Impressionist

In India, at the birth of the last century, an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out from his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Naths brain. This small thing cascades into something larger and potentially threatening and he takes a shot at giving it a name and fails, though he thinks it may be something to do with duty and India Office ordinances, and this thing that now seems enormous and important and panic inducing makes him leap to his feet and stagger backward, turning around to try and confront it or at least have some idea of its shape and meaning. Perhaps it is unnameable, the unnameable thing which strikes a lost man whose sole short purpose has just been achieved, but whether or not it can be named, it makes Forrester look at the girl wildly and understand nothing about where he is and why, except to know that he has just changed everything about his life and cannot see where it will lead. So Forrester wheels around and steps out of the cave and down to the edge of the water, which has formed itself into a fast-flowing red river. As he rubs his eyes and straightens his back and tries to control his panic, he sees, with a surge of joy, something coming toward him that he knows. A young deodar tree, snapped off at the trunk, is sailing toward him down the flooded gully, its branches quivering like the beginning of speech. The tree seems so freighted with wisdom and routine that it might as well be playing the National Anthem and Forrester lets out an incoherent cry and hails it like a cab and jumps on and is swept away. The last Amrita sees of him is a mud-streaked torso heading downstream, continuing the journey she interrupted a few hours before.