Redemption in Indigo

Epilogue

i have been authorised to add this epilogue to the tale. Not only is this in order to placate that demanding portion of my audience who felt that to end with vague hints of Paama's married life was to end too abruptly, but it is also to round off the story according to my own rules. I have been hoist by my own petard, constrained by that offhand statement: the proper study of humankind is humans. So be it.

Imagine then two humans, boys, aged about twelve years, sitting in a primitive treehouse. It lacked walls, there was no roof—in fact it was more of a treeplatform than anything else, but imaginations that can make castles out of the air can certainly build marvels on a few planks.

'She knows,’ said the elder twin smugly. ‘That's why you're her favourite, admit it.'

'How can you be sure?’ his brother replied, looking far too serious for a boy his age. ‘I know she worries about me. She's constantly afraid that I'll get hurt, or that people will laugh at me, but that's just her way of protecting me. It doesn't make me the favourite.'

'Trust you to see the sunny side of things,’ came the exasperated reply. ‘If I weren't around, I swear you'd have no life at all. You think she feels sorry for you? You think that's all there is to it?'

He pushed him roughly, half in jest, half in genuine frustration, and the younger boy, who was also the smaller of the two, almost rolled off the unbarred edge of their domain. He let out a yelp of fear and scrabbled quickly back to safety.

'Ajit! Yao! Stop that right now!'

Both flinched with guilt and looked around. The house was only twenty metres away, and they could see their mother looking out of the kitchen window, frowning threateningly at them.

'Your father already warned you—no skylarking in the tree-house or down it comes for good. Do you want to fall to your death?'

The boys looked at the grass a scant two metres below, rolled their eyes at each other, and said together, ‘No, Maa.'

It did not satisfy her, or perhaps even at that distance she caught the eye-roll.

'Kwame!’ she called. ‘The boys are idle.'

'Are they?’ her husband answered. ‘How fortunate for me. I could use the help of two sturdy youngsters. Come!'

Each shooting the other ‘this is your fault’ glares, they climbed down from the tree and walked up the hill to where their father was digging a drainage trench for the garden.

He grinned at them. ‘The pick and spade are too big for your hands, but you can move those stones out of the way for me. Stack them over there? And down there. We can mend the terrace with them later on.'

The grin did not fool them; their father had a pleasant yet implacable manner, and the more pleasant he was, the less likely it would be that he could be persuaded from his path. They set to work, Yao flinching slightly in the bright sunlight now that he was out from under the shade of the tree. His father took off his own hat and dropped it, oversized and sweaty, onto the boy's head. Then he squatted comfortably nearby and occasionally pointed out where he wanted the stones placed.

'What were you quarrelling about?’ he asked.

'We weren't quarrelling,’ said the elder in disgust.

'Ajit was talking about who's Maa's favourite,’ said the younger, looking with narrowed eyes at his brother from under the hat's shady brim.

'Not about who's my favourite?’ their father said, pretending to be disappointed.

'Oh, I know Ajit's yours,’ Yao replied offhandedly.

The words had an odd effect. Speaking with a dangerous courtesy, his father said, ‘May I know why?'

'Because he looks just like you,’ said Yao innocently while Ajit covered his face with a dust-whitened hand and groaned.

'Boys, leave the stones a moment,’ said his father in a surprising gentle voice, so gentle in fact that Yao finally realised that he might have said something wrong.

Kwame pulled the boys to sit down on either side of him and said, ‘You don't look at your own face, Yao. You're the one who looks like me, not Ajit.'

He paused and fondly traced the line of his son's brow and jaw with his fingers. ‘My facial structure, my nose. Even the shape of the eyes is mine, though that purple colour isn't anyone's fault.'

He tweaked Yao's nose, and the boy's habitually serious face broke into a rare smile.

'Now Ajit doesn't really look like your Maa, but if you could only remember what your Grandda looked like, you'd realise he's the image of Semwe. Except for those hairy arms—we can't account for them,’ and he dropped a light, playful punch on Ajit's shoulder as the lad grinned up at him, his deep black eyes twinkling.

'But I don't like this talk of favourites, and I'll tell you why. There was a man? His name was Ansige.'

