The Impressionist Read Online Free PDF

The stars had contorted themselves, wrung themselves into a frightening shape. Their pattern of influences had no equilibrium. It was skewed towards passion and change. To the astrologer this distribution looked impossible. Forces tugged in all directions, the malefic qualities of the moon and Saturn auguring transmutations of every kind. It was a shape-shifting chart. A chart full of lies. He kept going back to the almanac to check his results, covering his brown-flecked paper in calculations.
    The boy’s future was obscure. The astrologer could predict none of the usual things – length of life, marital prospects, wealth. Patterns emerged, only to fade when another aspect of the conjunction was considered. Planets seemed to flit through houses, hovering between benign and malevolent positions. Clusters of possibilities formed, then fell apart. He had never been so confused by a reading.
    Perhaps (though he would not have liked to bet on it) there was a route through the chaos. If so, then it was certainly a bizarre one. How could so many delusions lead to their opposite, to the dissolution of delusion? He glanced up at the square of light in the upstairs window. The child would have to endure suffering and loss. Could he really tell the father this? The man was grieving for his wife. On the table, a mandala of crisped moth corpses lay around the lamp. The astrologer thought of the dead woman, and shuddered.
    When the maid came back, she found him sitting in front of a fresh, neat chart depicting a bland future of long life, many sons and business success. The torn-up pieces of the first attempt had been stuffed, out of sight, into his case.
    When the astrologer brought the master his new son’s chart, Pandit Razdan seemed satisfied, but everyone knows that astrologers say what their clients want to hear. If a man’s beard is on fire there is always someone who will warm their hands on it, but then again who gives a tip to the bearer of bad news? As soon as Anjali saw the white-skinned baby, she knew it was ill-starred.
    The baby cooed and gurgled, and a boy ran down to the cremation ghats for a priest, and the midwives burned bloody sheets in the garden. No one, it seemed, had a thought for the dead mother beyond disposing of her body as quickly as possible. The girl had been an anomaly, an irritant against the skin of a smooth-running household. Now there was a silent agreement to treat her as a vision, a temporary phenomenon which had simply evaporated.
    Anjali too thought it was for the best that Amrita had died. It was a wonder she had lasted so long. The family seemed overjoyed by their son. So big! So healthy! Yet she could not look at the child without thinking of his true parentage, of a Brahmin woman defiled by the pale man in the photograph. Still, she might have been able to hold her tongue – if the child had not become such a monster.
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    It was obvious even when Pran Nath was small. He spat, kicked shins, and then threw tantrums when anyone dared to punish him. He was given fine clothes, which he tore to shreds, and a roomful of toys, which he pounded to splinters. The presents were a substitute for speaking to the boy, which his father did rarely, and then only in the form of clipped admonishments, like excerpts from a book of household hints. Keep your hair clean as a precaution against infestation. Memorize the various ways of starting a letter.
    When Pran reached the age of six, a tutor was employed to administer the tripartite programme of moral, intellectual and physical education which Amar Nath Razdan had outlined in his article ‘Towards an Uplifting Hindu Pedagogy’. He left after a week, nursing a broken ankle that had been caused, he claimed, by his charge tripping him down a steep flight of stairs. He was followed by a series of others, none of whom lasted more than a few months. After the injured man came an ex-army sergeant who had a breakdown when he found his cherished cache of