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told the story before, so the desire to create a reaction was obvious. I was looking out the window at the groundskeeper. He was walking around the compound sprinkling the dust with water from a bag the size of a man's body that was slung over one shoulder. When I did not turn around at the story's end, Pitaji said, "I'm sorry. I'm an old man. I shouldn't always be trying to get pity." This self-awareness made me feel for the first time that Pitaji need not have raped me. I had been raped because for Pitaji no one was as real as he was, so nothing he did to others had substance. My anger kept me from moving. When I did begin turning to him, I was frightened I might stab him with the scissors on the stool near his bed.
    This rage did not evaporate. I now hated Pitaji constantly. It was like a steady buzz in the background. Once, he screamed at me for not giving him his food on time, and I took his lunch and scraped it into the trash canister. "What will you eat now?" I said. I stopped giving him his lunch till he asked. If he forgot to take his medicines, I did not remind him.
    I also imagined Ma getting pneumonia that caused her lungs to collapse. I liked to think of her struggling to breathe. But to neither one did I show my feelings directly. I might show disrespect or challenge Ma over every petty thing, but to say something directly about what Pitaji had done felt like the end of the world.
    I did not see Rajinder for the two weeks I was with my parents. But thinking of Rajinder was a comfort, like the reality of the bed during malarial dreams.
    My hatred was so constant that it was as if gravity had increased. It exhausted me. But when I slept, as soon as I gained a certain minimum relief, I woke. My eyelids sometimes twitched for a minute at a time. My temper was wild. Kusum suggested I should go to a doctor; I answered, "My eyelids twitch, Kusum, because I work all day while you read in your air-conditioned laboratory."
    Around eleven the day Pitaji was released, an ambulance carried him home to the Old Vegetable Market. Two orderlies, muscular men in white uniforms, carried his bulk on a stretcher up the stairs into the flat. Fourteen or fifteen people came out into the courtyard to watch. Some of the very old women, sitting on cots in the courtyard, kept asking who Pitaji was, although he had lived there six years. A few children climbed into the ambulance. They played with the horn till somebody chased them out.
    The orderlies laid Pitaji on the cot in his bedroom before leaving. It was a small dark room, smelling faintly of the kerosene with

    which the bookshelves were treated every other week to prevent termites. Traveling had tired him. He fell asleep quickly. Pitaji woke as I was about to leave. I was whispering to Ma outside his bedroom.
    "I don't know when I'm coming back. I have my own family."
    "How much I suffer, only God knows."
    "You should have made him go to a doctor right in the beginning."
    "What could I do? I can't make him do anything."
    "Are you talking about me?" Pitaji tried to call out, but his voice was like wind on dry grass.
    "You want something?" Ma asked.
    "Water."
    As I started toward the fridge. Ma said, "You can't give him anything cold."
    I got water from the clay pot. Kneeling beside the cot, I helped Pitaji rise to a forty-five-degree angle. Ma had undressed him. He was wearing only his undershorts. His heaviness, the weakness of his body made me feel as if I were embracing an enormous larva. Pitaji held the glass with both hands. He made sucking noises as he drank. I lowered him when his shoulder muscles slackened. His eyes moved about the room slowly.
    "More?" he asked.
    "There's no more," I said, even though there was. Ma was clattering in the kitchen. "I'm going home."
    "Rajinder is good?" He looked at the ceiling while speaking.
    "Yes," I said. "The results for his exam came. He'll be promoted. He came second in all Delhi." Telling him this felt like a taunt, as if I was