The God of Small Things

Chapter 4.

Abhilash Talkies advertised itself as the first cinema hall in Kerala with a 70mm CinemaScope screen. To drive home the point, its façade had been designed as a cement replica of a curved CinemaScope screen. On top (cement writing, neon lighting) it said Abhilash Talkies in English and Malayalam.

The toilets were called HIS and HERS. HERS for Ammu, Rahel and Baby Kochamma. His for Estha alone, because Chacko had gone to see about the bookings at the Hotel Sea Queen.

“Will you be okay?” Ammu said, worried.

Estha nodded.

Through the red Formica door that closed slowly on its own, Rahel followed Ammu and Baby Kochamma into HERS. She turned to wave across the slipperoily marble floor at Estha Alone (with a comb), in his beige and pointy shoes. Estha waited in the dirty marble lobby with the lonely, watching mirrors till the red door took his sister away. Then he turned and padded off to HIS.

In HERS, Ammu suggested that Rahel balance in the air to piss. She said that Public Pots were Dirty. Like Money was. You never knew who’d touched it. Lepers. Butchers. Car Mechanics. (Pus. Blood. Grease.)

Once when Kochu Maria took her to the butcher’s shop, Rahel noticed that the green five-rupee note that he gave them had a tiny blob of red meat on it. Kochu Maria wiped the blob away with her thumb. The juice left a red smear. She put the money into her bodice. Meat-smelling blood money.

Rahel was too short to balance in the air above the pot, so Ammu and Baby Kochamma held her up, her legs hooked over their arms. Her feet pigeon-toed in Bata sandals. High in the air with her knickers down. For a moment nothing happened, and Rahel looked up at her mother and baby grandaunt with naughty (now what?) question marks in her eyes.

“Come on,” Ammu said. “Sssss…”

Sssss for the Sound of Soo-soo. Mmmmm for the Sound of Myooozick. Rahel giggled. Ammu giggled. Baby Kochamma giggled. When the trickle started they adjusted her aerial position. Rahel was unembarrassed. She finished and Ammu had the toilet paper.

“Shall you or shall I?” Baby Kochamma said to Ammu.

“Either way,” Ammu said. “Go ahead. You.”

Rahel held her handbag. Baby Kochamma lifted her rumpled sari. Rahel studied her baby grandaunt’s enormous legs. (Years later during a history lesson being readout in school-The Emperor Babur-had a wheatish complexion and pillarlike thighs-this scene would flash before her; Baby Kochamma balanced like a big bird over a public pot. Blue veins like lumpy knitting running up her translucent shins. Fat knees dimpled. Hair on them. Poor little tiny feet to carry such a load!) Baby Kochamma waited for half of half a moment. Head thrust forward. Silly smile. Bosom swinging low. Melons in a blouse. Bottom up and out. When the gurgling, bubbling sound came, she listened with her eyes. A yellow brook burbled through a mountain pass.

Rahel liked all this. Holding the handbag. Everyone pissing in front of everyone. Like friends. She knew nothing then, of how precious a feeling this was. Like friends. They would never be together like this again. Ammu, Baby Kochamma and she.

When Baby Kochamma finished, Rahel looked at her watch. “So long you took, Baby Kochamma,” she said. “It’s ten to two.”

Rub-a-dub-dub (Rahel thought), Three women in a tub, Tarry awhile said Slow…

She thought of Slow being a person. Slow Kurien. Slow Kutty. Slow Mol. Slow Kochamma.

Slow Kutty. Fast Verghese. And Kuriakore. Three brothers with dandruff.

Ammu did hers in a whisper. Against the side of the pot so you couldn’t hear. Her father’s hardness had left her eyes and they were Ammu-eyes again. She had deep dimples in her smile and didn’t seem angry anymore. About Velutha or the spit bubble.

That was a Good Sign.

Estha Alone in HIS had to piss onto naphthalene balls and cigarette stubs in the urinal. To piss in the pot would be Defeat. To piss in the urinal, he was too short. He needed Height. He searched for Height, and in a corner of HIS, he found it. A dirty broom, a squash bottle half-full of a milky liquid (phenyl) with floaty black things in it A limp floorswab, and two rusty tin cans of nothing. They could have been Paradise Pickle products. Pineapple chunks in syrup. Or slices. Pineapple slices. His honor redeemed by his grandmother’s cans, Estha Alone organized the rusty cans of nothing in front of the urinal. He stood on them, one foot on each, and pissed carefully, with minimal wobble. Like a Man. The cigarette stubs, soggy then, were wet now, and swirly. Hard to light. When he finished, Estha moved the cans to the basin in front of the mirror. He washed his hands and wet his hair. Then, dwarfed by the size of Ammu’s comb that was too big for him, he reconstructed his puff carefully. Slicked back, then pushed forward and swiveled sideways at the very end. He returned the comb to his pocket, stepped off the tins and put them back with the bottle and swab and broom. He bowed to them all. The whole shooting match. The bottle, the broom, the cans, the limp floorswab.

“Bow,” he said, and smiled, because when he was younger he had been under the impression that you had to say “Bow” when you bowed. That you had to say it to do it.

“Bow, Estha,” they’d say. And he’d bow and say, “Bow,” and they’d look at each other and laugh, and he’d worry.

Estha Alone of the uneven teeth.

Outside, he waited for his mother, his sister and his baby grandaunt. When they came out, Ammu said “Okay, Esthappen?”

