She faced him as she spoke of how her stay was at her mother’s. She sat on a low wooden stool on the floor, peeling the radishes and slicing them in coin shape. Already, her nose had scrunched up. She found the smell of radish overpowering: why even eat this thing? It’s known to cause gas in the stomach and then loud farts. Her husband was not immune to them. But the radishes were his favorite. Saute them in oil, turmeric, salt, and he would cram down two bowls of them in one meal. And then he would belch and fart in his sleep all night long, punching the fresh air out of the room. But, she didn’t want to say no to radishes today. Not today. Plus, she arrived this afternoon from her mother’s and he had been without radishes for whole eleven days.

He sat on his chair, which was pushed all the way to the wall, without his shirt and in his lungi. He took one last puff from the cigarette and dropped the butt into the finished cup of tea. The dregs at the bottom of the cup met the fiery tip, and the hissing brought him small satisfaction. Like it always did. He turned the newspaper to the international section.

“I said my mother is coming to stay with us for a month,” she repeated.

“Very good!” He lowered the newspaper to make eye-contact with her to assure her that the piece of information registered on him. That’s when he spotted it. Looking past his wife, he spotted the tail, the lower half of it, dangling from the bottom edge of the storing shelf. The rat had taken a leisurely refuge (that’s what it looked like) behind the square tin container which had parched rice in it. From time to time, its tail moved like a windshield wiper.

This was not right. This was the precise reason why his wife took off to her mother’s. For months now, the rat infestation had bothered them. The pests hustled in and out of kitchen outlets, backdoor, metal scrap pile on the back verandah, and the hallway after dark. Either way, their activity was limited to running away from them. But one day a rat landed on his wife’s shoulder. The audacity of the leap gave his wife a near heart attack. Till that point she had tolerated the slackness on part of her husband in getting rid of the infestation, but she could no longer overlook it. These damn pests have become encroachers, threatening to push her out of her own house.

She set a firm condition with her husband that until the rats were gone (really gone!) she wouldn’t live in this house and off she went to her mother’s. He toiled frantically for next few days, purchasing industrial strength rat poison, handling it with rubber gloves, mashing the poison in potato chops, and planting the bait strategically around the house. In total, he killed eight of them, of different sizes and stage of growth. He would wake up in the middle of the night to pee, forgetful of the trap he had set. He would step on one of the carcasses and startle himself. After the first week of the extermination, the house was quiet. He was vigilant and apprehensive. For three continuous days, he didn’t spot any movement. He declared instant victory and called his wife to return home. He peddled sweeping assertions over the phone, bragged a bit too. He revised the number upward to eighteen. He lied that he hadn’t seen any rats for eight days; all of them died in the first two days. The poison was so potent that even the ant and cockroach colonies in the house have shrunk. His wife lapped it all up and took the train back home the next day. And if she saw this rat now, she would be gone again. Perhaps for a couple of months this time. Their marriage was not that old: the moment the house went dark at night often their hands roved each other’s body hungrily.

He calculated a set of moves that would be casual and doubly deceptive. He gingerly walked toward the kitchen under the pretext of getting water from the fridge. As he entered the narrow hallway, which connected the kitchen with the drawing room, he came face to face with the wall against which the storing shelf was leant. He must have glided on air or the rat was super complacent, since it still latched itself to the same spot, the tail canoodling the air. He leaned upon the tin container, piling his whole body weight upon it. The rat was trapped between the container and the wall, and it fought back with surprising recoil. He needed to be balanced in his posture. If he pushed too hard then the container would make enough noise to draw his wife’s attention who had her head down and glued to the radishes, oblivious to the battle behind her. He kept up his leaning repose and increased the pressure. On the other side of the container, the rat was not finished yet. It fought back in waves. Just when he thought he was done with it, a renewed spell of struggle came. So much life in such a tiny thing. It surprised, but mostly, concerned him. A teeny cry finally came. It reached his wife’s ears. She lifted her head but didn’t turn around. He gave it a few more minutes and then let go the container. The rat dropped into a pile of cloth bags below without making any noise. That was convenient. He studied his victory and stole glances at his wife to ensure that she hadn’t sniffed out the intruder. The rat looked bulky, especially at its belly. The disproportion unmistakably stood out. Well, he be damned! He amused himself thinking that he got a pregnant rat and its babies. He kicked a few scraps of clothes over its body. Later when his wife got up and went to the bathroom, he hastily picked up the rat and tossed it deep into the backyard. He would dispose its body more carefully tomorrow morning when he would water the plants before leaving for work.

