Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal, denounced Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an election rally. According to a report from The Times of India on the 24th, Banerjee called Modi the “biggest thug” in India, and also said that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party will suffer more than former U.S. President Trump in the upcoming West Bengal parliamentary elections. Worse” fate.
According to reports, Banerjee stated at the rally that Prime Minister Modi and the Minister of the Interior Amit Shah are spreading lies and inciting hatred throughout the country. The report quoted Banerjee as saying: “Modi is the country’s biggest thug. He will face a worse fate than Trump. Violence will not reach the end.” Banerjee also said that in the upcoming parliamentary elections, she Will act as a “goalkeeper” for voting to ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party represented by Modi cannot get any seats. A few days ago, Modi launched an attack on the state government led by Banerjee, claiming that the area is highly corrupt.
The West Bengal state parliamentary elections in India are expected to be held from April to May this year. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been trying to seize control of West Bengal from the Indian grassroots Congress party created by Banerjee for the past ten years.
S ince a few days it was Pierre always been the same. Once or twice a day he got cramps and attacks of pain, otherwise he lay half asleep with his senses dawning. The warm weather had meanwhile exhausted itself in a whole series of thunderstorms, it had become cool, and in the lightly pouring rain the garden and the world lost their luscious summer glow.
Veraguth had finally passed the night in his own bed again and slept soundly for many hours. Now that he was undressing with the windows open, he noticed the dull coolness for the first time; in the last few days he had walked along as if in a fever. He leaned out of the window and breathed in the rainy air of the lightless morning, shivering gently with the coolness. It smelled of wet earth and of the nearness of autumn, and he, who was used to feeling the characteristics of the seasons with superfine senses, noticed with astonishment how this summer had vanished from him almost without a trace was. It seemed to him as if he had spent months, not days and nights, in Pierre’s sickroom.
He threw on the rubber coat and went into the house. He learned that the little one had woken early but had been sleeping again for an hour, so he kept Albert company at breakfast. The big boy took Pierre’s illness very much to heart and suffered, without wanting to let it be known, from the subdued sick atmosphere and worrying oppression of the house.
When Albert had left to do his homework in his room, Veraguth went to Pierre, who was still asleep, and took his place by the bed. During these days he had sometimes wished it would rather end quickly, if only for the sake of the child, who had not spoken a word for a long time and looked so exhausted and aged, as if it knew itself that it could no longer be helped. Yet he did not want to miss an hour and held his bedside post with a jealous passion. Oh how often it was Little Pierre had once come to him and found him tired or indifferent, absorbed in work or lost in worries, how often had he distractedly and without sympathy held that thin little hand in his and hardly listened to the child’s words, hers each had now become an inestimable treasure! There was nothing to be made up for. But now that the poor fellow was in agony and faced death alone with his unarmed, spoiled child’s heart, now that in a few days he had to savor all the paralysis, all the pain and all the fearful despair with which illness, weakness, aging and nearness to death had to go through a human heart frightened and crushed, now he wanted to be with him always and always. He wanted it to punish and hurt himself, and he wanted it so as not to miss and be missed,
And behold, this morning he was rewarded. That morning Pierre opened his eyes, smiled at him and said in a weak, tender voice: “Papa!”
The painter’s heart beat violently when he finally heard the long-missed voice again, which called him and confessed to him and which had become so thin and weak. For so long he had only heard this voice groan and miserable murmur in dull suffering that he was terrified of joy.
“Pierre, my dear!”
He bent down tenderly and kissed the smiling mouth. Pierre looked fresher and happier than he had ever hoped to see him again, his eyes were clear and conscious, the deep crease between his brows had almost disappeared.
“My heart, are you better?”
The boy smiled and looked at him in amazement. The father offered him his hand and he put his hand in it, which was never very strong and was now so small and white and tired.
“Now you should get breakfast right away, and afterwards I’ll tell you stories.”
“Oh yes, about the delphinium and the summer birds,” said Pierre, and again it was a miracle to his father that he talked and smiled and belonged to him again.