Estha said, “Okay,” and shook his head carefully to preserve his puff.

Okay? Okay. He put the comb back into her handbag. Ammu felt a sudden clutch of love for her reserved, dignified little son in his beige and pointy shoes, who had just completed his first adult assignment She ran loving fingers through his hair. She spoiled his puff.

The Man with the steel Eveready Torch said that the picture had started, so to hurry. They had to rush up the red steps with the old red carpet Red staircase with red spit stains in the red corner. The Man with the Torch scrunched up his mundu and held it tucked under his balls, in his left hand. As he climbed, his calf muscles hardened under his climbing skin like hairy cannonballs. He held the torch in his right hand. He hurried with his mind.

“It started long ago,” he said.

So they’d missed the beginning. Missed the rippled velvet curtain going up, with lightbulbs in the clustered yellow tassels. Slowly up, and the music would have been “Baby Elephant Walk” from Hatan Or “Colonel Bogey’s March.”

Ammu held Estha’s hand. Baby Kochamma, heaving up the steps, held Rahel’s. Baby Kochamma, weighed down by her melons, would not admit to herself that she was looking forward to the picture. She preferred to feel that she was only doing it for the children’s sake. In her mind she kept an organized, careful account of Things She’d Done For People, and Things People Hadn’t Done For Her.

She liked the early nun-bits best, and hoped they hadn’t missed them. Ammu explained to Estha and Rahel that people always loved best what they Identified most with. Rahel supposed she Identified most with Christopher Plummer, who acted as Baron von Trapp. Chacko didn’t Identify with him at all and called him Baron von Clapp-Trapp.

Rahel was like an excited mosquito on a leash. Flying. Weightless. Up two steps. Down two. Up one. She climbed five flights of red stairs for Baby Kochamma’s one.

I’m Popeye the sailor man dum dum

I live in a cara-van dum dum lop-en the door

And fall-on the floor

I’m Popeye the sailor man dum dum.

Up two. Down two. Up one.Jump, jump.

“Rahel,” Ammu said, “you haven’t Learned your Lesson yet. Have you?”

Rahel had: Excitement Always Leads to Tears. Dum dum.

They arrived at the Princess Circle lobby. They walked past the Refreshments Counter where the orangedrinks were waiting. And the lemondrinks were waiting. The orange too orange. The lemon too lemon. The chocolates too melty.

The Torch Man opened the heavy Princess Circle door into the fan-whirring, peanut-crunching darkness. It smelled of breathing people and hairoil. And old carpets. A magical, Sound of Music smell that Rahel remembered and treasured. Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity.

Estha had the tickets. Little Man. He lived in a caravan. Dum dum.

The Torch Man shone his light on the pink tickets. Row J. Numbers 17, 18, 19, 20. Estha, Ammu, Rahel, Baby Kochamma. They squeezed past irritated people who moved their legs this way and that to make space. The seats of the chairs had to be pulled down. Baby Kochamma held Rahel’s seat down while she climbed on. She wasn’t heavy enough, so the chair folded her into itself like sandwich stuffing, and she watched from between her knees. Two knees and a fountain. Estha, with more dignity than that, sat on the edge of his chair.

The shadows of the fans were on the sides of the screen where the picture wasn’t.

Off with the torch. On with the World Hit

The camera soared up in the skyblue (car-colored) Austrian sky with the clear, sad sound of church bells.

Far below, on the ground, in the courtyard of the abbey, the cobblestones were shining. Nuns walked across it. Like slow cigars. Quiet nuns clustered quietly around their Reverend Mother, who never read their letters. They gathered like ants around a crumb of toast. Cigars around a queen Cigar. No hair on their knees. No melons in their blouses. And their breath like peppermint. They had complaints to make to their Reverend Mother. Sweetsinging complaints. About Julie Andrews, who was still up in the hills, singing. The hills are alive with the sound of music, and was, once again, late for Mass.

She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee

The nuns sneaked musically.

Her dress has got a tear

She waltzes on her way to Mass

And whistles on the stair…

People in the audience were turning around.

“Shhh!” they said.

Shh! Shh! Shh!

And underneath her wimple

She has curlers in her hair

There was a voice from outside the picture. It was clear and true, cutting through the fan-whirring, peanut-crunching darkness.

There was a nun in the audience. Heads twisted around like bottle caps. Black-haired backs of heads became faces with mouths and mustaches. Hissing mouths with teeth like sharks. Many of them. Like stickers on a card.

“Shhhh!” they said together. It was Estha who was singing. A nun with a puff. An Elvis Pelvis Nun. He couldn’t help it.

“Get him out of here!” The Audience said, when they found him.

Shutup or Getout. Getout or Shutup.

The Audience was a Big Man. Estha was a Little Man, with the tickets.

“Estha for heaven’s sake, shut UP!!” Ammu’s fierce whisper said. So Estha shut UP. The mouths and mustaches turned away. But then, without warning, the song came back, and Estha couldn’t stop it.

“Ammu, can I go and sing it outside?” Estha said (before Ammu smacked him). “I’ll come back after the song.”

“But don’t ever expect me to bring you out again,” Ammu said. “You’re embarrassing all of us.”

But Estha couldn’t help it. He got up to go. Past angry Ammu.

Past Rahel concentrating through her knees. Past Baby Kochamma.

Past the Audience that had to move its legs again. Thiswayandthat.

The red sign over the door said EXIT in a red light. Estha EXITed.