Radishes turned out to be extra crunchy at the dinner. They’re out of season, indeed. His wife had reminded him, and so had the vegetable vendor, who was quite frank with him about the state of the radishes he was selling. It helped him get a bargain, but now these stringy and tasteless radishes harp the point that they shouldn’t be eaten even for free. He should find an alternative to radishes. He’s excessively dependent on them it seems to maintain the rhythm of domestic monotony. In that regard, he’s not very different from his father, who was tediously devoted to fish. He would spend each morning going to the market and shopping for fresh fish. If the fish wasn’t cooked right and complemented by other dishes, he would throw a ruckus. His father had a principle which he often repeated humorously to his children and friends: a man should have control over two things in life for peace of mind: who goes in and out of his house, and what goes in and out of his mouth.

His wife cleaned the floor after dinner. She left the plates and dishes to be cleaned for the next day. She skipped some of her after dinner chores, which he noticed but didn’t question. She was of course rushing for the bed. Like him she couldn’t wait for the lights to be turned off. That thought swole him up and made him a bit wet too. But as he was about to hang the mosquito net, she asked him to wait a bit. She had got desserts. She brought out the packet she seemed to have been hiding somewhere. It wasn’t the type of sweets commonly available in her region of the state, but a pricier one: sandesh.

“Where did you get them from?”

“Don’t ask, just pick one.” Her eyes melted in laughter.

He picked the one that was topped with keshar and pista. As he was about to pop the whole thing into her mouth, she stopped him: “Take half of it and give the rest to me.” She was in a delicious mood. So forthright, and at the same time suggestive. The corners of her lips danced. She snatched the half-eaten sandesh from his fingers and tapped it once on her belly and then popped it into her mouth. “This is for both of us,” she said.

“Both?” It registered on him bit late. But by then she had hid her face behind the sweets packet and taken a step toward him. “When did it…wait, you sure?” he blurted out. He showered kisses upon her after pushing the packet off her face, grabbed her tight, hugged her, laughed with her, and then made love to her with the lights on.

Kink in the euphoria didn’t take much time to appear. It hit him as fast as the rats bolting out of his way. He had just finished tucking the mosquito net under the mattress, when the image of the rat, its swollen belly, dangled itself before him. He walked out into the backyard with the backyard light on. That light had a short reach; it didn’t travel as far into the backyard as he would have liked. It didn’t even occur to him to fetch the flashlight. Yet, he was out there to make sure if the rat’s belly was really swollen. He could have been mistaken. It could have just been a distended, diseased, or obese rat. Or maybe the suffocation made its belly to swell up. He squatted down and scanned the patch of the yard where he was sure the rat must have landed. And somehow, he thought, he would be able to spot the rat’s carcass in the unflagging darkness. Then he heard a meowing sound from above. There, on the neighbor’s boundary wall, was the outline of a cat. It sat there, carefree and content, looking away from him. He felt thwarted, deeply infuriated. He found a rock without much trouble. He stood up and took aim at the cat, which was still looking away. But then he remembered the popular belief that killing a cat would invite bad omen. What about rats? He’s pretty sure there’s no such restriction regarding rats. But pregnant rats? Do they count?

On a night like this. Why? The coincidence pricked him like a million needles. His arm turned tense, even harder than the rock in his hand. He would have stayed in trance, had his wife not called him from the threshold of back verandah. His abrupt departure from the bedroom and his posture at that veiled corner triggered for her a chain of premonitions.

“What?” she asked. “What’s gone wrong?”

– Shailen Mishra