The Cripple and His Talismans (26 page)

“Munni! Too long for tea,” shouts Goonda.

Yes, Munni. You take too long. Even I have not had tea. As Goonda walks to the interior of the tea stall, I look at Daru for approval. I am sure this was a test.

“There’s no bigger sinner than Goonda,” says Andha.

I look behind to see if Goonda is out of earshot. He has disappeared behind the partition with Munni. They must be lovers.

“All sinners deserve to be punished,” says Daru.

“We must go. We have a business meeting,” says Andha.

I stand up.

“No, your place is here. Goodbye, friend,” says Daru.

“You will soon be complete,” Andha says.

There is a gunshot. I find it hard to breathe. My stomach muscles clamp and I clutch at a wound. The bullet must have gone in so deep that there is no blood. I fall to the floor. The bench is the last earthly object I touch.

“You idiot,” I hear Daru tell me. “Just when we thought you had improved.”

“Did Pendulum think
he
is shot?” Andha asks Daru.

Goonda casually sways out of the tea stall. There is blood all over his silky whites.

“Too long for tea,” Goonda says. “So I sent Munni on a long holiday.”

“Sinners must be punished. They must be prevented from doing more harm,” whispers Daru. He and Andha walk away from the tea stall and toward their mosquito hut.

And then I finally understand. The solution is for Baba Rakhu to take away Goonda’s arm so he cannot hold a gun. Even Goonda will become a eunuch-dog. We are on the same side now, Baba and I.

Goonda goes to the blackboard. With his silk sleeve, he erases the
No Killing
sign. I have found the lost arm. It is Goonda’s arm, more lost than anyone else’s. It is that of a trigger-happy boy, skipping through the marketplace, killing everyone simply because the morning sun is out.

I know it is time to return to Baba Rakhu for a final visit.

I do not know what to make of this city. Trees are few, men are many, smoke is mistaken for air, prayers are mistaken for threats and answered with blood. Colours rule our eyes: brown of water, orange of temples, green of mosques, red of bindis, yellow of heat. I wait for the black of Baba’s dungeon to take over as I descend the concrete stairs into his khopcha.

Somehow it is quite light. A humble glow comes from below. It is only natural that in a place like this, a reversal occurs. Light overrules its own laws by emanating from the earth and travelling upward.

When I reach the bottom, the starkness of the room alarms me. A single arm hangs in the centre of the room with the surety of a piece of meat on a butcher’s hook. I was prepared for seventy, not one.

“Where have all the arms and legs gone?” I ask.

“I sold a few since we last met,” says Baba.

“That was barely an hour ago. There’s only one arm left in this room.”

“Your eyes see only that which they are meant to.”

He walks to the centre of the room and stands directly under the arm. He looks at it from different angles with his own hands clasped behind his back. He is strolling through a mango grove, contemplating the ripeness of the last visible fruit.

“Do you recognize this arm?” he asks.

“No.”

“You might if you observe its behaviour.”

I stare at the arm. Baba does not take his eyes off it, either. I am not sure what I am expected to note. I am no better than the village idiot who stood alone and watched the guillotine for hours, waited for the blade to slice even though no one was scheduled to be beheaded.

I position myself under the arm just like Baba has. It is slender, not bone-thin, and has hair only on the forearm. The wrist and bicep are clean. I feel very uneasy. It has a face whose name I cannot remember and I wonder if I should be calling out to it.

“Any idea?” he asks.

“No.”

“Even after noticing its behaviour?”

“But it does nothing. It just hangs there.”

“Exactly. It is
your
arm. The one you lost.”

“What?”

“All its life it has been good for nothing. So I took it.”

“You
took it?”

“In one clean cut.”

“That’s a lie. I can prove it.”

“The photograph they showed you in hospital was not of your arm.”

“How do you know about the photograph?”

“I took it.”

I look at the arm that hangs in the middle of the room. There is no burn mark on it. Baba walks to the arm and pulls it down from the hook. He takes it out of its plastic sheet. It is coated with the oily substance for preservation. The hair on the forearm sticks to the skin. This cannot be my arm. There is no burn mark on it. Baba places his thumb over the bicep and rubs vigorously. As the oil starts to come off, a mark appears like the winning number in a lottery ticket. When it is fully formed, he stops rubbing and points it out to me.

“Is this what you’re looking for?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“How did you get this mark?”

“I cut myself when I was little,” I say. “On purpose.”

I reach out to touch my arm. But Baba puts it back in the plastic sheet and hangs it from the hook once more.

“The only way you recognize your own arm is through a self-inflicted wound,” he snarls. “That should tell you something.”

“What right did you have to take my arm?”

“You asked me to.”

“I gave you permission to cut off my own arm?”

“To cut off your past.”

I know what I must do. I will not buy back my arm. And nor do I wish to renounce the world and become a saint, or suffer silently like some poor village girl who views her sad reflection in a river. But I do want to go out with dignity.

“I don’t want my arm back,” I say. “Destroy it.”

“What?”

“Burn it, cut it into small pieces, feed it to vultures. I don’t want it.”

“Are you sure?”

“That arm is my past. If you attach it, you are giving me back my past and I may return to its ways.”

“Your arm may be lost, but you have begun to regain its wisdom.”

“Then I must leave now. Before I change my mind.”

“My dear cripple, you will
never
be able to leave.”

“What?”

“You will work as my apprentice. When I die, this vast empire of limbs will be yours. You will carry on my work.”

“You must be mad!”

“I thought you wanted to repent.”

“I do.”

“Then you must help others by ridding them of their rotten, misguided limbs.”