In the lobby, the orangedrinks were waiting. The lemondrinks were waiting. The melty chocolates were waiting. The electric blue foamleather car-sofas were waiting. The Coming Soon! posters were waiting.

Estha Alone sat on the electric blue foamleather car-sofa, in the Abhilash Talkies Princess Circle lobby, and sang. In a nun’s voice, as clear as clean water.

But how do you make her stay

And listen to all you say?

The man behind the Refreshments Counter, who’d been asleep on a row of stools, waiting for the interval, woke up. He saw, with gummy eyes, Estha Alone in his beige and pointy shoes. And his spoiled puff. The Man wiped his marble counter with a dirtcolored rag. And he waited. And waiting he wiped. And wiping he waited. And watched Estha sing.

How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?

“Ay! Eda cherukka!” The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said, in a gravelly voice thick with sleep. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Estha sang.

“Ay!” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said. “Look, this is my Resting Time. Soon I’ll have to wake up and work. So I can’t have you singing English songs here. Stop it.” His gold wristwatch was almost hidden by his curly forearm hair. His gold chain was almost hidden by his chest hair. His white Terylene shirt was unbuttoned to where the swell of his belly began. He looked like an unfriendly jeweled bear. Behind him there were mirrors for people to look at themselves in while they bought cold drinks and refreshments. To reorganize their puffs and settle their buns. The mirrors watched Estha.

“I could file a Written Complaint against you,” the Man said to Estha. “How would you like that? A Written Complaint?”

Estha stopped singing and got up to go back in.

“Now that I’m up,” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said, “now that you’ve woken me up from my Resting Time, now that you’ve disturbed me, at least come and have a drink. It’s the least you can do.”

He had an unshaven, jowly face. His teeth, like yellow piano keys, watched little Elvis the Pelvis.

“No thank you,” Elvis said politely. “My family will be expecting me. And I’ve finished my pocket money.”

“Porketmunny?” The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said with his teeth still watching. `First English songs, and now Porketmunny! Where d’you live? On the moon?”

Estha turned to go.

“Wait a minute!” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said sharply. “Just a minute!” he said again, more gently, “I thought I asked you a question.’

His yellow teeth were magnets. They saw, they smiled, they sang, they smelled, they moved. They mesmerized.

“I asked you where you lived,” he said, spinning his nasty web. “Ayemenem,” Estha said. “I live in Ayemenem. My grandmother owns Paradise Pickles & Preserves. She’s the Sleeping Partner.”

“Is she, now?” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said. “And who does she sleep with?”

He laughed a nasty laugh that Estha couldn’t understand. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Come and have a drink,” he said. “A Free Cold Drink. Come. Come here and tell me all about your grandmother.”

Estha went. Drawn by yellow teeth. -

“Here. Behind the counter,” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It has to be a secret because drinks are not allowed before the interval. It’s a Theater Offense. Cognizable,” he added after a pause.

Estha went behind the Refreshments Counter for his Free Cold Drink. He saw the three high stools arranged in a row for the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man to sleep on. The wood shiny from his sitting.

“Now if you’ll kindly hold this for me,” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said, handing Estha his penis through his soft white muslin dhoti, “I’ll get you your drink. Orange? Lemon?”

Estha held it because he had to.

“Orange? Lemon?” the Man said. “Lemonorange?”

“Lemon, please,” Estha said politely.

He got a cold bottle and a straw. So he held a bottle in one hand and a penis in the other. Hard, hot, veiny. Not a moonbeam.

The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s hand closed over Estha’s. His thumbnail was long like a woman’s. He moved Estha’s hand up and down. First slowly. Then fastly.

The lemondrink was cold and sweet. The penis hot and hard.

The piano keys were watching.

“So your grandmother runs a factory?” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said. “What kind of factory?”

“Many products,” Estha said, not looking, with the straw in his mouth. “Squashes, pickles, jams, curry powders. Pineapple slices.”

“Good,” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said, “Excellent” His hand closed tighter over Estha’s. Tight and sweaty. And faster still.

Fast foster flies: -

Never let it rest

Until the fast is faster;

And the faster’s fest.

Through the soggy paper straw (almost flattened with spit and fear), the liquid lemon sweetness rose. Blowing through the straw (while his other hand moved), Estha blew bubbles into the bottle. Stickysweet lemon bubbles of the drink he couldn’t drink. In his head he listed his grandmother’s produce.

PICKLES

SQUASHES

JAMS

Mango

Orange

Banana

Green pepper

Grape

Mixed fruit

Bitter gourd

Pineapple

Grapefruit marmalade

Garlic

Mango

Salted lime

Then the gristly-bristly face contorted, and Estha’s hand was wet and hot and sticky. It had egg white on it. White egg white. Quarterboiled.

The lemondrink was cold and sweet. The penis was soft and shriveled like an empty leather change purse. With his dirtcolored rag, the man wiped Estha’s other hand.

“Now finish your drink,” he said, and affectionately squished a cheek of Estha’s bottom. Tight plums in drainpipes. And beige and pointy shoes. “You mustn’t waste it,” he said. “Think of all the poor people who have nothing to eat or drink. You’re a lucky rich boy, with porketmunny and a grandmother’s factory to inherit. You should Thank God that you have no worries. Now finish your drink.”

