Later I saw him sharpening the cleaver on the washing stone behind the house. He never spoke a word about his mind to the girl. He behaved as if nothing had happened. Once he asked her whether she really wanted to work in the town. I could not hear what she replied. It was Sunday and she and I had just returned from the church. I was changing in my bedroom and she in hers. When she came to lunch, she was so happy and cheerful. I saw her talking to the boy about the nishagandhi she had planted in our back yard. In the midnight, I woke up to see him getting out of the bed like a cat and groping about in the dark room, streaked with silver moonlight that had seeped in through the slits of the ventilator. When he opened the door, he had the cleaver in his hand.
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The first one came slowly, swiftly turning its head from left to right inspecting its way. It suddenly appeared in my sight like a droplet of darkness falling in to the squarish moonlight spread on the floor. Then there was a short interval. The next one came at a slightly faster pace, its head bent to the floor and its chunky abdomen hoisted up in the air. It surveyed the area quickly, pausing sometimes as if to take breath, and hastily departed and lost in darkness. Then two or three more came one after another with their antennae, nervous and erect. Then began the procession, uninterrupted- one followed the other fixing the gaze at its rear. They partitioned the moonlight square and zigzagged in to darkness. I feared they would march in to my mat, tie me down like the Lilliputians and tickle me all over. Like tiny rolling black pearl-beads of a necklace, they moved and I started counting the beads. I did not want to sleep, because nishagandhi buds had grown enough to blossom this night. I did not know when I broke the counting and slipped in to a doze, but my eyes had been open. Then suddenly a bigger and thicker bead emerged in the procession from darkness and I remembered the green monster. My sister turned in her bed and it creaked. My sister and I sleep in the same room but I sleep on the floor in a straw mat. I slowly turned to the other side. Against the flooding moonlight sifting through the open window, she lay silhouetted. I thought of the green monster again and I wanted to crawl on to her bed. Then I decided against it for fear of her nails. The ant-procession had turned thin and the moonlight square had moved closer to my mat. How could a bud of such size hold a big monster in it? It must be a genie; like the genie that my mother had told me about in the genie-and-the-fisherman story- hiding inside as a puff of smoke. I heard something tumbling down in the next room, and a door faintly squeaked. When the petals open up, the green puff will unfurl and grow in to a big green cloud; then slowly solidify in to the green monster- with pink eyes and‌ The bed creaked behind me again. This time a bit longer. A shadow disfigured the moonlight that by then had crept in to my mat and my sister tiptoed across to the door. Carefully pulling it open, she disappeared over the door. The old wall-clock wearily chimed. Half past eleven or half past twelve?
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