The God of Small Things (40 page)

“It isn’t him,” Rahel whispered to Estha. “I can tell. It’s his twin brother. Urumban. From Kochi.”

Unwilling to seek refuge in fiction, Estha said nothing.

Someone was speaking to them. A kind Touchable Policeman. Kind to his kind.

“Mon, Mol, are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

And not together, but almost, the twins replied in a whisper.

“Yes. No.”

“Don’t worry. You’re safe with us now.”

Then the policemen looked around and saw the grass mat.

The pots and pans.

The inflatable goose.

The Qantas koala with loosened button eyes.

The ballpoint pens with London’s streets in them.

Socks with separate colored toes.

Yellow-rimmed red plastic sunglasses.

A watch with the time painted on it.

“Whose are these? Where did they come from? Who brought them?” An edge of worry in the voice.

Estha and Rahel, full of fish, stared back at him.

The policemen looked at one another. They knew what they had to do.

The Qantas koala they took for their children.

And the pens and socks. Police children with multicolored toes.

They burst the goose with a cigarette.
Bang.
And buried the rubber scraps.

Yooseless goose. Too recognizable.

The glasses one of them wore. The others laughed, so he kept them on for awhile.

The watch they all forgot. It stayed behind in the History House. In the back verandah.

A faulty record of the time. Ten to two.

They left.

Six princes, their pockets stuffed with toys.

A pair of two-egg twins.

And the God of Loss.

He couldn’t walk. So they dragged him.

Nobody saw them.

Bats, of course, are blind.

SAVING AMMU

A
t the police station, Inspector Thomas Mathew sent for two Coca-Colas. With straws. A servile constable brought them on a plastic tray and offered them to the two muddy children sitting across the table from the Inspector, their heads only a little higher than the mess of files and papers on it.

So once again, in the space of two weeks, bottled Fear for Estha. Chilled. Fizzed. Sometimes Things went worse with Coke.

The fizz went up his nose. He burped. Rahel giggled. She blew through her straw till the drink bubbled over onto her dress. All over the floor. Estha read aloud from the board on the wall.

“ssenetilo
P
,” he said. “ssenetilo
P
, ecneideb
O
.”

“ytlayo
L
, ecnegilletn
I
,” Rahel said.

“ysetruo
C.
”

“ycneiciff
E
.”

To his credit, Inspector Thomas Mathew remained calm. He sensed the growing incoherence in the children. He noted the dilated pupils. He had seen it all before … the human mind’s escape
valve. Its way of managing trauma. He made allowances for that, and couched his questions cleverly. Innocuously. Between
When is your birthday, Mon?
and
What’s your favorite color, Mol?

Gradually, in a fractured, disjointed fashion, things began to fall into place. His men had briefed him about the pots and pans. The grass mat. The impossible-to-forget toys. They began to make sense now. Inspector Thomas Mathew was not amused. He sent a jeep for Baby Kochamma. He made sure that the children were not in the room when she arrived. He didn’t greet her.

“Have a seat,” he said.

Baby Kochamma sensed that something was terribly wrong.

“Have you found them? Is everything all right?”

“Nothing is all right,” the Inspector assured her.

From the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice, Baby Kochamma realized that she was dealing with a different person this time. Not the accommodating police officer of their previous meeting. She lowered herself into a chair. Inspector Thomas Mathew didn’t mince his words.

The Kottayam Police had acted on the basis of an F.I.R. filed by
her
. The Paravan had been caught. Unfortunately he had been badly injured in the encounter and in all likelihood would not live through the night. But now the children said that they had gone of their own volition. Their boat had capsized and the English child had drowned by accident. Which left the police saddled with the Death in Custody of a technically innocent man. True, he was a Paravan. True, he had misbehaved. But these were troubled times and technically, as per the law, he was an innocent man. There was no
case.

“Attempted rape?” Baby Kochamma suggested weakly.

“
Where
is the rape-victim’s complaint? Has it been filed? Has she made a statement? Have you brought it with you?” The Inspector’s tone was belligerent. Almost hostile.

Baby Kochamma looked as though she had shrunk. Pouches of flesh hung from her eyes and jowls. Fear fermented in her and the spit in her mouth turned sour. The Inspector pushed a glass of water towards her.

“The matter is very simple. Either the rape-victim must file a complaint. Or the children must identify the Paravan as their abductor in the presence of a police witness. Or.” He waited for Baby Kochamma to look at him. “Or I must charge you with lodging a false F.I.R. Criminal offense.”

Sweat stained Baby Kochamma’s light-blue blouse dark blue. Inspector Thomas Mathew didn’t hustle her. He knew that given the political climate, he himself could be in very serious trouble. He was aware that Comrade K. N. M. Pillai would not pass up this opportunity. He kicked himself for acting so impulsively. He used his printed hand towel to reach inside his shirt and wipe his chest and armpits. It was quiet in his office. The sounds of police-station activity, the clumping of boots, the occasional howl of pain from somebody being interrogated, seemed distant, as though they were coming from somewhere else.

“The children will do as they’re told,” Baby Kochamma said. “If I could have a few moments alone with them.”

“As you wish.” The Inspector rose to leave the office.

“Please give me five minutes before you send them in.”

Inspector Thomas Mathew nodded his assent and left.

Baby Kochamma wiped her shining, sweaty face. She stretched her neck, looking up at the ceiling in order to wipe the sweat from crevices between her rolls of neckfat with the end of her pallu. She kissed her crucifix.

Hail Mary, full of grace
…

The words of the prayer deserted her.

The door opened. Estha and Rahel were ushered in. Caked with mud. Drenched in Coca-Cola.