“But we must end suffering, not add it.”

“The world can be changed not by ending suffering, but by a more judicious distribution of it.”

I look at myself and realize that he is absolutely right.

I will make a fine apprentice. Like I did with Goonda, I will spot sinners from a mile, for in their eyes I will see mine. Through their useless limbs, I will detect the familiarity of a lost, misguided brother. I will hunt them down. But the cutting I will leave to the master tailor.

“I accept the position,” I say.

“But you are still not ready,” he replies. “Bring yourself onto the same side as me.”

“Baba, I thought I did.”

“Take a look at your arm again.”

“What did I miss?”

“It’s not what
you
miss. It’s what your arm misses.”

It misses being with the other one
. Andha and Daru had given me the answer, but I was too afraid to take it.

So I extend my right arm.

“What are you doing?” Baba asks.

“I must give up this arm as well,” I say. “Take it.”

“You want me to cut the other one off?”

“Donate it to someone who deserves it more.”

“You have made me proud, my cripple.”

I lie down on the floor, directly under the arm that hangs.

Baba towers above me. As I look at his beard, I realize that each hair holds the wisdom of the ages. He resembles the prophets of old, strict and unforgiving at first, but turning more and more human as time goes by. The blade of a butcher’s knife gleams in his hand.

I close my eyes and wait.

Suddenly a strong wind starts to blow.

It is Malaika. She flies toward me in a golden sari that spans the entire sky. The wind blows her long black hair as she lands. She sits besides me and takes my head in her lap. Then she touches my face and looks down at me as if I am her only child. I wish I were paralyzed in this position for life. I beg her to take me with her. She opens her mouth and speaks in gold — of fire, and rain, and wind, and of all that is far away and that I must cross, streets and streets, deserts and deserts, before I get to her. Then she places my head back on the ground and leaves. The sky follows her.

I cry out to her:
Wait until I come. And don’t even look at another man
.

She turns my way one last time and whispers:
Tonight when the stars come out, I will spray them with silver and then go blind
.

This city is a widow. It is always mourning a loss.

Songs pour from its walls, water taps, roofs and chimneys to blanket our heads and faces like a slippery veil.

A song is a treacherous thing. It lifts your soul to a height and then watches it descend. I have heard the song of this city. It is over now as I bend over a small shrub in the dark. It is unusually cold, and everything is quiet. I am in a sad place.

A little boy walks toward me. I try to remain calm, but the closer he gets, the more I sink to the earth.

“I saw you from a distance,” says the boy. “I had to come.”

He is made only of light. This boy is pure light.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“Help. Why, I know what that is,” I answer.

“Do you need it?”

“Yes,” I say.

He puts his arms around me. I stand extremely still.

“Look at you,” he says. “You are still entangled in your own embrace.”

I look at myself. I do not have any arms to entangle myself in.

“Put your arms around me,” he says. “Even if you have none.”

I lean against his warm body. I close my eyes and send myself outward, without shame, until I know I am embracing him. I feel so much love that I might burst if this continues. He senses this and breaks away from me.

“Do you know I can fly?” he asks.

I remain quiet. I do not wish to dispute light.

“What am I thinking of right now?”

“Of flying?”

“Of flying, of tigers, of flying tigers.”

I have heard these words before, a very long time ago. I remember seeing a warm, gold light above my head. I think back, very far back, to when I was at this same spot. As I look at this boy, I know what his next words will be. But I still wait for him to speak them.

“This place,” he says. “It is very strange. There is magic, poverty, thievery, music, pollution, dancing, murder and lust.”

“Yes,” I say. “But this time there will also be prayer.”

“What is this place called?” he asks.

“Bombay,” I say.

“There is no other like it,” he says.

First of all, I am grateful to God, the Bhavnagris (especially Khorshed Aunty), my parents and Shiamak. I would like to thank George McWhirter for his guidance and encouragement throughout the writing of this book; my editor, Lynn Henry, for making suggestions with insight and thoughtfulness; and my agent, Denise Bukowski, for believing in my writing. There are also many of you who have helped me in ways too innumerable to list. I thank you all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANOSH IRANI
is the author of the acclaimed novels
The Song of Kahunsha
, a finalist for Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and
Dahanu Road
. His play
Bombay Black
won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and was nominated for the 2007 Governor General’s Award for
The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black
. Irani’s most recent play,
My Granny the Goldfish
, premiered in 2010.

EXTENDED SYNOPSIS

“There is an unwritten rule, or, if it is writ, it lies sculpted on God’s arm. Once your journey begins, you cannot end it. You can propel yourself off track, skid in different mud, but it will only make your journey that much longer. There is another rule, that of widows and mad dogs. It lies under their beds. God has never read it for he does not visit their homes. I will find out which rule holds true.”

—from
The Cripple and His Talismans

An unnamed narrator wakes in a Bombay hospital to discover that he is missing his left arm. How it was lost he cannot recall, but he is now wrecked, a pariah to the upper-crust society to which he once belonged. He moves away from his white marble apartment to a dark and squalid cockroach-infested flat and soon encounters Gura the floating beggar, who lives under the egg-seller’s cart and with whom he feels a stronger kinship than he ever did with his wealthy, miserable parents. Gura advises the narrator that to find out the story of his arm, he must first locate the In-charge, a beedi vendor who referees lepers in grotesque fighting matches. The In-charge is one of many bizarre guides along the narrator’s quest, all directing him to the notorious avenger Baba Rakhu, whose dungeon is stocked with hanging limbs, a “dealer of arms” in the most shocking sense.