And Harbart dreamed a dream:

What revelry is this, that you don a human part

Are they, then, so close to your heart?

Nagendrabala Mustafi

Enormous, endless, a curtain of glass. On this side, running along its length, a broken-battered dirt track. On that side, at the base of a golden mountain, a vast cave from whose ceiling hang slivers of stone, like a crystal chandelier, from whose floor rise rivulets of rock—Harbart can hear Binu’s voice clearly—the ones that hang from the roof are stalactites, the ones that rise from the ground are stalagmites—that’s right, Binu had pointed them out in a book. Then the mountain comes to an end. Walking on, walking on and on. Sometimes, on the other side of the glass, water. Sometimes, sky. The light is fading. It’s such a long way back. Back where? As soon as this fear touches his heart, a cloud of crows collects on the other side. Pecking. Flapping. But making no sound.

Crow blood and crow shit slowly smear-soil the glass.

Then, through a gap in the crow-cumulus, Harbart sees Binu.

The middle of the 1980s—after Binu’s death, this is the first of Binu.

Binu standing still. Binu saying something. Waves of crows wash over him, hide him from view. At the foot of the glass, on the other side, crow corpses fall and fester. Binu comes closer. Binu smiles. Harbart smiles back. Waves. The words, Binu’s words, echoing on this side, stained with the strains of a song from a distant speaker …

“Harbart-kaka, prayer room, diary … Harbart … kaka … diary behind Kali’s picture … diary …”

Binu is close to the glass. Binu is staring. People don’t usually stare that way. Not hoping to see anything, but staring anyway.

Harbart sat up with a start. Swiped his shirt cuff across his mouth and wiped away the dream-dribble. Raised his sleepy eyes to the sky and saw a rainbow—saw what looked like people walking over that rainbow. The sound of the heart-train thundering. The sound of the city blundering about.

Harbart came down. Not to the prayer room. But straight to the second-floor veranda. Jyathaima was sitting on a mat. Krishna-dada, Dhanna-dada, and Dhanna-boudi were drinking tea. Dhanna was about to say something when Harbart screamed: “Jyathaima! I had a dream! Binu came. He said …”

(Then he was confused. But then he remembered, shifting and faint …)

Krishna-dada smiled. “You saw Binu in a dream?”

Then he remembered everything.

“See? How could I see? So many crows I could barely see. Binu, Binu said—come, come with me, Jyathaima …”

“Calm down,” Dhanna-dada said, “then tell us. It’s easy to get confused. A dream, after all!”

“He said, in Jyathaima’s prayer room, behind the Kali picture” (Harbart touched his forehead in respect), “behind it is Binu’s diary.”

Jyathaima tried to rise from the mat: “Here, help me up. Mother, oh my knees, oh mother mine.”

Harbart remembered it clearly, Jyathaima, hobbling in front, then Harbart, then Dhanna-dada and boudi, and finally Krishna-dada climbing up the barely lit stairs. Then, the door of the prayer room was unbolted. The dim light was switched on. The picture of Kali hanging almost in the middle of the wall. Jyathaima first bowed her head before the goddess, then gripped the lower edge of the picture and tugged. A lizard darted out from behind it, ran up across the wall. “Dhanna, pull,” Jyathaima said, “She’s so heavy—how I can lift her alone?”