The God of Small Things

  To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.

  Three days before the Terror, he had let them paint his nails with red Cutex that Ammu had discarded. That’s the way he was the day History visited them in the back verandah. A carpenter with gaudy nails. The posse of Touchable Policemen had looked at them and laughed.

  “What’s this?” one had said. “AC-DC?”

  Another lifted his boot with a millipede curled into the ridges of its sole. Deep rust-brown. A million legs.

  The last strap of light slipped from the cherub’s shoulder. Gloom swallowed the garden. Whole. Like a python. Lights came on in the house.

  Rahel could see Estha in his room, sitting on his neat bed. He was looking out through the barred window at the darkness. He couldn’t see her, sitting outside in the darkness, looking in at the light.

  A pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative. Stumbling through their parts, nursing someone else’s sorrow. Grieving someone else’s grief.

  Unable, somehow, to change plays. Or purchase, for a fee, some cheap brand of exorcism from a counselor with a fancy degree, who would sit them down and say, in one of many ways: “You’re not the Sinners. You’re the Sinned Against. You were only children. You had no control. You are the victims, not the perpetrators.”

  It would have helped if they could have made that crossing. If only they could have worn, even temporarily, the tragic hood of victimhood. Then they would have been able to put a face on it, and conjure up fury at what had happened. Or seek redress. And eventually, perhaps, exorcize the memories that haunted them.

  But anger wasn’t available to them and there was no face to put on this Other Thing that they held in their sticky Other Hands, like an imaginary orange. There was nowhere to lay it down. It wasn’t theirs to give away. It would have to be held. Carefully and forever.

  Esthappen and Rahel both knew that there were several perpetrators (besides themselves) that day. But only one victim. And he had blood-red nails and a brown leaf on his back that made the monsoons come on time.

  He left behind a Hole in the Universe through which darkness poured like liquid tar. Through which their mother followed without even turning to wave good-bye. She left them behind, spinning in the dark, with no moorings, in a place with no foundation.

  Hours later, the moon rose and made the gloomy python surrender what it had swallowed. The garden reappeared. Regurgitated whole. With Rahel sitting in it.

  The direction of the breeze changed and brought her the sound of drums. A gift. The promise of a story. Once upon a time, they said, there lived a

  Rahel lifted her head and listened.

  On clear nights the sound of the chenda traveled up to a kilometer from the Ayemenem temple, announcing a kathakali performance.

  Rahel went. Drawn by the memory of steep roofs and white walls. Of brass lamps lit and dark, oiled wood. She went in the hope of meeting an old elephant who wasn’t electrocuted on the Kottayam-Cochin highway. She stopped by the kitchen for a coconut.

  On her way out, she noticed that one of the gauze doors of the factory had come off its hinges and was propped against the doorway. She moved it aside and stepped in. The air was heavy with moisture, wet enough for fish to swim in.

  The floor under her shoes was slick with monsoon scum. A small, anxious bat flitted between the roof beams.

  The low cement pickle vats silhouetted in the gloom made the factory floor look like an indoor cemetery for the cylindrical dead.

  The earthly remains of Paradise Pickles & Preserves.

  Where long ago, on the day that Sophie Mol came, Ambassador E. Pelvis stirred a pot of scarlet jam and thought Two Thoughts. Where a red, tender-mango-shaped secret was pickled, sealed and put away.

  It’s true. Things can change in a day.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE RIVER IN THE BOAT

  While the Welcome Home, Our Sophie Mol Play was being performed in the front verandah and Kochu Maria distributed cake to a Blue Army in the greenheat, Ambassador E. Pelvis/S. Pimpernel (with a puff) of the beige and pointy shoes, pushed open the gauze doors to the dank and pickle-smelling premises of Paradise Pickles. He walked among the giant cement pickle vats to find a place to Think in. Ousa, the Bar Nowl, who lived on a blackened beam near the skylight (and contributed occasionally to the flavor of certain Paradise products), watched him walk.

  Past floating yellow limes in brine that needed prodding from time to time (or else islands of black fungus formed like frilled mushrooms in a clear soup).

