by Shani Mootoo
The constable took off toward the police station. It was not often that any of the force got a chance to show off their training in physical endurance and, conscious that he was in full view of the townspeople, he made good use of the opportunity.
Hearing the town suddenly astir, women, children and men started pouring out from their houses. Every dog for miles, aroused by the unusual din, commenced barking. There were two streams of people: those leaving the spot where Otoh lay to race through town crying, “Murder in the Ramchandin yard,” and those rushing toward the scene, almost trampling one another in their haste.
* * *
—
Ambrose E. Mohanty sat low in his wheelchair on the verandah waiting for Otoh to return. Hearing the din in the streets Elsie came onto the verandah.
She saw Pilai, the old grocer, edging under the strain of lumbago toward the scene.
“Ey, Pilai. Pilai! Mornin’ Pilai. How your madam?”
“She good. She good, yes. She real good. Thanks, Mrs. Mohanty. So you hear news?”
“No, I ent hear nothing. What happening that everybody running so?”
Pilai knew of Ambrose’s and Mala’s interest in each other in their youth. He had even played a small role in getting them together or so he liked to think. Realizing this moment held great importance he stopped and faced Elsie, for he could not see Ambrose. He took off his hat, held it reverently to his chest and spoke with appropriate solemnity.
“Some fellas gone in the Ramchandin house and they tief everything and murder the old woman dead-dead! Yes, somebody say they catch one of them already. He lying in the road near she house. It still have about five of them loose. I going to pay my respects.” And he nodded and walked slowly onward. After a few steps he picked up speed again.
“Oh God!” said Elsie, “Oh God, I hope they didn’t kill Otoh too. Oh God, Ambrose, I feeling weak. My son dead. Is you who send my only child to his death. Oh God, they kill my only child.” And as she slipped down to the ground in an unsightly crumple of panic and uncontrollable wailing for her son’s supposed death, Ambrose rose like heat out of his wheelchair.
“He has seen her. He has. I just know that he has. That son of mine. Otoh has seen her!” Ambrose E. Mohanty was standing upright for the first time in decades.
Elsie, still on the floor, did not notice when her husband, attired in his moth-eaten, camphor-smelling, wrinkled black suit, stood behind his wheelchair and pushed it down the stairs. He held the railing and lumbered after it, his elegance belying the pain caused by such an ordinary act. At the bottom Ambrose sat in the wheelchair to catch his breath. Re-energized, he rose, moved behind the chair and with decorum pushed it out of the yard and onto the roadway.
How Paradise has expanded! he thought. It had never occurred to Ambrose that, while he slept, the rest of the town was busy. Paradise, he noticed with bewilderment, had grown from a village with a house here, plots of raw land there and then another house way over there, to a town with houses crammed against each other and hardly any wild land in sight. To get to Mala’s house he relied on habit and a homing instinct.
Eventually he arrived at a corner, a vaguely familiar spot, in the middle of which sat his discombobulated son. Most of the crowd that had surrounded Otoh had surged away when it became evident he was no longer in any danger. The real story was unfolding up the hill at Mala’s house.
One would think Otoh would have been shocked to see his father out in the world, not in but accompanying his wheelchair, standing tall before him. But Otoh was too stunned to be shocked by anything. He also now understood his father so well that he fully expected Ambrose E. Mohanty to spring back to life the minute he heard that his son had made a meaningful connection with Mala. Nor was Otoh at all surprised at how swiftly the news of his adventures had travelled to Government Alley.
Otoh had never before looked up at his father. The new angle revealed an aged face with a fleshy, sagging chin and tangled nose hairs. He was quite tall and startlingly unfamiliar, standing up. Ambrose attempted to stoop down beside Otoh, but instead tumbled to the ground. This view of his father was more familiar and gave Otoh much-needed comfort.
“Ooh! A little stiff!” Ambrose giggled nonchalantly.
Otoh put a hand on his father’s thigh. They remained quiet until the last of the onlookers had rushed up the hill. Only then did Ambrose lean closer.
“Does she remember me? Did she ask about me?”
“She remember you very well, Pappy. I think she waiting for you.”
Ambrose made grand gestures to raise himself from the ground. “Well then, let’s go. Here, let me help you up, my gallant son.” When he realized he wasn’t able to get himself up, he giggled with jovial embarrassment. Otoh smiled wearily and put a firm arm on his father’s elbow to keep him on the ground.
“Pappy, it have something I have to tell you.”
“Oh, my son, are you all right? Tell me, she didn’t try to use a cleaver on you, did she? Did she wield a cleaver at you?”
“A cleaver? God! No!”
“Oh. Good. That’s good. Then tell me how you are. I should have asked after you sooner. How negligent of me. Tell me. Tell away. You know you can tell me anything. How can I be of assistance to you?”
“No. No. Wait, just listen a minute…” Otoh told his father almost everything that had occurred and all that he had seen that morning, omitting only the parts about the gramophone and dancing. When he told about the sickening odours and the room beneath the house, Ambrose remained studiedly composed. He wrapped his fingers around one of his son’s hands. He sighed and in apparent desperation breathed out, “Dearest, dearest!” several times. Otoh had the sense that his father was awakening to much more than he had, in all his years of sleeping, ever dreamed about.
