The two-storied house stood in the most urban part of the city. Buildings crowded on all three sides of it, leaving one side open to a sassy road. The entire scene seemed like an optical illusion caused by heavy myopia. Besides, the pose of the house was obscene, like a low-class mystery, as if a cheap female was advertising herself, turning her back to the client, saying, ‘I am  a shy, simple, pure village girl—but I’ve fallen.’ It was difficult to see the old brown drape on her smooth back. That’s how old it was.

Although the house was two-storied, there was no connecting staircase between the first and the second floors. Of the three main doors, the one on the right, near the entrance, had an enclosed staircase straight up to the second floor. There was a little space for any unnecessary movements, but no other alternatives except going straight up the stairs or going straight out into the street. A professor of history resided upstairs, a small brass plaque on his door announcing his M.A. On the first floor lived the ‘Ocean of Astrology,’ also ‘Renowned,’ according to the large, colorful, wood-framed tin sign board tacked on the remaining two doors. Both doors led to a single room, most of which was occupied by the astrologer’s office, with a small passage on one side leading to the inner rooms. Entering through the middle door, there was a staircase on the right, behind a wall and on the left were the naked backs of two full bookshelves. Going inside step by step, just before entering the half-dark, dank inside rooms of the astrologer’s family, one could see a gap of about an arm’s length between the bookshelves and the inside wall. Through that gap, the astrologer and his family members passed between his office and the inner rooms.

The outsiders entered through the third door and sat either on the soiled cover of the double bed or on the wooden chair facing the oilcloth-covered table. Sitting there, they looked around like hesitant thieves with hope and despair, faith and disdain, belief and disbelief. They made notes of everything they saw, even the lizard on the wall. It was like a cheap woman judging herself with the eyes of all the ogling men, ‘What’s going to be my fate?’

In truth, there is no other question in this world. Everything is stamped with this issue. Hasn’t the future already devoured everything?

While placing the sandalwood paste dot on the astrologer’s forehead, his children’s mother tilted her head to one side, rolled her eyes and smiled, stretching her plump, loose lips. It was the astrologer’s fault that once this pose had enchanted him. But it was not just the pose. She also asked, “What will happen to you if I die?”

She asked this in the morning and died a few hours later in the evening. Yet, it seemed as if she asked the question just before she died.

Even he, who could see the past, present and the future in the palm of one’s hand, didn’t understand what happened. The astrologer didn’t know that even before his children’s mother had started talking about dying, a lizard on the ceiling overhead was moving its tail. And after his children’s mother spoke about dying, that lizard called another one to be the mother of its children. But what difference did that make? The astrologer knew everything else that one was supposed to know. Knowing about that lizard couldn’t have solved the question in his mind whether the lizard called because his children’s mother was going to die or his children’s mother died because the lizard called.

The children were small. The eldest son was learning spelling using the first primer, and the youngest son was just learning to speak. The girl in between was mute and couldn’t learn to speak. So only the eldest son asked about their mother.

“Where has Ma gone, Baba?”

“Heaven.”

Saying that, the astrologer listened for verification by the lizard. There were at least eight or ten lizards in the house, but none agreed with the astrologer. Realizing his own mistake, he pathetically gave a shy smile and nodded to himself a few times. If his children’s mother were to go to heaven, she must have reached there by now. How could a lizard know of such an event that, as soon as he uttered the word, the lizard had to call ‘tiktik’ to agree with him? Besides, going or not going to heaven was not an event in this living world. Heaven, where people go after death, was not located in this world, was it?

But even after tossing around such deep and complex questions in his mind, his doubts remained. Perhaps those all-knowing lizards stayed quiet because his children’s mother didn’t make it to heaven? If she did, at least the lizard that announced her death should have agreed with him, if not the others. Even if he was a tiny creature, once he showed his knowledge, shouldn’t he have at least the sense of following through? The problem was that the astrologer knew that his children’s mother was banned from heaven. Heaven wasn’t meant for unmarried wives. But since she had spent all her life with only one man since her girlhood, couldn’t the strict rules of heaven be relaxed a bit for her? That’s all he could hope for in the afterlife of his children’s mother.

The youngest son sobbed for his mother. The girl shed silent tears. The eldest son cried and asked, “Baba, where’s my Ma gone?”