  Past green mangoes, cut and stuffed with turmeric and chili powder and tied together with twine. (They needed no attention for a while.)

  Past glass casks of vinegar with corks.

  Past shelves of pectin and preservatives.

  Past trays of bitter gourd, with knives and colored finger guards.

  Past gunny bags bulging with garlic and small onions.

  Past mounds of fresh green peppercorns.

  Past a heap of banana peels on the floor (preserved for the pigs’ dinner).

  Past the label cupboard full of labels.

  Past the glue.

  Past the glue-brush.

  Past an iron tub of empty bottles floating in soapbubbled water.

  Past the lemon squash.

  The grape crush.

  And back.

  It was dark inside, lit only by the light that filtered through the clotted gauze doors, and a beam of dusty sunlight (that Ousa didn’t use) from the skylight. The smell of vinegar and asafetida stung his nostrils, but Estha was used to it, loved it. The place that he found to Think in was between the wail and the black iron cauldron in which a batch of freshly boiled (illegal) banana jam was slowly cooling.

  The jam was still hot and on its sticky scarlet surface, thick pink froth was dying slowly. Little banana-bubbles drowning deep in jam and nobody to help them.

  The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man could walk in any minute. Catch a Cochin-Kottayam bus and be there. And Ammu would offer him a cup of tea. Or Pineapple Squash perhaps. With ice. Yellow in a glass.

  With the long iron stirrer, Estha stirred the thick, fresh jam.

  The dying froth made dying frothly shapes.

  A crow with a crushed wing.

  A clenched chicken’s claw.

  A Nowl (not Ousa) mired in sickly jam.

  A sadly swirl.

  And nobody to help.

  As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts, and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:

  (a) Anything can happen to Anyone.

  and

  (b) It’s best to be prepared.

  Having thought these thoughts, Estha Alone was happy with his bit of wisdom.

  As the hot magenta jam went round, Estha became a Stirring Wizard with a spoiled puff and uneven teeth, and then the Witches of Macbeth.

  Fire burn, banana bubble.

  Ammu had allowed Estha to copy Mammachi’s recipe for banana jam into her new recipe book, black with a white spine.

  Acutely aware of the honor that Ammu had bestowed on him, Estha had used both his best handwritings.

  Banana Jam (in his old best writing)

  Crush ripe banana. Add water to cover and cook on a very hot fire till fruit is soft.

  Sqweeze out juice by straining through course muslin.

  Weigh equal quantity of sugar and keep by.

  Cook fruit juice till it turns scarlet and about half the quantity evapourates.

  Prepare the gelatin (pectin) thus:

  Proportion 1:5

  ie: 4 teaspoons Pectin: 20 teaspoons sugar.

  Estha always thought of Pectin as the youngest of three brothers with hammers, Pectin, Hectin and Abednego. He imagined them building a wooden ship in failing light and a drizzle. Like Noah’s sons. He could see them clearly in his mind. Racing against time. The sound of their hammering echoing dully under the brooding, storm-coming sky.

  And nea
rby in the jungle, in the eerie, storm-coming light, animals queued up in pairs:

  Girlboy.

  Girlboy.

  Girtboy.

  Girlboy.

  Twins were not allowed.

  The rest of the recipe was in Estha’s new best handwriting. Angular, spiky. It leaned backwards as though the letters were reluctant to form words, and the words reluctant to be in sentences:

  Add the Pectin to concentrated juice. Cook for a few (5) minutes.

  Use a strong fire, burning heavily all around.

  Add the sugar. Cook until sheeting consistency is obtained.

  Cool slowly.

  Hope you will enjoy this recipe.

  Apart from the spelling mistakes, the last line—Hope you will enjoy this recipe—was Estha’s only augmentation of the original text.

  Gradually, as Estha stirred, the banana jam thickened and cooled, and Thought Number Three rose unbidden from his beige and pointy shoes.

  Thought Number Three was:

  (c) A boat.

  A boat to row across the river. Akkara. The Other Side. A boat to carry Provisions. Matches. Clothes. Pots and Pans. Things they would need and couldn’t swim with.