“Son, did you tell anyone about all of this?” Ambrose whispered even though there was no one nearby. Otoh said that he remembered running out of the yard but had no recollection of falling in the road. He vaguely remembered opening his eyes, perhaps even trying to say something, but had no memory of speaking.
“Why does everyone then think that a band of murderers have been in her yard and that she was murdered?” Ambrose gestured toward the people running by. “What did you say to them? You must have said something that became exaggerated. Did you perhaps use the word marauder? Have you no memory? Try, son, try to remember what you might have said.”
Otoh, fearing he might have exposed more than he intended, shook his head. “Pappy, I really didn’t mean to cause she no harm. I just wanted you and she to be able to meet again.”
“Well, how else can one look at this rather unfortunate turn of events? Clearly you did not cause trouble. It seems that trouble was lurking like a diseased phantom, waiting to be revealed, and you had the misfortune to have come upon it. Ultimately, I suppose, one is led to fulfill every iota of one’s raison d’être. And you have just so done. It was your duty, my unfortunate son, to be the man who unleashed the business of an ugly, lurking phantom.”
Ambrose looked directly at his son. Seeing on Otoh’s face a look that Ambrose mistook for despair but was actually befuddlement at his father’s ramblings, he smiled sheepishly.
“Our relationship to each other, yours to me and mine to her, serves only to make the waters that we travel interestingly murky,” said Ambrose. “Cheer up. There is no point trying to undo what can’t be undone.”
Otoh glanced at Ambrose. His father’s eyes were downcast. Even though he tried to be optimistic and philosophical about the situation, the old man was in fact pained.
“You know, my son, to all appearances, current circumstances are rather dire. But our thinking exhibits both the ignorance and shortsightedness of mere mortals. Mala and I will meet again, as you wish.” He grinned and looked straight at Otoh. “Endings are but beginnings that have taken to standing on their heads. Come. Let us, you and
I, go to her house now.”
“Pappy, I hear you. But I want to know what really happened. You sound like you know. Who is Mala, Pappy? What happened between you and her?”
“Oh dear. Where should one begin? Even beginnings have their own beginnings. What a daunting task.”
He paused, took a deep breath and turned to Otoh.
“Shall we just trek on up to the house? Since she has not been murdered off, as all these folk in this town might have relished, we might ask her ourselves. Come on, son, get up, get up. Come along, now. You’re dilly-dallying. One might be inclined to believe, from the example of your tardiness, that it is you who has slept life away.”
* * *
—
As Otoh and his father, pushing the wheelchair up the road, approached the house, they could see uniformed policemen whacking at the brambles in the front of the house with scythes and machetes. A path wide enough for a car had already been cleared. There was a good view of the dilapidated house.
Ambrose halted. He stared at the house. He covered his open mouth with his hand and tears began to fall. They reached the crowded front gate, which had been completely mowed down by the police, but were restrained by a young officer with a baton. Otoh was puzzled that his father allowed the police to hold him back.
“Pappy, tell the officer you know she. Tell him.”
Ambrose thought for a long moment.
“Pappy, why you don’t tell the man, na? We have to go up there and take care of she.”
Ambrose shook his head. “I have never been very good at this sort of thing, have I?”
Otoh did not smile back. He felt an unusual anger and loathing rise in him. There would be no on the one hand…but on the other now.
“No, son. What has been done has been done. I believe that it would be in our best interest to stay here and wait.”
Otoh stared at his father in disbelief. Then he tore decisively through the little crowd, intending to make a break for the yard. The crowd parted. The officer attempted to intercept him but Otoh pushed ahead. The officer reluctantly whacked him on the head with the baton but only hard enough to stun him. Ambrose remained where he was and covered his face with his hands. Shaking his head he whispered, “I should not have risen today. I suddenly feel so sleepy.”
* * *
—
As soon as Otoh bolted out of her yard, Mala had sensed that trouble would follow. She wrung her hands in desperation and sadness, wondering if what she thought was a visit from her beloved Ambrose was simply a memory, as vivid as her daydreams about Pohpoh’s adventures.
She looked with longing at the bottles of pepper sauce that surrounded her. The pain of a teaspoon of the fiery sauce on her tongue would surely dull the despair that threatened to swallow her up. It all seemed so real. She sniffed her hands for a trace of clove oil, cardamon and bayleaf—scents she associated with Ambrose. There was an unfamiliar smell but not what she remembered. She decided that if trouble was indeed on its way her first duty was to save and care for Pohpoh. Hardly anyone, in her estimation, ever cared for Pohpoh. Now that she was grown up, she herself would take care of little Pohpoh. She made her way down the back stairs and toward the mudra tree and her rocking chair. She sat there and waited.
Before long she heard the police siren. When the siren fell silent at the front of her yard, she leaned back in the rocker and closed her eyes.
