The God of Small Things

Chapter 14.

Chacko took the shortcut through the tilting rubber trees so that he would have to walk only a very short stretch down the main road to Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s house. He looked faintly absurd, stepping over the carpet of dry leaves in his tight airport suit, his tie blown over his shoulder.

Comrade Pillai wasn’t in when Chacko arrived. His wife, Kalyani, with fresh sandalwood paste on her forehead, made him sit down on a steel folding chair in their small front room and disappeared through the bright pink, nylon-lace curtained doorway into a dark adjoining room, where the small flame from a large brass oil lamp flickered. The cloying smell of incense drifted through the doorway, over which a small wooden placard said Work is Struggle. Struggle is Work.

Chacko was too big for the room. The blue walls crowded him. He glanced around, tense and a little uneasy. A towel dried on the bars of the small green window. The dining table was covered with a bright flowered plastic tablecloth. Midges whirred around a bunch of small bananas on a blue-rimmed white enamel plate. In one corner of the room there was a pile of green unhusked coconuts. A child’s rubber slippers lay pigeon-toed in the bright parallelogram of barred sunlight on the floor. A glass-paned cupboard stood next to the table. It had printed curtains hanging on the inside, hiding its contents.

Comrade Pillai’s mother, a minute old lady in a brown blouse and off-white mundu, sat on the edge of the high wooden bed that was pushed against the wall, her feet dangling high above the floor. She wore a thin white towel arranged diagonally over her chest and slung over one shoulder. A funnel of mosquitoes, like an inverted dunce cap, whined over her head. She sat with her cheek resting in the palm of her hand, bunching together all the wrinkles on that side of her face. Every inch of her, even her wrists and ankles, were wrinkled. Only the skin on her throat was taut and smooth, stretched over an enormous goiter. Her fountain of youth. She stared vacantly at the wall opposite her, rocking herself gently, grunting regular, rhythmic little grunts, like a bored passenger on a long bus journey.

Comrade Pillai’s SSLC, BA and MA certificates were framed and hung on the wall behind her head.

On another wall was a framed photograph of Comrade Pillai garlanding Comrade E. M. S. Namboodiripad. There was a microphone on a stand, shining in the foreground with a sign that said Ajantha.

The rotating table fan by the bed measured out its mechanical breeze in exemplary; democratic turns-first lifting what was left of old Mrs. Pillai’s hair, then Chacko’s. The mosquitoes dispersed and re-assembled tirelessly.

Through the window Chacko could see the tops of buses, luggage in their luggage racks, as they thundered by. A jeep with a loudspeaker drove past, blaring a Marxist Party song whose theme was Unemployment. The chorus was in English, the rest of it in Malayalam.

No vacancy! No vacancy!

Wherever in the world a poor man goes,

No no no no no vacancy!

“No” pronounced to rhyme with door.

Kalyani returned with a stainless-steel glass of filter coffee and a stainless-steel plate of banana chips (bright yellow with little black seeds in the center) for Chacko.

“He has gone to Olassa. He’ll be back any time now,” she said. She referred to her husband as addeham, which was the respectful form of “he,” whereas “he” called her “eli,” which was, approximately, “Hey, you!”

She was a lush, beautiful woman with golden-brown skin and huge eyes. Her long frizzy hair was damp and hung loose down her back, plaited only at the very end. It had wet the back of her tight, deep-red blouse and stained it a tighter, deeper red. From where the sleeves ended, her soft arm-flesh swelled and dropped over her dimpled elbows in a sumptuous bulge. Her white mundu and kavath were crisp and ironed. She smelled of sandalwood and the crushed green gram that she used instead of soap. For the first time in years, Chacko watched her without the faintest stirring of sexual desire. He had a wife (Ex-wife, Chacko!) at home. With arm freckles and back freckles. With a blue dress and legs underneath.

Young Lenin appeared at the door in red Stretchlon shorts. He stood on one thin leg like a stork and twisted the pink lace curtain into a pole, staring at Chacko with his mother’s eyes. He was six now, long past the age of pushing things up his nose.

“Mon, go and call Latha,” Mrs. Pillai said to him.

