by Indra Sinha
“She says she has come because people say you are a great physician, the best in Khaufpur.”
At once this bastard’s all smiles. “Madam, I do my best.” He sends a self-satisfied smirk her way, totally ignoring me. “Normally you would need an appointment, but we are not inflexible. So, dear lady what can I do for you?”
“Such guttural baliverne can you follow?” asks Ma, she has got used to the idea that I can somehow interpret the bêtises of the Khaufpuris.
“He is placing himself at your service Ma, see how he’s making eyes, I think maybe he has fallen in love with you.”
“Shameless boy, tu t’en moques, soit sérieux. The people of the city are in need of care and what do they get? This baragouin.”
“What is the good lady saying?” he asks.
I was in my madness, remember, Eyes, it comes to me that I can ask him anything and there’s one thing that I want more than anything in the world, yet I’m afraid to ask. A desperate business is hope, not to be encouraged if you can be content with small happiness, but the curse of human beings and this animal alike is that whatever you have, always you want more. Ever since I realised my feelings for Nisha, a wish for one thing has been growing in me, day by day as I sit beside her, smell the perfume of her hair and her skin, it has become fiercer, I think unless I do something I will die, this desire will devour me and now a moment has come when I might at least ask for what I want. I cannot let it pass.
You will be disappointed, whispers a voice. Ask! shouts another.
Now or never. I take courage and say what’s in my heart, “Sir, she wishes you to do an operation to make me stand up straight and walk on two legs.”
Now I’m down on fours looking up at this important doctor, so impatient am I for what he will say that my eyes remove from his, down his nose slide and settle on his lips, ready I’m for his reply. The lips purse and chew, he’s thinking. Such a big doctor, I was right to ask, a grand professor.
Turning to Ma he says, “Madam, I must be plain with you, whatever could have been done for this boy, the time is long past. He will have to get used to his condition. There is absolutely no hope, this boy will never walk or stand up straight again.”
Ma’s asking something but I’m unable either to hear or reply. In my head a thing flees away shrieking like a bird, eee-chip-chip-chip, the sound of the world dwindles to an eerie hum. I am looking at a shelf in the professor’s room. On it is a jar, a big round glass jar of liquid that flashes like it’s full of sunlight.
“What did you think, it’s that easy?” says a gnarly voice in my ear. “Quit staring by the way it gives me the creeps.” Glaring at me from inside the jar is a small crooked man. An ugly little monster, his hands are stretched out, he has a wicked look on his face, as if he’s just picked your pocket and is planning to piss on your shoe. Such an expression, I forget my own troubles and start laughing. There’s something weird about him. Looks like someone’s peering over his shoulder, a second head is growing out the side of his neck.
The doctor follows where I’m looking and turns to Ma still as if I don’t exist, his lips move, I see rather than hear the words, “Be grateful this boy’s no worse, madam, that could have been him in the jar. Half of those who were expecting on that night aborted and as for the rest, well let’s just say some things were seen in this town that were never seen before.”
The jar starts bubbling and shining, Ma’s reply when it comes sounds like she’s by a waterfall inside a huge cave, this time I don’t even catch the words.
“Hey you, standing there like a fucking Sadda Miyã ki tond, what the fuck are you looking at?” The creature’s frowning through the glass of his jar.
“You, mate,” I’ve said still laughing. “You are in a right fucking mess.”
“Bugger off,” says he, “if you can’t stop staring. Know what you look like to me? Come pressing your nose like a snail’s foot on the glass, huge round eyes are waving, even slime do you leave from your snout’s unwiped, fuckers like you have no consideration.”
“Hey hey, I too get stared at.”
“Then you know better,” he says. “Anyway, shut up and listen. Long I’ve waited for a one like you. I need your help. You have to get me out of here.”
“Here’s where?” I ask. “This office, this hospital?”
“This jar, stupid. You wouldn’t want to be in here, believe me, it’s like being trapped in an egg.”
“Up a hen’s bum?” This strikes me as so funny, hooting with laughter I’m.