Now where was she, she wondered, before Ambrose—it was Ambrose, wasn’t it?—entered her yard. Ah yes! Pohpoh had just exited the strangers’ house successfully and was out in the yard. Over the last few years Mala had grown fond of this particular Pohpoh. She had rather disliked her many years before when they were one and the same. But these days she wished that she and that Pohpoh could have been two separate people, that they could have been best friends, or even that she could have been the mother of Pohpoh or at least her older sister. She would certainly have lifted her up in her arms, held her, hugged her and protected her as well as Pohpoh had protected Asha.
* * *
—
Yes, Pohpoh was out in the yard behind a grapefruit tree. The stars in Pohpoh’s sky had receded. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that where she left Pohpoh? she wondered. Yes. The stars were much less bright than when Pohpoh had first climbed through the neighbour’s window. And there was a wisp of pink cloud, a little wisp, like a scribble, visible as the first light broke. It streaked across a corner of the sky. And, that’s right, there were roosters. In the distance a rooster here and there, the earliest risers among them, gave the morning’s first hesitant crowings.
* * *
—
A man’s voice called out. “Miss Ramchandin. Miss Ramchandin. You there, Miss Ramchandin?”
She did not answer. She thought harder of Pohpoh. She ignored the sounds of her fence being torn down.
“Mala will take care of you, Pohpoh. No one will ever touch you again like that. I will never let anyone put their terrible hands on you again. I, Mala Ramchandin, will set you, Pohpoh Ramchandin, free, free, free, like a bird!”
* * *
—
The grapefruit tree trembled. Cold dewdrops flew like a sudden rain shower. Pohpoh was startled. An old man, the night watchman, whipped around the shrub brandishing a broomstick and attempting to shout. Shaken by the appearance of a stranger in the yard, his voice was thick with the fear trapped inside his chest.
“Who is that? Who is that?” he asked gruffly then took off, nervously beating the air in front of him with the stick. Finally able to shout, he screamed at the top of his voice, “Tief, tief, tief in the yard!” and headed toward the house.
* * *
—
Through her dreaming Mala could hear that her yard was crawling with police. Like Otoh, they were unable to spot her in the camouflage of the mudra tree. They had surrounded the house where they would concentrate their search for murderers and a corpse. She rocked a little and thought of Pohpoh’s dilemma.
* * *
—
Pohpoh decided to make a dash for the hole in the fence. As she was about to spring out from behind the grapefruit tree, the dogs in the area started a frantic barking. Her first instinct was to stand frozen, to will herself to disappear into thin air.
Lights in the house went on, room after room. Pohpoh grasped her chest. With the speed of a terrified hare she darted to the opening in the fence. Less graceful than her entrance, she scrambled to get through. As she somersaulted into the ditch she noticed lights in every house in the neighbourhood. She tumbled down, slipping and sliding on the mossy bottom. She peeped out from the ditch, preparing to sprint to her house across the road.
The light in her father’s room was on. The front door opened and he came out shirtless and paunchy in his pajama pants. He stood on the top front step trying to make sense of the commotion with his alcohol-saturated mind. Running down the street were two neighbours in pajamas and brightly coloured rubber thongs, wielding sticks in their hands.
Pohpoh dropped low in the ditch. She listened but her head reverberated with her own breathing, which was shallow and rapid like a cornered animal’s. She began to feel what she was normally oblivious to: her face and neck, wet with sweat and tears, bruises on her legs, skin that felt as though it had been torn off her back in thick chunks. Her lower stomach ached.
Fear was breaking her, was unprying her memory. She was reminded of what she usually ignored or commanded herself to forget: her legs being ripped apart, something entering her from down there, entering and then scooping her insides out. Her body remembered.
* * *
—
Mala remembered.
She heard the voices of the police. She reconfigured what they said to match her story of how she saved Pohpoh that day.
* * *
—
Pohpoh, remembering her father’s invasio
n, put her hand over her mouth and nose to stifle her panic and the nauseating smell of fear that rumbled from her insides. Pressed against the bush, she bit the inside of her lip and willed herself to think.
* * *
—
Mala bit the inside of her lip and willed herself to think. She squeezed her eyes tightly and ignored the people trampling, destroying her yard. She put all her efforts into protecting Pohpoh. Pohpoh squeezed her eyes tightly, inducing a red and silver fireworks explosion inside her eyeballs. She scolded herself sternly, insisting that she would never ever give up or get caught or allow herself to panic. She never had before and now would not become the first time. It had always been this way for her: just as she was about to succumb, an irrational strength would surface, taking control, propelling her toward feelings of invincibility. Yet this time there was a difference. Pohpoh felt, for once, that she was not alone.
With a determined bolt she raced back in the direction of Mala’s house. Mala’s yard appeared, strangely, to come toward her as she moved toward it. As though emerging from a stupor she realized that this was the yard she knew best.
* * *
—
With all the activity and excitement in the road, the neighbourhood dogs were still barking and neighbours were still shouting out to each other.
“They get caught?”
“They ain’t find the killers yet?”
“They find the body?”
“Is true the old lady dead?”
“They should let go the dogs loose in the yard, quick quick.”
“But what them police waiting for, pray tell?”
* * *
—