Dahanu Road: A novel (35 page)

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“From Ganpat’s hut. Ganpat found this cork when he was a boy. He saw you do something …”

“I am through with Ganpat. All he wanted was money. And I was right to refuse him.”

“That was when he threatened you.”

“Threatened
me?
With what will a tribal threaten me?”

Shapur Irani tried to sit up straight but it was not possible. He coughed as he spoke.

“Ganpat asked for money on the strength of something he knew,” said Zairos.

“Part of this land belonged to his father. Sometimes these tribals forget they do not own the land anymore. They forget they have lost it. It is now your land, Zairos. It’s yours.”

“This land will mean nothing to me if I don’t know the truth. What did Ganpat see as a boy?”

“Nothing,” said Shapur Irani. “He saw nothing.”

“Ganpat said you were near a well. Why did Ganpat mention a well? He said something terrible happened.”

“By then the torture of the Warlis had stopped …”

But even if Ganpat had seen Shapur Irani inflict the worst kind of torture on a Warli, it was not something Shapur Irani could be blackmailed with. That was just the way things were then. Zairos thought of leaving his grandfather alone and going home because what he was about to say next was hurtful. But he could not afford to flinch now.

He held his grandfather’s shoulders, put his face so close he could smell the stale breath, the breath of a man who never got sleep.

“Maybe it has nothing to do with the Warlis,” said Zairos. “It has to do with Banumai.”

“Don’t touch me …” said Shapur Irani.

He was a child whose bowels were weak, who needed help.

“If you give me this land, give me its truth,” said Zairos.

“Zairos, please …”

“What happened that day, Pa? What did Ganpat see? Tell me or I am walking out of here, never to return.”

“Zairos …”

When Zairos looked into his grandfather’s eyes, he could tell that something within had moved, some small animal that had been presumed dead.

“How was I to know about the beard?” asked his grandfather.

WHEN SHAPUR IRANI
woke up, he saw that Banu was not next to him. He was not surprised because he had burned all her books the night before, an act he knew he would regret for years to come.

He rubbed his eyes vigorously, not knowing what else to do. Maybe Banu was in the kitchen making his tea, her morning routine. He hoped that was the case. It would mean she had chosen to ignore what he had done. But when he went to the kitchen, she was not there. Only the tea strainer lay in the sink with two large leaves of mint.

He went to the boys’ room next, and they were still asleep.

They were purring like cubs. He was proud of his boys. They would become men of the soil, not men of books. He went into the living room where Banu liked to sit at the dinner table and drink her tea.

There was a cup of tea at the table, but it was untouched. The main door was open and through it he saw his wife in her
cream nightgown standing amid the charred remains of her books. The soil around her feet had turned black and a lone rooster, full of vigour, failed to dilute the truth of the landscape.

The sleeve of Banu’s nightgown was off her shoulder and this troubled Shapur Irani. He did not like the fact that she was out in her nightgown. She was still an attractive woman, her skin was fair, and he did not want any of the workers to have a picture of her in their minds. He saw the way they looked at her—her skin must remind them of goat’s milk.

He was about to tell her to come in, but he stopped himself. It felt like an order, and orders were the last thing his wife needed right now because he had behaved like a tyrant the night before. He told himself to stop being dramatic. What he did was an act of love. It was an act of fear as well, but Banu had made him that way with her obsession with shadows.

“Banu,” he said, his normally gruff voice trying to find some gentleness. “Please come back in.”

She said nothing. She looked at the black soil around her. He noticed that she was barefoot and her feet were dirty. They had picked up whatever the soil had to offer.

“Banu,” he said again. “Come inside. The boys will wake up soon.”

“How could you do this?” she asked.

He was never good with words. He was a man of physical strength, a man of push-ups. How did she expect such a man to explain his actions?

“I’m sorry” was all he could manage. Even he knew it was weak and insincere.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “You’ve killed them all.”

“Killed?”

“You’ve killed hundreds.”

She closed her eyes as she said this. Shapur Irani shuddered at the thought that she could not bear to see his face.

“I’ll get you new books, Banu. I’ll … we’ll go to Bombay together and buy all the books I’ve burned, I promise.”

“What books? What are you talking about?”

Why did she say that? Did she want him to confess his crime again and again? She wanted him to own up like a disgraced bully, a common thief. He was ready to do that for her.

“You’ve killed hundreds of people,” she said. “You are a murderer.”

“What?”

“All those people. They were my friends. Oliver, I loved Oliver. Then the man who sent his shadow out into the world to see what was out there. I understood that man. And that woman who fought with her family to become a writer …”

She rattled off names, spoke of events that Shapur Irani had no clue of. After a while, he realized what she was doing. She was telling him about the people in those books. She thought they were alive. If that was the case, they deserved to die. He wanted to hear their fucking screams as they were being eaten by the flames.

He had had enough.

The sleeve of Banu’s blouse had dropped even lower. She had no excuse for stepping out of the house in her nightgown. There was an element of purity to her that he wanted to preserve.

“You murderer,” she said. There was no rage in her voice. It was cold and clear, a voice that had been cleansed of anger or any form of judgment.

“That’s enough,” said Shapur Irani.

“How will the boys feel when I tell them? How will your sons feel when I tell them their father is a murderer?”

Shapur Irani’s blood swirled around his temples. He reached for her shoulder, the exposed one.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, escaping his grip.

She bolted through the chickoo trees with such force it made Shapur Irani believe she was chasing all the dead people from her books. She was running after them, pleading for mercy, begging them to come back.

