by Threes Anna
Then, as they wait for the next thrust of the shovel, he suddenly stops. “This is work,” he pants. “I’m an old geezer and long retired, so don’t tell me you can’t do it. You just don’t feel like it. Why do you think this country isn’t developing? Because there are too many gutless bastards like you around. Do you think we could have won the war in our bare feet?” He stamps his foot on the ground and continues his tirade.
Then a large truck appears at the bottom of the driveway and comes to a halt. It’s full of pipes: long iron sewage pipes. There are four men seated on top of the pile. The driver honks his horn, and from his cabin he waves to the men in the driveway. During this interruption the general has temporarily lost the thread of the conversation, and now he glares at the driver. When he sees the men sitting on top of the pipes, he orders them to climb down. “Another truckload of layabouts! Don’t you people understand that you’re expected to work for the wages I’m paying you?”
One by one, the men jump down from the truck.
“And now I suppose you’re going to tell me that it’ll take a week to unload those pipes.” He was still holding the shovel. Then, before anyone sees what he is doing, he starts to cut through the ropes holding the iron pipes together. The driver shouts and everyone jumps backwards. As the general slices through the last rope, there’s a creaking sound, but that is all. The general is disappointed. He was hoping that all the iron pipes would glide from the truck at the same time. It would have been a magnificent apotheosis to his bout of digging. He gives the pile a final whack and turns away. The labourers are dumbstruck. The pile begins to creak, and one of the pipes works itself free and starts to slide. The man with the cloth wound around his head does his best to pull Victor away from the truck, but Victor doesn’t want to be pulled away. He wants to stride away from the truck in his combat boots.
But Victor is too slow. The blow knocks him to the ground, face down, as though a grenade has just exploded behind him. The first pipe hits his calves. It is as if all the power in his legs has been obliterated. His knees hit the ground and he feels them break. The next pipe falls on the one before, breaking his shins. With a thundering roar, the entire load begins to slide off the truck bed. One by one, the pipes land on the general’s legs. He feels his feet and ankles shatter. Inside his boots, all his bones are reduced to splinters. Only the leather holds the flesh together. Now the pipes fall onto his back. The men are screaming. They throw their shovels in front of the pipes, trying to stop the onslaught. But the iron pipes continue to come crashing down, like the finale of a breathtaking piece of music.
In the midst of the music, Victor hears the sound of Japanese bullets all around him. They don’t hit him: he knows he’s invulnerable. The war is over and he’s made it out of the jungle alive. On foot. Wearing his boots. He is walking along the river, and his feet feel wet. Blood gushes over the top at every step. He founders in the mud. The sumpy bottom makes it impossible for him to take another step. He lies there, face down. Then he realizes that he’s lying on the ground, with his face on the rocks. The drum roll ceases; one final high tone echoes. Then everything goes dark and still.
The driver mutters, “The pipes weren’t for here.”
1953 Bombay ~~~
THE BELT COMES down again and again, leaving red welts on his back. In the chapel the boys’ choir is singing, their voices high and fragile. Together with the brothers of the St. Thomas congregation, the churchgoers are celebrating Easter. Most of them are descendants of the bastard offspring of English soldiers who, after getting an Indian beauty pregnant, left the mother-to-be behind. Brother Francis hopes no one misses him. He’s standing in the shower room, stripped to the waist, and he is chastising himself with his belt. His dream, and the reason he learned Hindi, was to do good work ministering to the poorest of the poor, as a respectable missionary brother. That dream has collapsed. A week ago Joseph, the boy he rescued from the clutches of the tyrannical tailor, disappeared, and it is his fault. He’s sure of that.
This morning, when it was his turn to go forward in prayer, he lost his place. Father Prior looked at him questioningly. He desperately searched his missal for the right words, but the sentence was gone. The letters kept spinning around, and the abbot finally had to assign the reading to his neighbour. Later that same day, when they all walked in procession to the chapel, he chose a spot at the end of a row of brothers kneeling at the communion rail. His thoughts turned to Joseph, as they did every second that he was not distracted by more edifying thoughts. Where could he be? The boy hadn’t returned to the tailor, that much was clear, since Francis had gone by that morning. Had he run away with the non-believer Abbas? Abbas who wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone; he had become the prior’s special conversion project. Please, God, let them keep their hands off him, he prayed. He felt his member swelling and through his habit he saw a bulge appear next to the wooden cross. He stole away from the altar rail and went to the shower room. There he had untied the rope around his waist, hung the wooden cross on a nail, let his habit slip from his shoulders, and begun to lash himself.
“RUN, MUKKA” yells Abbas. “Run!”
