The Cripple and His Talismans (22 page)

Because I was expelled from school, I had tutors come to my home. They were told that I was a disturbed child. I never thought of myself as disturbed, but then a mad person always thinks he is normal. It is the normal ones who eventually go mad.

I enter the lift. The overhead fan blows my hair a little. In the small mirror, I watch my face. New lines have appeared and my eyes look hollow — like my shirtsleeve. I press the number 6. I shall walk up one floor in order to tire the shame and fear that I feel. I hope Viren recognizes me and slams the door in my face.

I get off on the sixth floor.

As I climb up the flight of stairs to the seventh, I say a short prayer. It surprises me, for I have never prayed in my life. The prayer comes right from the centre of my being and I send it outward, upward, to heaven. For the first time, the absence of my arm is filled by something lighter: mere thoughts, but positive and powerful, God’s very own war tank.

My fingers shake as I ring Mr. D’Silva’s bell. It is mid-afternoon. I hope no one is home. The door snaps open and I am surprised. That was too quick. Did he know I was coming?

A beautiful woman stands in front of me. Her hair is wet. She must have stepped out of the shower. She is lovely. There is nothing else I can say. She notices that my mouth is open but no words come out. As a result I feel even more awkward, obliged to speak.

“I have the wrong address,” I say.

“Who are you looking for?”

“Viren D’Silva.”

“Oh, Viren. He’s at his desk. You must be from the newspaper.”

Before I can tell her I am not from any newspaper, she has already opened the door wide to let me in. I look down at the ground and enter. I am sure she must have noticed my hollow white sleeve.

“He’ll be out in a minute,” she says.

“Okay,” I say.

“You don’t seem to have a pen and paper,” she says. “How will you conduct the interview?”

“I … I’m not from the newspaper.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m Viren’s …”

I want to say
friend
. For the first time in my life, I truly want to say that I am his friend.

“I’m from his school days.”

“A school friend!”

She said it. Not I.

“Aren’t you proud of him?” she asks.

If a newspaper wants to interview him, he must have done something. Who would have thought Viren would have anything worthwhile to say?

“Your name?” she asks.

I remain silent. I am too confused to say anything. Viren is being interviewed. This lovely woman must be his wife. I am a cripple who has not eaten or slept much in three days. What went wrong?

“Oh, don’t tell me. We’ll just surprise him,” she says.

“No …”

But she has already gone inside. My heart starts thumping. If I were a rabbit, I would hide in the kitchen and never come out. What am I talking about? Rabbits do not hide in kitchens. I look around the hall. There is a single wooden chair, a few Chinese vases and a large statue of the Buddha. Next to it is an oil lamp. The flame burns bright as if it is angry, protecting the house from something. My heart has not yet calmed down. This is what Viren must have felt every time I approached him. The damage I have caused his heart.

And then a man appears. It is hard to call him a man — he is so frail. Instead of looking at his face, I stare at his right hand. The fingers are missing. Except the little one. Why did the machine not eat his little finger? I cannot bear to look up. All three of us are silent. Maybe they are staring at my missing limb just as I am staring at Viren’s missing digits.

“Hello, Viren,” I say. I am unable to look up at him.

There is no reply. I still look down. You notice the oddest things during times of shame and guilt. I stare at my feet and notice that they look like those of an old man — wrinkled under the sandals I wear, afraid of going out in the cold. When I finally look up, I have a feeling Viren has recognized me. I know this because the woman is gone. He must have sent her inside. All I needed to do was say his name and St. Bosco School must have swum before his eyes, along with the dead-rat water, his pretty blue school bag, the sound of girls laughing, him wheezing and the pain of the grinder crushing his fingers.

“How’s Shakespeare?” I ask. What else can I say at a time like this?

Viren is very thin. His hands are long and hairy, and it looks as though his skull has been sucking his face from inside. He looks cancerous. I will not ask him about it. He walks to the wooden chair and sits down. There is only one chair in the room, so I continue to stand. Why was the woman so happy? It looks as if he is about to die. Ah, but it makes sense. If one person is sick, the other has to act super-healthy.

