The Light of Dead Fires

by Sakiv Koch

  The fat man struggled to get to his feet, or to his one functional foot. Pintu came further into the hut, completely oblivious to the hurt and humiliation he had caused his loyal servant. Pintu's lips were swollen, grotesquely puffed out, so that, in conjunction with his bulgy eyes, he looked like a corpulent and particularly malicious frog.

  He studied the hut in the nebulous light of the rainy morning and a compound of pleasure and disappointment further distorted his features. “My pony lives in a better place than this!” he said, obviously pleased with the fact. “There’s nothing here I can take or break,” he added, disclosing the cause of his disappointment.

  “Except for this boy,” Darshan Singh said through grunts of pain, as he managed to stand up again, his pyjama soaked through to his skin. “whom we’ll take and break.” Nina and Smast sat motionless, speechless, but Nina was glaring at Darshan Singh. He met her gaze defiantly, but his eyes jerked away as though Nina were still wielding an axe in her hands. The fat man started to back out of the hut as hurriedly as he’d come into it.

  “Hey, wait, Darshan,” Pintu commanded. “Come back and pick up that big stick in the corner over there. Rat attacked me with that thing. I’ll get even with him before we take him back home for more fun.”

  Darshan Singh hesitated at the threshold, stuck between two fears. “Gone deaf, Darshan?” Pintu prompted. “Should I exert myself? Should I start doing my own work from now on?”

  “No, no, my Junior Master, not until your Darshan is alive and able to move about on his own two feet,” Darshan Singh said in horrified tones. He limped back into the hut, keeping as far away from Nina as possible, and picked up Smast’s home-made crutch.

  “Give it to me now,” Pintu said, extending his hand. “I’ll give him two tits for each tat! Four teeth for my two, right here, in his own rat hole. Ha, ha!”

  “No, no, my Junior Master,” Darshan Singh protested, hugging the stick, nearly hiding it in the folds of his obesity. “Mother Mistress forbade us to do anything here. We’re just to take the boy back to her.”

  Pintu lunged at the man and grappled the stick, but Darshan Singh held on, so that a minor tug-of-war broke out between the large boy and the larger man. “I’m the supreme commander here, Darshan,” Pintu said, unable to wrest the stick out of Darshan Singh’s hands, “you’ll be very sorry for disobeying me.”

  “But Mother Mistress —-”

  “We’ll tell her that Rat tried to run and fell on his face. She’s not going to find out, and she’s not going to care either. A couple of blows here, like a light snack, and then we’ll haul him home for the grand feast!”

  “M-mother Mistress —,” Darshan Singh stuttered, but his fingers started to uncurl, yielding the weapon to Pintu. Pintu wielded the stick like a cricket bat and turned towards Smast.

  Nina rose from the cot and stepped between her son and the intruders. “Your mother was very clear about this,” she croaked, “you’re not to hit Smast.”

  “Step aside,” Pintu said. “He dared hit me. Me! He stole from me! I must punish him with my own hands. Step aside, or you’ll also get a taste of my wrath!”

  Two things happened simultaneously. A whirlwind blew out from behind Nina and something slammed into Pintu’s mouth, bloodying his unhealed lips once more. Almost at the same time, a figure flitted into the hut and took hold of one of Pintu’s ears, just as Smast’s tin cup wreaked new havoc on Pintu’s uncomely face. Pintu’s head jerked back in Sona’s hand and the boy cried out in equal measures of pain, disbelief, and fear.

  Sona’s arrival froze every entity in that small, decrepit space: all its four human occupants, the plump lizard scurrying up a mud wall with an expiring bluebottle fly in its jaws, drops of water suspended from the roof, the very wavelet of time sweeping through the hut at that moment.

  Nina’s eyes widened and her shoulders slumped. Darshan Singh’s body was trembling from head to foot in unspeakable rage; he stopped breathing at seeing Sona and his doughy face grew red.