“Your back is twisted,” says he with great bitterness, “but at least you are alive. Me, I’m still fucking waiting to be born.”
“Sorry, forgive,” says I. “Your situation is worse than mine.”
“I feel myself sinking,” says the little creature. “I drift down into a place where it is all dark, you open your mouth but there is no air just the black stink of it filling your mouth and eyes and nose, burns too, this fucking stuff they’ve got me in. Cunts want to study me, but they look for the wrong things. See this second head, Animal miyañ? It’s the clever one with the ideas. Such stuff it thinks, thoughts you could spin a world on. The one in front is dumb, sits swallowing liquid like a fish listening to all the shit these doctors talk. Number two knows what’s what. It’s stuffed with secrets they’d love to get their hands on, secrets of plants, minerals, lead to gold, mermaids, sun, moon, laughter, immortal life, all this class of thing’s there, locked up in the other head, this info must never fall into their hands. You must free me.”
I’m about to ask him how I can do this when the roaring recedes, Ma’s voice is buzzing in my ears, I am dropped back into this life where I find her looking questioningly at me, so I’ve told her I can’t understand a thing the great doctor is saying, but he’s sure to be talking shit as people like him always do.
“Il raconte les conneries, comme toujours.”
She gives a snort. “As usual.” Well, I am fully back.
“What is she saying?” asks the doctor.
“She is praising your wisdom, doctor sahib and asking, what might be that creature in the jar?”
“A child of the poison,” says the mullah of medicine. “We call it parapagus.”
“Now what’s he on about?” demands Ma.
“He says you have a voice like a nightingale.”
She simpers, “Oh get away with you.” I can’t tear my eyes away from the little bugger in the jar, I could swear he is winking at me.
“She thinks I hear voices,” I tell him.
“Should fucking hope so,” says he, “why else do you have ears?”
This is how I met my mate the Khã-in-the-Jar, I call him that because in Khaufpur you call a friend Khã like in other places they say mate or yaar, plus he’s in a jar.
TAPE FIVE
The big thing that happened in Amrika, when it I saw it on the tele do you know what I did? I clapped! I thought, fantastic! This plane comes out of nowhere, flies badoom! into this building. Pow! Blam! Flowers of flame!
It’s night, outside rain’s dripping golden off the roof of Chunaram’s chai house, turning Paradise Alley to glue. We’re inside drinking tea, I’m going “Fucking brilliant! Bollywallah special-effects, forget it!”
Zafar looks at me and says, “You fucking idiot, Animal, this isn’t a movie. This really happened. It’s a terrible accident that just happened.”
Really upset he must be, who almost never swears.
“Wasn’t an accident,” chips in someone. “The plane didn’t even try to miss.” The tele is going crazy, playing the crash over and over again. Commentators are shouting. No one knows what’s happening. Nine-fingered Chunaram, our host of the chai shop, smooth-talking ex-leper, kebab-genius, doesn’t care what the fuss is about, in heaven the fucker is. From all over the Nutcracker, people drawn by the commotion are coming running through the mud. Chunaram’s tin shack is crammed with gawpers, some at least will buy his tea and snacks. Thrilled he’s to see the
tele earning its keep. Bribes must be paid to run the wire that steals electric from the munsipal. Pays to invest.
“My god, how awful! How terrible!” voices round the room are saying as the shimmering blue shape in the corner once more bursts into flame. These two women, Ashraaf and Bano, they are crying, I can make out the shine of tears. Me, I don’t believe it’s real. It’s a hoax, clip from a movie, trailer of some coming multi-starrer. Has to be.
“In Amrika bombs, explosions, buildings falling, such things are normal. I’m telling you, yaar, see Fight Club.” It’s Farouq, the movie expert.
“So what are you saying?” I ask. “Normal it’s a movie, or normal it’s not a movie?”
“Arsehole, who asked you to speak?” replies Farouq. It’s like that between him and me. Arsehole? I’ve looked at Zafar, but he’s locked to the screen.