The sight of Baby Kochamma made them suddenly sober. The moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts spread its wings over both their hearts.
Why had she come? Where was Ammu? Was she still locked up?

Baby Kochamma looked at them sternly. She said nothing for a long time. When she spoke her voice was hoarse and unfamiliar.

“Whose boat was it? Where did you get it from?”

“Ours. That we found. Velutha mended it for us,” Rahel whispered.

“How long have you had it?”

“We found it the day Sophie Mol came.”

“And you stole things from the house and took them across the river in it?”

“We were only playing…”

“
Playing
? Is that what you call it?”

Baby Kochamma looked at them for a long time before she spoke again.

“Your lovely little cousin’s body is lying in the drawing room. The fish have eaten out her eyes. Her mother can’t stop crying. Is that what you call
playing
?”

A sudden breeze made the flowered window curtain billow. Outside Rahel could see jeeps parked. And walking people. A man was trying to start his motorcycle. Each time he jumped on the kickstarter lever, his helmet slipped to one side.

Inside the Inspector’s room, Pappachi’s Moth was on the move.

“It’s a terrible thing to take a person’s life,” Baby Kochamma said. “It’s the worst thing that anyone can ever do. Even
God
doesn’t forgive that. You know that, don’t you?”

Two heads nodded twice.

“And yet”—she looked sadly at them—“you did it.” She looked them in the eye. “You are murderers.” She waited for this to sink in.

“You know that I know that it wasn’t an accident. I know how jealous of her you were. And if the judge asks me in court I’ll have to tell him, won’t I? I can’t tell a lie, can I?” She patted the chair next to her. “Here, come and sit down—”

Four cheeks of two obedient bottoms squeezed into it.

“I’ll have to tell them how it was strictly against the Rules for you to go alone to the river. How you forced her to go with you although you knew that she couldn’t swim. How you pushed her out of the boat in the middle of the river. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Four saucers stared back at her. Fascinated by the story she was telling them.
Then what happened?

“So now you’ll have to go to jail,” Baby Kochamma said kindly. “And your mother will go to jail because of you. Would you like that?”

Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at her.

“Three of you in three different jails. Do you know what jails in India are like?”

Two heads shook twice.

Baby Kochamma built up her case. She drew (from her imagination) vivid pictures of prison life. The cockroach-crisp food. The
chhi-chhi
piled in the toilets like soft brown mountains. The bedbugs. The beatings. She dwelled on the long years Ammu would be put away because of them. How she would be an old, sick woman with lice in her hair when she came out—if she didn’t die in jail, that was. Systematically, in her kind, concerned voice she conjured up the macabre future in store for them. When she had stamped out every ray of hope, destroyed their lives completely, like a fairy godmother she presented them with a solution. God would never forgive them for what they had done, but here on Earth there was a way of undoing some of the damage. Of saving their mother from humiliation and suffering on their account. Provided they were prepared to be practical.

“Luckily,” Baby Kochamma said, “luckily for you, the police have made a mistake. A
lucky
mistake.” She paused. “You know what it is, don’t you?”

There were people trapped in the glass paperweight on the policeman’s desk. Estha could see them. A waltzing man and a waltzing woman. She wore a white dress with legs underneath.

“Don’t you?”

There was paperweight waltz music. Mammachi was playing it on her violin.

Ra-ra-ra-ra-rum

Parum-parum.

“The thing is,” Baby Kochamma’s voice was saying, “what’s done is done. The Inspector says he’s going to die anyway. So it won’t really matter to him what the police think. What matters is whether you want to go to jail and make Ammu go to jail because of
you.
It’s up to you to decide that.”

There were bubbles inside the paperweight which made the man and woman look as though they were waltzing underwater. They
looked happy. Maybe they were getting married. She in her white dress. He in his black suit and bow tie. They were looking deep into each other’s eyes.

“If you want to save her, all you have to do is to go with the Uncle with the big
meesbas.
He’ll ask you a question. One question. All you have to do is to say ‘Yes.’ Then we can all go home. It’s so easy. It’s a small price to pay.”

Baby Kochamma followed Estha’s gaze. It was all she could do to prevent herself from taking the paperweight and flinging it out of the window. Her heart was hammering.

“So!” she said, with a bright, brittle smile, the strain beginning to tell in her voice. “What shall I tell the Inspector Uncle? What have we decided? D’you want to save Ammu or shall we send her to jail?”

As though she was offering them a choice of two treats. Fishing or bathing the pigs? Bathing the pigs or fishing?

The twins looked up at her. Not together (but almost) two frightened voices whispered, “Save Ammu.”

In the years to come they would replay this scene in their heads. As children. As teenagers. As adults. Had they been deceived into doing what they did? Had they been tricked into condemnation?

In a way, yes. But it wasn’t as simple as that. They both knew that they had been given a choice. And how quick they had been in the choosing! They hadn’t given it more than a second of thought before they looked up and said (not together, but almost) “Save Ammu.” Save us. Save our mother.

Baby Kochamma beamed. Relief worked like a laxative. She needed to go to the bathroom. Urgently. She opened the door and asked for the Inspector.

“They’re good little children,” she told him when he came. “They’ll go with you.”

“No need for both. One will serve the purpose,” Inspector Thomas Mathew said. “Any one. Mon. Mol. Who wants to come with me?”

“Estha.” Baby Kochamma chose. Knowing him to be the more practical of the two. The more tractable. The more farsighted. The more responsible. “You go. Goodboy.”

Little Man. He lived in a caravan. Dum dum.

Estha went.