Moth Smoke

The reader is whisked back to the courtroom for closing arguments, again playing the role of judge: “The gavel weighs heavily in your hand” (234). The fate of Daru rests with said gavel, but the author leaves the question of his guilt or innocence ultimately unresolved: The novel ends without a verdict. The trial itself is staged as if it were a play, and it echoes Kafka in its convoluted absurdity. As the prosecutor proclaims:

The accused would have you believe, Milord […] that our trials are on trial here, that our judgments are being judged. The accused would have you believe that a crime is in progress in this courtroom. The accused would accuse those who accuse him (234-35).

Yet buried within this circular reasoning are resonances of the truth: The reader discovers that Daru is on trial for the death of a boy hit with an automobile—the crime that Daru witnesses Ozi commit earlier in the narrative. It seems that the robbery Daru committed is unsolved, and that the gunshot fired during that event killed nobody.

It is not even clear whether Daru himself fired the gun or not, as discussed in the previous analysis. Thus, whether or not Daru is “guilty” depends upon which event one emphasizes. He is innocent of the crime of which he is accused in the courtroom; however, he is guilty of many other things, some prosecutable activities, some not. He sells and uses drugs; he betrays his best friend; he commits a robbery in which a gun is fired. It is clear that Daru loses control of himself, which is echoed in the revelation that he is possibly not even the narrator of his own story. Mumtaz, under her pen name Zulfikar Manto, has “been writing an article that tells things from Daru’s perspective” (243). It is this manuscript, “The Trial, by Zulfikar Manto,” that Daru reads in his prison cell: “It is the story of my innocence. A half-story” (245). At the beginning of the chapter, Daru thinks of himself in the third person; he is disembodied until the manuscript grounds him: “In the cell a man moves and I watch him” slowly becomes “[t]he envelope glows in my hands” (245). Ironically, Mumtaz herself admits, “I doubt the article will do much good, but at least Daru will have some defenders” (244). This illuminates why Daru’s chapters are narrated as if there is no audience—who will read it is unknown, uncertain—while the other characters tell their stories self-consciously aware of an unspecified audience.

The Epilogue returns to the reign of Aurangzeb, son of Shah Jahan: History again repeats itself, as Aurangzeb’s sons fight another bloody war of succession. Daru and Ozi, like their 17th-century namesakes, repeat a pattern of history with childhood brothers growing up and apart, committing appalling acts of betrayal (see Theme: What’s in a Name?: Honor and Hypocrisy). It may be that Daru finds himself remorseful for hurting the one person he truly loved: Mumtaz. After the robbery and before he is arrested, Daru seeks her out and wordlessly sinks before her: “And gravity pulls me down, overcoming exhausted muscles, an unfed, unslept body, bending weak legs, bringing me to the earth, leaving me on my knees” (239). He is her supplicant, and she becomes his would-be savior. In the Epilogue that follows, the narrator suggests a kind of closure for 20th-century Darashikoh Shezad via the final moments of Darashikoh, son of the great Shah Jahan: “[O]ur poets tell us Darashikoh, the apostate, called out to God as he died” (247). This final line implies that Daru too might ask forgiveness as he reads Mumtaz’s words, “the paper getting wet” with his tears (245)—an ablution of her defense, a penitential expression of his corrupted love.