Harbart

Nabarun Bhattacharya

Contents (14)

Harbart

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Originally published as Herbert in 1994 by Deys Publishers, Calcutta

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published as New Directions Paperbook 1451 in 2019

Design by Erik Rieselbach

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bhattacharya, Nabarun, author. | Banerjee, Sunandini, translator. | Deb, Siddhartha, 1970– author of afterword.

Title: Harbart / Nabarun Bhattacharya ; translated from the Bengali by Sunandini Banerjee ; with an afterword by Siddhartha Deb.

Other titles: Harabarta. English

Description: New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2019. | “A New Directions paperbook.” | “Originally published as Herbert in 1994 by Deys Publishers, Calcutta”—T.p. verso.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019004325 | ISBN 9780811224734 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Spiritualism—India—Fiction. | Orphans—India—Fiction. | Kolkata (India)—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PK1730.14.A775 H3713 2019 | DDC 891.4/4371—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004325

eISBN: 9780811224741

New Directions books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

Harbart

One

No ties round my feet, no heart to my beat,

Eye-open nirvana, my soul waits, still.

—Bijoychandra Majumdar

“Let him sleep. He’ll be alright if he sleeps.”

May 25, 1992: Borka had spoken those words on the way back from the “Conversations with the Dead” office—Harbart’s room—spoken them deep into the night, late into the darkness, to the house in the lane … the road in the house … the house in the street … the house back home.

For Koton, Somnath, Koka, Daktar, and Borka, the memories of the walk back home after the drinking that night are jumbled. Slime on the face of the moon. The frothy-foaming light-dust of the streetlights. Everything slippery with heat. And from the pits of their bellies, curdled chops and chana and whisky and rum and ice water roaring up into their throats. Swarms of cockroaches seething out of the gutter grilles and flying up into the streetlights’ glow. Koka vomiting against the Dutta-house gates—hot, sour, and slithering vomit—Borka could still smell its acid reek. Daktar and Koton playing piss-cross games. Like a dirty sack, an oily cloud suddenly covers the moon. At the turn to the cowmen’s slums, a Corporation tap. A mumble-mad woman sitting there in rags, legs wide open, splashing the water. Every now and then an owl letting out a screech and the skin-rotten street dogs whimpering in their dreams.

On the roof of Harbart Sarkar’s house sat a Star-TV-signal-sucking satellite dish, gaping up at the night sky, hoping to swallow a falling star.