The Hero's Walk (47 page)

“Where are we going?” she wailed, rubbing her eyes.

“The sea has come inside the house,” said Ammayya tearfully. “We will all drown, yo-yo-yo Rama, yo-yo-yo Sita!”

“We are all going to die? Like my Mommy and Daddy?”

“No, we are not,” soothed Nirmala.

“Where is my kitten?”

They had all forgotten the little animal trapped in its basket. Nobody said anything and Nandana kicked her legs against Arun. “I
want
my kitten.”

“Not now, my raja,” said Nirmala, patting her legs. “Later on. He will be all right.”

Nandana gave her a suspicious look but allowed herself to be pacified. They went outside and were soaked by the rain almost immediately. Ammayya moaned that her chest hurt, that she was dying, that this was God's way of showing his anger over Putti's betrothal.

Why, thought Sripathi, was his life in such chaos all of a sudden? Like King Harishchandra, was he too being tested by the gods? He glanced at Nandana cowering under a plastic sheet that Nirmala had found in her cupboard. The umbrellas were all stranded in the living room, so they had to make do with whatever they had been able to find in the small storage cupboard near the terrace door.

“Nobody will hear us if we shout!” he said despondently over the gush of rain in the gutters.

“I can climb down easily,” suggested Arun. He had jumped from one compound to another often enough as a boy. “Best way. You all stay here till I come back.”

He balanced for a moment on the wall of the terrace and leapt across to the adjacent balcony. He shinnied down the drainpipe and was lost to the darkness. A few moments later, however, they heard him banging on their neighbour's door, shouting for help. Doors opened, there were voices, and then a wide beam of light as Petromax lanterns flared whitely on Munnuswamy's terrace.

Only a moment later, it seemed, Arun leapt back onto their terrace. “Appu! The flood is only in our house. Must be a burst septic tank or something. We will have to go to the Munnuswamys' for the night.”

“I am not climbing walls and all,” declared Ammayya.

“No need,” said Arun. “If you use the bathroom stairs on the first floor till you are level with the wall, we can lift you over.”

“Bathroom stairs? Which the sweeper woman uses? Are you mad?” demanded Ammayya, her voice thick with rage. Wasn't it
bad enough that her insides were swilling with filth? Now she was supposed to lower herself even further by using the untouchable stairs? “I am not going anywhere,” she declared. “I will die in my own house, if necessary. My children will stay with me. Putti mari? Sripathi?”

They stared wordlessly at her. Again the pinch of pain in her chest that she had felt that morning. Everyone had let her down. All her life she had been betrayed and humiliated. By her whoring husband who stole her youth, her self-respect, even the fortune that should have sustained her in old age. By her son who had run away like a coward from medical school and robbed her of hope. By Putti, who was leaving her for a milkboy. And by God himself, who had sent this filthy flood into her room alone. Silently she followed the family to the bathroom. Silently she allowed them to hustle her down the curling wrought-iron staircase to the level of the wall, where Arun and Gopala waited to lift her over to the other side. Inside the blue Munnuswamy home, Ammayya lay on the divan, still unable to speak after the affronts suffered by her body and her heart that day. She could literally
hear
her stupid daughter simpering at that cowherd's son. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, she thought. Somewhere in the room, she could also hear Nandana asking querulously whether they were all going to die, and Nirmala exclaiming over the multicoloured marvels of the room revealed to her by the bright light of the Petromax lamps. She choked with fury when she realized how little she mattered to these people gathered here in this room. Simply an old woman with odd ways, that's how they thought of her. Even her beloved Putti, for whom she had saved and scrimped and stolen. And with that thought, Ammayya's ancient heart gave one more heave, dragging a fiery path of pain through her left side, and she cried out loud, surprised at the intensity of it.

Sripathi heard the cry first and, to his shame, ignored it, thinking that his mother was performing, as usual. Then it came again,
fainter now, almost a gurgle followed by silence. This time he rushed over to the sofa and found Ammayya straining for breath, her eyes dilated horribly as if they would force their way out from her face, and her lips turned back from her teeth in a blue-tinged snarl.

“She is sick!” he said frantically. “My mother is sick. We need to take her to the hospital.”