Lenin remained where he was, and, still staring at Chacko, screeched effortlessly, in the way only children can.

“Latha! Latha! You’re wanted!”

“Our niece from Kottayam. His elder brother’s daughter,” Mrs. Pillai explained. “She won the First Prize for Elocution at the Youth Festival in Trivandrum last week.”

A combative-looking young girl of about twelve or thirteen appeared through the lace curtain. She wore a long, printed skirt that reached all the way down to her ankles and a short, waist-length white blouse with darts that made room for future breasts. Her oiled hair was parted into two halves. Each of her tight, shining plaits was looped over and tied with ribbons so that they hung down on either side of her face like the outlines of large, drooping ears that hadn’t been colored in yet.

“D’you know who this is?” Mrs. Pillai asked Latha.

Latha shook her head.

“Chacko saar. Our factory Modalali.”

Latha stared at him with a composure and a lack of curiosity unusual in a thirteen-year-old.

“He studied in London Oxford,” Mrs. Pillai said. “Will you do your recitation for him?” -

Latha complied without hesitation. She planted her feet slightly apart.

“Respected Chairman”-she bowed to Chacko-”mydearjudges and”-she looked around at the imaginary audience crowded into the small, hot room-”beloved friends.” She paused theatrically.

“Today I would like to recite to you a poem by Sir Walter Scott entitled `Lochinvar.’” She clasped her hands behind her back. A film fell over her eyes. Her gaze was fixed unseeingly just above Chacko’s head. She swayed slightly as she spoke. At first Chacko thought it was a Malayalam translation of “Lochinvar.” The words ran into each other. Like in Malayalam, the last syllable of one word attached itself to the first syllable of the next. It was rendered at remarkable speed:

“O, young Loch in varbas scum oat of the vest

Through wall the vide Border his teed was the be:

sTand savissgood broadsod he weapon sadnun,

He rod all unarmed, and he rod al lalone…

The poem was interspersed with grunts from the old lady on the bed, which no one except Chacko seemed to notice.

Whe swam the Eske river where fird there was none;

Buitair he alighted at Netherby Gate,-

The bride had cansended, the galla ntcame late.”

Comrade Pillai arrived mid-poem; a sheen of sweat glazed his skin, his mundu was folded up over his knees, dark sweatstains spread under his Terylene armpits. In his late thirties, he was an unathietic, sallow little man. His legs were already spindly and his taut, distended belly, like his tiny mother’s goiter, was completely at odds with the rest of his thin, narrow body and alert face. As though something in their family genes had bestowed on them compulsory bumps that appeared randomly on different parts of their bodies.

His neat pencil mustache divided his upper lip horizontally into half and ended exactly in line with the ends of his mouth. His hairline had begun to recede and he made no attempt to hide it His hair was oiled and combed back off his forehead. Clearly youth was not what he was after. He had the easy authority of the Man of the House. He smiled and nodded a greeting to Chacko, but did not acknowledge the presence of his wife or his mother.

Latha’s eyes flicked towards him for permission to continue, with the poem. It was granted. Comrade Pillai took off his shirt, rolled it into a ball and wiped his armpits with it. When he finished, Kalyani took it from him and held it as though it was a gift. A bouquet of flowers. Comrade Pillai, in his sleeveless vest, sat on a folding chair and pulled his left foot up onto his right thigh. Through the rest of his niece’s recitation, he sat staring meditatively down at the floor, his chin cupped in the palm of his hand, tapping his right foot in time with the meter and cadence of the poem. With his other hand he massaged the exquisitely arched instep of his left foot.

When Latha finished, Chacko applauded with genuine kindness. She did not acknowledge his applause with even a flicker of a smile. She was like an East German swimmer at a local competition. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Olympic Gold. Any lesser achievement she took as her due. She looked at her uncle for permission to leave the room. Comrade Pillai beckoned to her and whispered in her ear.

“Go and tell Pothachen and Mathukutty that if they want to see me, they should come immediately.”

“No comrade, really… I won’t have anything more,” Chacko said, assuming that Comrade Pillai was sending Latha off for more snacks. Comrade Pillai, grateful for the misunderstanding, perpetuated it.

“No no no. Hah! What is this? Edi Kalyani, bring a plate of those avalose oondas.”