He brought him his breakfast, Pierre ate willingly and was persuaded to have a second egg. Then he asked for his favorite picture book. The father carefully pushed aside one of the curtains, the pale light of the rainy day came in and Pierre tried to sit up and look at pictures. It didn’t seem to cause him any pain, he carefully looked at several sheets of paper and greeted the lovely pictures with little exclamations of joy. Then he got tired of sitting and his eyes began to hurt a little again. He let himself lie back and asked papa to read him a few of the verses, especially from the crawling Gunsel who comes to the pharmacist Gundermann:
O pharmacist Gundermann,
Oh help me with ointments!
You see how bad I can go
It tears me everywhere!
Veraguth tried hard, he read as freshly and mischievously as he could, and Pierre smiled gratefully. But the verses no longer seemed to have their old strength, as if Pierre had grown years older since he had never heard them. With the pictures and verses the memory of many bright, laughingly happy days came back, but the old joy and high-spirited lust could not return, and without understanding it, the little one looked back to his own childhood, days ago, weeks ago Had been reality, already over with the longing and sadness of an adult. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was a sick person from whom the world of reality had already slipped away and whose soul, which had become clairvoyant, felt the waiting death everywhere and all around with fearful scent.
Still, this morning was full of light and happiness after all those terrible days. Pierre was quiet and grateful, and against his will, Veraguth found himself repeatedly touched by foreboding hope. In the end it was possible that the boy stayed with him! And then it was his; him alone!
The medical council came and stayed by Pierre’s bed for a long time without tormenting him with questions or examinations. Only now did Frau Adele join in, who had shared the last night watch with the nurse. She was stunned by the strange improvement, she held Pierre’s hands so tightly that it hurt him, and did not bother to hide the relieving tears that ran from her eyes. Albert was also allowed to come in for a little while.
“It’s like a miracle,” said Veraguth to the doctor. “Aren’t you surprised too?”
The medical council nodded and smiled pleasantly. He didn’t argue, but he didn’t seem to be overjoyed. Immediately the painter was again attacked by suspicion. He watched every gesture of the doctor and he saw in his eyes, while his face smiled, the cold attention and restrained worry unresolved. Afterwards he overheard the doctor’s conversation with the nurse through the crack in the door, and although he could hardly understand a word about it, he said so nothing but danger to be heard in the strict, measured serious whisper.
Finally he accompanied him to the car and asked at the last minute: “You don’t think much of this improvement?”
The ugly, controlled face turned back to him. “Be glad he’s had a good few hours, poor fellow! We want to hope that it will last a long time. ”
There was nothing of hope to be read in his shrewd eyes.
In a hurry, so as not to lose a moment, he returned to the sickroom. His mother was just telling the story of Sleeping Beauty, he sat down next to it and watched Pierre’s features follow the fairy tale.
“Should I tell you something else?” Asked Mrs. Adele.
The boy looked up with large, calm eyes.
“No,” he said, a little tired. “Later.”
She went to check the kitchen and the father took Pierre’s hand. They were both silent but from time to time Pierre looked up with a faint smile, as if pleased that Papa was with him.
“You are much better now,” said Veraguth, coaxing.
Pierre blushed slightly, his fingers moving playfully in his father’s hand.
“Don’t you love me, papa?”
“Certainly, honey. You are my dear boy, and when you are well again we want to stay together forever. ”
“Yes, Papa … I was in the garden once and there I was all alone and none of you ever loved me. But you must love me, and you must help me when it hurts again. Oh, it hurt me so much! ”
He had his eyes half closed and was speaking so softly that Veraguth had to bend close to his mouth to hear him.
“You have to help me. I want to be good, always, you mustn’t scold me! You never scold me, don’t you? You have to tell Albert too. ”
His eyelids trembled and opened again, but the gaze was dark and the pupils oversized.
“Sleep, child, just sleep! You are tired. Sleep, sleep, sleep. ”
Veraguth carefully closed his eyelids and hummed him, as he had sometimes done in Pierre’s baby days. And the little one seemed to be asleep.
After an hour the nurse came to ask Veraguth to have dinner, and meanwhile to stay with Pierre. He went into the dining room, took a bowl of soup, quietly and absent-mindedly, and hardly heard what was being said next to him. The child’s fearful, affectionate whisper of love continued to sound sweet and sad in him. Oh how many hundred times he could have talked to Pierre like that and felt the naive trust of his carefree love, and had not done it!
