Teatime for the Firefly (37 page)

Mima floated onto the veranda in a tent-shaped African caftan with fierce rhino prints.

“Ma, look what Dadamoshai gave us,” Moon cried, bouncing up and down on the sofa cushion. “A knife. A real knife.”

Mima’s eyes popped. “Good heavens, what is this? Dada, you should know better!” she cried in horror. “Why are you giving the children knives, of all things? They will hurt themselves.”

“Not if they are responsible human beings,” said Dadamoshai, giving us a sly look, “which I believe they are. Only sensible, mature people should rightfully own knives. Not hooligans.”

“I would not be so sure,” said Mima apprehensively. “But why give them knives?”

“What better way is there to teach them responsibility?” He looked at us. “The girls know if I ever see them use the knives to destroy things, to harm or intimidate anybody, I will not only take them away but I will be very, very disappointed. Now, somebody get me a potato from the kitchen. I want you both to learn the proper way to open and close the knife. You should also know how sharp the blade is, and if you are not careful, you can very easily slice off your finger.”

Moon and I spent the rest of that day, and probably the better part of our summer, gazing at our pocketknives, taking them in and out of the cases and opening and closing the blades very carefully as Dadamoshai had taught us to. We whittled wood and cut tiny pieces of green mango and eventually got over our fear of the knife’s potential to do harm. Whatever nefarious activities we may have been up to that summer, we never once misused our pocketknives. Nobody got attacked or had a finger cut off. We were not willing to jeopardize Dadamoshai’s trust for anything in the world.

CHAPTER 34

I had barely sliced into my apple when I heard voices. My heart almost stopped. Men. There were several of them. They sounded as if they were near the toilet end of the carriage, about four compartments down. I quickly switched off my flashlight and squeezed myself into the corner of the seat, covering my head with my sari. I heard footsteps come down the passage, banging each compartment door. They stopped at the compartment before mine. I could see one of them lean against the window in the passage. He cracked a match and lit a bidi. The sharp flame illuminated his face momentarily. The man had a broad, pockmarked face, with narrow slitted eyes. He waved the match out, and the tip of his bidi pulsed in the dark.

“You are stoned, you fucker,” another man said. “You damn nearly fell off the train. Don’t grab me next time. I almost went down with you.”

“I am so fucking tired,” said another. “Don’t think I have slept in three days.”

“I have not fucked in three days. That last Hindu bitch was a good one. What was she—around twelve?”

“You animal, I could not do it. She reminded me of my kid sister.”

“You are an asshole, Salim. Who is looking at the face?”

The men stood there smoking silently.

“Here, give me a drag,” said the guy called Salim.

The cigarette passed hands, pulsed twice in the dark and got passed back.

My heart must have stopped. I sat there with the apple and pocketknife frozen in my hands.

A flashlight switched on and beamed down at the floor. Then it flashed inside the compartment next to mine.

“This one is a pigsty,” the man said.

He walked over to my compartment, stood in my doorway and swiftly skimmed the inside. The beam grazed over me. He did not see me huddled in the corner.

He leaned against the doorway and yelled, “This one looks okay.”

Other footsteps came down the corridor. The men entered my compartment. There were four of them. The beam swept the overhead bunks and around the compartment, passed over me, then jerked quickly back. The flashlight dropped with a loud clatter on the floor and rolled under the seat where it rocked from side to side, the long beam lighting up my feet. The man staggered, pushing back on the others.

“What the...?
Fuck!
” he yelled. “There’s someone in here!”

“What!” Another flashlight clicked on. The beams pointed directly at me as I sat there with my face covered.

“I don’t believe this,” one of them said softly. “It’s a woman.”

He reached out with his stick and lifted the end of the sari covering my head, shining the flashlight directly at my face. He whistled softly.

“By God, look at those eyes? Is she real?”

“She’s real, all right,” said the man with the flashlight. He spoke softly. He tilted my chin up with the end of his stick.

He glanced down and saw the apple and the pocketknife on my lap.

“I am going to enjoy this. Maybe she’ll share her delicious apple with me,” he purred, tapping the fruit softly with his stick.

What was happening to me was so grotesque and terrifying that I experienced what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience. Suddenly I was not in the train compartment anymore. I soared high above and watched almost dispassionately at the scene unfolding before my eyes. Every drop of blood in my body had congealed. Every nerve, every muscle, every fiber was pulled taut to the breaking point. I even wondered if my heart had stopped beating.

