitting on the car.
Please just stop and turn around. Baba please.’
The older man stooped to examine the blood on the headlight. He took out
a spotless white handkerchief and began to wipe off the stain. Soon the
headlight, fender and wheel were clean. He shook the now no longer white piece
of cloth and smoothened it with both hands, pipe clamped between his teeth. He
folded the handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket. He then got into the Rover
and backed it out of the room.
Ratnankur stared. The car, his car was gone. He returned to his bed
feeling petulant. What kind of a father, on the pretext of visiting his sick
son, makes off with his car?
‘It was my car,’ said Ratnankur to the rabbit who now sat on the floor
exactly where the Rover had stood seconds before. ‘Baba said he would have
nothing to do with it. He did. That makes it my car for I am his son. You know
that don’t you?’
The rabbit flopped its ears back and did a complete about turn. It
kicked its hind legs towards Ratnankur and hopped out of the room. Ratnankur
felt an uncontrollable rage bubble up inside him. He snarled at the rabbit’s
twitching tail. Something solid and stone smooth rose up from his throat and
rolled into his tongue. Involuntarily he coughed and then spat with as much
force as he could muster. The thing shot out like a bullet. The rabbit vanished
instantly. The lights began to dim around Ratnankur as he watched a small and
curiously circular black body hit the floor where the animal had been seconds
ago, before dissipating into the darkness.
RK Biswas is the author of Culling Mynahs and Crows, Lifi
Publications and Breasts and Other
Afflictions of Women, Authorspress. Her third book Immoderate Men is forthcoming from Speaking
Tiger Books. Her short fiction and poetry have been published
worldwide, notably in Asia Literary
Review, Eclectica, Per Contra, Etchings, Markings, Pushing Out the Boat, Muse India, Out of Print and Nth Position. She
won second prize in the 2016 India Currents Katha Literary Fiction Prize for
her story It Comes from Uranus. Her
novel was listed as one of the 20 most popular books published in 2014 by The
Readers’ Club, Delhi. In 2012 she won first prize in the Anam Cara
Writer's Retreat Short Story Contest. The recipient of numerous other awards
and accolades, she blogs at http://biswasrk.wordpress.com.
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