And so, behind the Refreshments Counter, in the Abhilash Talkies Princess Circle lobby, in the hail with Kerala’s first 70mm CinemaScope screen, Esthappen Yako finished his free bottle of fizzed, lemon-flavored fear. His lemon too lemon, too cold. Too sweet. The fizz came up his nose. He would be given another bottle soon (free, fizzed fear). But he didn’t know that yet. He held his sticky Other Hand away from his body.

It wasn’t supposed to touch anything.

When Estha finished his drink, the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said, “Finished? Goodboy.”

He took the empty bottle and the flattened straw, and sent Estha back into The Sound of Music.

Back inside the hairoil darkness, Estha held his Other Hand carefully (upwards, as though he was holding an imagined orange). He slid past the Audience (their legs moving thiswayandthat), past Baby Kochamma, past Rahel (still tilted back), past Ammu (still annoyed). Estha sat down, still holding his sticky orange.

And there was Baron von Clapp-Trapp-Christopher Plummer. Arrogant. Hardhearted. With a mouth like a slit. And a steel shrill police whistle. A captain with seven children. Clean children, like a packet of peppermints. He pretended not to love them, but he did. He loved them. He loved her (Julie Andrews), she loved him, they loved the children, the children loved them. They all loved each other. They were clean, white children, and their beds were soft with Ei. Der. Downs.

The house they lived in had a lake and gardens, a wide staircase, white doors and windows, and curtains with flowers.

The clean white children, even the big ones, were scared of the thunder. To comfort them, Julie Andrews put them all into her clean bed, and sang them a clean song about a few of her favorite things. These were a few of her favorite things:

(1) Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes.

(2) Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings.

(3) Bright copper kettles.

(4) Doorbells and sleigbbells and.rcbnizzel with noodles.

(5) Etc.

And then, in the minds of certain two-egg twin members of the audience in Abhilash Talkies, some questions arose that needed answers:

(a)Did Baron von Clapp- Trapp shiver his leg?

He did not.

(b)Did Baron von Clapp-Trapp blow spit bubbles? Did be?

He did most certainly not.

(c)Did he gobble?

He did not.

Oh Baron von Trapp, Baron von Trapp, could you love the little fellow with the orange in the smelly auditorium?

He’s just held the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man’s soo-soo in his hand, but could you love him still?

And his twin sister? Tilting upwards with her fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? Could you love her too?

Baron von Trapp had some questions of his own.

(a)Are they clean white children? No. (But Sophie Mol is.)

(b)Do they blow spit bubbles? Yes. (But Sophie Mol doesn’t.)

(c)Do they shiver their legs? Like clerks? Yes. (But Sophie Mol doesn’t.)

(d)Have they, either or both, ever held strangers’ soo-soos?

N… Nyes. (But Sophie Mol hasn’t.)

“Then I’m sorry,” Baron von Clapp-Trapp said. “It’s out of the question. I cannot love them. I cannot be their Baba. Oh no.”

Baron von Clapp-Trapp couldn’t

Estha put his head in his lap.

“What’s the matter?” Ammu said. “If you’re sulking again, I’m taking you straight home. Sit up please. And watch. That’s what you’ve been brought here for.”

Finish the drink.

Watch the picture.

Think of all thepoorpeople-

Lucky rich boy with porketmunny. No worries.

Estha sat up and watched. His stomach heaved. He had a greenwavy, thick-watery, lumpy, seaweedy, floaty bottomless-bottomful feeling.

“Ammu?” he said.

“Now WHAT?” The WHAT snapped, barked, spat out. “Feeling vomity,” Estha said.

“Just feeling or d’you want to?” Ammu’s voice was worried. “Don’t know.”

“Shall we go and try?” Ammu said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Okay,” Estha said.

Okay? Okay.”Where’re you going?” Baby Kochamma wanted to know. `Estha’s going to try and vomit,” Ammu said. “Where’re you going?” Rahel asked.

“Feeling vomity,” Estha said. “Can I come and watch?” “No,” Ammu said.

Past the Audience again (legs thiswayandthat). Last time to sing. This time to try and vomit Exit through the EXIT. Outside in the marble lobby, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man was eating a sweet His cheek was bulging with a moving sweet He made soft, sucking sounds like water draining from a basin. There was a green Parry’s wrapper on the counter. Sweets were free for this man. He had a row of free sweets in dim bottles. He wiped the marble counter with his dirtcolored rag that he held in his hairy watch hand. When he saw the luminous woman with polished shoulders and the little boy, a shadow slipped across his face. Then he smiled his portable piano smile.

“Out again so soon?” he said.

Estha was already retching. Ammu moonwalked him to the Princess Circle bathroom. HERS.

He was held up, wedged between the notclean basin and Ammu’s body. Legs dangling. The basin had steel taps, and rust stains. And a brownwebbed mesh of hairline cracks, like the road map of some great, intricate city.

Estha convulsed, but nothing came. Just thoughts. And they floated out and floated back in. Ammu couldn’t see them. They hovered like storm clouds over the Basin City But the basin men and basin women went about their usual basin business. Basin cars, and basin buses still whizzed around. Basin Life went on.

“No?” Ammu said. “No,” Estha said. No? No. “Then wash your face,” Ammu said. “Water always helps. Wash your face and let’s go and have a fizzy lemondrink.”

Estha washed his face and hands and face and hands. His eyelashes were wet and bunched together. -

The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man folded the green sweet wrapper and fixed the fold with his painted thumbnail. He stunned a fly with a rolled magazine. Delicately, he flicked it over the edge of the counter onto the floor. It lay on its back and waved its feeble legs. -

“Sweet boy this,” he said to Ammu. “Sings nicely.”

