Monograph of a Murder

I no longer fear death. I no longer value life. Its remnants lie curled up cold and clammy inside me, waiting to be snuffed out.

It began with envy: the envy of a friend. What ended it was a poem. The sequence of events, as they unfolded are recorded here.

I attribute my present condition to Ajaya´s death, For a week or two after that, memories of my life are at best hazy. I probably went through the motions of living.

My wife doubtless suspects that my behaviour is related to my friend´s death. Her anxiety became obvious when she referred to my odd behaviour later. If only she knew.

Ajaya was the only person who meant something to me, who listened to what I had to say and understood me. I admired him very much. Everybody admired him. His first book of poems had attracted much attention. Some critics even regarded him as the most promising poet of the nineties. This was not his only talent. He could gather friends and aquaintances—even those who scarcely knew him -— and hold them in thrall for hours in a web of words, telling stories, reciting, or arguing with precision and wit.

Adulation and artistic recognition did not however, turn his head. He welcomed the company of his friends with the same easy warmth. He did not suspect the envy that lurked in me, eating away my soul. My bitternesss stemmed from the knowledge that I could neither captivate audiences nor write fine poems. My envy was a recurring interference in my passion for his company. I almost showed it the day the reviews of his book came in. So, secretly, I nursed my — yes — jealousy.

Matters finally came to a head one summer evening. Searching through haunts, I finally located him at a comer table with his girl. I hesitated because she did not like me. But I approached them anyway. She looked up at me, turned to him and complained audibly, "Here comes that bore!" My blood surged. Angrily I retorted. Words flew, it looked like the beginnings of a war. Ajaya tried to calm us down. He did not reproach her. Instead he asked me to calm down. The implications sank in. I walked out, brushing aside his protests.

Bore!

The word rang in my brain. I strode down the street unmindful of my course. Only when I reached there did I realise that my feet had carried me to my usual refuge near the Teesta river.

Wearily I sat on a fiat rock that served as a bench, From here the town´s lights shimmered across the curve of the water. Tonight the moon seemed remote and the night failed to move me. My mind was a mass of colliding thoughts. When at last I could think more coolly, I went home.

For the next few days I did not go to work, although that would have helped to forget. Instead I stayed home and brooded. Reading was difficult. I skimmed through several books, but nothing caught my interest until I picked up a collection of poems by a South American poet. One of them drew my attention. It was titled MAY 20, 1928 (ON THE DEATH OF FRANSISCO LOPEZ MERINO). On a second reading, I grew exited. And the more I read it, the better I liked it. The poet had imbued the poem with uncanny insight. Or perhaps he had generously attributed to the protagnist his own sensibility and delicate nuances of feeling.

My immediate impulse was to go to Ajaya´s house and show him the poem. In the excitement, my hurt was forgotton. With his perception and passion, the poem could scarcely fail to move him. But there ran in him a morbid streak which unnerved me at times. Sometimes he grew melancholy for no reason and talked gloomily of a meaningless life. I thought this to be an affectation but later realised it was genuine. And dangerous. The sane and the insane are seperated by a thin line after all. But even as I hesitated about showing him the poem, an idea, fantastic in scope, logical in its implausibility, took shape.

Shoving aside my compunctions, I visited him early the next morning. Awake, he sat in bed, sipping tea. He smiled as he saw me. I felt guilty, and ashamed over having avoided him over the past few days. Soon we were arguing as furiously as before. I realised how much I had missed him.

I took out the book and showed him the poem-He ran his eyes down the page. A second time. More slowly. Then.

"A good poem."

I returned home, my enthusiasm cooled by his lukewarm response.

He surprised me, however, by joining me for a stroll early next morning. Seeing the question in my eyes, he launched into an explanation. He had read the poem again, and liked it more. With each subsequent reading, new meanings sprang up. From insignificant little actions, a sensuous portrait emerged. What a romantic! Imagine being able to die such an artistic death.

Was I amazed, then? Maybe.

I pulled him up for such rash thoughts but the devil in me shouted in glee. I pretended to caution him, yet I kept stoking the fire. I did not allow him to forget. When his enthusiasm burned too brightly, I pretended to douse it.

It was a strange situation.

The whole affair might not have taken such a turn but for two (for him) unfortunate incidents. First, his brother, his only family, died. That shook him. Then on top of that, his girlfriend became schizophrenic and was put away.

Just when he needed my stabilising presence, I left for Calcutta. It was an official trip. I could have delayed it. I did not.

I returned two weeks later.

He was dead.

Though I had worked to undermine him, the news came as a blow. Without him life became lusterless. Like so many others, I was now a vegetable. I could bear it no longer.

So here I am, once again on my rocky bench over the river. Watching for the last time the lights of the town and the shimmering water. There is no moon.

Soon I will press this weapon to my head. And end it in the way, I suppose, Francisco Lopez Merino did.