  Estha’s arm hairs stood on end. The jam-stirring became a boat-rowing. The round and round became a back and forth. Across a sticky scarlet river A song from the Onam boat race filled the factory. “Thaiy thaiy thaka thaiy thaiy thome!”

  Enda da korangacha, cbandi ithra thenjadu?

  (Hey, Mr. Monkey man, why’s your bum so red?)

  Pandyill thooran poyappol nerakkamuthiri nerangi njan.

  (I went for a shit to Madras, and scraped it till it bled.)

  Over the somewhat discourteous questions and answers of the boat song, Rahel’s voice floated into the factory.

  “Estha! Estha! Estha!”

  Estha didn’t answer. The chorus of the boat song was whispered into the thick jam.

  Theeyome

  Thithome

  Tharaka

  Thithome

  Theem

  A gauze door creaked, and an Airport Fairy with hornbumps and yellow-rimmed red plastic sunglasses looked in with the sun behind her. The factory was angry-colored. The salted limes were red. The tender mangoes were red. The label cupboard was red. The dusty sunbeam (that Ousa never used) was red.

  The gauze door closed.

  Rahel stood in the empty factory with her Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo. She heard a nun’s voice singing the boat song. A clear soprano wafting over vinegar fumes and pickle vats.

  She turned to Estha bent over the scarlet broth in the black cauldron.

  “What d’you want?” Estha asked without looking up.

  “Nothing,” Rahel said.

  “Then why have you come here?”

  Rahel didn’t reply. There was a brief, hostile silence.

  “Why’re you rowing the jam?” Rahel asked.

  “India’s a Free Country,” Estha said.

  No one could argue with that.

  India was a Free Country.

  You could make salt. Row jam, if you wanted to.

  The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man could just walk in through the gauze doors.

  If he wanted to.

  And Ammu would offer him pineapple juice. With ice.

  Rahel sat on the edge of a cement vat (frothy ends of buckram and lace, delicately dipped in tender mango pickle) and tried on the rubber finger guards. Three bluebottles fiercely fought the gauze doors, wanting to be let in. And Ousa the Bar Nowl watched the pickle-smelling silence that lay between the twins like a bruise.

  Rand’s fingers were Yellow Green Blue Red Yellow.

  Estha’s jam was stirred.

  Rahel got up to go. For her Afternoon Gnap.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Somewhere.”

  Rahel took off her new fingers, and had her old finger-colored fingers back. Not yellow, not green, not blue, not red. Not yellow.

  “I’m going to Akkara,” Estha said. Not looking up. “To the History House.”

  Rahel stopped and turned around, and on her heart a drab moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts unfurled its predatory wings.

  Slow out.

  Slow in.

  “Why?” Rahel said.

  “Because Anything can Happen to Anyone,” Estha said. “It’s Best to be Prepared.”

  You couldn’t argue with that.

  Nobody went to Kari Saipu’s house anymore. Vellya Paapen claimed to be the last human being to have set eyes on it. He said that it was haunted. He had told the twins the story of his encounter with Kari Saipu’s ghost. It happened two years ago, he said. He had gone across the river, hunting for a nutmeg tree to make a paste of nutmeg and fresh garlic for Chella, his wife, as she lay dying of tuberculosis. Suddenly he smelled cigar smoke (which he recognized at once, because Pappachi used to smoke the same brand). Vellya Paapen whirled around and hurled his sickle at the smell. He pinned the ghost to the trunk of a rubber tree, where, according to Vellya Paapen, it still remained. A sickled smell that bled clear, amber blood, and begged for cigars.

  Vellya Paapen never found the nutmeg tree, and had to buy himself a new sickle. But he had the satisfaction of knowing that his lightning-quick reflexes (despite his mortgaged eye) and his presence of mind had put an end to the bloodthirsty wanderings of a pedophile ghost.

  As long as no one succumbed to its artifice and unsickled it with a cigar.