“He’s my son,” Ammu said. -

“Really?” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said, and looked at Ammu with his teeth. “Really? You don’t look old enough-”

“He’s not feeling well,” Ammu said. “I thought a cold drink would make him feel better.”

“Of course,” the Man said. `Of course of course. Orangelemon? Lemonorange?” Dreadful, dreaded question.

“No. Thank you.” Estha looked at Ammu. Greenwavy, seaweedy, bottomless-bottomful.

“What about you?” The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man asked Ammu. “Coca-ColaFanta? Icecream Rosemilk?”

“No. Not for me. Thank you,” Ammu said. Deep dimpled, luminous woman.

“Here,” the Man said, with a fistful of sweets, like a generous Air Hostess. “These are for your little Mon.”

“No thank you,” Estha said, looking at Ammu.

“Take them, Estha,” Ammu said. “Don’t be rude.’

Estha took them.

“Say thank you,” Ammu said.

“Thank you,” Estha said. (For the sweets, for the white egg white.) “No mention,” the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man said in English.

“So!” he said. “Mon says you’re from Ayemenem?”

“Yes,” Ammu said.

“I come there often,” the Orangedrink Lemondrink man said. “My wife’s people are Ayemenem people. I know where your factory is. Paradise Pickles, isn’t it? He told me. Your Mon.”

He knew where to find Estha. That was what he was trying to say. It was a warning.

Ammu saw her son’s bright feverbutton eyes.

“We must go,” she said. “Mustn’t risk a fever. Their cousin is coming tomorrow.” She explained to Uncle. And then, added casually, “From London.”

“From London?” A new respect gleamed in Uncle’s eyes. For a family with London connections.

“Estha, you stay here with Uncle. I’ll get Baby Kochamma and Rahel,” Ammu said.

“Come,” Uncle said. “Come and sit with me on a high stool.”

“No, Ammu! No, Ammu, no! I want to come with you!” Ammu, surprised at the unusually shrill insistence from her usually quiet son, apologized to the Orangedrink Lemondrink Uncle.

“He’s not usually like this. Come on then, Esthappen.”

The back-inside smell. Fan shadows. Backs of heads. Necks. Collars. Hair. Buns. Plaits. Ponytails.

A fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo. A little girl and an ex-nun. Baron von Trapp’s seven peppermint children had had their peppermint baths, and were standing in a peppermint line with their hair slicked down, singing in obedient peppermint voices to the woman the Baron nearly married. The blonde Baroness who shone like a diamond. -

– The hills are alive with the sound of music-

“We have to go,” Ammu said to Baby Kochamma and Rahel. “But Ammu!” Rahel said. “The Main Things haven’t even happened yet. He hasn’t even kissed her! He hasn’t even torn down the Hitler flag yet! They haven’t even been betrayed by Rolf the Postman!” -

“Estha’s sick,” Ammu said. `Come on!”

“The Nazi soldiers haven’t even come!”-

“Come on,” Ammu said. “Get up!”

“They haven’t even done `High on a hill lived a lonely goatherd’!”

“Estha has to be well for Sophie Mol, doesn’t he?” Baby Kochamma said.

“He doesn’t,” Rahel said, but mostly to herself.

“What did you say?” Baby Kochamma said, getting the general drift, but not what was actually said.

“Nothing,” Rahel said. -

“I heard you,” Baby Kochamma said.

Outside, Uncle was reorganizing his dim bottles. Wiping with his dirtcolored rag the ring-shaped water stains they had left on his marble Refreshments Counter. Preparing for the Interval. He was a Clean Orangedrink Lemondrink Uncle. He had an air hostess’s heart trapped in a bear’s body.

“Going then?” he said.

“Yes,” Ammu said. `Where can we get a taxi?”

“Out the gate, up the road, on your left,” he said, looking at Rahel. “You never told me you had a little Mol too.” And holding out another sweet “Here, Mol-for you.”

“Take mine!” Estha said quickly, not wanting Rahel to go near the man. -

But Rahel had already started towards him. As she approached him, he smiled at her and something about that portable piano smile, something about the steady gaze in which he held her, made her shrink from him. It was the most hideous thing she had ever seen. She spun around to look at Estha.

She backed away from the hairy man.

Estha pressed his Parry’s sweets into her hand and she felt his fever-hot fingers whose tips were as cold as death.

“Bye, Mol” Uncle said to Estha. “I’ll see you in Ayemenem sometime.”

So, the redsteps once again. This time Rahel lagging. Slow. No I don’t want to go. A ton of bricks on a leash.

“Sweet chap, that Orangedrink Lemondrink fellow,” Ammu said. – “Chhi!” Baby Kochamma said. -

“He doesn’t look it, but he was surprisingly sweet with Estha,” Ammu said.

“So why don’t you marry him then?” Rahel said petulantly.

Time stopped on the red staircase. Estha stopped. Baby Kochamma stopped.

“Rahel,” Ammu said.

Rahel froze. She was desperately sorry for what she had said. She didn’t know where those words had come from. She didn’t know that she’d had them in her. But they were out now, and wouldn’t go back in. They hung about that red staircase like clerks in a government office. Some stood, some sat and shivered their legs.

“Rahel,” Ammu said, “do you realize what you have just done?”

Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu.