Viren takes out a cigarette from his blue shirt pocket and lights it. No cloud, no rain, and Viren is smoking. He was the type of boy who, if he had the money, would buy all the cigarette packets in existence to prevent others from smoking.

“What happened to your arm?” he asks.

I swear he is smiling. Behind all that sickness, there is a wry smile. I like it. He is laughing at my pain. It is not like him at all, but it is refreshing.

“I lost it,” I say.

“How?”

“I’m not sure.”

Surprised by my answer, a puff of smoke comes out of his mouth on its own. “Why are you here?”

I do not say a word. I look at him. There is a certain calmness about him. He is not afraid anymore.

“Who was that woman?” I ask.

“My wife.”

“She’s very beautiful.”

“She’s okay.”

“What?”

“I won’t be able to enjoy her for too long.”

“Are you dying?” I promised I would not ask, but his remark leaves me no choice.

“I was dying, I’m okay now. But she’s leaving me anyway.”

So that is why she is happy. Perhaps she gets this house.

“Why is a reporter coming?” I ask.

“My novel won an award.”

“You wrote a novel? About what?”

“Shakespeare,” he says. “It’s about how Shakespeare never wrote the things he did. It was a woman, Helen, a prostitute, who wrote all his plays. He kept her in a cage for years until she died.”

His body is sick, but his brain has finally been cured. He has started to think like a normal person.

“You must go now,” he says. “The reporter will be here any minute.”

“But there’s something I want to say first.”

“Say it fast, then leave.”

The doorbell rings. I look at Viren and he looks right back at me. Words are useless. They are rotten vegetables that no one should use. Viren gets up and thumps me on the back. He coughs and takes one more drag from his cigarette. I put my hand on his back, too. As we walk to the door, Viren goes to the statue of the Buddha and picks up the oil lamp next to it. Perhaps it is a peace offering. With my left arm, I hold his right hand. All he has is one little finger. I shake it. He coughs again. Something in his eyes tells me he finds it funny. His behaviour is very strange. There is no malice in him at all, just a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

I open the door. The oil lamp is still in his left hand. The reporter walks in as I walk out. Viren takes a last hard look at me and blows the oil lamp out. I know I will never see Viren again. But I am happy. The boy I had harmed has become a man. I wish him well.

As I descend the stairs, instead of feeling light, my heart begins to burn. I do not understand this. Have I not been forgiven? But my steps grow heavier and heavier, until I am forced to stop walking. I try to lift my feet but I am unable to do so. It is as if someone does not want me to move forward. As I stay rooted to the tiles, Viren’s face floats before me. It glows in the light of the oil lamp. In ghost form, his smile does not seem friendly now. I see him blow out the oil lamp, and then I am plunged into darkness. A terrible thought hits me.

I think of what the lady of the rainbow told me.

A sworn enemy will try and end your journey before it is truly over
.

That bastard Viren has not forgiven me at all. That is why he kept smiling. He wants me to fail. That is why he extinguished the oil lamp. But there is no way he could have known about the thousand oil lamps. Thoughts run through my head like angels in a slaughterhouse. Each time an idea flies, tries to make sense, its wings are chopped off.

I must flee this place or I will be defeated. It has the negative vibrations of a murderer. No wonder I am unable to move forward.
Viren does not want me to complete my journey. If I cannot walk, I shall crawl.

I place one arm on the step before me and descend. Unable to bear the weight of my body, my hand trembles. My knees hurt and my bones ache. I must make it to the lift. I look at myself and realize that I am no longer human. In the end I am reduced to a trembling, crawling creature.

There are many things you still do not know about me.

For example, when I was little, Mother took me to see the Great Russian Circus. It was dull, very dull. There was nothing Russian about it. As we walked home, I asked Mother if she would take Father, climb to the top of a tall building and jump off. I would stand on the street and watch them fall. It would certainly be more daring than anything I had seen in the circus. She was disturbed by my question.