The astrologer asked himself this as he sat in his office, in front of three clients. He glanced at the motionless lizard on the wall next to the hanging yogini chakra diagram. He stood up and told the clients politely, “Please wait, I will be right back.”

Then he took his eldest son and went into the bedroom and eagerly scanned the walls and ceiling for the lizard. Everything that was there in the room on that day was still there today, except for some neatness--and the lizard. The neatness was truly missing; it could not be hidden. But couldn’t such a tiny creature as a lizard easily hide in cracks or crevices or behind the furniture? The astrologer felt slightly reassured. He asked his son, “Yes, what were you saying, Son?”

The boy felt calmer as he climbed into his father’s lap, “When, Baba?”

“When you came into my office?”

“No, I didn’t say anything.”

The boy was still not beyond the age of forgetting things upon reaching the hairy chest, where mostly his younger brother and sister reigned. But he was unusually heavy for his age. The astrologer put him down on the floor and said softly and carefully, “Didn’t you ask something about your mother?”

“Where has Ma gone?”

With the helpless courage of playing with a bomb, the astrologer replied, “To hell.” And he pricked his ears. He could hear the younger son crying, the sudden singing by the history professor’s wife on the second floor, and the sassy pranks on the main road.

The older son was almost in tears looking at his father. He glowered at his son, “Don’t you cry!”

The boy didn’t.

“Listen, I was wrong. Your Ma hasn’t yet reached hell, but she will. Got it? She will, in the future.”

Again, the astrologer listened. The older boy covered his mouth to stifle his cry. He could hear the younger one’s ebbing, stuttered sobs, the undecipherable humming of the wife from upstairs, the sassy noise from the road and the call of a lizard.

It wasn’t the old one. It was the one who was called to be the mother of the children, that one. The two lizards were different in size, skin color and behavior, but a lizard was still just a lizard.

A person with an aching heart wants to share his pain. It is a sign of the pain gnawing inside. It was natural that the astrologer would be in pain knowing that his wife was destined to go to hell. So, he opened his heart to those who came for palm reading, horoscope casting, inviting him for prayer ceremonies and other rites or having their amulets made with proper instructions. He also told everything to his friends who just dropped by. Just like the astrological predictions, he had almost memorized what to say about his worries as well. People nowadays are too cynical; they wouldn’t believe anything even when shown clearly. Talking to them made the astrologer feel too depressed. His face showed the etchings of deep, helpless pain. His voice would tremble. His listeners, on the bed or in the chair, felt more moved by his face and tone than by his words alone. At least for the time being, they would forget his quackery.

“Proof? You need proof to believe me? So many proofs have happened in my own life! Just the other day, when my wife died, didn’t I know that she would die on that very day, at that exact time?”

“Did you?”

The lizard in the office always showed itself. The huge map of the palm lines, diagrams of horoscopes, calendar diagrams, yogini chakra, Pataki chakra, even the advertisement of a hair oil showing a woman with long hair, shelves on the wall, the square openings of the windows, empty walls, behind the beams of the ceiling, he didn’t need to search any of these places to find the lizard. Just a glance here and there, and that was enough to locate it. The astrologer stared at the lizard absent-mindedly for some time and shook his head, “Not at first. One is not supposed to forecast the death of one’s own folks. After all, it is human nature to get easily disturbed. That morning, she jokingly asked ‘What will you do if I die?’ meaning, as she alone managed the household, she teased me about who would do all her chores and look after the children. As soon as she said it, a lizard called out tiktik!”

“Lizard?”

“Yes, a lizard. Something bothered my mind. I looked at her palm and asked her age. Of course, I knew her age when we got married, but I asked again. Then I told her to take out her horoscope. It was at the bottom of the black trunk. Smiling all the time, she took it out. Even then, I was thinking it’d be better to leave it alone. If her death was near, what was the use of knowing it ahead of time? We couldn’t do anything, just suffer unnecessarily. But in the end, I could not help but check it out. The result just stunned me! Her life would last only till that evening! Looking at her, I felt I was already looking at a corpse, and right behind her some—”

The listener was stunned, too. His throat was dry. Not from fear but from real thirst. But that was not the time to ask for water.

“I knew it was useless--her father was an honest and devout pundit. Still, I asked, ‘Did they decrease your age by a few years at the time of our wedding? Was the horoscope properly cast?’ If I had known at that time—anyway, forget about all that. What was I telling you before, Parshwamukh stars…”

Out of nine Parshwamukh stars, one is named Revati. After six months, the astrologer married Revati to bring up his children. Revati came with the right to enter heaven after her death, but she didn’t encounter a single lizard in the house.