They duck into an alley and then make a right through a small gateway. They can hear the policeman panting behind them. They shoot down another alleyway, where a woman is on her knees doing the wash. They slip between two houses, and suddenly Abbas pulls Madan behind a wall. A rat streaks past. Abbas puts his finger to his lips. Madan holds his breath and presses his arms tight against his body. They hear the sound of the policeman’s boots as he goes clumping past and disappears into the distance. Abbas smiles and holds up his hand. Madan takes the apple from his pocket and hands it to Abbas.
“Way to go, Dummy.” Abbas gives him a slap on the shoulder. Not a hard slap, but one that expressed appreciation.
It is a very large, bright red apple. They retreat farther behind the wall, where no one can see them. In the corner, the rat reappears and looks at the two boys. Abbas bites into the apple hungrily and then gives it to Madan. They take turns until even the core disappears into their stomachs. The stem is the only thing they throw away.
“Another one?” he asks.
Madan nods enthusiastically.
From their hiding place, they peer into the alleyway. Halfway down, there’s a woman with a bucket on her head, and at the far end a man is busy loading a cart. They crawl out of their hiding place and walk cautiously back in the direction they came from. When they turn onto the main street, Abbas starts to limp.
On the corner there’s a fruit stall where a woman is making her purchases.
“Baksheesh, baksheesh,” entreats Abbas as he limps along. He is also extremely cross-eyed.
The woman continues her negotiations as if oblivious to the child beggar standing at her elbow.
With longing in his eyes, Madan also looks up at the woman, as he slides his hand underneath her bag in the direction of the crate of apples.
“Out of here, you two!” shouts the man in the stall.
Holding up their hands, they work their way along the row of stalls. Then they dash into the first alleyway they see and dissolve into laughter. Again, Madan pulls a large apple out of his pocket, this time a green one. Abbas is just about to take a bite when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He freezes. A dirty claw appears at the level of his nose. Reluctantly he places the apple in the hand.
“If I ever find you working my street again,” says a boy with a large scar above one eye, “I’ll break your legs.”
1970 Rampur ~~~
Dear Donald,
Just a line this time. You know all about the idiotic decision taken by the English government. We don’t understand any of it. We’ve written several letters to various authorities, but when we finally get an answer it’s always the same. There’s nothing they can do for us! They should have told us that when we chose to give up our British citizens
hip. It’s absurd that we have to hear about it this way. My widow’s pension is small, but sufficient for the time being. Father’s pension from the army is still good, since the cost of living is much lower here than in England, but you can imagine what the future consequences are for us. We argue sometimes, because we’re so worried. Don’t let on to Father that I’ve written to you about this, but his legs are not good right now. They’re infected again. But every time I hire a live-in nurse for him, he sends her packing within a couple of days. He spends all his time writing to authorities here in India, but they don’t even answer his letters. Sometimes it’s as if he does nothing but write letters, just as I’m writing to you now, because I know that you are acquainted with Sir Whethamstede. If it’s not too much trouble, would you ask him if he can inquire at the Department of Army Pensions about the regulations for inhabitants of the former colonies, and find out if there isn’t something that can be done about the freeze on pensions? Is everything all right with you and Patricia? I sincerely hope so.
Love from your sister Charlotte
P.S.: The apples are just as sour as last year.
1995 Rampur ~~~
THE CROWS PECKED the soil listlessly. They wouldn’t find any worms until the rains came, and they were already two weeks later than normal. Anyone who could summon the energy to talk was discussing the only topic of interest: the water shortage in the Rampur reservoir.
Charlotte wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked around inquiringly. Something was different, but she didn’t know what. Then her nose told her. She sniffed the air. It wasn’t the grass, which at this time of year was odourless, but the jasmine bush next to the shed that gave off a faint scent. There weren’t any flowers yet — they wouldn’t appear until after the rain — but there was a subtle aroma coming from the bush itself, and the branches and leaves. It put her in a good mood. No doubt it was an omen, a sign that the monsoon was not far off. She looked up at the sky, but it was cloudless.