Even after the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth planes hit and all those buildings fall, Zafar maintains it is not a movie. Zafar has to be wrong. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life. Not in Amrika anyway. Here in Khaufpur it’s different. Here in Khaufpur we had that night. Nothing like that has ever happened anywhere else.
“How can it be happening right now?” I ask. “Look outside, it’s dark, it’s raining, but these buildings are in sunshine.”
“Wah, you idiot!” cries Farouq. “Don’t you know there’s a time difference between Khaufpur and Amrika? When it’s night here, it’s day there.”
“I tell you it’s a movie. Soon it will finish. Words will come, THE END.” But now I’m feeling stupid, which I hate. “Tell me what happens,” I say. “I have to get Ma’s supper.”
I’ve got down from my chair to the floor. “Let’s go,” I say to Jara. She gets up and follows me out.
“C’��tait un film,” I tell Ma Franci when we get home. “C’est normal.”
Says Ma, “Pauvre Jaanvar à quatre pattes, pour toi c’est quoi le normal?” Poor four-foot Animal, for you what is normal?
“I see a star fall from heaven, the abyss opens, out pours smoke like from a great furnace, the sun and the day are gone.” Thus speaks Ma. C’est quoi le normal? Fine fucking one she is to ask this of me, ever since I told her what we witnessed she’s been raving like she’s fully cracked. I am trying to describe the flames, the smoke, the falling towers, she’s interrupted with étoiles and abîmes, stars and abysses.
“It was a movie.”
“No Animal, it’s him,” cries Ma in excitement or panic I can’t tell. “This is his work, he’s up and running again, this time there’ll be no stopping him.”
“What makes you so sure it’s real?”
“He began the job right here in Khaufpur, now others are getting a taste.”
Ma starts gabbling on and on about him, what he’s done and what he’ll do next. She says that he is full of anger and is going to unleash his full fury on the world, all of us are going to catch it.
“Time for supper,” says I, reaching my hand into the hole in the wall where is the big purple onion I’ve kept aside for tonight’s meal.
“Have a care!” cries Ma. Adds with a cunning look, “Animal, dis à nos amis, soyez prêt, il vous appelera à tout moment,” it means tell our friends be ready, he’ll be wanting you any moment.
By our friends she means the scorpions that live in our wall, press your ear to the stones you’ll hear their scrapes, rustles, the clicking of tiny claws.
“What have the scorps to do with this?” I ask, removing one from the onion before extracting it from the wall.
Seems Ma has big hopes for the scorpions. “Animal, when the time comes these little beasts who live in the walls of our house, they will come creeping out and grow huge. They’ll reach the size of horses. They’ll grow stiff red wings like locusts, that rustle when they move. They’ll have faces like people and long hair like women, but their teeth will be like lions’ teeth, which they’ll gnash in the most horrifying way.”
“What will they do next, Ma?” I’ve somewhat crushed the onion with a stone, then buried it in the hot ashes of the hearth.
“They’ll wear golden crowns, when they beat their wings, it’ll sound like an army of chariots rushing to war.”
“And then?”
“Well, my little Animal, they’ll still have their tails, only much much longer, ten feet at least with a sting the size of a bull’s horn, what they’ll do is they’ll go around stabbing people, the ones who’ve done evil to others.”
“People like Fatlu Inspector and the Chief Minister? There’s a little dough left, I’ll make a chappati.”
“They’ll sting them with their tails, and those people will want to die, but won’t be able to, because the poison won’t kill them. It will fill them with agony for five months.”
“Why five months?” Five months is not enough for Fatlu Inspector. “Why not six months? Why not eighteen years?”
“It’s what Sanjo saw,” says she out of the well of her madness.
Once Ma’s eyes were bright blue, now they’re milky with coming cataracts, but when she speaks of Sanjo such a look comes into them, you’d expect their milky clouds to part and light come streaming through. Ma brings out a small black book, it’s the one written by Sanjo that tells about the end of the world, she holds it up close to her nose. “Jusques à quand, Maître saint et vrai, tarderas-tu à faire justice? à tirer vengeance de notre sang?”