Mechanically he reached for the bottle to pour himself some water. Then a loud, piercing scream rang out from Pierre’s room, tearing Veraguth’s wistful dream right through. All jumped up with pale faces, the bottle fell over, rolled over the table and clattered to the floor.
With one jump Veraguth was out the door and over there.
“The ice pack!” Called the nurse.
He didn’t hear anything. Nothing but the terrible, desperate scream that stuck in his mind like a knife in the wound. He rushed to the bed.
There lay Pierre, snow-white, with a hideously twisted mouth, his emaciated limbs writhed in furious convulsions, his eyes staring in senseless horror. And suddenly he gave another scream, even wilder and wailing, and reared up in an arch so that the bed trembled, let himself fall and bent up again, tense with pain and bent like a whip in angry boy’s hands.
Everyone stood horrified and helpless until the nurse’s orders brought order. Veraguth was on his knees in front of the bed, trying to keep Pierre from hurting himself in his convulsions. Nevertheless the little one cut his right hand on it metal bed edges bloody. Then he collapsed, turned around so that he was lying on his stomach, bit into the pillow in silence, and began to kick his left leg out to the beat. He lifted his leg, let it fall again with a stomping movement, rested for a moment, and then began the same movement again, ten times, twenty times, and on and on.
The women were at work preparing envelopes; Albert had been sent away. Veraguth was still kneeling and watching the leg lift, stretch, and fall with uncanny regularity under the covers. There lay his child, whose smile had been like sunshine hours ago and whose pleading love stammer had just touched and enchanted his heart to the last depths. There it was and was nothing but a mechanically twitching body, a poor helpless bundle of pain and misery.
“We’re with you,” he called desperately. “Pierre, child, we are here and want to help you!”
But there was no way out of his lips to the boy’s soul, and all evocative consolation and senseless whispers of tenderness no longer penetrated the terrible loneliness of the dying man. He was far away in another world, he wandered thirstily through a valley of hell full of pain and distress, and maybe there he was now crying out for the one who was on his knees next to him and who would have liked to endure every torment to help his child .
Everyone knew that this was the end. Since that first scream that had startled her and which had been so bitterly full of deep animal suffering, death had stood on every threshold and in every window of the house. Nobody spoke of him, but everyone had recognized him, including Albert and the maids downstairs, and even the dog, who ran restlessly back and forth in the rain on the gravel place and sometimes whined anxiously. And whether you made an effort and boiled water, put on ice and had to do busily, there was no more fighting, there was no longer any hope.
Pierre was no longer conscious. He was trembling all over, as if he were freezing, sometimes he screamed weakly and madly, and again and again, after every exhausted pause, he began to hit and stamp his leg anew, as if driven by clockwork.
So went the afternoon, and the evening, and finally the night, and when the little fighter had exhausted his strength early in the morning and surrendered to the enemy, his parents looked at each other wordlessly over his bed with sleepy faces. Johann Veraguth put his hand on Pierre’s heart and could no longer feel a beat, and he let his hand rest on the child’s lean chest until it got cool and until it got cold.
Then he gently ran his hand over Mrs. Adele’s clasped hands and said in a whisper, “It’s over.” And while he led his wife out of the room and supported her and listened to her hoarse sobs as he left her to the nurse and to Alberts Door listened to see if he was awake, while he returned to Pierre and better bedded and straightened the dead man, he felt halfway dead in his life and come to rest.
He calmly did what was necessary, and finally he left the dead to the nurse and lay down for a short, deep sleep. When the full daylight shone through the window of his room, he woke up, got up immediately and went to the last work that he still intended to do on Rosshalde. He went into Pierre’s bedroom, pulled away all the curtains, and let the cool, autumnal day shine on the little white face and rigid hands of his darling. Then he sat down by the bed, spread out a cardboard box and drew for the last time the features that he had studied so often, that he had known and loved since she was tender, and that now matured and simplified by death, but still full of unexplained suffering were.