Shapur Irani stood paralyzed. He could not understand how the air around him smelled so good even though his wife was running through the trees, possessed. It was a weird thought to have at that moment, to think about the quality of air.

His boys were alone at home. They were sleeping and the more they slept the better. The door to his house was ajar. Not only the door, everything had been ripped open. His life was one gaping hole. He walked through the trees, slapping branches aside, forgetting the love he felt for his trees.

Even though Banu was out of sight, he did not run. There was no point. He would never catch up with his wife. Today, she had an otherworldly power that gave her strength. It was the power of books, the power of witches, who knows. It all felt the same to him.

He longed for the peace and quiet of the early days of his marriage. The large cups of sweet tea that they would share, the way he would slide his hand up her thigh and she would naughtily remark, “Lately there has been an increase in snakes around here.” That woman no longer existed.

He could not tell where she had gone. He noticed one tree with a swelling on its branch, a bump, and just above the
bump was a tiny branch, only three or four inches long, one that had stopped growing. He recognized it as the tree under which he had hidden a bottle of RB whiskey. He wished he had the forked instrument he used for digging the soil, but he knew this particular hole was not deep, so he picked up a sharp rock and started.

He needed a shot of whiskey. He thought of how Catholic priests used crosses to fight demons. He had no cross, so he would use whiskey. The whiskey inside him would battle the demon inside his wife. He did not know why, but he felt it was the right thing to do. If she had lost her mind, he would lose his too. Let it all burn. Not just the books. Let it all burn—the trees, the air, the wired fence, his sons … He knew that was a horrible thought so he dug with renewed force.

Within minutes the bottle’s cork showed its head to him and he did not waste any time. He poured the demon-fighter down his throat with such recklessness that it made him shiver. He had to stop and start again. Stop and start, stop and start, until a quarter of the bottle was gone. He put the bottle in the hole and covered it with mud again. He was wasting time on purpose because he knew it would take time for the demon-fighter to kick in, and he did not want to face his wife without it.

He heard a sound behind him, but when he looked there was nothing. It could be some small animal. But then he saw a little Warli boy. Shapur Irani tried to think of the boy’s name.

After a while, Shapur Irani saw her through the trees. She was walking around in circles and the strap of her nightgown
was still off her shoulder. He did not want her to see him because she might start running again. He waited and watched. She had a strange pattern—she walked clockwise, took three circles, then walked counter-clockwise and took three more. Then she stopped and examined the soles of her feet. She tried to scrape the book ash off her feet with her hands. Not satisfied with the result, she walked some more towards the well.

Shapur Irani remembered how, when the well was being dug, she had joked that when her water burst the well would be full. After showing much promise, the well did not give water. It was the deepest well in Dahanu, but it was completely dry.

She sat at the edge of the well and used a stone to take the dirt off her feet. She was talking to herself, mumbling in the language of witches. How hurtful her words had become. Someone, some horrible creature, had entered his house at night and swapped his wife’s tongue. What wife would call her husband a murderer?

His wife, at this moment, hated him. The idea came to him suddenly. She hated Shapur, the man. What if he transformed himself into something else? A tiger, perhaps? He remembered the game he played with her, where she was lost in the forest and he would pretend to be a tiger, a game that would eventually lead to lovemaking. Sex was not on his mind at this moment, but it might make sense to present himself in front of her as anything
but
himself. Only then would she listen.

He started growling, softly at first, trying to gauge his wife’s reaction. She did not move, did not say a word. He walked
closer and closer, and his growling increased in volume and intensity. He made sure it was playful, never scary. Her eyes looked above him, as though she was looking through the trees behind him. It was fine. As long as she did not run. As long as she did not move.

“I am the king of this jungle,” he said. “What are you doing in my jungle?”

She was still staring at something as he came closer and closer. But whatever he was doing was working because she was now walking towards him. By being a tiger, he was moving from his world into the imaginary, the world in which she was living. He was drawing her closer, and he blessed his stars for inventing this game.

She suddenly stopped. “Stay away,” she said, still looking into the distance.

“The beard,” she said. “The beard …”

Her face was turning pale. She was looking behind him.

Shapur Irani turned to look as well. It was Ejaz the Pathan. He was walking through the trees with a tin of water.

“The beard,” said Banu again.

Shapur Irani’s brain felt like it was full of wires, and the wires were unconnected, giving off shocks and sparks. He did not like this feeling because things were starting to make sense. And when Banu finally screamed her lungs out and shouted, “The beard!” it was a scream that had a hundred confessions in it.

He looked at Ejaz, at the man who had a long, black beard, and then at his wife.

Then Banu started speaking fast. Shapur Irani could pick up only a few words such as “wooden club” and “Ejaz’s
breath,” and Shapur Irani kept telling himself that these words were completely random and did not mean anything. He went towards his wife, to shut her up, because she was embarrassing herself. But Banu continued, “I’m sorry, Shapur, I wanted to tell you.”

“Be quiet,” said Shapur Irani. He inched closer to her, and she retreated, went closer to the well.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Shut up,” said Shapur Irani, and he held his wife’s arm.

As Banu continued to speak, his grip on her arm tightened, and when she said, “It’s
your
fault, I told you not to trust Ejaz,” he hit her hard across the face, so hard that it felt as though she was running backwards, and when she disappeared, Shapur Irani ran too, but it was not really him who was running, it was his heart. He stood staring at the motionless body of his wife at the bottom of the well.