The Cripple and His Talismans (17 page)

“I must kill this unpatriotic coconut,” says Baba.

“Because he does not like the Indian cricket team?” I ask.

“Absolutely. Now all that’s left is the cutting.”

Baba happily performs a sawing action. He does not mean the kind of cutting I used to have in school with my buttered bread.
I would do anything for a hot and steamy cutting from Lucky Moon right now. I could sip calming tea and watch.

“Help me return him to the car trunk,” says Baba.

“Again?”

“Yes, we must amputate in his natural habitat.”

I miss the flying cockroaches. Their death has emptied me.

As the car moves, the city’s homeless appear and disappear in fast blurs. Young boys smoke ganja in dim light. Men blindfolded by a dark sky sleep on the footpath in neat rows. These are men who walk the earth, build houses in the shade and smuggle in traces of warm light when life is not looking.

I hear the murmur of mosquitoes. They tell me I have used my hands wrongly. I passed by the houses of these men and looked through their windows. Instead of helping, I used my hands to blindfold myself. I read my own palm and overlooked the torn elephants that lay by my side.

There is a red icebox between Baba and me on the front seat. It looks beautiful and wet in this heat, with water trickling down its sides. The chair-man is in the backseat clapping his hands and bobbing his head from side to side. He is still in the attic of his own candour, enjoying his collection of broken dolls.

Soon we approach a line of parked taxis. I have never been in this part of the city before. There are no taxiwalas around. I do not understand why this is so; they always sleep on the bonnets of their cars with their shirts open and chest hair flying in the breeze. All the taxi meters are down for the night. The taxiwalas are probably lined up to buy petrol for the next morning. Baba stops the car.
The air is flat and even the dust seems exhausted, unable to rise and cause discomfort.

“Lead us to your taxi,” he tells the chair-man.

So the chair-man is a taxiwala. He points to the third taxi from the front.

“Bring the icebox with you,” Baba tells me as he steps out of the car.

“Please sit on the bonnet,” Baba tells the chair-man.

I place the icebox on the ground. The chair-man quickly plops onto the bonnet as though playing a game. He scissors his legs out-in, out-in, and lets them hit the fender of the car. Baba Rakhu pulls the lid off the icebox, removes a weighty butcher knife from it and waves it in his hands. As the blade glides under the streetlights, the knife delivers light to the face of the chair-man. His eyeballs glint and dart. His watch catches the same light; it is time.

“I will go for the right arm. We will leave the legs intact since they are skinny. No one wants to buy skinny legs,” says Baba.

If Baba Rakhu can paralyze by pressing nerve endings, make a man speak the truth by nipple adjustment, surely he can gracefully detach an arm. But that is the illegitimate comfort I seek. For once, when I need to most, I am incapable of dismissing what is real.

“Kindly hold your arm out at a right angle,” Baba tells the chair-man.

The man suddenly extends his right arm. The fool thinks he is directing traffic.

“Isn’t it convenient?” asks Baba. “No shrieks, futile begging and pleading, unnecessary rise in blood pressure. Look at him now, calm and fresh as a lotus on the water.”

It is true. Even though the chair-man has not shaved in days, even though his hair is oily and feet rough-skinned, and the rim and strap of his cheap watch are lined with dirt, his face exudes the quiet of a faraway light blinking in the night sky.

Without warning, Baba raises the knife above his head and brings it down on the chair-man’s arm. A cut cleaner and smoother than can be felt. But which (and appropriately) the chair-man now feels. He who was a little boy in the attic with his wife-doll has suddenly become a man. His cry is so curdling, it prevents the blood from spilling off the bonnet onto the tires. As my skin turns inward to check out my insides, I see his arm on the bonnet of the car — the fingers curled a little, the thumb pressed onto the forefinger to hold the stem of a rose.

“The loss of blood changes the balance,” says Baba. “He is back in dishonesty mode now.”

The chair-man tries to communicate. His speech is erratic: inside him has opened a Hindi dictionary and he is sporadically quoting words from it, words that bear no relation to his present situation. As he slowly slides down the front of the car, smearing blood all over, Baba drags the chair-man’s pants down to his knees.

I look away. I look at the closed ration shops, at the mosque in the distance, at the faces of politicians slapped onto the walls, at the stall of the coconut seller, at the open-air garbage dump, at the car we came in, its steering wheel, its seats, its trunk.

I look back.

Baba holds the chair-man’s meat in his hands and dismembers him, as though he is eliminating a stale piece to be fed to the vultures.

“Now he is a true eunuch-dog,” says Baba. “Part of the cash sale from this arm goes to his wife.”

The chair-man’s recital of synonyms continues. By now his eyes point upward. Mine are bathed in fear. Baba puts the knife into the icebox without wiping it. He lifts the arm from the bonnet and runs his hand over it, as if it were a child lost in an underworld of sewers and dead dogs.

We leave the car behind at the taxi stand. I try to take my eyes off the icebox Baba carries. The road ahead is dug up. Telephone wires lay exposed. I can hear the conversations of people as I stare at the copper that holds the words of their lives. They are all lonely. They keep talking about it. I do not think Baba hears them, for he walks with the urgency of a man who is late for office.

