The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

  Sophiekins.

  The Sitting Man with the cap and epaulettes, also intimidated by Chacko’s suit and sideways tie, allowed him into the baggage claim section.

  When there was no railing left between them, Chacko kissed Margaret Kochamma, and then picked Sophie Mol up.

  “The last time I did this I got a wet shirt for my pains,” Chacko said and laughed. He hugged her and hugged her and hugged her. He kissed her bluegrayblue eyes, her Entomologist’s nose, her hatted redbrown hair.

  Then Sophie Mol said to Chacko, “Ummm … excuse me? D’you think you could put me down now? I’m ummm … not really used to being carried.”

  So Chacko put her down.

  Ambassador Estha saw (with stubborn eyes) that Chacko’s suit was suddenly looser, less bursty.

  And while Chacko got the bags, at the dirty-curtained window LayTer became Now.

  Estha saw how Baby Kochamma’s neckmole licked its chops and throbbed with delicious anticipation. Der-Dhoom, Der-Dhoom. It changed color like a chameleon. Der-green, der-blueblack, dermustardyellow.

  Twins for tea

  It would bea

  “All right,” Ammu said. “That’s enough. Both of you. Come out of there, Rahel!”

  Inside the curtain, Rahel closed her eyes and thought of the green river, of the quiet deep-swimming fish, and the gossamer wings of the dragonflies (that could see behind them) in the sun. She thought of her luckiest fishing rod that Velutha had made for her. Yellow bamboo with a float that dipped every time a foolish fish enquired. She thought of Velutha and wished she was with him.

  Then Estha unraveled her. The cement kangaroos were watching.

  Ammu looked at them. The Air was quiet except for the sound of Baby Kochamma’s throbbing neckmole.

  “So,” Ammu said.

  And it was really a question. So?

  And it hadn’t an answer.

  Ambassador Estha looked down, and saw that his shoes (from where the angry feelings rose) were beige and pointy. Ambassador Rahel looked down and saw that in her Bata sandals her toes were trying to disconnect themselves. Twitching to join someone else’s feet. And that she couldn’t stop them. Soon she’d be without toes and have a bandage like the leper at the level crossing.

  “If you ever,” Ammu said, “and I mean this, EVER, ever again disobey me in Public, I will see to it that you are sent away to somewhere where you will jolly well learn to behave. Is that clear?”

  When Ammu was really angry, she said Jolly Well. Jolly Well was a deeply well with larfing dead people in it.

  “Is. That Clear?” Ammu said again.

  Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu.

  Sleepy eyes and a surprised puff looked back at Ammu.

  Two heads nodded three times.

  Yes. It’s. Clear.

  But Baby Kochamma was dissatisfied with the fizzling out of a situation that had been so full of potential. She tossed her head.

  “As if!” she said.

  As if!

  Ammu turned to her, and the turn of her head was a question.

  “It’s useless,” Baby Kochamma said. “They’re sly. They’re uncouth. Deceitful. They’re growing wild. You can’t manage them.”

  Ammu turned back to Estha and Rahel and her eyes were blurred jewels.

  “Everybody says that children need a Baba. And I say no. Not my children. D’you know why?”

  Two heads nodded.

  “Why. Tell me,” Ammu said.

  And not together, but almost, Esthappen and Rahel said:

  “Because you’re our Ammu and our Baba and you love us Double.”

  “More than Double,” Ammu said. “So remember what I told you. People’s feelings are precious. And when you disobey me in Public, everybody gets the wrong impression.”

  “What Ambassadors and a half you’ve been!” Baby Kochamma said.

  Ambassador E. Pelvis and Ambassador S. Insect hung their heads.

  “And the other thing, Rahel,” Ammu said, “I think it’s high time that you learned the difference between CLEAN and DIRTY. Especially in this country.”

  Ambassador Rahel looked down.

  “Your dress is—was—CLEAN,” Ammu said. “That curtain is DIRTY. Those Kangaroos are DIRTY. Your hands are DIRTY.”

  Rahel was frightened by the way Ammu said CLEAN and DIRTY so loudly. As though she was talking to a deaf person.

  “Now, I want you to go and say Hello properly,” Ammu said. “Are you going to do that or not?”

  Two heads nodded twice.

  Ambassador Estha and Ambassador Rahel walked towards. Sophie Mol.