“It’s all right. Don’t be scared,” Ammu said. “Just answer me. Do you?”

“What?” Rahel said in the smallest voice she had.

“Realize what you’ve just done?” Ammu said.

Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu.

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?” Ammu said. “When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

A cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel’s heart. Where its icy legs touched her, she got goosebumps. Six goosebumps on her careless heart

A little less her Ammu loved her.

And so, out the gate, up the road, and to the left. The taxi stand. A hurt mother, an ex-nun, a hot child and a cold one. Six goosebumps and a moth.

The taxi smelled of sleep. Old clothes rolled up. Damp towels. Armpits. It was, after all, the taxi driver’s home. He lived in it. It was the only place he had to store his smells. The seats had been killed. Ripped. A swathe of dirty yellow sponge spilled out and shivered on the backseat like an immense jaundiced liver. The driver had the ferrety alertness of a small rodent. He had a hooked Roman nose and a Little Richard mustache. He was so small that he watched the road through the steering wheel. To passing traffic it looked like a taxi with passengers but no driver. He drove fast, pugnaciously, darting into empty spaces, nudging other cars out of their lanes. Accelerating at zebra crossings. Jumping lights.

“Why not use a cushion or a pillow or something?” Baby Kochamma suggested in her friendly voice. “You’ll be able to see better.”

“Why not mind your own business, sister?” the driver suggested in his unfriendly one.

Driving past the inky sea, Estha put his head out of the window. He could taste the hot, salt breeze on his mouth. He could feel it lift his hair. He knew that if Ammu found out about what he had done with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man, she’d love him less as well. Very much less. He felt the shaming churning heaving turning sickness in his stomach. He longed for the river. Because water always helps.

The sticky neon night rushed past the taxi window. It was hot inside the taxi, and quiet Baby Kochamma looked flushed and excited. She loved not being the cause of ill-feeling. Every time a pye-dog strayed onto the road, the driver made a sincere effort to kill it.

The moth on Rahel’s heart spread its velvet wings, and the chill crept into her bones.

In the Hotel Sea Queen car park, the skyblue Plymouth gossiped with other, smaller cars. HJ’I:p H.thp Hsnooh-snah. A big lady at a small ladies’ party. Tailfins aflutter.

“Room numbers 313 and 327,” the man at the reception desk said. “Non-airconditioned. Twin beds. Lift is closed for repair.”

The bellboy who took them up wasn’t a boy and hadn’t a bell, He had dim eyes and two buttons missing on his frayed maroon coat. His grayed undershirt showed. He had to wear his silly bellhop’s cap tilted sideways, its tight plastic strap sunk into his sagging dewlap. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to make an old man wear a cap sideways like that and arbitrarily re-order the way in which age chose to hang from his chin.

There were more red steps to climb. The same red carpet from the cinema hall was following them around. Magic flying carpet.

Chacko was in his room. Caught feasting. Roast chicken, chips, sweet corn and chicken soup, two parathas and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Sauce in a sauceboat. Chacko often said that his ambition was to die of overeating. Mammachi said it was a sure sign of suppressed unhappiness. Chacko said it was no such thing. He said it was Sheer Greed.

Chacko was puzzled to see everybody back so early, but pretended otherwise. He kept eating.

The original plan had been that Estha would sleep with Chacko, and Rahel with Ammu and Baby Kochamma. But now that Estha wasn’t well and Love had been re-apportioned (Ammu loved her a little less), Rahel would have to sleep with Chacko, and Estha with Ammu and Baby Kochamma.

Ammu took Rahel’s pajamas and toothbrush out of the suitcase and put them on the bed.

“Here,” Ammu said.

Two clicks to close the suitcase.

Click. And click.

“Ammu,” Rahel said, “shall I miss dinner as my punishment?”

She was keen to exchange punishments. No dinner, in exchange for Ammu loving her the same as before.

“As you please,” Ammu said. “But I advise you to eat. If you want to grow, that is. Maybe you could share some of Chacko’s chicken.”

“Maybe and maybe not,” Chacko said.

“But what about my punishment?” Rahel said. “You haven’t given me my punishment!”

“Some things come with their own punishments,” Baby Kochamma said. As though she was explaining a sum that Rahel couldn’t understand.

Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn more about punishments soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. You could spend your whole life in them, wandering through dark shelving.

Baby Kochamma’s goodnight kiss left a little spit on Rahel’s cheek. She wiped it off with her shoulder.

“Goodnight Godbless,” Ammu said. But she said it with her back. She was already gone.

“Goodnight,” Estha said, too sick to love his sister.

Rahel Alone watched them walk down the hotel corridor like silent but substantial ghosts. Two big, one small, in beige and pointy hoes. The red carpet took away their feet sounds.

Rahel stood in the hotel room doorway, full of sadness.

She had in her the sadness of Sophie Mol coming. The sadness of Ammu’s loving her a little less. And the sadness of whatever the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man had done to Estha in Abhilash Talkies.

A stinging wind blew across her dry, aching eyes.

Chacko put a leg of chicken and some finger chips onto a quarter plate for Rahel. “No thank you,” Rahel said, hoping that if she could somehow effect her own punishment, Ammu would rescind hers.

“What about some ice cream with chocolate sauce?” Chacko said.

“No thank you,” Rahel said.

“Fine,” Chacko said. “But you don’t know what you’re missing.”

He finished all the chicken and then all the ice cream.

Rahel changed into her pajamas.