A few days later, we were at the dinner table. One of my cousins, a boy I had never met, had had an accident that very day. As Mother and Father ate their fish and vegetables, they discussed the boy’s condition in the grimmest manner. The poor boy ran from a mad dog, they said, straight into a bus. It flattened his face completely. Upon hearing this, I roared with laughter. It was much funnier than the clown act in the Great Russian Circus. I told my parents what I was thinking. They stopped eating.

My point is this. If Horasi the eunuch wants me to correct my past, is it possible to rectify thoughts of this nature? Also, do I need to? Horasi also said that I must do this before it is too late. How much I can correct depends on how much time I have left. The lady of the rainbow set the clock. If even one of the thousand oil lamps is still burning, I have time. But it is impossible to trace the oil lamps. Instead, I think, I must find out how much oil is left. It is wonderful how my thoughts have become so linear over the past two days.

I stand just outside Viren’s building. My knees are skinned from crawling, and my white clothes smell of sweat and defeat. But I can walk now because I am out of his building. I look at the building opposite me. And then I stare at its name.

Rainbow Apartments.

Surely I will find someone there who knows how much oil is left. It is an old building, but its feet are strong. I count three floors. A few clothes hang outside the windows and collect dust from the street. The road is being dug up. No children live in this building. Either they have all grown up and left, or they were killed in a tragic accident during building renovations. Perhaps a slab of grey stone fell from the terrace and crushed them all. I think this because there are no children’s clothes hanging outside. I also smell sadness — each slab of stone stores it like an old person stores the death of a loved one in his teeth.

I enter the building. The corridor is dark.

I have always heard people say that when you are in trouble, a door will open. I do not have that kind of time. So I must start knocking. A door will open only if it is meant to.

On the first door there is a sticker that says: “Where there is a will, there is no confusion about money.” I knock on the door and read the sticker again.

The door opens. The woman who stands there must be in her forties and has big hips.

I blurt out: “I’m depressed. Life is too hard to bear.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Did my eruption surprise you?”

“Eruption?”

“This sudden display of emotion. I’m not accustomed to it.”

“Who are you?”

“You don’t know me. But I think the future is bleak.”

I can tell from the way her hand grips the door that she wants to shut it. I fall to one knee.

“It’s all over,” I proclaim.

“What is?”

“I cannot pinpoint. The issue lacks specificity.”

“Get out!”

She slams the door shut. This is fine. A door will open only if it is meant to.

The door next to hers is of a similar dark shade. There is no sticker on it. I knock three times. The opener is short and stocky. His right eye is smaller than the left one.

“Your right eye is definitely smaller,” I say.

“Who are you?”

“That’s a hard question.”

“Listen, what do you want?”

“I want to buy some time.”

“Then stop wasting mine!”

“I was right. It’s all over.”

I look down dejectedly.

“What’s all over?” he asks.

“Even the lady next door asked me that. It’s strange how people in the same building think alike.”

“You know the lady next door?”

“No. But I was telling her that it’s impossible to define what’s over. I could say the oil is over. But that is being too specific. Do you see what I mean?”

“You better get out of here,” he threatens. “Before I make you.”

I turn around and climb the stairs that lead to the next floor. I can hear the door shut behind me. Yes, his right eye was smaller than the left.

There are two doors on this floor, one to the left of the other. I must choose carefully now, be extremely logical: I like to play cricket. I am a lefty (batting only) so I knock on the door to the left.

As I wait for the door to open, I notice that the wood around the keyhole has scratches. There is the shuffle of feet, a thump against the door, and silence. I assume I am being inspected through the eyehole.

“Who is it?” It is the voice of a woman. Her accent tells me that she is not from the city.

“It’s me,” I say. “Open the door, I have something to tell you.”

“Are you here for Madam?”

“Yes, I have a message for her.”

A chain unlocks. A dusky young girl stands before me.

“A chain unlocks,” I say. “And now a dusky young girl stands before me. But it is bleak, so bleak.”