The Cripple and His Talismans (16 page)

“This is different.”

“Only if you let it be.”

“But I need to know if …”

“Need to know what? I offer you a commodity that is unattainable and what do I get in return? I will forgive your insolence only because you have proved your worth by preserving the finger. Otherwise, step outside. The scenery will be breathtaking there, once I put your face in the gutter.”

At any moment, his beard will spurt poison in my face, blind me for not seeing in the first place. As he shouts, the arms on the wall move — a twitch, a flick of their wrists, fingers rise to point at me. In the corner opposite us there is a pair of female legs. They tremble as though their flesh has been beaten, smacked as sorely as a disobedient child’s. Baba breathes into my face. With each exhalation, a germ of fear is born within me.

“You young people complain too much,” he says. “You lose an arm, you complain. Someone offers you one, you complain. If you have the money, buy it. Think of it as an orange. It might grow in someone else’s garden, but if you are hungry you will eat it.”

“An orange.”

“An organ transplant, then. No incompetent doctor will meddle with the fitting. It is Baba Rakhu’s guarantee, brother. To date, I have fixed two hundred cripples.”

“In the case of a transplant there is a donor. I doubt these arms are donated.”

“A minor technicality,” he continues. “I want to help you. You seem like a good person, although. your skin is a little pale. I will do what I have not done for any customer before. You will learn how I obtain my stock.”

He is convinced that he is selling oranges.

“If you choose not to use my services after that, so be it. If you go to the police, there’s a special place reserved for your other arm right there in the corner.”

If I retreat now, I am dead anyway. I have met Baba Rakhu and seen his pet dungeon. Are some of these limbs customers’ limbs? It is so dark here. Hell must be like this. Only less organized.

I ask, “Who do you take from? Do you target the poor and hardworking as well, or is it only the eunuch-dogs you despise?”

“Before you behave like a third-class journalist, did you understand the condition I just set you?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “If I’m convinced, I buy an arm. If I’m not convinced, I walk away. If I run to the police, I lose the other.”

“It is settled, then. You shall witness the buying. Before we go arm shopping, we must eat. Please serve yourself,” he says.

But there is not a morsel of rice around, or, for that matter, a morsel of anything I recognize as human morality.

Baba motions to the arms and legs. “All you can eat, brother. America style.”

Legs swim before my eyes and I picture chili powder being sprinkled on them for flavour. Because Baba Rakhu speaks of America I see salt and pepper shakers. I imagine the legs being chopped into edible pieces and placed on banana leaves, because that is an Indian custom. Nausea overtakes me and the snakes in Baba’s beard bicker amongst themselves over who gets me first. I throw up — it is the only act that seems dignified in this depraved brothel.

I hear Baba’s voice and the snakes are gone. “Brother, you are a weakling. It is unwise to be so delicate in the present day.”

“Perhaps we could talk a little more.”

“Talk is for politicians. We simple folk must simply exchange arms.”

“But I was hoping …”

“Hope is the poor man’s burden. Why are you carrying it?”

Mockery. We all hate being subjected to it, and yet it is our favourite subject.

“Do you have a shopping bag?” he asks me.

“What for?”

“To put the arm in.”

I see the flying cockroaches again. I am confused because there are both brown and black ones. They act as if they are friends. Good and evil holding hands, dancing like children. They are celebrating that I have come to this place. They sing a song, the type bandits sing on horses, and it is lovely. Then they stop flying. They lie flat on their backs, wings spread out, looking at the ceiling. In a minute, they are dead.

A lightbulb looms over Baba’s head. It gives his silver matted hair a luminescence fit only for the wise and the holy. After an hour of window shopping, we are back in his pet dungeon.

“This is terrible,” I say. “I don’t even know this man.”

I look at the man in the khaki uniform, tied to a chair. Unshaven and dirty, he is in a room with limbs for curtains. Baba positions the man under the lightbulb.

“I don’t even know this man,” I repeat.

“Then next time we should abduct someone you know.”

With his black shawl still draped over him, Baba is wearing the sheen of crows. He puts his face very close to the man’s. The man’s neck is limp. He is a drunken person who has passed out in front of a
TV
. His face is blank.

