"You always had a way with words."
"Thank you,"
Yaksha hesitates. "Do you have any last words?"
"A few. May I decide how we die?"
"You want us to die together?"
"Of course," I say.
Yaksha nods. "I prefer it that way." He glances at the crate of dynamite beside him. "You have made us a bomb, I see. I like bombs."
"I know. You can be the one to light it. You see the fuse there, the lighter beside it? Go ahead, old friend, strike the flame. We can burn together." I lean forward. "Maybe we should have burned a long time ago."
Yaksha picks up the lighter. He considers Ray. "How do you feel, young man?"
"Strange," Ray says.
"I would set you free if I could," Yaksha says, "I would leave you both alone. But it has to end, one way or the other."
This is a Yaksha I have never heard before. He never explained himself to anyone.
"Sita has told me your reasons," Ray says.
"Your father is dead," Yaksha says.
"I know."
Yaksha pulls his thumb across the lighter and stares at it. "I never knew my father."
"I saw him once," I say. "Ugly bastard. Are you going to do it or do you want me to do it?"
"Are you so anxious to die?" Yaksha asks.
"I never could wait for the excitement to begin," I say sarcastically.
He nods and moves the flame to the end of the fuse. It begins to fizzle, it begins to shortenquickly. There are three minutes of time coiled in that combustible string. Yaksha sits back in his chair.
"I had a dream as I walked by the ocean tonight," he says. "Listening to the sound of the waves, it seemed I entered a dimension where the water was singing a song that no one had ever heard before. A song that explained everything in the creation. But the magic of the song was that it could never be recognized for what it was, not by any living soul. If it was, if the truth was brought out into the open and discussed, then the magic would die and the waters would evaporate. And that is what happened in my dream as this realization came to me. I came into the world. I killed all the creatures the waters had given life to, and then one day I woke up and realized I had been listening to a song. Just a sad song."
"Played on a flute?" I ask.
The fuse burns.
There is no reason for me to delay. Yet I do.
His dream moves me.
"Perhaps," Yaksha says softly. "In the dream the ocean vanished from my side. I walked along an endless barren plain of red dust. The ground was a dark red, as if a huge being had bled over it for centuries and then left the sun to parch dry what the being had lost."
"Or what it had stolen from others," I say.
"Perhaps," Yaksha says again.
"What does this dream mean?" I ask.
"I was hoping you could tell me, Sita."
"What can I tell you? I don't know your mind."
"But you do. It is the same as yours."
"No."
"Yes. How else could I know your mind?"
I tremble. His voice has changed. He is alert, he always was, to everything that was happening around him. I was a fool to think I could trick him. Yet I do not reach for the metal rod that will detonate the bomb. I try to play the fool a little longer. I speak.
"Maybe your dream means that if we stay on earth,
and once more multiply, then we will make a wasteland of this world."
"How would we multiply this late in the game?" he asks. "I told you you can have no children. Krishna told you something similar." It is his turn to lean forward. "What else did he tell you, Sita?"
"Nothing."
"You are lying."
"No."
"Yes." With his left hand he reaches for the burning fuse, his fingers hovering over the sparks as if he intends to crush them. Yet he lets the countdown continue. "You cannot trick me."
"And how do I trick you, Yaksha?"
"You are not waiting to die. I see it in your eyes."
"Really?"
"They are not like my eyes."
"You are a vampire," I say. Casually, as if I am stretching, I move my hand toward the lamp stand. "You can't look in a mirror. There would be nothing there. What do you know about your own eyes?" I joke, of course. I am one bundle of laughs.
He smiles. "I am happy to see time has not destroyed your wit. I hope it has not destroyed your reason. You are quick. I am quicker. You can do nothing that I cannot stop." He pauses. "I suggest you stop."
My hand freezes in midair. Damn, I think. He knows, of course he knows.
"I cannot remember what he said," I say.
"Your memory is perfect, as is mine."
"Then you tell me what he said."
"I cannot. He whispered in your ear. He did that so that I would not hear. He knew I was listening, even though I was lying there with the venom in my veins. Yes, I heard your original vow to him. But he did not want me to hear the last part. He would have had his reasons, I'm sure, but the time for those reasons must be past. We are both going to die in a few seconds. Did he make you take a second vow?"
The fuse burns.
"No."
Yaksha sits up. "Did he say anything about me?"
Shorter and shorter it burns.
"No!"
"Why won't you answer my question?"
The truth bursts out of me. I have wanted to say it for so long. "Because I hate you!"
"Why?"
"Because you stole away my love, my Rama and Lalita. You steal my love away now, when I have finally found it again. I will hate you for eternity, and if that is not enough to stop you from being in his grace, then I will hate him as well." I point to Ray. "Let him go. Let him live."
Yaksha is surprised. I have stunned the devil. "You love him. You love him more than your own life."
There is only pain in my chest. The fourth center, the fourth note. It is as if it is off key. "Yes."
Yaksha's tone softens. "Did he tell you something about love?"
I nod, weeping, I feel so helpless. "Yes."
"What did he tell you?"
"He said, where there is love, there is my grace." The sound of his flute is too far away. There is no time to be grateful for what I have been given in my long life. I feel as if I will choke on my grief. I can only see Ray, my lover, my child, all the years he will be denied. He looks at me with such trusting eyes, as if somehow I will still manage to save him. "He told me to remember that."