The Cripple and His Talismans (4 page)

I simply look at the boats; I know an explanation is not far away.

“The sand is always white. Only our eyes darken it. Look at it again.”

“It’s still white,” I affirm.

“Correct.”

“What?”

“It’s still white,” she smiles.

“I did not say that,” I tell her.

“Your eyes have lightened the soil.”

I look at the sand and gravel again. It is whatever I want it to be. It can change in a blink.

“I will light a thousand oil lamps for you,” she says. “I will send them out to sea. You will need them to light the road before you.”

She walks back to the where the sand and gravel meet the mill walls. She is gone only a minute. She returns with a burning oil lamp cupped in her palms. It is a tiny earthen bowl filled with oil and a wick. The flame flickers gently in the breeze, almost dying out, then displaying the spark of a newborn. I must have heard her wrong. I thought she said she would light one thousand oil lamps.

She walks past me toward the water. She bends and carefully places the oil lamp on the water’s surface as though she is parting with the ashes of a loved one. The oil lamp floats away and the flame gets stronger.

“A prayer has been lit,” she says. “A special one for you.”

In the past I have been told that I needed prayers, but no one bothered to say one for me. When I had two arms, I never joined them in prayer myself. It is said that the only form of light that travels upward from the earth is prayer.

“The flame will go out soon,” I say. I doubt my purity. Anything lit for me will meet its dark fate sooner than a ship with a hole in its heart.

“It will go out only when your journey is complete.”

“Who said I’m on a journey?”

“Look back at your starting point,” she says. “You’ve already walked a long way.”

I turn around and instantly recognize the archway. It looks beautiful in the night. It is red. It is yellow and blue. It is any colour I want it to be.

“That’s a rainbow,” I say. “There’s no doubt about it.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asks.

“Can you prove it is not?”

“At last I can return to my husband and son,” the woman says after a pause. “I did not know until this moment, but this was my final sale.”

She looks at the sea with such longing, I am convinced she will walk into the water and never come back. “Remember this,” she says. “A sworn enemy will try and end your journey before it is truly over.”

“If that happens, what should I do?” I ask.

“Look for a rainbow,” she says. “Now go home. An evil eye was cast upon you. You must stay there until you find a way to close it.”

I look to the sea again. The oil lamp has given birth to many. An army of light sails toward the horizon. There are oil lamps everywhere, around the boats, on the crests of waves. Even the fish carry oil lamps on their backs. This is what God’s skin must look like. Smooth water and light as far as the eye can see. I turn to my left to ask the woman if the ruins are causing my madness but she is gone.

There are at least one thousand oil lamps. They coast along to the next country, to the next world, to the mouth of God.

I live on the ground floor of a sinking building. Like most of the tenants here, the building is very old. Each day it sinks lower into the ground. I am not regarded fondly by its tenants. I have written an open letter to them all, proclaiming that I wish the entire building would go underground with all of us in it. It is the weight of our collective hearts that is pulling it down, but no one else believes this.

It is dawn. I have spent the rest of the night staring out the window. I am unable to eat. I tried to eat a carrot last night after I got home, but it turned into a human finger right before my eyes. So I decided to fry eggs. As I cracked open the first egg, I saw a tiny human baby inside, laughing at me. It leapt out of the egg and flew away into the night. After that I simply lost my appetite.

Dawn breaks. It breaks the poor first.

Get up, dip piece of bread in tea, shit outside, brush with fingers, leave fallen hair in dust, have gentle chat with neighbour about dying, live for nothing. No alms, no arms — we are all poor.

I was not aware of these delightful mornings before. I used to have breakfast in bed at 3 p.m. Toast and eggs, tea with honey. My honey’s name would change according to whom I brought home the night before. Did you know that honey is never sweet in the morning? If you have forgotten its name, it will turn sour and poison your tea. I loved all kinds of honey, no matter which part of the country it came from. Now I wake up alone. Only the eggs remain.