As an aspiring politician, it was essential for Comrade Pillai to be seen in his chosen constituency as a man of influence. He wanted to use Chacko’s visit to impress local supplicants and Party Workers. Pothachen and Mathukutty. the men he had sent for, were villagers who had asked him to use his connections at the Kottayam hospital to secure nursing jobs for their daughters. Comrade Pillai was keen that they be seen waiting outside his house for their appointment with him. The more people that were seen waiting to meet him, the busier he would appear, the better the impression he would make. And if the waiting people saw that the factory Modalali himself had come to see him, on his turf, he knew it would give off all sorts of useful signals.

“So! comrade!” Comrade Pillai said, after Latha had been dispatched and the avalose oondas had arrived. “What is the news? How is your daughter adjusting?” Hc insisted on speaking to Chacko in English.

“Oh fine. She’s fast asleep right now.”

“Oho. Jet lag, I suppose,” Comrade Pillai said, pleased with himself for knowing a thing or two about international travel.

“What’s happening in Olassa? A Party meeting?” Chacko asked.

“Oh, nothing like that. My sister Sudha met with fracture sometime back,” Comrade Pillai said, as though Fracture were a visiting dignitary. “So I took her to Olassa Moos for some medications. Some oils and all that. Her husband is in Patna, so she is alone at inlaws’ place.”

Lenin gave up his post at the doorway, placed himself between his father’s knees and picked his nose.

“What about a poem from you, young man?” Chacko said to him. `Doesn’t your father teach you any?”

Lenin stared at Chacko, giving no indication that he had either heard or understood what Chacko said.

“He knows everything,” Comrade PilIai said. “He is genius. In front of visitors only he’s quiet.”

Comrade Pillai jiggled Lenin with his knees.

“Lenin Mon, tell Comrade Uncle the one Pappa taught you. Friends Romans countrymen…”

Lenin continued his nasal treasure hunt.

“Come on, Mon, it’s only our Comrade Uncle-”

~Comrade Pillai~~

“Friends Roman: countrymen lend me your-?”

Lenin’s unblinking gaze remained on Chacko. Comrade Pillai tried again.

“Lend me your-?”

Lenin grabbed a handful of banana chips and bolted out of the front door. He began to race up and down the strip of front yard between the house and road, braying with an excitement that he couldn’t understand. When he had worked some of it off, his run turned into a breathless, high-kneed gallop.

“kndmeyawYERS;”

Lenin shouted from the yard, over the sound of a passing bus.

“I cometobery Caesar, not to praise him. Thee-vu that mendoo lives after them, The goodisoft interred with their bones…”

He shouted it fluently, without faltering once. Remarkable, considering he was only six and didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. Sitting inside, looking out at the little dust devil whirling in his yard (future service contractor with a baby and Bajaj scooter), Comrade Pillai smiled proudly.

“He’s standing first in class. This year he will be getting double promotion.”

There was a lot of ambition packed into that hot little room.

Whatever Comrade Pillai stored in his curtained cupboard, it wasn’t broken balsa airplanes.

Chacko, on the other hand, from the moment he had entered the house, or perhaps from the moment Comrade Pillai had arrived, had undergone a curious process of invalidation. Like a general who had been stripped of his stars, he limited his smile. Contained his expansiveness. Anybody meeting him there for the first time might have thought him reticent. Almost timid.

With a street-fighter’s unerring instincts, Comrade Pillai knew that his straitened circumstances (his small, hot house, his grunting mother, his obvious proximity to the toiling masses) gave him a power over Chacko that in those revolutionary times no amount of Oxford education could match.

He held his poverty like a gun to Chacko’s head.

Chacko brought out a crumpled piece of paper on which he had tried to sketch the rough layout for a new label that he wanted comrade K. N. M. Pillai to print. It was for a new product that Paradise Pickles & Preserves planned to launch in the spring. Synthetic Cooking Vinegar. Drawing was not one of Chacko’s strengths, but Comrade Pillai got the general gist. He was familiar with the logo of the kathakali dancer, the slogan under his skirt that said Emperors of the Realm of Taste (his idea) and the typeface they had chosen for Paradise Pickles & Preserves.

