'What about Pram?' I said, watching Indiri carefully. 'Could he be a sutra, or even a candala?'
I had expected some kind of reaction, but not laughter. It just didn't go with our conversation. 'I'm sorry, Dr. Frederickson,' Indiri said, reading my face. 'That just struck me as being funny. Pram's family is Ksatriyana, the same as mine.'
'Where does a Ksatriyana fit into the social scheme of things?'
'A Ksatriyana is very high,' she said. I decided it was to her credit that she didn't blush. 'Ksatriyana is almost interchangeable with Brahman, which is usually considered the highest caste. Buddha himself was a Ksatriyana. A member of such a family could never be considered a sutra, much less a candala.'
'What about Dr. Dev Reja? What's his pedigree?'
'He is a Brahman.'
I nodded. I had no time to answer Indiri's unspoken questions; I still had too many of my own. I thanked her and left. The subject of our conversation had left a dusty residue on the lining of my mind and I gulped thirstily at the cool night air.
I needed an excuse to speak to Pram, so I picked up his clothes from the common locker we shared in the gym and cut across the campus to his residence.
It was a small building, a cottage really, converted into apartments for those who preferred a certain kind of rickety individuality to the steel-and-glass anonymity of the high-rise student dorms. There was a light on in Pram's second-floor room. I went inside and up the creaking stairs. The rap of my knuckles on the door coincided with another sound that could have been a chair tipping over onto the floor. I raised my hand to knock again, and froze. There was a new sound, barely perceptible but real nonetheless; it was the strangling rasp of a man choking to death.
I grabbed the knob and twisted. The door was locked. I had about three feet of space on the landing, and I used every inch of it as I stepped back and leaped forward, kipping off the floor, kicking out with my heel at the door just above the lock. It gave. The door flew open and I hit the floor, slapping the wood with my hands to absorb the shock and immediately springing to my feet. The scene in the room branded its image on my mind even as I leaped to right the fallen chair.
Two factors were responsible for the fact that Pram was still alive: He had changed his mind at the last moment, and he was a lousy hangman to begin with. The knot in the plastic clothesline had not been tied properly, and there had not been enough slack to break his neck; he had sagged rather than fallen through the air. His fingers clawed at the thin line, then slipped off. His legs thrashed in the air a good two feet above the floor; his eyes bulged and his tongue, thick and black, protruded from his dry lips like an obscene worm. His face was blue. He had already lost control of his sphincter and the air was filled with a sour, fetid smell.
I quickly righted the chair and placed it beneath the flailing feet, one of which caught me in the side of the head, stunning me. I fought off the dizziness and grabbed his ankles, forcing his feet onto the chair. That wasn't going to be enough. A half-dead, panic-stricken man with a rope around his neck choking the life out of him doesn't just calmly stand up on a chair. I jumped up beside him, bracing and lifting him by his belt while, with the other hand, I stretched up and went to work on the knot in the clothesline. Finally it came loose and Pram suddenly went limp. I ducked and let Pram's body fall over my shoulder. I got down off the chair and carried him to the bed. I put my ear to his chest; he was still breathing, but just barely. I grabbed the phone and called for an ambulance. After that I called my brother.
3
Pram's larynx wasn't damaged and, with a little difficulty, he could manage to talk, but he wasn't doing any of it to Garth.
'What can I tell you, Mongo?' Garth said. He pointed to the closed door of Pram's hospital room, where we had just spent a fruitless half hour trying to get Pram to open up about what had prompted him to try to take his own life. 'He says nobody's done anything to him. Actually, by attempting suicide, he's the one who's broken the law.'
I muttered a carefully selected obscenity.
'I didn't say I was going to press charges against him,' Garth grunted. 'I'm just trying to tell you that I'm not going to press charges against anyone else either. I can't. Whatever bad blood there is between your friend and this Dev Reja, it obviously isn't a police matter. Not until and unless some complaint is made.'
I was convinced that Pram's act was linked to Dev Reja, and I'd hoped that a talk with Pram would provide the basis for charges of harassment-or worse-against the other man. Pram had refused to even discuss the matter, just as he had refused to let Indiri even see him. I thanked my brother for his time and walked him to the elevator. Then I went back to Pram's room.
I paused at the side of the bed, staring down at the young man in it who would not meet my gaze. The fiery rope burns on his neck were concealed beneath bandages, but the medication assailed my nostrils. I lifted my hands in a helpless gesture and sat down in a chair beside the bed, just beyond Pram's field of vision.
'It does have something to do with Dev Reja, doesn't it, Pram?' I said after a long pause.
'What I did was a terrible act of cowardice,' Pram croaked into the silence. 'I must learn to accept. I
'Accept what?' I said very carefully, leaning forward.
Tears welled up in Pram's eyes, brimmed at the lids, then rolled down his cheeks. He made no move to wipe them away. 'My birth,' he said in a tortured whisper. 'I must learn to accept the fact of my birth.'
'What are you talking about? You are a Ksatriyana. Indiri told me.'
Pram shook his head. 'I am a. . sutra.' I tried to think of a way to frame my next question, but it wasn't necessary. Now Pram's words flowed out of him like pus from a ruptured boil. 'You see, I am adopted,' Pram continued. 'That I knew. What I did not know is that I am illegitimate, and that my real mother was a sutra. Therefore, on
'A sutra cannot marry a Ksatriyana. It would not be right.' I started to speak but Pram cut me off, closing his eyes and shaking his head as though in great pain. 'I cannot explain,' he said, squeezing the words out through lips that had suddenly become dry and cracked. 'You must simply accept what I tell you and know that it is true. I know why Dr. Dev Reja called me a candala; he thought I had gone to you to discuss something which has nothing to do with someone who is not Indian. It does not matter that it was said in anger, or that he was mistaken in thinking it was me who had come to you; he was right about me being a candala. I have proved it by my actions. I have behaved like a coward. It is in my blood.'
'If you want to call yourself a fool, I might agree with you,' I said evenly. 'Do you think Indiri gives a damn what caste you come from?' There was a rage building inside me and I had to struggle to keep it from tainting my words.
Pram suddenly looked up at me. Now, for the first time, life had returned to his eyes, but it was a perverted life, burning with all the intensity of a fuse on a time bomb. 'Having Indiri know of my low station would only increase my humiliation. I have told you what you wanted to know, Dr. Frederickson. Now you must promise to leave me alone and to interfere no further.'
'You haven't told me anything that makes any sense,' I said, standing up and leaning on the side of the bed. 'A few days ago you were a fairly good-looking young man, a better than average student deeply loved by the most beautiful girl on campus. Now you've refused to even see that girl and, a few hours ago, you tried to take your own life. You're falling apart, and all because some silly bastard called you a
I paused and took a deep breath. I realized that my bedside manner might leave something to be desired, but at the moment I felt Pram needed something stronger than sympathy-something like a kick in the ass.