“For your moral satisfaction, I will demonstrate why this man here is a candidate. I will show you the criteria for his selection,” says Baba.

I want to tell Baba that he is depraved, that he is no visionary but a fraudulent mound of flesh. My thoughts bombard the pores of his skin but cannot penetrate.

“There are many reasons that make him an ideal choice,” he says. Baba taps the man’s temple with his knuckles. “They are all neatly tucked away in here. Any suggestions on how to retrieve them?”

I am not enjoying this. I have just helped Baba transport a man in the trunk of an old Ambassador in a manner suited to a sack of old potatoes. We held him by his arms and legs as we carried him to Baba’s limb emporium. I had not noticed the low door at the end of this room. Who would notice a door when limbs hang merrily above your head? A carpet of dust lies on the floor.

Baba taunts me further: “It is simple for me to attach an arm. But to bring a man back to consciousness, I have not mastered that yet.”

“Throw water on his face.”

“You have the brain of a toilet! The body is scientific. It is not a radio — bang it once and it will work again.” He looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “But let us do what you say. Otherwise you will complain.”

Baba walks to the low door at the far end. I hear the clack of utensils. Baba returns with a steel glass in one hand.

“We have here the product of your toilet mind,” he says. “Throw water on his face.”

He extends the steel glass my way. I do not take it. He throws the contents of the glass on my face.

“Your skin needs it,” he smirks. “It is so pale. Come under this bulb. Let me examine it.”

I look around at the skin on the arms and legs that hang from the walls. My flesh resembles that of the preserved — shades of scaly pinks, browns and blacks that are acquired only in dark places. I wipe the water off my face. The little that is left on my lips, I lick.

“Time to awaken our sleeping booty!” he sings.

He presses the back of the man’s neck with both his thumbs. He twists the neck sideways, first gently, then with a quick jerk. I think of my barber.

The man squints, the light further polishing the glaze of his oily black hair. Baba pokes his head into the man’s line of sight like a hand puppet.

“Baba Rakhu!” shouts the man.

“See how famous I am. Everybody knows my name. I like my name. Don’t you think it is nice?” he asks me as he circles the man.

The man has realized that he is bound to a chair. His gaze does not leave Baba.

“Baba Rakhu!” he says again.

Baba slaps him. It is a very calm slap — forceful, yet calm. “Quiet. Don’t overdo it. Overdoing things is the number one problem in our country. In our movies also. We don’t need people over-killing in real life.”

Baba walks toward one wall, where only arms are displayed. He runs across the width and plucks at them — they are the strings of his sitar. “Be subtle, like me,” he tells the man.

It is obvious that the man does not like Baba’s orchestration. “No! Not that! I’m innocent.”

“What a positive attitude he has. Guilty as a beast of burden but denies it,” he tells me. “Why can’t you be more like him?”

I do not know what to say. Perhaps it is because I am guilty, too. At least a bank robber uses his arms to steal money. I am using money to steal an arm.

“Why are you helping me?” I ask.

Baba breaks into laughter. This scares the man on the chair. He struggles to break loose.

“I’m not
helping
you. I’m selling you an arm for money. Rich cripples like you fund my enterprise so I can afford to give limbs to the poor.”

“So it’s only about the money, then.”

“What else?”

“Then why didn’t you contact me directly? Why did Gura and the In-charge lead me here?”

“They are part of the fine print,” he smirks. “You need to earn your arm back. Even though you are paying for it. Now stop being tragic and concentrate on this specimen who is about to lose his arm.”

Baba looks at the man on the chair again. Sweat sticks to his body like fear.

“You’ve made a mistake,” he tells Baba. “You’ve got the wrong person. I have done nothing.”

“You lie like the eunuch-dog you are about to become. But since I am fair, I will give you a choice. Would you rather lose an arm or leg?”

Then he points to me and whispers in the man’s ear: “Perhaps I will leave that decision to this delicate object here. He is very much a part of this.”

“I am not,” I say.

“Enough of this time-wasting argument. After I am done with him, you will have to decide whether you wish to buy an arm or not.”