Things started happening almost in slow motion: it was like watching a scene underwater. I was a marionette; my movements were slow and very precise. Somebody was pulling the strings, making me do things I had no control over. I saw myself lift the hand holding the apple. Then the other hand holding the pocketknife also lifted as if pulled by an invisible string. All this while I never once took my eyes off the man’s face. I don’t think I even blinked. I made two angled incisions in the apple and pulled out a tiny and perfect slice with the very pointed tip of the pocketknife and put the piece slowly and deliberately in my mouth. I chewed slowly all the while pointing the blade of the pocketknife toward the men. Then I repeated my actions. I have no idea how long I continued to cut tiny pieces of apple and eat it. Time had ceased to exist.

I remember observing dispassionately the men had their mouths hanging open. What I saw on their faces that day is something I will never forget: it was pure and abject terror.

Then the man with the flashlight turned abruptly and ran out of the compartment.

“It’s a ghost!” he cried.

“Ghost! Ghost!” echoed the others.

Then one of them said, “You guys are assholes. She is just a woman trying to act tough. Did you see the size of that pocketknife? What the fuck can she do with that?”

“If you were so sure, why didn’t you jump her?”

“Just get Karim. He’ll fix her.”

“Guard that door. See that she doesn’t get away.”

“There’s something wrong with that woman, I swear,” said one of the guys stationed outside. “Why was she staring at us like that with those funny-colored eyes?”

Meanwhile, I had descended back into my body. Great spasms shook me violently. I could not stop my teeth from chattering. I looked down at the apple
and noticed that I had cut a beautiful crisscross pattern into it. I had turned the apple into an exquisite work of art.

But my fear was now jagged and open. I was collapsed inside and filled with terror. Could I kill myself? I wondered. Jump from the running train? The men were blocking the door. I looked at the pocketknife. Suddenly the pip-squeak blade was laughable. I just had to await my fate. This was the end, I thought. The men would rape me and throw my body from the train. Nobody would ever find me. I would become just another nameless body decomposing in the rice fields. I thought of Manik lying wounded. I had tried my best to get to him, but failed. I was just grateful he was not there to see me die this way.

The voices got louder down the corridor. The men were shouting. I could hear another voice, deep and rumbling.

“The woman scared you assholes
with a
two-inch pocketknife
?”

“And an apple. You should have seen the apple. I don’t know which was more frightening, the apple or the woman.”

“Her eyes. Her eyes are white, like a ghost.”

“You fellows are fucking jokers,” said the man in the gruff voice. “Move out of the way. Let me see this ghost.”

A big bulk framed the doorway. The man carrying a powerful flashlight walked up to me. I smelled stale rice liquor on his breath and the acrid sweat of an unwashed animal wafting off his skin. He stood there breathing heavily. Blinded by the light, I could not see his face, but could make out the big bulk of his body and the dark tattoos on his arms. A thin gold chain glinted around his neck. I was completely drained. I felt lifeless, as though something in me had just drifted away. Only the shell of my body remained. I did not look at the man. I stared right through him.

The man abruptly switched off the flashlight. He turned and shoved the others crowding the doorway.

“Move!” he yelled. “Don’t any one of you motherfuckers touch this woman. Do you hear?” There was a surprised silence.

“So you want to enjoy her all to yourself, is it, Karim?” one of them leered softly. “Come on, brother, share the goods. Let us have a piece of the action.”

Karim turned around and slapped the man hard on the side of the head. He staggered under the blow.

“Did you not hear me, asshole?” he hissed viciously. “I will fucking kill any son of a bitch who touches this woman. You do not speak to her. Leave her alone, do you understand?”

The train rattled past a small station. The light from the platform fell on Karim’s face. I covered my mouth and choked back a cry. The man had a sickle-shaped scar on his cheek.

* * *

How I got to Aynakhal that day defies all probability. Small moments stand out in my memory. There was a lorry waiting for the men at Mariani station. I rode in the front seat of the cab, sandwiched between the driver and Jamina’s brother, Karim. I remember seeing a small idol of Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god, on the dashboard. How ironic, I thought. Ganesha, the lord of new beginnings and the powerful remover of obstacles, in a lorry piled with Muslim hoodlums out to kill Hindus. Later I heard it was a stolen lorry from the plywood factory in Mariani.

Mariani had been reduced to a pile of rubble. The streets were empty, most of the shops cindered. There were piles of rotting garbage everywhere. A mangy pariah bitch with sagging teats crossed the railway tracks, tripping over her newborn cubs.

It was 5:00 a.m. when we reached Aynakhal. There were disturbing signs everywhere. The boom gate was yawning open, the guardhouse unmanned. We drove past the factory. There was a sense of eerie quiet. A pile of broken tea chests blocked the factory gate. A tractor with a twisted trailer stood abandoned in the middle of the road. The doors to the office were locked, but the long veranda was littered with garbage. It looked as though people had been camping out there at night.