“Please don’t tell me what it is you’re being punished for,” Chacko said. “I can’t bear to hear about it.” He was mopping the last of the chocolate sauce from the sauceboat with a piece of paratha. His disgusting, after-sweet sweet. “What was it? Scratching your mosquito bites till they bled? Not saying `Thank you’ to the taxi driver?”

“Something much worse than that,” Rahel said, loyal to Ammu.

“Don’t tell me,” Chacko said. “I don’t want to know.”

He rang for room service and a tired bearer came to take away the plates and bones. He tried to catch the dinner smells, but they escaped and climbed into the limp brown hotel curtains.

A dinnerless niece and her dinnerfull uncle brushed their teeth together in the Hotel Sea Queen bathroom. She, a forlorn, stubby convict in striped pajamas and a Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo. He, in his cotton vest and underpants. His vest, taut and stretched over his round stomach like a second skin, went slack over the depression of his belly button.

When Rahel held her frothing toothbrush still and moved her teeth instead, he didn’t say mustn’t.

He wasn’t a Fascist.

They took it in turns to spit. Rahel carefully examined her white Binaca froth as it dribbled down the side of the basin, to see what she could see.

What colors and strange creatures had been ejected from the spaces between her teeth?

None tonight. Nothing unusual. Just Binaca bubbles.

Chacko put off the Big Light

In bed, Rahel took off her Love-in-Tokyo and put it by her sunglasses. Her fountain slumped a little, but stayed standing.

Chacko lay in bed in the pool of light from his bedside lamp. A fat man on a dark stage. He reached over to his shirt lying crumpled at the foot of his bed. He took his wallet out of the pocket, and looked at the photograph of Sophie Mol that Margaret Kochamma had sent him two years ago.

Rahel watched him and her cold moth spread its wings again. Slow out. Slow in. A predator’s lazy blink.

The sheets were coarse, but clean.

Chacko closed his wallet and put out the light. Into the night he lit a Charminar and wondered what his daughter looked like now. Nine years old. Last seen when she was red and wrinkled. Barely human. Three weeks later, Margaret his wife, his only love, had cried and told him about Joe.

Margaret told Chacko that she couldn’t live with him anymore. She told him that she needed her own space. As though Chacko had been using her shelves for his clothes. Which, knowing him, he probably had.

She asked him for a divorce.

Those last few tortured nights before he left her, Chacko would slip out of bed with a torch and look at his sleeping child. To learn her. Imprint her on his memory. To ensure that when he thought of her, the child that he invoked would be accurate. He memorized the brown down on her soft skull. The shape of her puckered, constantly moving mouth. The spaces between her toes. The suggestion of a mole. And then, without meaning to, he found himself searching his baby for signs of Joe. The baby clutched his index finger while he conducted his insane, broken, envious, torchlit study. Her belly button protruded from her satiated satin stomach like a domed monument on a hill. Chacko laid his ear against it and listened with wonder at the rumblings from within. Messages being sent from here to there. New organs getting used to each other. A new government setting up its systems. Organizing the division of labor, deciding who would do what.

She smelled of milk and urine. Chacko marveled at how someone so small and undefined, so vague in her resemblances, could so completely command the attention, the love, the sanity of a grown man.

When he left, he felt that something had been torn out of him. Something big.

But Joe was dead now. Killed in a car crash. Dead as a doorknob. A Joe-shaped Hole in the Universe.

In Chacko’s photograph, Sophie Mol was seven years old. White and blue. Rose-lipped, and Syrian Christian nowhere. Though Mammachi, peering at the photograph, insisted she had Pappachi’s nose.

“Chacko?” Rahel said, from her darkened bed. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask me two,” Chacko said.

“Chacko, do you love Sophie Mol Most in the World?”

“She’s my daughter,” Chacko said.

Rahel considered this.

“Chacko? Is it Necessary that people HAVE to love their own children Most in the World?”

“There are no rules,” Chacko said. “But people usually do.”

“Chacko, for example,” Rahel said, “just for example, is it possible that Ammu can love Sophie Mol more than me and Estha? Or for you to love me more than Sophie Mol for example?”

“Anything’s possible in Human Nature,” Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. “Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy.”

Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.

Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.

A cold moth lifted a cold leg.

The cigarette smoke curled into the night. And the fat man and the little girl lay awake in silence.

A few rooms away, while his baby grandaunt snored, Estha awoke.

Ammu was asleep and looked beautiful in the barred-blue streetlight that came in through the barred-blue window. She smiled a sleepsmile that dreamed of dolphins and a deep barred blue. It was a smile that gave no indication that the person who belonged to it was a bomb waiting to go off.

Estha Alone walked wearily to the bathroom. He vomited a clear, bitter, lemony, sparkling, fizzy liquid. The acrid after taste of a Little Man’s first encounter with Fear. Dum dum.

He felt a little better. He put on his shoes and walked out of his room, laces trailing, down the corridor, and stood quietly outside Rahel’s door.

Rahel stood on a chair and unlatched the door for him. Chacko didn’t bother to wonder how she could possibly have known that Estha was at the door. He was used to their sometimes strangeness.

He lay like a beached whale on the narrow hotel bed and wondered idly if it had indeed been Velutha that Rahel saw. He didn’t think it likely. Velutha had too much going for him. He was a Paravan with a future. He wondered whether Velutha had become a card-holding member of the Marxist Party. And whether he had been seeing Comrade K. N. M. Pillai lately.