“Design is same. Only difference is in text, I suppose,” Comrade Pillai said.

“And the color of the border,” Chacko said. “Mustard instead of red.” -

Comrade Pillai pushed his spectacles up into his hair in order to read aloud the text. The -lenses immediately grew fogged with hair oil.

“Synthetic Cooking Vinegar,” he said. “This is all in caps, I suppose.”

“Prussian Blue,’ Chacko said.

“Prepared from Acetic Acid?”

“Royal blue,” Chacko said. “Like the one we did for green pepper in brine.”

“Net Contents, Batch No., Mfg date, Expiry Date, Max Rd Pr. Ri… same Royal Blue color but c and Ic?”

Chacko nodded.

“We hereby certify that the vinegar in this bottle is warranted to be of the nature and quality which it purports to be. Ingredients: Water and Acetic Acid. This will be red color, I suppose.”

Comrade Pillai used “I suppose” to disguise questions as statements. He hated asking questions unless they were personal ones. Questions signified a vulgar display of ignorance.

By the time they finished discussing the label for the vinegar, Chacko and Comrade Pillai had each acquired personal mosquito funnels.

They agreed on a delivery date.

“So yesterday’s march was a success?” Chacko said, finally broaching the real reason for his visit.

“Unless and until demands are met, comrade, we cannot say if it is Success or Non-success.”

A pamphleteering inflection crept into Comrade Pillai’s voice. “Until then, struggle must continue.”

“But Response was good,” Chacko prompted, trying to speak in the same idiom.

“That is of course there,” Comrade Pillai said. “Comrades have presented Memorandum to Party High Command. Now let us see. We have only to wait and watch.”

“We passed them on the road yesterday,” Chacko said. “The procession.”

“On the way to Cochin, I suppose,” Comrade Pillai said. “But according to Party sources Trivandrum Response was much more better.” -

“There were thousands of comrades in Cochin too,” Chacko said. “In fact my niece saw our young Velutha among them.”

“Oho. I see,” Comrade Pillai was caught off guard. Velutha was a topic he had planned to broach with Chacko. Some day. Eventually. But not this straightforwardly. His mind hummed like the table fan. He wondered whether to make use of the opening that was being offered to him, or to leave it for another day. He decided to use it now.

“Yes. He is good worker,” he said thoughtfiuly. “Highly intelligent.”

“He is,” Chacko said. “An excellent carpenter with an engineer’s mind. If it wasn’t for-”

“Not that worker, comrade,” Comrade Pillai said. “Party worker.” Comrade Pillai’s mother continued to rock and grunt. There was something reassuring about the rhythm of the grunts. Like the ticking of a clock. A sound you hardly noticed, but would miss if it stopped.

“Ah, I see. So he’s a card-holder?”

“Oh yes,” Comrade Pillai said softly “Oh yes.”

Perspiration trickled through Cha‡ko’s hair. He felt as though a company of ants was touring his scalp. He scratched his head for a long time, with both his hands. Moving his whole scalp up and down.

“Org kaaryam parayattey?” Comrade Pillai switched to Malayalam and a confiding, conspiratorial voice. “I’m speaking as a friend, keto. Off the record.”

Before he continued, Comrade Pillai studied Chacko, trying to gauge his response. Chacko was examining the gray paste of sweat and dandruff lodged under his fingernails. I

“That Paravan is going to cause trouble for you,” he said. “Take it from me… get him a job somewhere else. Send him off.”

Chacko was puzzled at the turn the conversation had taken. He had only intended to find out what was happening, where things stood. He had expected to encounter antagonism, even confrontation, and instead was being offered s1y, misguided collusion.

“Send him away? But why?! have no objections to him being a card-holder. I was just curious, that’s all… I thought perhaps you had been speaking to him,” Chacko said. “But I’m sure he’s just experimenting, testing his wings; he’s a sensible fellow, comrade. I trust him…”

“Not like that,’ Comrade Pillai said. “He may be very well okay as a person. But other workers are not happy with him. Already they are coming to me with complaints. You see, comrade, from local standpoint, these caste issues are very deep-rooted.”

