The Cripple and His Talismans

by Anosh Irani

  “Why do you call yourself Mr. P?” I ask.

  “There are almost fourteen thousand eunuchs in the city,” he says, ignoring me. He takes his spectacles off and looks at me. He taps the newspaper with his knuckles. I do not know what this interesting statistic has to do with the question I have just asked. I stare at him blankly.

  “Out of those fourteen thousand, only half are original eunuchs.” He raises an eyebrow.

  “That’s sad,” I say.

  “No, it’s good! It means only seven thousand are castrated. The others were born useless, so no harm done.”

  Mr. P turns toward the back of the shop and shouts: “Quiet in there! I’m talking here.”

  I do not hear anything. I wonder if this is a test. So I shout, too. “Yes, please! Keep the volume to a minimum!”

  On the wall I see family pictures neatly framed. One in particular stands out. It is in black and white, and it shows a stout man, a dark woman, two beautiful children and an old lady. The old lady’s face is circled in red felt pen. Strangely, all the photographs on the wall have one or two persons who are marked in red.

  “You’re wondering about the red circles,” Mr. P remarks.

  “Yes.”

  “They are the dead ones.”

  “Ah.”

  “I made coffins for them all.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You want to know a secret?”

  “I love secrets.”

  “I circled one by mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That old woman in the far corner.”

  “Yes?” He refers to the photograph I saw first.

  “She was my wife’s friend. I found that family photograph at home and circled her by mistake and put it up in my shop, thinking I had made a coffin for her. She had given the photo to my wife to show off her grandchildren.”

  “I don’t like show-offs.”

  “She died the very day I circled her.”

  “How sad.”

  “No. How coincidental.”

  “Extremely.”

  “Stand very still.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t move.”

  Mr. P ducks his head below the counter and snaps back like a puppet. He holds a small camera in his hands. He shoots me. I feel like a soldier who has just been tricked by the enemy.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I’m going to circle you, too.”

  “I’m going to die?”

  “I hope so. It’s my hobby. To take pictures of strangers and then mark them for death. I want to see if it’s a gift I have or if it was just a one-time random happening with that old woman.”

  “I wish you well,” I say.

  “How kind.”

  We do not speak for a while. I think of my photograph developing. I hope he took only the face. But what if both arms show up in the picture? That would be nice. I would prance if that happened. I have never pranced, or even thought of prancing before.

  “You’ve chosen the Dark Torpedo,” Mr. P says.

  “Dark Torpedo?”

  “That’s the name of the coffin.”

  “When will it be ready?”

  He gets up and unlocks a small cabinet that is placed near a wooden stool. The shelves of the cabinet are lined with red felt. He removes what I assume is the coffin. It is wrapped in white cloth. He takes off the cloth and caresses the Dark Torpedo. It looks better in reality than it does in the photograph. He pushes it toward me. I open the lid and see the indent of a finger: streamlined for the tip, gradually fattening at the centre and receding toward the base. Just like the leper’s.

  “Go ahead. Try it out,” he coaxes.

  I place the finger in the coffin. I feel sad, as though I am parting with a dear friend. Without it, my journey ends. Maybe I should buy my own coffin. I do not tell Mr. P I ordered one over the phone only a day ago. He did not like me over the phone. I am much more charming in person.

  “Learn to let go,” says Mr. P. “Only then will you receive.”

  He adjusts his spectacles and looks outside at the street. There is a church opposite, with a signboard that promises to save alcoholics. Three trees stand near the church steps. Sometimes drunks climb the trees instead of the church steps. But God does not mind. Only the priests do.

  I snap the coffin lid shut. “Do I leave the finger with you?” I ask.

  “What for?”

  “So you can direct me further.”

  “That will be two thousand rupees.”

  “Two thousand! But it’s such a small coffin.”

  “Do you know anyone else who makes one?”

  “No.”

  “Am I wrong in assuming that you can afford it?”

  “I …”

  “Then two thousand rupees cash. Take the coffin with you.” He raises his voice. “And for the last time, quiet back there!”

  GURA AND THE EGG-MAN

  I know what Mr. P means by sending me away with the coffin. He means the same thing that Gura did, the floating beggar who directed me to the In-charge. I must get used to this absence. My palm is too full of the past to be able to receive anything.

  Perhaps I need to talk with Gura again. I have not seen him since our first meeting yesterday morning. Floating beggars have no home, but at the end of the day they all eat together. They collect at the egg-man’s, opposite A-1 Restaurant, under the Grant Road Bridge. Then they float away into the night again.

  When I think about it, the egg-man looks a lot like Gura. It could be because I have seen the egg-man only at night. If there is even a slight similarity between people, they look more alike at night.

  It is not because of the darkness. It has to do with the moon.