Earlier in the year, Comrade Pillai’s political ambitions had been given an unexpected boost. Two local Party members, Comrade J. Kattukaran and Comrade Guhan Menon had been expelled from the Party as suspected Naxalites. One of them-Comrade Guhan Menon-was tipped to be the Party’s candidate for the Kottayam by-elections to the Legislative Assembly due next March. His expulsion from the Parry created a vacuum that a number of hopefuls were jockeying to fill. Among them Comrade K. N. M. Pillai.

Comrade Pillai had begun to watch the goings-on at Paradise Pickles with the keenness of a substitute at a soccer match. To bring in a new labor union, however small, in what he hoped would be his future constituency; would be an excellent beginning for a journey to the Legislative Assembly.

Until then, at Paradise Pickles, Comrade! Comrade! (as Ammu put it) had been no more than a harmless game played outside working hours. But if the stakes were raised, and the conductor’s baton wrested from Chacko’s hands, everybody (except Chacko) knew that the factory already steeped in debt, would be in trouble.

Since things were not going well financially, the labor was paid less than the minimum rates specified by the Trade Union. Of course it was Chacko himself who pointed this out to them and promised that as soon as things picked up, their wages would be revised. He believed that they trusted him and knew that he had their best interests at heart.

But there was someone who thought otherwise. In the evenings, after the factory shift was over, Comrade K. N. M. Pillai waylaid the workers of Paradise Pickles and shepherded them into his printing press. In his reedy, piping voice he urged them on to revolution. In his speeches he managed a clever mix of pertinent local issues and grand Maoist rhetoric, which sounded even grander in Malayalam.

“People of the World,” he would chirrup, “be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the People. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed. You must demand what is rightfully yours. Yearly bonus. Provident fund. Accident insurance.”

Since these speeches were in part rehearsal for when, as the local Member of the Legislative Assembly, Comrade Pillai would address thronging millions, there was something odd about their pitch and cadence. His voice was full of green rice fields and red banners that arced across blue skies instead of a small hot room and the smell of printer’s ink.

Comrade K. N. M. Pillai never came out openly against Chacko. Whenever he referred to him in his speeches he was careful to strip him of any human attributes and present him as an abstract functionary in some larger scheme. A theoretical construct. A pawn in the monstrous bourgeois plot to subvert the revolution. He never referred to him by name, but always as “the Management” As though Chacko was many people. Apart from it being tactically the right thing to do, this disjunction between the man and his job helped Comrade Pillai to keep his conscience clear about his own private business dealings with Chacko. His contract for printing the Paradise Pickles labels gave him an income that he badly needed. He told himself that Chacko-the-client and Chacko-the-Management were two different people. Quite separate of course from Chacko-the-Comrade.

The only snag in Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s plans was Velutha. Of all the workers at Paradise Pickles, he was the only card-holding member of the Party, and that gave Comrade Pillai an ally he would rather have done without. He knew that all the other Touchable workers in the factory resented Velutha for ancient reasons of their own. Comrade Pillai stepped carefully around this wrinkle, waiting for a suitable opportunity to iron it out.

He stayed in constant touch with the workers. He made it his business to know exactly what went on at the factory. He ridiculed them for accepting the wages they did, when their own government, the People’s Government, was in power.

When Punnachen, the accountant who read Mammachi the papers every morning, brought news that there had been talk among the workers of demanding a raise, Mammachi was furious. “Tell them to read the papers. There’s a famine on. There are no jobs. People are starving to death. They should be grateful they have any work at all.”

Whenever anything serious happened in the factory it was always to Mammachi and not Chacko that the news was brought. Perhaps this was because Mammachi fitted properly into the conventional scheme of things. She was the Modalali. She played her part. Her responses, however harsh, were straightforward and predictable. Chacko on the other hand, though he was the Man of the House, though he said “My pickles, my jam, my curry powders,” was so busy trying on different costumes that he blurred the battle lines.

Mammachi tried to caution Chacko. He heard her out, but didn’t really listen to what she was saying. So despite the early rumblings of discontent on the premises of Paradise Pickles, Chacko, in rehearsal for the Revolution, continued to play Comrade! Comrade!

That night, on his narrow hotel bed, he thought sleepily about pre-empting Comrade Pillai by organizing his workers into a sort of private labor union. He would hold elections for them. Make them vote. They could take turns at being elected representatives. He smiled at the idea of holding round-table negotiations with Comrade Sumathi, or, better still, Comrade Lucykutty; who had much the nicer hair.

His thoughts returned to Margaret Kochamma and Sophie Mol. Fierce bands of love tightened around his chest until he could barely breathe. He lay awake and counted the hours before they could leave for the airport.

On the next bed, his niece and nephew slept with their arms around each other. A hot twin and a cold one. He and She. We and Us. Somehow, not wholly unaware of the hint of doom and all that waited in the wings for them.

They dreamed of their river.

Of the coconut trees that bent into it and watched, with coconut eyes, the boats slide by. Upstream in the mornings. Downstream in the evenings. And the dull, sullen sound of the boatmen’s bamboo poles as they thudded against the dark, oiled boatwood.

It was warm, the water. Graygreen. Like rippled silk.

With fish in it.

With the sky and trees in it.

And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

When they grew tired of waiting, the dinner smells climbed off the curtains and drifted through the Sea Queen windows to dance the night away on the dinner-smelling sea.

The time was ten to two.