Rays of sunlight shone through the roof of the shed. She noticed immediately that someone had slept in the old mali’s bed. She’d have to have a serious talk with Hema about this. Had he again offered one of a hoard of distant second cousins a roof over his head? Like every head servant, Hema wanted to reign supreme in his own kingdom, but because his empire had shrunk to one man, he was sometimes moody, and that annoyed her. He’d “forget” to empty the wastebaskets, iron her blouses, unclog the sewer pipes every week, and water the borders, although he had perhaps taken care of the last chore. His relationship with the tailor was also a concern. It might be better if she arranged for the darzi to work in the music room. She felt herself blush and shook her head in an effort to banish the colour from her cheeks. Her bicycle was standing next to the mali’s bed, and she saw at once that one of the tires was flat. Her blush intensified, but this time it was one of annoyance. The man who repaired tire punctures could come by only after closing his shop, and she had relieved Hema of that task after several unsuccessful attempts. But this was an emergency. She couldn’t afford to miss the Tuesday-morning get-together, since that would mean that all the inquisitive club members would have to come by, one by one, not only to check on the progress of their dresses, but also to peek and pry, and to establish whether her house was really as empty as the gossip would have them believe. So she adjusted her straw hat and pretended that the heat didn’t bother her. At the bottom of the path, on the very spot where her father had stood for the last time, she would hail a rickshaw. After all, she still had a good portion of the money from her Wedgwood service, although it was going faster than she had hoped. Worrying about unpaid bills was one of the things that Charlotte was very good at postponing. She had urged her father to find a smaller house, but he refused to sign on the dotted line. Her latest attempt had given rise to such an unholy row that she had finally given up hope.
The sun burned straight through her hat, and perspiration poured from her face. The street at the bottom of the hill, normally full of traffic, was deserted except for a cow grazing absently and a truck full of bananas. No one wanted to spend a minute longer than necessary outdoors in this heat, and she was wondering whether many of the club ladies might not show up when she heard a familiar car horn. The shiny vehicle stopped and the door flung open.
“Come on, jump in,” called the wife of Nikhil Nair.
Charlotte was only too happy to comply. “I’ve got a flat tire,” she said as she flopped down next to the portly woman in the shocking pink blouse.
“You shouldn’t be cycling at all in this weather. Don’t you have the Vauxhall anymore?”
Charlotte smiled. “Cycling keeps me fit.”
The air conditioning was on high. Charlotte shivered slightly.
“Is he making progress?” inquired the wife of Nikhil Nair. “I simply cannot wait to see my American dress.”
“He’s hard at work,” Charlotte replied. She had a clear recollection of the pink dress that hung from the ceiling, dancing gently above the bent figure of the tailor.
“I do hope it turns out well. What if I had to take my silk to a third darzi? It doesn’t bear thinking about! And run the risk of someone cutting off another half a metre.”
“According to the butler, he’s making great strides.”
“The man doesn’t do his sewing in the kitchen, does he? I don’t want my dress smelling like masala and roast chicken.”
“No, of course not.”
“Fabrics absorb odours, you know. The darzi who made my wedding outfit worked on it next door to the room where my uncle kept a secret stash of liquor, and the whole day I smelled like a brewery. We tried to get rid of the odour by hanging it outside for a night, but I was afraid someone might steal it. My mother sprinkled it with eau de cologne. Not that that helped . . .” Everyone knew that her tailor back then was a notorious alcoholic, and that by the time the celebrations began, her uncle was already short twelve bottles of whisky.
“He only uses a bit of sugar to stiffen the collars.”
“Sugar!”
“That’s what he said.”
“You mean you can converse with him?”
“No, but the butler saw him doing something with sugar and assumed that it was our sugar he was using. I had to intervene.”
“I hear he’s a bit strange.”
“How do you mean, strange?
“My chauffeur saw him buying flower seeds at the market. What on earth does he need flower seeds for? You can’t eat them and there’s no use sending them home, since it’s the wrong season, so I thought maybe . . . You haven’t asked him to do the gardening as well, have you? You still don’t have a new gardener?”
There was a touch of disdain in her voice; Charlotte pretended not to notice it.
“He probably saw something he fancied.”
“Well, it’s still strange. Keep an eye on him. I certainly don’t want to end up with a row of sunflowers embroidered on my collar.”
When they arrived at the club, all the ladies were anxious to hear how the tailor was progressing with their festive outfits, and Charlotte had to move heaven and earth to convince them to leave the tailor — and more particularly, herself — in peace. “When he’s finished,” she said, “he’ll come straight to each of you. I’ll see to that.”
~~~
“HAVE YOU HEARD anything?” sighed the wife of Ajay Karapiet over the phone. She hadn’t attended the Tuesday-morning gathering because she was in bed and running a high fever. She was still too ill to listen to the commentary from her friend with the penchant for pink.
“It’s really too pathetic for words. I’m almost afraid to tell you, but she was on foot, in this weather. Imagine! There was no one on the street, of course, and I noticed a strange odour in the car, so I gave her one of those modern eau-de-cologne tissues, that was the least I could do.” The wife of Nikhil Nair rat
tled on.