  My old servant told me this, and I have expanded and expounded her theory. The moon, she used to say, was an evil fishmonger before it was the moon. That is why the moon is so far away from us. It stinks. Now, being the moon, and out of fish, it plays tricks on earth people. One of its favourite games is to make people look alike. It reflects only those parts of a person’s face that look similar to the parts on another person’s face. My servant was beautiful (so she thought) and her sister was ugly (true, true). When the moon was out, people would tell the two sisters that they looked alike. During the day, they did not. So it is quite a solid theory. Moonlight can make two mooncalves think they are moonlighting as replicas of each other. It is a moonstruck theory, which can be easily shaken and disproved by a moonquake.

  As I approach the egg-man, I yearn not for his bhurji-pao but for a window. There should be windows available to all unhappy people. Let us say you are walking on the road and you have the sudden urge to die. (Some people crave death as they do cigarettes.) If the craving gets too intense, a window should appear. You can jump through the window and plunge to your death. Suicide takes too much planning. It then ceases to be suicide and becomes murder of the self. If a window opened out of nowhere, my death would be accidental. The last person to understand this would be the egg-man.

  There are two girls at the egg-man’s stand. I recognize them as dancers from Topaz. I do not want to see them because they remind me of her. In every man’s life, there will be that one woman. He knows he should treat her well, he knows he should open her hair gently and let her rivers of black touch the floor. But because she is stronger than he is, he will separate her thighs again and again so that when she is least expecting it, he can tell her he is leaving her.

  That one woman will look into your eyes while holding you. She will touch you, make you feverish, and ask you if that is really your thickness she is holding or a bijli ka khamba. When you tell her that it is no bolt of lightning, she will tell you that you are wrong. She will fly you to heaven. After you have flown and exchanged your heart for a larger one, she will make you sleep in her lap and she will play with your hair. Only then will you believe in God and ask for no further pr
oof of his creation. But again, even to know God, you need money.

  As I look at the bar dancers, who eat their eggs so beautifully, I am taken to the edge of her bed, where I stood and undressed while she looked outside. The streetlights shone on the movie posters.

  That night, Malaika was not happy. I had drunk too much.

  Malaika. That very name makes me want her to bear my children. Seventy times. It is the best name in the world. God should be called Malaika. Then everybody will love him.

  That night Malaika was not happy.

  “Your drinking makes you less of a man,” she said.

  “Come here,” I told her.

  But she sat by her dressing table and looked at the moon. The flowers in her hair were white, or orange, or an evil green.

  “Not tonight,” she said. “This night is bad.”

  “I will make it badder.”

  “You love me?”

  I talked to her face in the mirror. It was less beautiful but easier to remember. “Tonight I do,” I said.

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “If I can still afford to love you, I will.”

  “Means?”

  “You’re expensive.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Then come and suck my worries away.”

  The window next to the dresser opened with the wind. A car horn entered the room. Buffalo horn, Fiat, 1970s.

  “I keep thinking something is going to happen to you,” she said.

  “You’re right.”

  “Even you feel it?”

  “Something happens to me every time you kiss me. Will you marry me?”

  “No.”

  “Not even for a day?”

  “Just for one day?”

  “I will love you more in one day than other men can in a lifetime.”

  “You talk like a bad poet.”

  “What’s a poet?”

  “Someone who means one thing and says another.”

  Once more the car horn entered the room. Smoke from a cooking fire as well. The flowers in her hair were green. They did things behind her head that she could not see. I did not like those flowers.

  “Come here,” I said.

  “You don’t have to pay me tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tonight, I will pay you.”

  “I’d love that.”

  “But you won’t fetch much.”

  “Then I’ll work extra hard.”

  The sari she wore was almost transparent, and her nipples rose through her blouse as if they wished to speak. Her skin is so smooth I could slip on it if I walked, I thought. I love this woman.

  I held her face in both my hands. I wanted to call out her name. I wanted to call her by a hundred names. I wanted to call her name a hundred times. I told her.

  “You’re so silly. Like a child.”

  “Malaika,” I said.

  “What.”

  “Start counting.”

  I moved close to her lips until their redness could kill me.

  “Malaika,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “That was one,” I said. “Malaika.”

  “Two,” she played along.

  “Malaika.”

  “Three.”

  “Malaika.”

  On some days you can count like a gambler and still lose. Even after one hundred I could not stop. Instead of getting less drunk, I flew across the room — over her dresser, along the cracks in the stone and under the wobbling fan. The flowers in her hair were so green that each time I tried to break them loose, the colour rubbed off on my hands. It seemed as if both my hands had been dipped in a mossy, slimy pool of water. The next second I had no hands. They had been cut off at the wrists. Then the elbows were gone. I wanted to ask Malaika how she knew the night was bad, but all she would say was, “You don’t have to pay me.”

  The two bar dancers have finished eating their meal and sway toward their cars. They are rich, earning as much as chartered accountants do, and their cars are more expensive. Dancers can be accountants if they want to. It might take work, but it can be done. But why count numbers when you can dance to them?

  “How are you?” asks the egg-man. His cart has been painted yellow since I last saw him. Without waiting for me to respond, he says, “You’re hungry. You need eggs.”

  “I need a window to die,” I say.

  “No stylish talk here. Say straight.” He grinds his teeth and lets out a grunt.

  “One bhurji-pao,” I order.