Living alone affects me. I have no one to compare myself to. I know that most people have two arms, but there are other things. Does everyone have one eye smaller than the other? When you keep your hands still for too long, do they move on their own? Do brown flying cockroaches visit us all?

The tube lights in my kitchen seem extra long, longer than when I bought them at the electronics shop. Moths always collect around them, sticking to the hot light, fluttering madly. I counted the moths once. They were stationary for a whole minute. I reached thirty-seven and then they moved. They were watching me. Only a few were left to count. So now I count the tube lights in my house. I know there are eight and I can never go wrong. But I wish I had someone to live with so I could know for certain if they were growing in length.

I sit by the window and eat boiled potatoes. I am down to my last potato. My diet has changed since the loss of my arm. I eat poorly. By that I mean I eat food that is meant only for the poor. It does not seem right for a cripple to eat rich food. A suffering man cannot have a fat, happy face. I feel like a vegetable and so I must eat one.

The tenants in my building think I am poor. I am not. My parents were rich, but they got divorced. When they separated, they bought separate houses. When they died alone and separately, they left both the houses to me, which I sold. It is no success story, but it worked (and so I do not). They married late, had me late, and died early. They had good manners. I thank them for sending me to private school. Other than that, I would like to keep things under the coffin.

There is a knock on the door. It scares me, but that is not unusual. I am always scared. Of telephone bills, the news, cycles, barbers, manholes. The list goes on like a blind man circling the earth. I call it mandatory fear, or fear out of good manners. The tables have four legs; the chairs have four legs. The clock works, the telephone rings, the water quenches your thirst and the newspaper is tucked in your door latch each morning. You then prey upon your own house and lift the carpet to check for scorpions. You place your hand on your heart — has it left you? It is the way of humans, of a car that can move only backwards. When the car finally hits a tree, the man is relieved even though the steering wheel is stuck in his chest.

I open the door. It is the garbage man. I shake my head to indicate I have nothing to deposit in his large cane basket which contains orange peels, eggshells and used tea leaves. The man hoists the basket on his shoulder and leaves. One day he will come to collect garbage and I will not be here. I will be under the earth. It is true that we are sinking. The thousand oil lamps have not made me feel lighter. I have been given a finger. It will lead me to my arm — leprous or torn off an ancient tree. It does not matter. It is a lead, and a lead is more than the stump I have.

On the other side of the street, barbers clip away at the heads of men. They snip in thin air most of the time. We all do. At night, even though the barbers are asleep, I can still hear the snipping. A man with a handcart carrying gas cylinders trudges past; the veins on the man’s hands are green streams. He licks his own sweat, drinks his own dream. He will push for miles and stop to ask the time. Looking at the man makes me sink ten inches into the ground.

Once more there is a knock. It comes from the lower part of the door. Once more, I am scared. This time it is the fear you feel when you have been told that the earthquake will not hit your city. Why would God spare
you?
You have done nothing holy; you have not poured milk over his idol. God will send you a gift worse than an earthquake — a dead nightingale in your lap, a child carrying a hand grenade in your garden, an old lady calling you by the name of her dead son.

But I like opening doors. It is an activity that requires a single arm. You never use two hands to twist a doorknob or open a latch. I pick my tasks carefully.

Behind the door is a man sitting on his haunches, his hands clasped under his chin. A large cane basket lies on the ground before him. Its lid rattles with the flap of wings. He is selling chickens.

“What a great day to buy a chicken!” he shouts.

At least he gets straight to the point, unlike the milkman, who always asks me how my arm is. I just shake my head. But he continues to ask.

“My chickens are the size of dogs,” says the man. His shoes are long and pointy, and curl upward at the tips.

“That’s large,” I say. “But no thank you.” A door-to-door chicken salesman is unusual. Plus it is too early in the morning to talk. But after my two-month silence, the words want to burst out.

“For your wife,” he says to me.

He deftly points to the lid of the basket as though its contents are top secret. Maybe he thinks the chickens do not know they are being sold.