Kalyani put a steel tumbler of steaming coffee on the table for her husband.

“See her, for example. Mistress of this house. Even she will never allow Paravans and all that into her house. Never. Even I cannot persuade her. My own wife. Of course inside the house she is Boss.” He turned to her with an affectionate, naughty smile. “Allay di, Kalyani?”

Kalyani looked down and smiled, coyly acknowledging her bigotry.

“You see?” Comrade Pillai said triumphantly. “She understands English very well. Only doesn’t speak.”

Chacko smiled halfheartedly.

“You say my workers are coming to you with complaints…”

“Oh yes, correct” Comrade Pillai said.

“Anything specific?”

“Nothing specifically as such,” Comrade K. N. M. Pillai said. “But see, comrade, any benefits that you give him, naturally others are resenting it. They see it as a partiality. After all, whatever job he does, carpenter or electrician or whateveritis, for them he is just a Paravan. It is a conditioning they have from birth. This I myself have told them is wrong. But frankly speaking, comrade, Change is one thing. Acceptance is another. You should be cautious. Better for him you send him off.”

“My dear fellow,” Chacko said, “that’s impossible. He’s invaluable. He practically runs the factory-and we can’t solve the problem by sending all the Paravans away. Surely we have to learn to deal with this nonsense.”

Comrade Pillai disliked being addressed as My Dear Fellow. It sounded to him like an insult couched in good English, which, of course, made it a double-insult-the insult itself, and the fact that Chacko thought he wouldn’t understand it. It spoiled his mood completely.

“That may be,” he said caustically. “But Rome was not built in a day. Keep it in mind, comrade, that this is not your Oxford college. For you what is a nonsense for Masses it is something different.”

Lenin, with his father’s thinness and his mother’s eyes, appeared at the door, out of breath. He had finished shouting the whole of Mark Antony’s speech and most of Lochinvar before he realized that he had lost his audience. He re-positioned himself between Comrade Pillai’s parted knees.

– – flg œ-lapped his hands over his father’s head, creating mayhem in the mosquito funnel. He counted the squashed carcasses on his palms. Some of them bloated with fresh blood. He showed them to his father, who handed him over to his mother to be cleaned up.

Once again the silence between them was appropriated by old Mrs. Pillai’s grunts. Latha arrived with Pothachen and Mathukutty

The men were made to wait outside. The door was left ajar. When Comrade PiIlai spoke next, he spoke in Malayalam and made sure it was loud enough for his audience outside.

“Of course the proper forum to air workers’ grievances is through the Union. And in this case, when Modalali himself is a comrade, it is a shameful matter for them not to be unionized and join the Party Struggle.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Chacko said. “I am going to formally organize them into a union. They will elect their own representatives.”

“But comrade, you cannot stage their revolution for them. You can only create awareness. Educate them. They must launch their own struggle. They must overcome their fears.”

“Of whom?” Chacko smiled. “Me?”

“No, not you, my dear comrade. Of centuries of oppression.”

Then Comrade Pillai, in a hecronng voice, quoted Chairman Mao. In Malayalam. His expression curiously like his niece’s.

“Revolution is not a dinner party. Revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence in which one class overthrows another.”

And so, having bagged the contract for the Synthetic Cooking Vinegar labels, he deftly banished Chacko from the fighting rank of the Overthrowers to the treacherous ranks of the To Be Overthrown.

They sat beside each other on steel folding chairs, on the afternoon of the Day that Sophie Mol Came, sipping coffee and crunching banana chips. Dislodging with their tongues the sodden yellow mulch that stuck to the roofs of their mouths.

The Small Thin Man and the Big Fat Man. Comic-book adversaries in a still-to-come war.

It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pulai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and ribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he started out.

He broke the eggs but burned the omelette.