  Pintu let go of the stick and wept with his hands pressed to his mouth. Smast placed the tin mug he had clobbered Pintu with on his cot. He then looked at the woman who had played such an important role in shaping, in distorting, his destiny. She wore a rich, sky-blue silk sari. A dazzling necklace hung around her slender neck. Intricately-wrought gold bracelets graced her wrists. She had applied kajal to her large, brown eyes, accentuating their luminosity. She was not very tall, but her presence was imposing. She had an impish half-grin playing on her lipsticked lips.

  “Aw, my injured buffalo,” she said, patting Pintu’s head rather harshly. “You should have respected your Ma’s wishes. You wouldn’t have had to take yet another beating and bawl like this then. And you,” she turned fiercely upon the nearly-asphyxiated Darshan Singh. Although she said nothing more to him, the man gasped as if he had been hit. He stumbled, lost his precarious balance, and fell in the water puddled on the floor for the second time that morning.

  Sona spared Nina a single glance and then turned her attention upon Smast. The bejewelled woman and the ragged boy regarded each other for a long moment. Smast had only glimpsed her a few times in the past, always from a distance. He returned her look coolly, without any apprehension or fear in his heart. Sona’s semi-smile wilted by degrees as Smast continued to stand his ground in the staring battle with her. He blinked nor fidgeted. A part of his mind marvelled at the incredible transformation that had taken place in him overnight, with the unfolding of Nina’s story. He felt as though she had given him a second birth last night — the birth of his spirit, almost fifteen years after the birth of his body!

  He allowed himself a tiny, barely-there smile of satisfaction as he noted the formation of sweat-beads upon Sona’s brow. Her eyes narrowed fractionally and then her mouth broke into a full-fledged, radiant smile — it must be the kind of smile she produced the day she stole and destroyed Mother’s notebook, Smast thought, neither charmed nor fooled by her attempt to charm/fool him.

  “Come, Smast, let’s go for a little outing,” she said at last, looking away, conceding defeat. She turned and walked out of the hut. Her son and her servant literally ran out after her, both summarily subdued. Smast took his mother’s hands in his for a moment.

  “No matter what happens,” she whispered to him, “I’m already so proud of you, Smast. Your father would be so proud of you. Go now, my son.”

  He let go of her hands, picked up his crutch, and left his home.

  13: The Wish-granting Woman

  The rain didn’t get a chance to drench him. It merely clung to his eyelashes and cooled his face. He tasted a few sweet droplets by licking his lips. And then he was climbing into the backseat of the long, black marvel on wheels that was parked a few feet away.

  A uniformed chauffeur shut the door after him, enclosing him in luxury that made him suspect he was dreaming the entire thing up. Sona sat in the back with him. Pintu was in the front seat, still holding a hand over his mouth. His shoulders shook from time to time, but he made no sound. Darshan Singh stood by Sona’s door, his shoulders hunched in the rain, a hangdog expression on his face as he spoke non-stop, his words muted by the thick window-glass. Smast watched the fat man’s lips move soundlessly. His chins, jiggling up and down, appeared more expressive of his repentance than his clasped hands and his stricken eyes.

  “Take us home,” Sona commanded the chauffeur as he got behind the wheel and awakened the engine. We didn’t hear her arrive, Smast thought, she must have had the motorcar coast to our door. A thrill started to race up and down his spine as he realised that he was being taken to the house, the building that his father had built, the structure whose model Smast had somehow constructed without ever having seen the original. The motorcar started to move. Darshan Singh limped along painfully for a few wobbly steps with folded hands, begging his mistress’s hard-to-get pardon.

  Smast sank back into the soft upholstery. His old, threadbare clothes formed a stark contrast with the ful
l-grain leather and polished rosewood surrounding him. Sona opened a tin box lying on the seat between them and gave Smast a biscuit. Pintu turned his head and looked at his mother in dismay, his eyes questioning the mode of punishment Sona had selected for Smast.

  You are feeding him? he asked without saying anything. When he obtained no answer to his unspoken query, he looked expectantly at the tin box, hungering for the consolation of a dozen or so of its contents for himself. Sona ignored Pintu completely and offered Smast a second biscuit, as he had wolfed down the first one in one greedy bite. He dispatched the second one in the same speedy manner, the delicious, buttery snack increasing the aching emptiness of his stomach rather than satiating it.