“Which way from here, sister?” asked Karim. We had not spoken a single word the entire way. Something told me Manik would be at our old bungalow. As I directed the lorry driver, I was filled with a terrible dread. Was Manik even alive? All I knew was that he had been seriously injured. I had no idea what to expect.

The lorry roared up the hill. The monkeys were nowhere in sight. The bungalow roof came into view. We were just a short distance from the front gate when Karim shouted to the driver to stop.

“It is not safe for us to take the lorry any farther, sister,” he said. “Somebody may hear us and shoot. We have to leave you here.”

“Thank you,” I said, clambering down.

“No mention, sister,” said Karim in English. “
Inshallah
, this madness will end soon.”

With that, the truck turned around and rattled back down the hill.

I walked to the gate. It was wide-open on its hinges. The marigold pots were cracked and broken. Manik’s jeep was parked haphazardly outside the portico. I lifted my sari and started to run toward the house.

“Manik!” I screamed. “Manik, please, God.”

I heard barking. A black streak bounded down the stairs. It was Marshal. He galloped toward me. He had a crooked limp and his thick fur was caked and matted with blood. His eyes were wild and he was foaming at the mouth. Seeing me, he whined and collapsed at my feet and rolled over.

Then I heard Manik’s voice. “Who is there? Stop! Or I will shoot!”

“It’s me, oh, Manik!”

I ran up the stairs, and there he was slouched over his gun in torn and bloody clothes. Manik looked up briefly. His glasses were missing; his left eye was closed and misshapen. When he saw me, his gun clattered to the floor.

“Layla,” he said, stunned. “How did you come here? Where is the baby?”

Manik had an open wound on the side of his head, his hair was clotted with blood and his arm hung at a funny angle, but he was alive.

Tears streamed down my face and he collapsed into my arms.

* * *

The servants had fled the bungalow. The pantry and kitchen were deserted. I filled Marshal’s water bowl and found some stale bread, which I broke into pieces for him. All Manik wanted was a cigarette and a stiff shot of whiskey. I heated a kettle of water to give Manik a sponge bath. He had not bathed in two days and had not budged from the veranda in the past twenty-four hours, nor had he eaten. My stomach turned when I saw his wounds. Manik’s back was striped black-and-blue with stick beatings. He had trouble breathing. And when he coughed, there was blood.

“I feel your tears on my back, Layla,” he said softly. “Please don’t cry, darling. I will live, I promise. I will not die without seeing my daughter.”

Just hearing him say that made me feel better. I mixed Dettol with water in the basin and washed his wounds. I found one of my sari petticoats in the cupboard, cut it into long strips and bandaged his wounds as best as I could.

“They are still around—the men,” said Manik. “They will try to get into the bungalow to kill me. But Marshal is there. He saved my life, Layla.”

Bit by bit he related what had happened. For the past three weeks, the union leaders had held protests outside Manik’s office. The crowds were getting harder to control. Every day the tea pluckers were harassed on their way to the plantation and the factory workers threatened. The union leaders hijacked the tractor bringing in the leaves from the plantation. They beat up the driver and overturned the trailer, throwing the leaves on the road. Despite everything Aynakhal was still managing to function.

One day a young coolie reported that there was elephant trouble in the plantation. It was only in hindsight Manik realized that this man was a well-known troublemaker who had been recently suspended from work.

Manik drove to the section where the trouble was reported. He found a tree felled across the road. He assumed that it was the elephant’s doing. Had he been a little observant, he might have noticed that the tree had been chopped down. He got out of the jeep to investigate, leaving his gun in the car, when five or six men hiding in the tea bushes jumped on him. Marshal ran to his rescue and savagely attacked the men, ripping flesh from their bones as they tried to fend him off with sticks. Finally Manik fell into a culvert and Marshal stood guard over him so ferociously the men did not dare to come near. Most of them had suffered Marshal’s bites in one way or the other. Some of them had serious injuries: one had his face bitten terribly and another had his arm in shreds. They had no choice but to leave. That was when Manik crawled out of the culvert, got into the jeep and drove home with Marshal. They had been holed up in the bungalow ever since.

Later that day, the men returned to break into the servant quarters and chase the servants away. At night they tried to enter the bungalow, but Marshal was always on guard and Manik fired several rounds from the veranda.

Then Manik stopped talking abruptly and looked at me through his wounded eye. “How did you get here, Layla?” he asked. “Who brought you from Silchar?”