Nobody ever learned the precise nature of the role that Comrade Pillai played in the events that followed. Even Chacko-who knew that the fervent, high-pitched speeches about Rights of Untouchables (“Caste is Class, comrades”) delivered by Comrade Pillai during the Marxist Party siege of Paradise Pickles were pharisaic-never learned the whole story. Not that he cared to find out. By then, numbed by the loss of Sophie Mol, he looked out at everything with a vision smudged with grief. Like a child touched by tragedy, who grows up suddenly and abandons his playthings, Chacko dumped his toys. Pickle Baron-dreams and the People’s War joined the racks of broken airplanes in his glass-paned cupboard. After Paradise Pickles closed down, some rice fields were sold (along with their mortgages) to pay off the bank loans. More were sold to keep the family in food and clothes. By the time Chacko emigrated to Canada, the family’s only income came from the rubber estate that adjoined the Ayemenem House and the few coconut trees in the compound. This was what Baby Kochamma and Kochu Maria lived off after everybody else had died, left, or been Returned.

To be fair to Comrade Pillai, he did not plan the course of events that followed. He merely slipped his ready fingers into History’s waiting glove.

It was not entirely his fault that he lived in a society where a man’s death could be more profitable than his life had ever been.

Velutha’s last visit to Comrade Pillai-after his confrontation with Mammachi and Baby Kochamma-and what had passed between them, remained a secret. The last betrayal that sent Velutha across the river, swimming against the current, in the dark and rain, well in time for his blind date with history.

Velutha caught the last bus back from Kottayam, where he was having the canning machine mended. He ran into one of the other factory workers at the bus stop, who told him with a smirk that Mammachi wanted to see him. Velutha had no idea what had happened and was completely unaware of his father’s drunken visit to the Ayemenem House. Nor did he know that Vellya Paapen had been waiting for hours at the door of their hut, still drunk, his glass eye and the edge of his ax glittering in the lamplight, waiting for Velutha to return. Nor that poor paralyzed Kuttappen, numb with apprehension, had been talking to his father continuously for two hours, trying to calm him down, all the time straining his ears for the sound of a footstep or the rustle of undergrowth so that he could shout a warning to his unsuspecting brother.

Velutha didn’t go home. He went straight to the Ayemenem House. Though, on the one hand, he was taken by surprise, on the other he knew, had known, with an ancient instinct, that one day History’s twisted chickens would come home to roost. Through the whole of Mammachi’s outburst he remained restrained and strangely composed. It was a composure born of extreme provocation. It stemmed from a lucidity that lies beyond rage.

When Velutha arrived, Mammachi lost her bearings and spewed her blind venom, her crass, insufferable insults, at a panel in the sliding-folding door until Baby Kochamma tactfully swiveled her around and aimed her rage in the right direction, at Velutha standing very still in the gloom. Mammachi continued her tirade, her eyes empty, her face twisted and ugly, her anger propelling her towards Velutha until she was shouting right into his face and he could feel the spray of her spit and smell the stale tea on her breath. Baby Kochamma stayed close to Mammachi. She said nothing, but used her hands to modulate Mammachi’s fury, to stoke it anew. An encouraging pat on the back. A reassuring arm around the shoulders. Mammachi was completely unaware of the manipulation.

Just where an old lady like her-who wore crisp ironed saris and played the Nutcracker Suite on the violin in the evenings-had learned the foul language that Mammachi used that day was a mystery to everybody (Baby Kochamma, Kochu Maria, Ammu in her locked room) who heard her.

“Out!” she had screamed, eventually. “If I find you on my property tomorrow I’ll have you castrated like the pariah dog that you are! I’ll have you killed!”

“We’ll see about that,” Velutha said quietly.

That was all he said. And that was what Baby Kochamma in Inspector Thomas Mathew’s office, enhanced and embroidered into threats of murder and abduction.

Mammachi spat into Velutha’s face. Thick spit. It spattered across his skin. His mouth and eyes.

He just stood there. Stunned. Then he turned and left.

As he walked away from the house, he felt his Senses had been honed and heightened. As though everything around him had been flattened into a neat illustration. A machine drawing with an instruction manual that told him what to do. His mind, desperately craving some kind of mooring, clung to details. It labeled each thing it encountered.

Gate. He thought as he walked our of the gate. Gate. Road Stones. Sky. Rain.

Gate.

Road.

Stones.

Sky.

Rain.

The rain on his skin was warm. The laterite rock under his feet jagged. He knew where he was going. He noticed everything. Each leaf. Each tree. Each cloud in the starless sky. Each step he took.