  “Should I throw lots of masala?”

  “No, it’s hard on my stomach.”

  “Less spicy then. Sit.”

  “Where?”

  “Lean on the bonnet.”

  He indicates a white Maruti with his head as he breaks the eggs into two and lets them fry on an oily iron plate. I can see my large, fat tree in the distance. The stray dogs still hover around it. They are so sick that they look like ghosts of dogs.

  “Why do you not want masala? It does not taste the same if it’s not spicy.”

  “My stomach,” I remind him.

  “Why worry about your stomach when you don’t have an arm?”

  “You’re right,” I say. “Throw lots of masala.”

  He slaps a thick red paste onto the plate. I wonder if the ghost dogs can smell it.

  “I will make you burn in delight like a woman of the night,” he says. “You’ll go home and still be on fire. You’ll need a fire engine to calm you down. No, even if they put the hose in your mouth you’ll still not get relief. But for a few hours you’ll forget that you don’t have an arm because the burning sensation will be so good.”

  The sari shops are all closed for the night. Beside them is a makeshift temple with oil lamps in its hutch. They are still burning because there is no wind. Five children sleep near the shutters of the sari shop. They snore in peace; they do not hate the world. Only those who have beds hate the world. The god in the makeshift temple knows this. That is why he lets poverty grow; he does not want his children to own beds and hate the world.

  The egg-man sprinkles salt, slaps an orange mixture into the existing egg paste. A prod here, a poke there, a few droplets of his sweat dip in, sizzle-sizzle.

  “Is that your money box?” he asks, pointing to the finger coffin.

  I do not feel like explaining. So I put the Dark Torpedo in my pocket and pull out a ten-rupee note.

  “Is this enough?” I ask.

  “I made this with love. Now it’s up to you to pay with love.”

  “More than ten rupees?”

  “Your love is weak. My love is real and strong.”

  “Fifteen rupees okay?”

  “Right now you love me like a brother or sister. I made bhurji for you like a naughty, spicy lover.”

  “Is twenty rupees fine?”

  “Yes. You are my true love. Romeo–Juliet, Laila–Majnu no class. It should be put in all the scriptures and literatures that the realest love came from a cripple to an egg-man and exactly opposite versa.”

  “It’s sad that no one knows how much you love me.”

  He puts his hand on his heart. “If that is how you feel, then feel no more.” He shouts, “Help!”

  I look around but there is no one. I recall that Mr. P talked to imaginary people as well. Perhaps it is a new practice in the city. But why invent people when millions already exist?

  “Someone help! Come here and see our love.”

  I repeat what I did at Mr. P’s. I imitate the egg-man: “Come here and watch two lovers.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “The same person you are talking to.”

  Just then I hear a scraping sound. It comes from underneath the egg-cart. There is a loud bump and the cart rattles a bit. The egg-man reacts quickly and ensures that none of the plates or food land on the street.

  “Gura, is that you?” asks the egg-man.

  “It is.”

  “What are you doing
underground?”

  “Sleeping.”

  Did Gura know I was looking for him? Was he hiding from me? There is still no sign of his face. I hope he does not intend on conversing from below the cart.

  “Did you get drunk again?” asks the egg-man.

  “Yes,” says Gura.

  “Come out of there. I don’t want people to think negative things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what you could be doing to me from under there,” says the egg-man with a sheepish grin.

  Gura scuttles out from below the egg-cart. He is not surprised to see me at all. Maybe that is why he does not acknowledge me.

  “We want you to see our love,” says the egg-man.

  “Brotherly,” I say. “All brotherly.”

  “You think I’m a fool? There is no such thing as brotherly love!” says Gura.

  “Gura, calm down,” says the egg-man.

  “Right in front of my eyes you’re doing this!”

  “Gura, we were doing nothing,” I say.

  Then Gura starts mumbling. He eats up his words, swallows them like a goblin chomping up tiny living letters at random. The remaining letters flee for their lives, and even though they try to collect themselves, they make no sense at all.

  In a fit, Gura lifts the egg-man’s iron frying pan and flings it onto the bonnet of the white Maruti. Even the egg-man is startled. Next to go are the small plastic containers that hold masalas. Gura opens them and sprinkles the powder into my eyes. My eyes sting and water. Through the haze, trees fall, rivers dry up and a midget rides a tricycle. I can see only that which is not before me. Mad women, blue dogs, orange robes and deep wells. I hear children screaming, swords clashing, prayers failing.

  Then everything goes quiet.

  I look for the egg-man and Gura but they are nowhere.

  It is too dark to see, but I sense a light, a slight varnish, around an object a man holds in his hands. He strokes it methodically, as if he is giving it a new coat of light with his fingers.

  “Mr. P makes good coffins,” he says in a resounding voice. He speaks with the speed and grace of a carrier pigeon in flight. The glaze around the Dark Torpedo is a sheet of dark ice.

  “You were ready to let go, so I helped myself,” he says.

  I can trace the finger through the coffin. I try to see the man’s face but only his long, matted hair is visible.