A hush fell over the room.

“Don't want hospital,” whispered Ammayya, clutching at Sripathi's shirt as he bent over her. He was surprised at the strength of that grip. “Want Putti.”

Putti hurried over to her mother and knelt on the floor, her protruding upper lip trembling with emotion. “Ammayya, I am sorry,” she wept. “Don't be angry with me, please.”

Ammayya released Sripathi's shirt and transferred her grip to Putti's wrist. She pinched it so hard that Putti's eyes began to tear. “I am dying,” she hissed through her ragged blue lips. “And
you
are the cause. Remember that! Remember that when you crawl into his bed.”

She panted and glared at Putti, who tried to wrench her arm out of her mother's terrible grip. When she finally broke free she found fingermarks etched into her skin, marks that would later dry and scab but would never entirely disappear. They began to resemble three staring, cartoonish eyes, causing Putti to wear dozens of bangles retrieved from her mother's trunk under the bed, all in an effort to hide the marks from her own guilt-ridden gaze. And after her wedding, when Gopala made love to her in their brand-new apartment—one of three that Sripathi had got in exchange for Big House—on a brand-new cot that had been purchased in Madras, Putti wrapped her wrist with a thick bandage to hide those ovals of jealous anger left on her by Ammayya.

“Get an ambulance,” said Nirmala weakly, wishing that someone would take charge. Even the efficient, bustling Munnuswamy
seemed at a loss. “Shouldn't we take her to the hospital? Call an ambulance?” she asked again.

“Phone isn't working,” said Munnuswamy briefly, “but don't worry. We will take her in our milk van.” He gestured to Gopala, who nodded and left the room. There was the sound of a vehicle being started up, reversing into the driveway and stopping.

Arun lifted Ammayya off the sofa and carried her to the van, which was also a bright shade of blue, with Ambika Milk Co-op stencilled in flowery letters on the side. He put her down on one of the long seats and Nirmala arranged a blanket over her.

“Putti,” called Ammayya weakly. When her daughter's anxious face swam into view she whispered, “You also come with me. I want you to make sure those doctors don't take off my clothes and poke here and there with their instruments. If my own son were a doctor …”

Another wave of pain cut off all further speech, and then the van started up again. Putti clambered in beside Arun and Sripathi. Arun sat on the ridged floor of the van, which smelled of stale milk, and held Ammayya as they bumped and rattled through the pitted, flooded roads to Toturpuram's Vanitha Hospital, a new institution with a dubious reputation. But Munnuswamy said that he knew many people there, and so that was where he took them.

The emergency ward at the hospital was busy, even at that early hour of the morning. A bus had collided with an overloaded truck, bringing in three dozen wounded passengers. A harried nurse told them that they would have to wait in the corridor until someone was free to examine Ammayya. She lay on the ground against the bleached wall of the hospital corridor, her nose full of the odour of dead and dying bodies, her bulging heart full of the rage she had accumulated over sixty of her eighty years of existence.

After a brief conversation with Munnuswamy, which Sripathi could not hear, the nurse paged a doctor.

“Not to worry,” said Munnuswamy with a satisfied air. “I told her who I was. You will get some good service. Now if you will
excuse, I have to take my leave. The van will be back with my driver at seven o'clock. And I will get my Boys to clean up your house.”

“I'm sorry,” he said to Munnuswamy. “Very, very sorry for imposing on you like this.”

“No problem, we are sambandhis now.” He waved Sripathi's gratitude away with one hand and left.

Ammayya opened her eyes and called to Sripathi. “Unscrew my earrings,” she commanded hoarsely. “And remove my mangalya and all the other chains. They will rob me otherwise. My earrings are blue jaguar diamonds. The best water. I want them all back when we go home. My vaaley, my mangalya, the rice-grain necklace, the mohan-maaley and my corals. I know what I am wearing. And under my bed—my
aurum
and my
argentum
—I know how much there is, so don't try to take anything.”

She insisted that Sripathi do the job, and not Putti. “Nothing for you,” she said when her daughter tried to help Sripathi with the unfamiliar task of removing a woman's earrings. “Not a single paisa of mine.”