I feel small discussing this in front of a man whose arm is in question. I feel small but calm, because I still do not think it possible.

“Do you beat your wife?” Baba asks the man.

“I’m innocent, I swear,” says the man.

“I wish to teach you something,” Baba tells me. “It will be useful when you get married to find out if your wife is playing someone else’s flute.”

He rips open the man’s khaki shirt. Buttons fall to the floor. “No guns or pitiful devices of torture to make you talk,” he reassures the man.

He fidgets with the man’s nipples as though he is operating an old
TV
knob. I do not know if the man is as unsure of Baba’s actions as I am. The nipples are brown and small. They point well, though.

“The nipples are the organs that control the honesty and dishonesty glands of the human body,” Baba instructs us. “We must find the right channel by twisting them.” He asks the man, “Do you beat your wife?”

“No!”

“This man’s reception is bad.”

He tweaks the nipples again. The man yelps a little.

“Tell me.”

“It’s not true,” says the man.

Now he turns the right nipple clockwise, very slowly.

“Answer me,” Baba says.

“Let me go!”

“We are still on the wrong channel.”

He turns both nipples clockwise.

“Do you beat your wife?”

“I … I’m not sure,” says the man.

“You already know this man,” I say. “This is a joke.”

“Quiet. We’re getting closer,” says Baba.

He turns the nipples clockwise once more and keeps them twisted at that angle. The man giggles. His eyes are watery; the thin film makes them look silly and dazed.

“We are definitely moving in the right direction,” concludes Baba.

I do not move. I simply watch this charade.

“For the last time, do you hit your wife?”

“She deserves it!”

Baba releases the nipples. “Feel free to garland me anytime,” he tells me.

“Do you expect me to believe in this?” I ask.

“Let me assure you that by the end of this little talk, you will. Now you question him. He will answer. Right now, he is in another room.”

“You mean another plane of existence?”

“Nothing that fancy. If we are in the basement, he is in the attic. He feels safe there, eats sweets and plays with toys. He does not know what dishonesty is while he is there.”

“Cockfights,” says the man.

“Is he talking to us?” I ask.

“To everyone and no one. He’s talking to himself. His body secretes only honesty from its glands right now.”

“I had a cock,” says the man. “Killer was his name. He was a terrific fighter. Grown men wept when they saw Killer fight. He was as elegant as a bird. He
was
a bird — but what I mean is, he had style. I bet heavily on him and he made me lots of money.”

The man looks directly at four pairs of legs to his left and recites this. I wonder if he see cocks fighting in their place.

“When Killer was not fighting, I let the little girls and boys of our gully play with him. ‘Uncle, can we play with your cock?’ they used to ask me. Because of the children’s petting, Killer got weak. In a crucial match against a cock from South India, Killer was killed. That day, I went home and beat my wife.”

“So he hit his wife once. It’s wrong, but does he need to lose an arm?” I ask.

“Was that the only time you hit her?” Baba asks the man.

“Of course not. The day after we got married I slapped her because she refused to press my feet. Can you imagine? After I opened her petals so delicately on our wedding night.”

“Isn’t he worthy?” asks Baba.

The man continues: “The next time was two days later. She went to her mother’s house without telling me. What if I got hungry or needed water? Then a week later, she spoke to our neighbour. He is male! Beatings became regular after that. Because I hit her so much, her skin stayed blue and hard as stone. That made her unattractive. So I had to seek pleasure elsewhere. It was an inconvenience, so I hit her again. Then her lips would swell up. She would look worse. What a cycle.”

I hope he runs out of toys or sweets, gets bored and climbs down from the attic to this dungeon. The casualness of his revelations is turning him into a casualty.

“Stop,” I say.

“You’re the one who needed justification,” Baba reminds me. “Now hear him out.”

“No, make him stop.”

“One last question,” Baba asks the man. “If India and Pakistan played a cricket match, who would you support?”

The man looks to the ceiling and nods his head a couple of times. “Pakistan. Our team is unpredictable. Indian batsmen cannot face fast bowling. They jump and duck at the same time.”