  Sona placed the entire edible-treasures box in Smast’s lap, deepening the dream-like quality of his experience. If I am getting this sort of a princely treatment at merely breaking two of Pintu’s teeth, Smast wondered with rounded eyes, what would she have given me at fracturing a couple of his bones? A chuckle escaped his luxuriating mouth. He looked up from the mound of his biscuits — they couldn’t have been more precious to him had they been made out of gold — and saw Pintu glaring at him with murderous eyes.

  Smast found himself extremely drowsy due to his sleepless night, the gentle rocking of the motorcar, and the impossibility of his too-pleasant-to-be-true situation. He lidded his tin box, shut his eyes, and dozed off.

  ◆◆◆

  The horn squalled rudely and woke him up. His heart changed the rhythm of its beating as he looked at the majestic wrought-iron gates being opened inwards by two uniformed sentries. His eyes developed magical fingertips, so that they could touch everything they saw. His blood began to warm in his veins as he effortlessly remembered things that he had never seen or heard of before. It’s the home my father built, he thought with a stab of unbearable pain, a pulse of electric joy. It’s my home. My home.

  He was conscious of Sona watching him hawkishly, but he neither erased the grimace nor guarded the smile that came to live as unlikely neighbours on his face. He loved everything that he saw; he spoke to the constituents of the house and they spoke back to him.

  The compound wall, dressed in black granite, stretched to at least a hundred feet on either side of the gates. The pathway leading to the main building of the house, set about a hundred-and-fifty feet back from the street, was paved with a green stone.

  Groves of flowering trees populated the landscaped gardens on both sides of the driveway. A slender, chuckling stream wended its way from the western garden, crossed the driveway under a wooden bridge, and threw itself into a pond in the eastern garden.

  A round structure, made out of wood and glass, stood at the pond’s shore. When he saw it, Smast sat up with a jerk. He rubbed his eyes to clear away a film of moisture that had suddenly formed over them. Sona laughed softly and asked the chauffeur to stop the motorcar.

  She and Smast got out of the vehicle and it rolled on with Pintu still fuming silently in the front seat. “That place is something special — an emperor among kings,” she said with what sounded to Smast like a thief’s pride in her loot. “I’ll show it to you at the very last.”

  He wanted to go into the embrace of that room straightaway, instinctively knowing it to have been an extremely fond dream of his father’s, but he did as Sona asked, following her down the driveway, the tin-box tucked under one arm, his crutch — Pintu’s bane — punctuating his drunkard’s walk. He drank in the overwhelming beauty, natural and man-made (Father-made, as Smast thought of it), cocooning him on all sides.

  They stepped onto the ornate wooden bridge that spanned the stream. Smast lingered upon it for a long minute, absorbing the music that water made beneath its weathered planks. The last thirty feet of the driveway curved a little, so that the main building of the mansion remained veiled behind wealthy boughs brimming with fragrant blossoms.

  When he finally saw it, the building’s white-marbled grandeur snatched a half of his breath away. The other half, lodged in the hollow of his throat, made a curious sound as it escaped his gaping mouth. Sona looked at him with the same fraudulent satisfaction she had exhibited earlier, as though she were the architect, the true owner of this house that was in reality someone else’s home, that was in reality Smast’s home. In spite of its literally breathtaking splendour and majesty, Smast thought, this place feels sad and forlorn.

  An unseen but immense force jolted him as he stepped over the threshold of the main door. The tin box fell from under his arm with a loud, drawn-out clatter. The container separated from its lid violently, spilling out precious biscuits, scattering and breaking them.

  He ignored his clumsiness and the resultant wasted treasure. He ignored the welcoming committee of men and women — cooks and maids and gardeners — assembled in the entrance hall, all of them staring at him as though he had dropped down from the sky. Which, in a way, I have, he thought.

