An Unrestored Woman by Shobha Rao Page B

suspects. The district superintendent, along with the inspectors, had sent a further brittle message to Jenkins: “The circumstances leading to Subinspector Abheet Singh’s death are under review, as is your service with the Imperial Police.”
    He read the note again then threw it into the dustbin. He could already see the gray, grimy shores of England.
    He took another sip of his tea; he waited. Yes, she’d be easy enough to deal with, he considered, if only she wouldn’t ask too many questions. Well, that was hardly a concern; he’d never heard an Indian woman speak , let alone ask a question. It occurred to him that she might be pretty. That was disconcerting, yes, though improbable. But she had been touched by him, they both had, and there was a fineness to that: being touched by a beautiful man.
    He heard footsteps. After a slight shuffling two figures, a young woman and an old man, appeared just outside his door. So she’s brought someone with her, Jenkins sniffed, I might’ve guessed. He nodded for them to enter but the woman gestured to the old man to wait on the bench. It was only after he was seated that she stepped into Jenkins’s office. She stood for a moment, slim, wearing a lavender shalwar with a thin white veil pulled over her shoulders and hair. Her skin was pale, shimmering in the yellow light that pushed through the window, and from what Jenkins could see of her downturned face she had a rounded chin and plain features, almost crude, so unlike the rarefied features of her husband.
    â€œPlease,” Jenkins gestured, “please sit down.”
    She walked to the chair, her eyes still cast down. “Sat Sri Akal,” she whispered.
    Jenkins recognized it as a common Sikh greeting. “Yes, indeed.” He cleared his throat. “Well, Mrs. Singh—”
    â€œYes, I know,” she interrupted in Urdu. “You want to express some condolence, some sadness. Isn’t that so?” She looked up at him, the veil fell away, and Jenkins saw that she was not as plain as he’d imagined. Her eyes were extraordinary, accusing, ablaze in the curtained room.
    â€œHe was a good man,” Jenkins said, wanting those eyes to stay on him, to punish him.
    She smiled. “You’re better than him.”
    â€œAm I?”
    Jenkins didn’t know what she meant but it occurred to him—with a certain horror—that this woman was not grieving. Not at all. That she had none of the weight, none of the blankness of grief. But there was something in her eyes, something more delicate.
    â€œHe’d managed to leave the fields,” she began, looking past him. “He was proud of that. He was afraid, after the accident, that he wouldn’t pass the physical.”
    â€œAn accident?” Jenkins’s voice faltered. “I never noticed.”
    Her eyes darted back to him. “You’re lying. It was obvious. His arm was never the same. He could hardly raise it past his shoulder.” She smiled faintly. “Believe me, I know.”
    It was then that Jenkins noticed the slight bruise on the side of her face. He smiled back despite the pain that shot through his spine. “No, not a thing.” He looked beyond her, at the fan, and it seemed to him a murderous thing. A thing that would go on and on, revolving through all of time, slicing through everything that was ever dear to him.
    â€œCruelty’s a strange thing,” she said after a long moment. “It gets so you actually miss it.”
    Her eyes drifted toward the window. It was curtained against the heat, and Jenkins became acutely aware—even though they were behind him—of the tawdriness of these curtains. He felt old. And he felt that some understanding had eluded him; that if life had ever had any nobility it had most certainly, and most perversely, passed him by.
    She rose to go, pulling her veil close around her shoulders.
    Jenkins wanted to see her