  What Vellya Paapen (who knew most things) didn’t know was that Kari Saipu’s house was the History House (whose doors were locked and windows open). And that inside, map-breath’d ancestors with tough toe-nails whispered to the lizards on the wall. That History used the back verandah to negotiate its terms and collect its dues. That default led to dire consequences. That on the day History picked to square its books, Estha would keep the receipt for the dues that Velutha paid.

  Vellya Paapen had no idea that Kari Saipu it was who captured dreams and re-dreamed them. That he plucked them from the minds of passersby the way children pick currants from a cake. That the ones he craved most of all, the dreams he loved re-dreaming, were the tender dreams of two-egg twins.

  Poor old Vellya Paapen, had he known then that History would choose him for its deputy, that it would be his tears that set the Terror rolling, perhaps he would not have strutted like a young cockerel in the Ayemenem bazaar, bragging of how he swam the river with his sickle in his mouth (sour, the taste of iron on his tongue). How he put it down for just one moment while he kneeled to wash the river-grit out of his mortgaged eye (there was grit in the river sometimes, particularly in the rainy months) when he caught the first whiff of cigar smoke. How he picked up his sickle, whirled around and sickled the smell that fixed the ghost forever. All in a single, fluid, athletic motion.

  By the time he understood his part in History’s Plans, it was too late to retrace his steps. He had swept his footprints away himself. Crawling backwards with a broom.

  In the factory the silence swooped down once more and tightened around the twins. But this time it was a different kind of silence. An old river silence. The silence of Fisher People and waxy mermaids.

  “But Communists don’t believe in ghosts,” Estha said, as though they were continuing a discourse investigating solutions to the ghost problem. Their conversations surfaced and dipped like mountain streams. Sometimes audible to other people. Sometimes not.

  “Are we going to become a Communist?” Rahel asked.

  “Might have to.”

  Estha-the-Practical.

  Distant cake-crumbled voices and approaching Blue Army footsteps caused the Comrades to seal the secret.

  It was pickled, sealed and put away. A red, tender-mango-shaped secret in a vat. Presided over by a Nowl.

  The Red Agenda was worked out and agreed upon:

  Comrade Rahel would go for her Afternoon Gnap, then lie awake until Ammu fell asleep.

  Comrade Estha would find the flag (that Baby Kochamma had b
een forced to wave), and wait for her by the river, and there they would:

  (b) Prepare to prepare to be prepared.

  A child’s abandoned Fairy Frock (semipickled) stood stiffly on its own in the middle of Ammu’s darkened bedroom floor.

  Outside, the Air was Alert and Bright and Hot. Rahel lay next to Ammu, wide awake in her matching airport knickers. She could see the pattern of the cross-stitch flowers from the blue cross-stitch counterpane on Ammu’s cheek. She could hear the blue cross-stitch afternoon.

  The slow ceiling fan. The sun behind the curtains.

  The yellow wasp wasping against the windowpane in a dangerous dzzzz.

  A disbelieving lizard’s blink.

  High-stepping chickens in the yard.

  The sound of the sun crinkling the washing. Crisping white bed-sheets. Stiffening starched saris. Off-white and gold.

  Red ants on yellow stones.

  A hot cow feeling hot. Amboo. In the distance.

  And the smell of a cunning Englishman ghost, sickled to a rubber tree, asking courteously for a cigar.

  “Umm … excuse me? You wouldn’t happen to have an umm … cigar, would you?”

  In a kind, schoolteacherly voice.

  Oh dear.

  And Estha waiting for her. By the river. Under the mangosteen tree that Reverend E. John Ipe had brought home from his visit to Mandalay.

  What was Estha sitting on?

  On what they always sat on under the mangosteen tree. Something gray and grizzled. Covered in moss and lichen, smothered in ferns. Something that the earth had claimed. Not a log. Not a rock.

  Before she completed the thought, Rahel was up and running.

  Through the kitchen, past Kochu Maria fast asleep. Thickwrinkled like a sudden rhinoceros in a frilly apron.

  Past the factory.

  Tumbling barefoot through the greenheat, followed by a yellow wasp.

  Comrade Estha was there. Under the mangosteen tree. With the red flag planted in the earth beside him. A Mobile Republic. A Twin Revolution with a Puff.