Xoo-koo kookum theevandi

Kookipaadym theevand

Rapakal odum theevandi

Thalannu nilkum theevandi

That was the first lesson he had learned in school. A poem about a train.

He began to count. Something. Anything.One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty-nine.

The machine drawing began to blur. The clear lines to smudge. The instructions no longer made sense. The road rose to meet him and the darkness grew dense. Glutinous. Pushing through it became an effort. Like swimming underwater.

It’s happening, a voice informed him. It has begun.

His mind, suddenly impossibly old, floated out of his body and hovered high above him in the air, from where it jabbered useless warnings.

It looked down and watched a young man’s body walk through the darkness and the driving rain. More than anything else that body wanted to sleep. Sleep and wake up in another world. With the smell of her skin in the air that be breathed. Her body on his. He might never see her again. Where was she? What had they done to her? Had they hurt her?

He kept walking. His face was neither lifted towards the rain, nor bent away from it. He neither welcomed it, nor warded it off.

Though the rain washed Mammachi’s spit off his face, it didn’t stop the feeling that somebody had lifted off his head and vomited into his body. Lumpy vomit dribbling down his insides. Over his heart. His lungs. The slow thick drip into the pit of his stomach. All his organs awash in vomit. There was nothing that rain could do about that.

He knew what he had to do. The instruction manual directed him. He had to get to Comrade Pillai. He no longer knew why. His feet took him to Lucky Press, which was locked, and then across the tiny yard to Comrade Pillai’s house.

Just the effort of lifting his arm to knock exhausted him.

Comrade Pillai had finished his avial and was squashing a ripe banana, extruding the sludge through his closed fist into his plate of curd, when Velutha knocked. He sent his wife to open the door. She returned looking sulky and, Comrade Pillai thought, suddenly sexy. He wanted to touch her breast immediately. But he had curd on his fingers and there was someone at the door. Kalyani sat on the bed and absentmindedly patted Lenin, who was asleep next to his tiny grandmother, sucking his thumb

“Who is it?”

“That Paapen Paravan’s son. He says it’s urgent.”

Comrade Pillai finished his curd unhurriedly. He waggled his fingers over his plate. Kalyani brought water in a little stainless-steel container and poured it out for him. The leftover morsels of food in his plate (a dry red chili, and stiff angular brushes of sucked and spat-out drumsticks) rose and floated. She brought him a hand towel. He wiped his hands, belched his appreciation, and went to the door.

“Enda? At this time of the night?’

As he replied, Velutha heard his own voice beat back at him as though it had hit a wall. He tried to explain what had happened, but he could hear himself slipping into incoherence. The man he was talking to was small and far away, behind a wall of glass.

“This is a little village,” Comrade Pillai was saying. “People talk. I listen to what they say. It’s not as though I don’t know what’s been going on.”

Once again Velutha heard himself say something which made no difference to the man he spoke to. His own voice coiled around him like a snake.

“Maybe,” Comrade Pillai said. “But comrade, you should know that Party was not constituted to support workers’ indiscipline in their private life.”

Velutha watched Comrade Pillai’s body fade from the door. His disembodied, piping voice stayed on and sent out slogans. Pennants fluttering in an empty doorway.

It is not in the Party’s interests to take up such matters.

Individual’s interest is subordinate to the organization’s interest.

Violating Party Discipline means violating Party Unity.

The voice went on. Sentences disaggregated into phrases. Words.

Progress of the Revolution.

Annihilation of the Class Enemy.

Comprador capitalist.

Spring-thunder.

And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.

Comrade Pillai shut the door and returned to his wife and dinner. He decided to eat another banana.

“What did he want?” his wife asked, handing him one. “They’ve found out. Someone must have told them. They’ve sacked him.”

“Is that all? He’s lucky they haven’t had him strung up from the nearest tree.’

“I noticed something strange,” Comrade Pillai said as he peeled his banana. “The fellow had red varnish on his nails.”

Standing outside in the rain, in the cold, wet light from the single streetlight, Velutha was suddenly overcome by sleep. He had to force his eyelids to stay open.

Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow when the rain stops. His feet walked him to the river. As though they were the leash and he was the dog.

History walking the dog.