  “Where d’you think people are sent to Jolly Well Behave?” Estha asked Rahel in a whisper.

  “To the government,” Rahel whispered back, because she knew.

  “How do you do?” Estha said to Sophie Mol loud enough for Ammu to hear.

  “Just like a laddoo one pice two,” Sophie Mol whispered to Estha. She had learned this in school from a Pakistani classmate.

  Estha looked at Ammu.

  Ammu’s look said Never Mind Her As Long As You’ve Done The Right Thing.

  On their way across the airport car park, Hotweather crept into their clothes and dampened crisp knickers. The children lagged behind, weaving through parked cars and taxis.

  “Does Yours hit you?” Sophie Mol asked.

  Rahel and Estha, unsure of the politics of this, said nothing.

  “Mine does,” Sophie Mol said invitingly. “Mine even Slaps.”

  “Ours doesn’t,” Estha said loyally.

  “Lucky,” Sophie Mol said.

  Lucky rich boy with porketmunny. And a grandmother’s factory to inherit. No worries.

  They walked past the Class III Airport Workers’ Union token one-day hunger strike. And past the people watching the Class III Airport Workers’ Union token one-day hunger strike.

  And past the people watching the people watching the people.

  A small tin sign on a big banyan tree said For V.D. Sex Complaints contact Dr. OK. Joy.

  “Who d’you love Most in the World?” Rahel asked Sophie Mol.

  “Joe,” Sophie Mol said without hesitation. “My dad. He died two months ago. We’ve come here to Recover from the Shock.”

  “But Chacko’s your dad,” Estha said.

  “He’s just my real dad,” Sophie Mol said. “Joe’s my dad. He never hits. Hardly ever.”

  “How can he hit if he’s dead?” Estha asked reasonably.

  “Where’s your dad?” Sophie Mol wanted to know.

  “He’s …,” and Rahel looked at Estha for help.

  “… not here,” Estha said.

  “Shall I tell you my list?” Rahel asked Sophie Mol.

  “If you like,” Sophie Mol said.

  Rahel’s “list” was an attempt to order chaos. She revised it constantly, torn forever between love and duty. It was by no means a true gauge of her feelings.

  “First Ammu and Chacko,” Rahel said. “Then Mammachi—”

  “Our grandmother,” Estha clarified.

  “More than your brother?” Sophie Mol asked.

  “We don’t count,” Rahel said. “And anyway he might change. Ammu says.”

  “How d’you mean? Change into what?” Sophie Mol asked.

  “Into a Male Chauvinist Pig,” Rahel said.

  “Very unlikely,” Estha said.

  “Anyway, after Mammachi, Velutha, and then—”

  “Who’s Velutha?” Sophie Mol wanted to know.

  “A man we love,” Rahel said. “And after Velutha, you,” Rahel said.

  “Me? What d’you love me for?” Sophie Mol said.

  “Because we’re firstcousins. So I have to,” Rahel said piously.

  “But you don’t even know me,” Sophie Mol said. “And anyway, I don’t love you.”

  “But you will, when you come to know me,” Rahel said confidently.

  “I doubt it,” Estha said.

  “Why not?” Sophie Mo
l said.

  “Because,” Estha said. “And anyway she’s most probably going to be a dwarf.”

  As though loving a dwarf was completely out of the question.

  “I’m not,” Rahel said.

  “You are,” Estha said.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. We’re twins,” Estha explained to Sophie Mol, “and just see how much shorter she is.”

  Rahel obligingly took a deep breath, threw her chest out and stood back to back with Estha in the airport car park, for Sophie Mol to see just how much shorter she was.

  “Maybe you’ll be a midget,” Sophie Mol suggested. “That’s taller than a dwarf and shorter than a … Human Being.”

  The silence was unsure of this compromise.

  In the doorway of the Arrivals Lounge, a shadowy, red-mouthed roo-shaped silhouette waved a cemently paw only at Rahel. Cement kisses whirred through the air like small helicopters.

  “D’you know how to sashay?” Sophie Mol wanted to know.

  “No. We don’t sashay in India,” Ambassador Estha said.

  “Well, in England we do,” Sophie Mol said. “All the models do. On television. Look—it’s easy.”