“I don’t have a wife,” I tell him.

“Then what better way to get one?”

I want to say there are ten men in a room and all are women. Or that cemeteries would be wonderful if they did not have dead people. Two people not making sense are always better than one.

“Wives love chickens,” says the man. “Buy a chicken and you will soon get a wife.”

“No one will marry me,” I say.

“Why not?”

“I’m a cripple.”

“I would marry a cripple,” he says. “If I loved her.”

“I would not,” I tell him truthfully.

“Then definitely buy a chicken.”

“Why?”

“To eat,” he says. “Why else?”

“I don’t eat chicken. I’m vegetarian.”

“If you tell me you are a trapeze artist I will believe you. But you are no vegetarian.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I can tell by the way the chickens act. Notice how hard they flap? They want to escape. If you were a vegetarian they would be totally calm.”

“I’m not hungry,” I say.

“You’re being ungrateful,” he says. “There are children in hungry countries who would die for these.”

“Then fly your chickens there,” I say.

“Please buy one,” he says. “I’ve not eaten since yesterday.”

“Not eaten?”

“I’ve not made a sale.”

“Why don’t you eat your chickens?”

“I’m vegetarian,” he says.

I want to close the door but I am afraid I will have to open it again.

“I have a solution,” he says. “Use these chickens to do black magic. My chickens are specially suited for hexes.”

“I do not wish to do black magic on anybody,” I say.

I have heard of these spells, using lemons, chillies, chickens, hair and nails. It is a thriving business for some people. They place ads in newspapers. They are a bunch of moons thinking — after dark, before common sense.

“Better you do it on them before they do it on you. Take my advice, start collecting chickens.”

“It’s all rubbish!” I say.

“You are a man of little faith.”

“It’s a sin to do black magic.”

“But everyone does it,” he says. “Even them,” he whispers.

“Your chickens?”

“They have cast the evil eye upon me many times. That’s why they are in a basket. Otherwise what kind of salesman would not put his products on display?”

“The chickens are doing black magic. The cows are praying for us. This whole city is hanging upside down from monkey bars.”

“You do not believe in
BM?”
he asks.

“BM?”

“Black magic.”

“It’s new to me,” I reply.

He has changed the position in which he sits. The white lungi he wears is of thin cloth, shaping the bulb of his manhood.

“I will open the lid just a little. Look them right in the eye. It’s like staring into an evil cave,” he says.

I sit on my haunches exactly like the chicken-seller. The chickens flap so hard it seems as if they are trying to save themselves from drowning.

“Aren’t they delicious?” he asks. “I’m a vegetarian and my mouth is watering.”

“I thought you were going to show me their evil eye.”

He sticks his forefinger out and licks it. His expression conveys that it is delightfully tasty. He is as joyous as the man who eats summer. He even bites lightly on his finger and makes the tip-top sign.

The moment he bites his own finger, I know it is a sign.

“The finger!” I shout. “You know about the finger!”

“Of course,” he says. “Who doesn’t?”

“Thank God,” I say. “I had no idea what to do with it.”

“So you will buy a chicken?”

“For the information you have, I will buy
all
of them.”

“All?”

“All, my friend.”

“You’re not vegetarian?”

“It’s a sin to be vegetarian.”

“You want to buy all my chickens?” he repeats.

“Even the basket. But
only
if you give me my next clue.”

“What clue?”

“Stop acting!”

“Baba, I’m not acting!”

“Baba! You said
Baba.”

“So what?”

“Are you Baba Rakhu?”

“Who?”

“You even bit your finger exactly like the leper did!”

“But it’s very normal to lick your fingers to show how tasty your chicken is! It’s not top secret!”

“Is that all you meant?”

He is silent.

I am silent.

I look outside the window. A boy on a cycle that is too big for him goes past. He leans forward and sits on the bar while riding it. An old newspaper is tucked under the carrier lid on the back of the cycle.

“I will leave the entire basket for you,” the chicken-seller says. “It will cost you five hundred rupees.”