The doctor arrived shortly after Sripathi had wrapped his mother's jewellery in a handkerchief and placed it in his pocket. Two orderlies lifted Ammayya on to a gurney and started to wheel her away.

Ammayya clutched at Putti's sari. “Come with me,” she whispered. “Tell them I don't want them to take off my clothes.”

But one of the orderlies shook his head at Putti. “No madam, visitors not allowed inside operating area.”

“Are you operating on her? But you don't even know what is wrong,” said Sripathi surprised at this quick turn of events. The doctor hadn't even checked Ammayya's pulse or put a stethoscope to her chest. Wasn't that what they were supposed to do to begin with?

“Name of patient?” asked the doctor, ignoring his questions and scribbling rapidly on a form.

“Janaki Rao.”

“Age?”

“Eighty-one. She was complaining of chest pains. Maybe a heart attack?” Sripathi suggested. “How can you operate without even checking her?”

“Please sign here, sir, and then I will answer all your questions,” said the doctor, pointing his pen at a cross on the form. “Just to verify that you are releasing the hospital from all obligations in case of problems.”

“What problems?” asked Arun. “Appu, don't sign till you read the form.”

The doctor shrugged. “The longer you take, the longer it will be to help the old lady. This is simply a formality. Everybody has to sign it.”

Sripathi took the pen and signed.

“Now, please pay at the desk.”

“Pay?” asked Sripathi blankly.

“Yes sir, that is the rule here. You have to issue a cheque at the nurse's desk before we do anything for the patient.”

“Is this a shop or a hospital?” demanded Arun. “First see if my grandmother is all right. We aren't going to run away without paying. We aren't thieves like you!”

“Your decision, sir,” shrugged the doctor. He yelled to the orderlies who were wheeling Ammayya through a swinging door. “Bring the patient back. These people can't pay.” He turned back to Arun. “Take her to the government hospital, it is free service there.”

“No, no, it is okay,” said Sripathi. “Please ignore my son, he is very emotional. I will pay. You take care of my mother.”

For several hours, Sripathi and Arun and Putti waited in the corridor, which was now being swabbed by a peon in a khaki uniform. He worked his way backwards down the length of the waiting area,
the wet rags that made up the mop slapping against the feet of those who waited in resigned silence for someone to attend to them. An odour of disinfectant permeated the air, mingling with the smell of cooking that emerged from the cafeteria. At eight o'clock, the doctor came looking for them with a grave expression on his face and facile words of condolence slipping out of his mouth. “We could do nothing for her,” he said. “She was very old.”

Ammayya was wheeled out, her body wrapped in a pale green hospital sheet, and for that Sripathi had to sign another cheque. Somebody had brushed her eyelids shut and she looked unusually gentle. It seemed to Sripathi that he had last seen such an expression on her face at his upanayana ceremony, when he was a boy of ten, just before his father's mistress had arrived. There were pieces of cotton wool sticking out of her nostrils, and her mouth was slightly open.

“She was angry with me, she didn't forgive me,” whispered Putti, her face wet with tears. She clutched a bag of clothes that the orderly had handed to her.

Sripathi helped Arun carry Ammayya's stiffening body, which was lighter than he had imagined it would be, to the van that was waiting for them. He sat silently beside the body and wondered who he would lose next.

Back at Big House, one of the Boys stopped them on the verandah, which was slimy with mud, and said, “You will have to go from the back, sir. The water has gone, but it is very filthy.”

He told Sripathi that the rear compound wall had been broken down to allow the water to drain. It would take several hours for them to clean and disinfect the house. “Oh, and we found something,” he smiled, his teeth large and white against his dark skin. He went to a corner of the verandah and picked up a cardboard box. Inside it was the kitten. “We found this baby clinging to the curtains.”

“Nandana will be happy,” said Putti. She took the box and went to Munnuswamy's house to break the news of Ammayya's death to
Nirmala. Meanwhile, Sripathi and Arun went back to the van to remove the corpse. This time they had to ascend the spiral toilet stairs to the terrace, holding Ammayya upright to negotiate the twisting metal path, through the bathroom and into the landing between the two bedrooms. Arun spread out a fresh sheet on the floor and they placed the old woman on it.