  And the three of them, led by Sophie Mol, sashayed across the airport car park, swaying like fashion models, Eagle flasks and Made-in-England go-go bags bumping around their hips. Damp dwarfs walking tall.

  Shadows followed them. Silver jets in a blue church sky, like moths in a beam of light.

  The skyblue Plymouth with tailfins had a smile for Sophie Mol. A chromebumpered sharksmile.

  A Paradise Pickles carsmile.

  When she saw the carrier with the painted pickle bottles and the list of Paradise products, Margaret Kochamma said, “Oh dear! I feel as though I’m in an advertisement!” She said Oh dear! a lot.

  Oh dear! Oh dearohdear!

  “I didn’t know you did pineapple slices!” she said. “Sophie loves pineapple, don’t you Soph?”

  “Sometimes,” Soph said. “And sometimes not.”

  Margaret Kochamma climbed into the advertisement with her brown back-freckles and her arm-freckles and her flowered dress with legs underneath.

  Sophie Mol sat in front between Chacko and Margaret Kochamma, just her hat peeping over the car seat. Because she was their daughter.

  Rahel and Estha sat at the back.

  The luggage was in the boot.

  Boot was a lovely word. Sturdy was a terrible word.

  Near Ettumanoor they passed a dead temple elephant, electrocuted by a high tension wire that had fallen on the road. An engineer from the Ettumanoor municipality was supervising the disposal of the carcass. They had to be careful because the decision would serve as precedent for all future Government Pachyderm Carcass Disposals. Not a matter to be treated lightly. There was a fire engine and some confused firemen. The municipal officer had a file and was shouting a lot. There was a Joy Ice Cream cart and a man selling peanuts in narrow cones of paper cleverly designed to hold not more than eight or nine nuts.

  Sophie Mol said, “Look, a dead elephant.”

  Chacko stopped to ask whether it was by any chance Kochu Thomban (Little Tusker), the Ayemenem temple elephant who came to the Ayemenem House once a month for a coconut. They said it wasn’t.

  Relieved that it was a stranger, and not an elephant they knew, they drove on.

  “Thang God,” Estha said.

  “Thank God, Estha,” Baby Kochamma corrected him.

  On the way, Sophie Mol learned to recognize the first whiff of the approaching stench of unprocessed rubber and to clamp her nostrils shut until long after the truck carrying it had driven past.

  Baby Kochamma suggested a car song.

  Estha and Rahel had to sing in English in obedient voices. Breezily. As though they hadn’t been made to rehearse it all week long. Ambassador E. Pelvis and Ambassador S. Insect.

  RejOice in the Lo-Ord Or-Orlways

  And again I say re-jOice.

  Their Prer NUN sea ayshun was perfect.

  The Plymouth rushed through the green midday heat, promoting pickles on its roof, and the skyblue sky in its tailfins.

  Just outside Ayemenem they drove into a cabbage-green butterfly (or perhaps it drove into them).

  CHAPTER 7

  WISDOM EXERCISE NOTEBOOKS

  In Pappachi’s study, mounted butterflies and moths had disintegrated into small heaps of iridescent dust that powdered the bottom of their glass display cases, leaving the pins that had impaled them naked. Cruel. The room was rank with fungus and disuse. An old neon-green hula hoop hung from a wooden peg on the wall, a huge saint’s discarded halo. A column of shining black ants walked across a windowsill, their bottoms tilted upwards, like a line of mincing chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley musical. Silhouetted against the sun. Buffed and beautiful.

  Rahel (on a stool, on top of a table) rummaged in a book cupboard with dull, dirty glass panes. Her bare footprints were clear in the dust on the floor. They led from the door to the table (dragged to the bookshelf) to the stool (dragged to the table and lifted onto it). She was looking for something. Her life had a size and a shape now. She had half-moons under her eyes and a team of trolls on her horizon.

  On the top shelf, the leather binding on Pappachi’s set of The Inssect Wealth of India had lifted off each book and buckled like corrugated asbestos. Silverfish tunneled through the pages, burrowing arbitrarily from species to species, turning organized information into yellow lace.

  Rahel groped behind the row of books and brought out hidden things.

  A smooth seashell and a spiky one.

  A plastic case for contact lenses. An orange pipette.

  A silver crucifix on a string of beads. Baby Kochamma’s rosary.