At night this city is an old person inching toward the bed or bathroom. When there is light, there is pretence. The man who sells combs will say that he is no sadder than the man who sells fish, who will insist that he is as happy as the man who works in the bank, who swears he does not envy the man who owns it. But when light leaves, they all wail. This city knows that once it has gone to the bathroom and then to bed, only death remains.

I know we are near the railway tracks, for I can hear a train pass by. Its slow speed tells me it is a local train that stops at all stations. There is wild grass around me; we must be between stations. You cannot catch a train from here, but this spot is very useful for throwing yourself in front of the train. A few years ago, policemen were stationed here to prevent suicides but then one day the policemen killed themselves. This city does that to us all.

“Look down and walk,” says Baba.

“Why?”

“Fried éclair.”

“What’s that?”

“Fresh shit. Looks like pieces of fried chocolate.”

“But it’s so dark. Impossible to spot.”

“Use your nose, fool.”

“I’d rather step on fried éclair than smell it.”

Those policemen must have killed themselves on account of the smell. Their lives and jobs must have brought them despair, but the smell must have driven them to jump before the train. I wonder if they had fried éclair on their shoes before they died.

“The train will come soon,” says Baba.

“I’m not killing myself,” I say.

“Fool, no one wants you dead.”

“Then why are we here?”

“To catch a train.”

“We are between stations. The train will not stop here.”

“Not to worry. I will catch it by the neck.”

I look around at the shrubbery. There could be all sorts of animals in there. Or small men that live like animals. It happens: you look at a small or medium-sized plant and wonder how it has feet. Why does it lie on the ground uprooted, shivering even though it is not cold? Then you realize that it is a man, or a child, or a man-child who slept on the earth so much, he has become a part of it and needs to crawl rather than walk, wither rather than die.

“Get ready,” says Baba. “Our train is here.”

“I have never caught a running train. I won’t be able to climb on.”

“It will slow down for a few seconds. You must climb on.”

“For what?”

“Do as I say, cripple.”

The train does slow down. It almost comes to a halt, and Baba lets the icebox get on first. Even though he is old, he boards the train with the eagerness of a runaway schoolboy. He helps me get on. The train picks up speed once more as we escape the smell of fried éclair.

“How did you know the train would stop?” I ask.

“The driver’s family and friends board the train from here so they can travel without a ticket.”

“Is that why we boarded? So we do not have to buy tickets?”

“We boarded because I need an empty compartment.”

I look around and notice that there is only one other passenger in the compartment with us. He is a thin, young boy. His head rests against the wood of the seat and his eyes are closed. The wind causes his white shirt to balloon. There are ads for mutual funds above his head. Also a caption for Tortoise mosquito repellent, a picture of the sturdy Atlas cycle, and the new mango soft drink that will cure us all of summer.

Baba opens the icebox. I know that no mango soft drink will emerge. He holds the arm in his hands. Dark hair has stiffened on it because of the cold. Drops of dry blood have settled on the crushed ice. Baba holds the arm at the wrist and points it to the night sky. He brandishes the arm behind him like a spear and flings it far into the sky. It flies away from us like some vicious bird.

“Why did you throw the arm away?” I ask in disbelief.

“I was about to ask you the same question.”

“What?”

“Why did you throw
your
arm away?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You must retrieve your lost arm.”

“Stop the train!”

“That
arm is already lost.”

I look for the arm, but it has flown. I am sure I did not see it land, but I know it
has
to land; it cannot just become part of a flock of migrating birds.

“The arm can’t disappear into the skies,” I say.

“Look at your arm,” Baba says.

I look at it, but I do not know for what. My other one looked just like it.

“No,” he says. “Not the one you have. Look at the arm you threw away.”

“I did not throw it away.”

“Is it there?”

“No.”

“Do you know exactly how you lost it?”

“No.”

“Then it disappeared? Just like the one I threw?”

“Yes …”

“So earn it back.”

The train slows down again. Baba jumps off into the shrubbery, leaving the icebox behind. I am afraid to follow him. I do not think I am meant to.

“Throw me the icebox,” he shouts.

I am happy to get rid of it. I push it off the train. I do not want the boy in the compartment to see the blood. I lean out of the train. I see Baba pick up the icebox and run back toward where we came from.
Then I understand. That arm was not for me, after all. Baba will retrieve it and sell it to someone else. Or maybe it did fly off into the skies. Either way, it does not matter.

Inside the compartment, I take a seat opposite the small, frail boy. His body is simply a hanger for his white shirt, which still puffs up because of the wind. But there is something else. He is not breathing too well. His chest heaves. His eyes are still closed. He must be flying kites or spinning tops with his friends in his village. Why did you leave your village? This city has eaten up half your body. The soul it took long ago.

I will wake him up. His station must have passed. I will ask him if he wants to eat vada-pow or even if he would fancy going to a proper restaurant. But it is almost midnight. All the restaurants must be closed. I have not eaten. This boy is not breathing properly. But his lungs are bold. They demand air and will not stop until there is none left on this earth. As I reach to touch him, I pause, horrified. Before I know it, I am calling out Viren’s name. There is a pretty blue schoolbag in my hand and I want to thrust it upon this small boy’s chest and crush his lungs forever.