I intended to walk on the Grand Trunk Road alone and unaccompanied to the river of life and find enlightenment and liberation at last, but already at Howrah I could feel the breathing behind me, something grazing my heels, casting a black shadow, a stagnant pool into which I was sinking with every step. Had I been armed with the necessary discipline at that stage, I would not have turned around and congealed into a pillar of salt. Behind me walked Manika pushing the old lady in an ancient pram she must have found while rummaging in the black hole of Calcutta, left by the British when they absconded. Without a word I turned my back and continued walking as if I were alone.

If by the time I reached Varanasi the old lady had not yet coughed up the last of the scum blocking her liberation from the wheel of life, I would walk on to Lahore. If still she held on, I would continue walking to Peshawar. If she still refused to let go, I would walk onward over the Khyber Pass all the way to Kabul, the end of the road. There I would sit down in the midst of the dust and carnage, pry open her mouth, and root in the sludge to release her soul and deliver it in a long albuminous cord and set us free.

About the Author

Tova Reich is the author of the novels One Hundred Philistine Foreskins, My Holocaust, The Jewish War, Master of the Return, and Mara. Her stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Harper’s, AGNI, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Fiction, the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award, as well as other prizes. She lives on the fringe of Washington, DC.