  She held it up against the light. Each greedy bead grabbed its share of sun.

  A shadow fell across the sunlit rectangle on the study floor. Rahel turned towards the door with her string of light.

  “Imagine. It’s still here. I stole it. After you were Returned.”

  That word slipped out easily. Returned. As though that was what twins were meant for. To be borrowed and returned. Like library books.

  Estha wouldn’t look up. His mind was full of trains. He blocked the light from the door. An Estha-shaped Hole in the Universe.

  Behind the books, Rahel’s puzzled fingers encountered something else. Another magpie had had the same idea. She brought it out and wiped the dust off with the sleeve of her shirt. It was a flat packet wrapped in clear plastic and stuck with Sellotape. A scrap of white paper inside it said Esthappen and Rahel. In Ammu’s writing.

  There were four tattered notebooks in it. On their covers they said Wisdom Exercise Notebooks with a place for Name, School/College, Class, Subject. Two had her name on them, and two Estha’s.

  Inside the back cover of one, something had been written in a child’s handwriting. The labored form of each letter and the irregular space between words was full of the struggle for control over the errant, self-willed pencil. The sentiment, in contrast, was lucid: I Hate Miss Mitten and I Think Her gnickers are TORN.

  On the front of the book, Estha had rubbed out his surname with spit, and taken half the paper with it. Over the whole mess, he had written in pencil Un-knowm. Esthappen Unknown. (His surname postponed for the Time Being, while Ammu chose between her husband’s name and her father’s,) Next to Class it said: 6 years. Next to Subject it said: Story-writing.

  Rahel sat cross-legged (on the stool on the table).

  “Esthappen Unknown,” she said. She opened the book and read aloud.

  “When Ulyesses came home his son came and said father I thought you would not come back, many princes came and each wanted to marry Pen Lope, but Pen Lope said that the man who can stoot through the twelve rings can mary me, and everyone failed, and ulyesses came to the palace dressed liked a beggar and asked if he could try. The men all laughed at him and said if we can�
��t do it you can’t, ulyesses son spopped them and said let himtry and he took the how and shot right through the twelve rings”

  Below this there were corrections from a previous lesson.

  Laughter curled around the edges of Rahel’s voice.

  “‘Safety First,’” she announced. Ammu had drawn a wavy line down the length of the page with a red pen and written Margin? And joint handwriting in future, please!

  When we walk on the road in the town, cautious Estha’s story went, we should always walk on the pavement. If you go on the pavement there is no traffic to cause accidnts, but on the main road there is so much dangerouse traffic that they can easily knock you down and make you senseless or a criple. If you break your head or back-bone you will be very unfortunate. policemen can direct the traffic so that there won’t be too many invalids to go to hospitil. When we get out of the bus we should do so only after asking the conductor or we will be injured and make the doctors have a busy time. The job of a driver is very fatle His famly should be very angsbios because the driver could easily be dead.

  “Morbid kid,” Rahel said to Estha. As she turned the page something reached into her throat, plucked her voice out, shook it down, and returned it without its laughing edges. Estha’s next story was called Little Ammu.

  In joint handwriting. The tails of the Y’s and G’s were curled and looped. The shadow in the doorway stood very still.

  On Saturday we went to a bookshop in Kottayam to buy Ammu a present because her birthday is in 17th of novembre. We hote her a diary. We hid it in the coberd and then it began to be night Then we said do you want to see your present she said yes I would like to see it. And we wrote on the paper For a Little Ammu with Love from Estha and Rahel and we give it to Ammu and she said what a lovely present its just what I whanted and then we talked far a little while and we talked about the diary then we gave her a kiss and went to bed.

  We talked with each other and went of to sleep. We had a little dream. After some time I got up and I was very thirsty and I went to Ammu’s room and said I am thirsty, Ammu gave me water and I was just going to my bed when Ammu called me and said come and sleep with me, and I lay at the back of Ammu and talked to Ammu and went of to sleep. After a little while I got up and we talked again and after that we had a mid-night feest, we had orange coffee bananana, afterwards Rahel came and we ate two more bananas and we gave a kiss to Ammu because it was her birthday after-wards we sang happy birthday. Then in the morning we had new cloths from Ammu as a back-present Rahel was a maharani and I was Little Nehru.