  The entrance hall had a small pond with a fountain making music in its centre. Father loved water so much, Smast thought, how ironic that he died by drowning. They entered into the central courtyard with its overhanging gallery, its manicured lawn, and its own body of water sending up a perpetual jet of water in the air. The similarity between what he saw now and what he had imagined at the time of building his model house was most pronounced here. The out-of-the-world intensity of this experience made the world go out of focus for a moment.

  His vision was still somewhat blurred, so he didn’t straightaway see the man who came out upon the gallery and stood peering down at them. A stab of unease made him look up. He recognised the usurper, the reckless, ingrate monster immediately and something immensely hot and acidic exploded inside him. His hands balled into pitiable fists and his thin body started to quake with the force of his fury.

  Raj laughed derisively. “A fiery pup!” he declared, a dark menace rippling in his face and his voice. “The no-bark, all-bite kind. Very unlike his respected father. No wonder this boy hurt our ‘all-bark, no-bite’ son so badly. What do you intend to do with him, woman?”

  The woman made no reply to her husband’s question, thereby disappointing Smast a little. At this point, he also desperately wanted to know as to what she intended to do with him. The intrigue had gone on long enough, and he wasn’t sure he could take any more of the wonders and horrors he was being subjected to, without clearly knowing where he was headed.

  He had visualised being lashed like an animal after he had hit Pintu last night. He knew that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, those lashes were coming. Only the form of punishment was going to take an unusual shape, a shape far more dangerous than the crude dispensation of ‘justice’ he had been expecting and dreading all night long.

  Until now, Smast had felt a certain degree of satisfaction at the ‘fattening’ component of the process, which, he knew, would terminate in butchery sooner or later. But seeing Raj had changed the complexion of this amazing new world. Smast now wanted things to come to a head immediately. He gripped his trusty crutch more tightly — he wasn’t going to go down without a fight, no matter how ineffective and laughable his offence would be.

  If I knock down that monster just as I knocked down his monstrous son; if I spit in his face and kick him in the head, even as his men start hitting me and dragging me away to kill me, I could die laughing.

  “Speak your bloody wishes out loud, boy!” Raj thundered, his tone half mocking, half stern, “I’m sure this woman will grant all of them!”

  Smast opened his mouth to comply with the monster’s request, but Sona clutched his arm and pressed it in a forestalling manner. “Come,” she said, “I’ve so many other things to show you.”

  They turned with the intention to move away. A large vase fell and exploded inches from Smast’s feet. Clods of soil got into his eyes and mouth even as the demonic strains of Raj’s laughter assaulted his ears.

  14: The Mysterious Sacrifice

  He opened his eyes to a slit and noted that mother soil had m
ade no discrimination between the rich and the poor. Sona uttered a curse, spat the grit from her mouth, and rubbed her eyes vehemently. Her husband laughed louder and answered her curse with a couple of his own. He then turned and went into a room opening from the gallery.

  It took Smast a much shorter time to fully regain his vision than it took Sona — she evidently hadn’t had much exposure to violence of any kind in the past decade and a half. Smast spied Pintu’s fat, smirking countenance before it vanished behind the curtains of a huge doorway.

  Sona led Smast to a basin where they washed their faces and rinsed their mouths. She took a towel from a visibly trembling maid and rubbed her face with it so vigorously Smast feared she would scrape some of her skin off in her anger. When she was done, Sona balled the towel and threw it at the maid, who let the damp cloth hit her in the face, although she could have warded it off easily. She ran away looking almost happy at having escaped so lightly.

  Sona’s eyes smouldered and her small hands fisted so tightly her sharp nails dug into her palms. Her teeth captured her bottom lip and bit it hard, so that pain momentarily replaced anger as the chief expression on her face. Just when Smast hoped he would get to witness something entertaining, Sona heaved a great sigh and appeared to master herself once more. She blinked a few times in succession. Her smile — the synthetic, full one, not the genuine, half-sized article — returned to her mouth.

  “Come,” she said, “pay no mind to the baboons of my house.”

  “They are hyenas and this is not your house,” Smast said, speaking his mind out loud. He but his tongue and winced. He had not meant to utter those true but suicidal words. If he could, he would take them back.