Eyes, in case you don’t understand Ma’s language, this is Sanjo talking to him, he’s saying fuck’s sake how much longer will you make us wait for justice? And if you still don’t know who he is, well it’s god. Sanjo reckons that the world is full of wickedness and is going to be wiped out, this will happen in various appalling ways and is called the Apokalis.
Sanjo’s dream has a strange effect on Ma, it makes her afraid and joyful at the same time. Says she, “Don’t you see, my poor little Animal, the Apokalis has already begun? It started on that night in Khaufpur.”
Onion comes out of the embers looking like a ball of ash, break the crust it’s juicy and sweet inside, smells good. Ma does not notice the food, so caught up is she. “Listen, injustice will triumph, thousands will die in horrible ways. Well, what else happened on that night? Nous sommes le peuple de l’Apokalis.” We are the people of the Apokalis.
“Old woman,” says I giving her her share of the roti, “listen to yourself. You ask what’s normal for me, I’m mad only once in a while, you are fulltime hypped.”
Ma grumbles about the insolence of the young. “Mark my words,” she says. “It has begun again, and will not stop. Round the world it will go. Right now it’s in Amrika but it will return to Khaufpur. Terror will return to this city. It began here, here it will end.”
But Sanjo’s wrong. Fucking world didn’t end. It’s still suffering.
In the low flicker of our oil lamp, Ma’s face looks like a witch’s, onion juice is dribbling from her jaw. No teeth, with a piece of roti she scoops the soft centre into her mouth. It’s not much, a bit of salt plus a little chilli would at least make the stomach glow, but we have neither.
Later, when we have turned out the lamp she says to me in the darkness, “Animal, listen, can you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The wings of the beast, they sound just like metal shutters rattling down over the shop of Ram Nekchalan.”
Soon her snores tell me she is asleep.
I lie and think about the thing that happened in Amrika. Sleep stays far away, the rain has stopped, through holes in the roof stars are shining. During monsoon time I patch these gaps with plastic, thatch, anything, but wind must have blown it off. Through some deep abyss a star is falling, inside me wells a deep dread, such a terrible thing, who would have thought it could happen to others, to die in terror, may I never know such a death. Then it’s like someone is singing softly in my ear
O my darling child let me wrap you up warm
your little nose, your flowerbud mouth, I’ll hide from harm
>
and though my heart’s breaking I must lay you down
and never shall we meet again till this world’s overthrown
After a while the night is filled with silence and no more stars fall.
Out of the darkness comes a screaming that makes my hair stand on end. Instantly I’m awake. Not yet dawn. Another howl, it’s the call of a train coming through from Delhi. In the gloom I hear Ma Franci whimpering. For Ma the hooting is not the 2616 GT Express rumbling through the Nutcracker, it’s an angel in a sooty robe blowing the last trump. Ma’s eyes are open, but she’s fully asleep, how often have I heard her shriek in her bed, it’s of that night she dreams, lying on her mat, so many years has she lain there the soft earth is moulded to her shape, the bumps and hollows near the hearth, they’re made by a bony old bint who sees in dreams the moon turning to blood, the world curling up like a leaf in the palm of her hand.
TAPE SIX
Elli appeared the way a spider does, from nowhere. Catch a movement in the corner of your eye, it’s there. We were all in Nisha’s house, which is her dad Somraj’s house in the Chicken Claw. Who’s we? Nisha of course, Zafar, he virtually lived there. Farouq I’ve mentioned, he was Zafar’s right hand man. As well as these there were some other cronies, plus me and Jara. We’re on the verandah, talking about the thing that had happened in Amrika, and Farouq’s chafing me because I’d thought it was a movie.
“It was you who talked of movies. Just love making me look stupid, I hate you second-most in the world.” I could not say who I detested the most.
“Animal, take your head out your arse, I mentioned movies because movies show how they live over there.”