The Impressionist Read Online Free PDF Page A

more or less dashing as he arrived at the head of the wedding procession. There was, however, one thing of which Anjali strongly disapproved: the sapphire set into the bride’s necklace. Sapphires are tricky gems, and though they can deflect Saturn’s harmful rays, they can also focus them.
    Amar Nath was obviously taken aback by his wife’s eagerness in the marriage bed. Anjali, who had joined the household with her mistress, sat up late and listened to his gasps of surprise, little kittenish sounds that carried out of the window and up to the roof where she lay. As she would later remark to the paanvendor, it was a fair bet that this serious boy was not expecting his silent bride to take charge in such a manner. Lucky for her he was so unworldly. Anyone else would have become suspicious. But although rumours of the bride’s adventures had already reached as far as the hijras who came to mock the wedding guests, Amar Nath and his family were too lofty to listen to the prattle of eunuchs or servants. With his new wife installed safely in his house, the bridegroom returned to his ruminations about disputed land boundaries and the value of Persian in the education of young gentlemen. So nine months passed, or perhaps a little less, while the young husband attended public meetings, the young wife grew big and Anjali surrounded herself with a delicious web of speculation and rumour. Then one afternoon, a shriek echoed around the courtyard. Amrita had gone into labour. The baneful influences of the sapphire and the mole started to take effect.
    The astrologer was called well before Pran Nath made his entry into the world. The family installed the man under a fan on a shady veranda, where he sat drinking sweet tea and clutching his case of charts.
    He waited for a very long time.
    He finished his tea. He put his case neatly on the table in front of him. He ate some fruit, peeling it carefully with a sharp knife. He declined more tea. He stood up and stretched, feeling his vertebrae click satisfyingly into place. He declined lime soda. The screams of the labouring mother echoed around the garden.
    Later the astrologer took a short walk, smelling the jasmine and enjoying the shade of the trees. The gardener was watering a bed of delicate white lilies, and the astrologer stopped to praise him for his work. The mali beamed with pride. Then the two of them fell silent, listening as the gasps and sobs from the mother’s apartment became more anguished.
    As the sun dipped low over the roofs, he was offered a bed on which to relax. He accepted, but found it difficult to doze. Though his business was birth and its meanings, he always found the actual event distressing. The blood and pain. It was a woman’s thing, beyond the fathoming of a man, even one educated in the science of Jyotish, to whom most common mysteries are transparent. He preferred to think of birth as a mathematical event, the stately progression of planets and constellations through clearly defined houses, gridded sections of airless space. This agony, the scurrying of maids, the scene of mess and horror that was no doubt unfolding in the upstairs room, all of it was most unpleasant. It was not nice to think of the planets tugging so hard at this unfortunate woman’s womb. The astrologer always imagined stellar influence as something ethereal, light to the touch.
    Then everything fell ominously silent. He strained his ears into the gathering darkness, hearing the immense noise of insects, the rasp of parrots arguing in the trees. Nothing else. Nothing human. Soon a maid came, carrying an oil lamp which she set on the table in front of him. At once, moths started beating against its glass sides.
    ‘The baby is born,’ said the maid, with an odd, triumphant expression on her face. ‘It is a boy. The mother is dead.’
    He nodded resignedly. Then he looked at his watch, opened his case, took out pen and paper, and set to work.
    The chart was strange and frightening.