At once, the man drew his bitten leg along the river bed and limped to the bank. There he sat with his hurt foot still underwater. He folded the other leg and he held his palms folded pleadingly to Nayakkar.

What was that partially submerged in the water next to his extended foot? For a moment neither Nayakkar nor the goldsmith could recognize it. But the goldsmith saw the ear ornament that had slipped out of the man’s waist, lying now on the wet ground.

At once, he recognized whom the ornaments belonged to. He was an artisan, and these were made by him, by his own hands. It is only after he saw them that he recognized the drowned body.

Nayakkar dug his raised bamboo rod into the bed and stood leaning on it. Then, he drew the soaked body out on the bank. The thief tried to tear his toe from her stiff lips, but he could not. Her teeth had dug deep into his toe. Krishnappa Nayakkar pulled out the dagger from the thief’s waist and chopped off his foot at the bitten toe.

As the dagger knifed through his flesh, the man roared in pain. Nayakkar gave him a blow on the chest with his elbow. The knock was so powerful that the man stopped screaming and merely opened and shut his mouth.

Once he was done with cutting off the toe, Nayakkar took out a thick rope from the cart, drew the man’s arms behind and tied them up and knotted the other end to the spokes of one of the wheels. The foot was bleeding profusely from the spot where the toe had been cut off.

The woman lay on the ground with her mouth partially open, her ears torn at the lobes, the tip of the bloody toe peeking from her lips like it was a piece of sugarcane. She looked frightening.

Nayakkar silenced the terrified goldsmith with a look, picked up the blood-soaked dagger and walked fast towards the village. As he turned the corner, he could the heart-wrenching cry.

‘Oh, you sinful woman! I never imagined such a pathetic death for you. Aiyyo … Aiyyo … why am I not dead yet? Why am I still alive?’

The goldsmith slapped his face with both his hands and writhed on the ground like a worm and wailed.

‘You who think it a sin to even kill an ant. My princess, where did he find the heart to murder you. Aiyyo!’

His cries bore the immensity and goriness of a man’s loss.

4

GOVINDAPPA NAYAKKAR HAD JUST FINISHED his lunch and was sitting on the concrete bench under the neem tree in his front yard, chewing betel leaf. In front of him next to the fort wall was Oorkudumban, standing with folded arms.

He was the man-servant of the house. He’d stand there, whether there was work or not: like a live statue.

Govindappa Nayakkar took another round of betel leaf. Each time he needed five arcca nuts.