Still, just to be on the safe side, the astrologer cautioned her, “Don’t ever talk about dying…’

Revati was still ‘parshwamukhi’ (face turned to the side); she couldn’t look straight at the astrologer. But he stared at her all the time. He checked her horoscope himself before marrying her. There was a conflict in their stars. His Shatavisha star and Revati’s Uttarbhadrapada were incompatible, like beast and man cast together.

Now, this astrologer, whether he appeared in my life or I in his, is one problem I have not been able to solve yet.

How old was I at that time? Much younger than Revati. I was staying with the history professor’s family for a few days and had become fast friends with Revati. Compared to my age, my body was much larger, my mind much more mature. Getting involved with somebody’s wife was a big surprise for me at the time. Yet I spent so much time playing cards and cowries with Revati that the history professor's wife was too upset to talk to me properly.

And that was rather convenient for me. Talking to someone who loved me was difficult for me. I felt as if I was unfairly getting something precious with my words.

I was playing cowrie with Revati. The astrologer would pass by a couple of times, and the third time he squatted beside us, “Let me take a look at your palm, my boy. Goodness! Where did you get this jumble of lines? I need to scan it properly. You’ll live long, but—”

Revati snatched my hand away, “Enough. You don’t have to scare a young boy.”

While I was exiting the inner quarters, the astrologer grabbed me again and started to tell me ghost stories. I was listening casually at first, but soon paid all my attention, even forgetting about hunger and thirst. I looked up to see Revati standing beside the bookshelf.

After the astrologer finished his story, I requested, “One more.”

Revati stood quietly, looking sad.

The astrologer pretended to laugh, “If you can kill all the lizards in this house, I will tell you more stories.” He said, “One story for each lizard. There are at least three in this room. Why don’t you get a stick and kill one?”

I said, “Stick for a lizard? Wait, let me get my bow and arrow.”

Revati said, “Don’t kill them, Manik. One mustn’t kill lizards.”

I waited to consider that. Since she had really loved me once, she wouldn’t quit loving me even if I didn’t listen to her. She was too crazy about playing cowries and cards with me. That craze wouldn’t stop by itself. But the astrologer would not miss the opportunity to torture me by not telling me any more stories. I went straight upstairs and got my bamboo bow and reed arrows. My arrows were lethal. They had two pins stuck at the tips.

There was one lizard in a corner. It was just within the range of my arrows if I stood up on the bed. Still body, still eyes. One could feel sorry for the gray little creature.

Revati again said, “Don’t kill Manik, it is not good.”

I had not rejected Revati, but her opinion had no value to me. I pulled the bow back to my ears and let fly the arrow from four inches away. Strange creature, this lizard. In spite of the hunter looming so close, it never moved.

The lizard with the arrow fell to the ground. I pulled the arrow out and noticed two tiny pinpricks of blood on either side of its eyes. Like two new eyes. The lizard’s blood is not red like humans’—

The astrologer stifled a grin, then started laughing.

“You made him four-eyed! You too will have to become four-eyed.”

Immediately, somewhere on the wall, a lizard called out tiktik. Who knos if it was related to the injured one? Only they knew if they would ever call each other to become parents of their children.

Revati looked up, eyes bright as the stars. “Again? You are scaring the kid?” Then she looked at the astrologer’s somber face and wilted in fear herself.

Within a month, I had to get glasses because I couldn't read the writing on the blackboard at my school. My friends teased me and called me ‘four-eyed’, never ‘eye-glassed’.

I never went back to the history professor’s house. Never saw Revati with my ‘four’ eyes. Every time I tried to remember her, the image of the two grey eyes of the lizard with two droplets of blood floated up in my mind and filled me with intense loathing for her. It wasn’t her fault, but still.

Perhaps Revati had become the mother of the astrologer’s children. Even though his first wife could not reach heaven because of the lizard, it did remove that obstruction from Revati’s path. Revati must be enjoying the heavenly bliss on this Earth while awaiting her time in heaven.

On the other hand, my eyeglass prescription has increased. To block my vision of a lizard on the wall, I don’t have to close my eyes anymore; just taking off my glasses does the job.