He paused for a moment and looked very thoughtful, almost sad.

'I never met Ansige, but he was the sort of person you get to hear quite a lot about. He was the son of a chief's daughter, but his father did not acknowledge him. People say he used to pass Ansige on the street as if he didn't know him. Ansige used to eat as much as twenty men until at last he ate himself to death. At first I thought he was a weak man, a sick man, but later, after I learned about his past, I wondered if perhaps he was just hungry for recognition. I promised myself I would never do that to my own sons.'

There was a slightly baffled silence. The twins gave each other the wide-eyed look that youngsters get when a parental lecture becomes a bit too complicated. Kwame caught it, smiled ruefully, and gave them the brief man-hug that a father uses on his sons.

'You are both mine,’ he summarised. ‘I may understand Ajit's sense of humour a little better than I can grasp Yao's deep thoughts, but you're still both mine.'

'And mine, too,’ came a voice behind them.

There was Paama, smiling approvingly at her husband, a tray of tall glasses in her hands. Their sides were cloudy with condensation, but the pale greenish-brown liquid inside them was too familiar to be mistaken.

'Ginger and lime!’ said Ajit, jumping up for his share.

'Good of you to be so quick, dear. Now take this glass to your father and then come back for yours,’ she said smoothly.

Kwame accepted his drink with a broad smile at the family joke. ‘I was just telling the boys a true story about a less fortunate son, and speaking of true stories, why don't you tell them about the exciting life you led just before you met me?'

Paama's gaze flickered quickly over her sons as they took their drinks, and she said, ‘I don't think we need to bother with that old story any more.'

Ajit eyed his brother over the rim of his glass and waggled his eyebrows meaningfully. She knows.

'Why not?’ Yao said, glaring at his brother. ‘We'd love to hear it.'

Paama gave him a look that was at once so knowing and so amused that he gulped lime and ginger juice the wrong way. He choked and wheezed helplessly as his father and his brother laughed at the turning colours of his face.

'Take him inside and flush out his lungs,’ Kwame advised, taking pity on him at last.

Paama took the empty glasses back on the tray and walked Yao back to the house. Once inside, she made him drink a glass of goat's milk to soothe the irritation of the ginger, and then she passed him a honey-almond cake for the sake of comfort. He stood beside her at the window while she washed the dishes, and gazed outside, watching Ajit as he helped his father continue work on the trench.

Suddenly he felt very jealous.

'I wish I could stay out in the sun,’ he said angrily.

'But you can't,’ she replied with calm. ‘Not with your skin the colour it is.'

Yao did not ask why. He had asked why many years ago when he first struggled under the discipline of covering clothes, sheltering hats, and carefully timed outdoor sessions. Instead he said, ‘If I could choose, I'd want my skin to be. Blue. A really deep, dark blue.'

'Indigo,’ his mother clarified. ‘Yes, I bet you would.'

He did not look up at her, but he leaned against her in that affectionate way sons have with their mothers when they feel they are too old for all that babyish hugging and kissing. She leaned against him too, and splashed him with the dishwater, whether accidentally or on purpose he couldn't tell, but the smile she flashed him was mischievous.

'Your father and I have been thinking about travelling again. The Sisters have taught you all that a lay person can know, and it's time you boys were apprenticed anyway. What do you think?'

'I'd love to see what else there is besides Makendha,’ Yao said with enthusiasm. ‘As for being an apprentice? I know Ajit wants to be a tracker like Da,’ he added a little wistfully.

She glanced at him. Her face was sympathetic, but not pitying. ‘I'll teach you how to cook if you like. No need to be out in the sun for that.'

'Yes!’ he exclaimed, thrilled at the idea. Though he was her son and had grown up eating at her table daily, he was not immune to Paama's fame as a cook. ‘When can we start?'

'Today if you like. What would you like to make?'

He did not have to think for very long. The memory came to him, as the memories often did, although he found it impossible to discuss them with anyone except his twin brother.

'Chocolate cake,’ he declared.

Paama guided him through the recipe that very evening. It went rather well. He even tried a slice of the end result on Constancy, the family cat, and she too seemed to agree that he might yet have a future in the art of providing humans with sustenance.