The Hero's Walk (24 page)

“Mummy,” she whispered to the coat, “I am never going to school again. Okay? There are
strangers
there.”

The Old Man entered her room. Went out into the landing and back again. She heard him opening and closing the drawers in the desk on the landing. As if he thought she was hiding in one of the
drawers! The thought of herself squished into a desk drawer made her giggle.

“Shh!” she heard her father's coat say. She rubbed her face against the soft, grey jacket.

“I won't make a sound,” she whispered in the darkness, her thin feet shoved into a large pair of shoes. The Old Man left the room and Nandana dozed off, although she was beginning to feel too warm in the cupboard. She snapped awake suddenly when she heard both the Old Man and Mamma Lady come into her room. The rickshaw's horn blared outside, and the fat boys were laughing loudly.

Dust tickled her nose delicately and she sneezed. Again. A bigger one this time.

N
IRMALA
OPENED
the cupboard door and looked at Nandana with astonishment. “Why you are sitting there in that dust?” she asked. She turned to Sripathi who shrugged helplessly. The child crawled out silently and stared at her feet, chewing on a thread of hair.

Nirmala sighed and sat down on the bed. “Do you know how worried we were? You mustn't do that again, understand?” The child continued to gaze stubbornly at the floor. Her grandmother removed the strand of hair from her mouth and said, “At this rate you will lose all your beautiful hair. Then we will have to ask Shakespeare Kuppalloor to make a wig for you, no?” The child did not even smile. Come to think of it, thought Sripathi, he had never seen her smile. Behind him, he heard Nirmala urging the child into her school uniform. “Come on, now, quick-quick. I will help you put on your clothes, and your Ajja can drop you off at school.”

Sripathi was startled to hear her refer to him as Ajja.
Grandfather
, he thought. The child has never called me that. What does she think of me? Of us? This house? This place? Why doesn't she say anything? He glanced at his watch and winced. He was going to be late again today. “Why doesn't Arun walk her to school or take an auto-rickshaw?” he asked.

Nirmala gave him one of her looks, the one that silently accused him of being callous and unfeeling, and Sripathi gave in. “Oh, all right. But tell her to hurry.”

Another impasse. The child wouldn't sit on the scooter. Sripathi waited impatiently for her to get on. The vehicle was puttering away, and his leg ached from having to balance the scooter while the child stood at the edge of the verandah, her small face pinched with fear.

Arun had returned from wherever he had gone early in the morning, and now he cajoled her. “Don't worry, nothing will happen. See, I'll show you how easy it is.” He settled on the pillion behind his father and Sripathi rode the bike in a tight circle around the tulasi planter in the centre of the front yard. “What did I say? So safe and simple!” yelled Arun waving his arms and sticking out his long legs while Sripathi thought anxiously about the amount of time this whole drama was taking.

She shook her head. No.

“Oho! Your Ajja is very careful. He will drive slowly—very, very slowly. He used to take your mother and Arun Maama to school every day, both together on this very scooter. You just have to hold him around his waist and you will be fine,” said Nirmala.

Nandana looked down and scuffed at the ground with a foot encased in a polished black shoe. The shine dimmed immediately under a patina of fine dust. Her face looked small and unhappy. She dropped her bag, clapped her hand to her mouth and gagged violently. Sripathi stopped the scooter, feeling like a clown in a circus ring.

“I shouldn't have forced her to drink milk in such a hurry,” moaned Nirmala, looking conscience-stricken. “You are feeling like vomiting? Sit, sit, it will be all right. No need to go with Ajja on the scooter.” She turned towards the interior of the house and yelled, “Koti, bring some cold water, quickly. From the boiled-water drum.” She rubbed the girl's back.

“Oh God, enough of this nonsense, Mamma,” said Arun, also
fed up. He jumped off the scooter. “I will take her to school in an auto. Is that okay, baby?”

Nandana looked at her uncle with relief and nodded.

“Your stomach is feeling all right now?”

She nodded again.

“Okay, let's go then.” Arun picked up his niece, school bag and all, and marched briskly out of the compound to the beat of “We Shall Overcome,” which he sang completely out of tune.

Nirmala shook her head and leaned against the verandah entrance. “Too old I am for all this daily hadh-badh,” she murmured sadly. “What is going to happen, I don't know.”

I don't know either, Sripathi thought. Maya's death had aged them both ten years. Where were they going to find the strength and energy to bring up a seven-year-old? He wheeled his scooter out of the gate, which was still jammed up by construction debris, and squeezed his way out. A warm breeze drifted down the road, and copper-bellied, yellow caesalpinia flowers chased after it, tumbling and skipping like merry children. Here and there lay crimson gulmohur petals, splashes of blood on the dull, black road. His spirits lifted momentarily at the prettiness of the blossoms. The flowers were falling; soon clouds full of moisture would blow across the sea, and the rains would come.

As he rode the scooter, Sripathi kept a wary eye out for lemons strung with leaves, which he avoided because they had been left on the street to draw evil away from somebody else. If he stepped on the pile of yellow and green, he would surely transfer the wickedness to his own fragile home.

When he returned that evening, he took another bath, not caring that the water supply was low in the drums and bins and buckets. He dressed in a clean shirt and a lungi that smelled of the sun and went down the stairs to the gods' room, where he fussed over the selection of fruit that Nirmala had arranged on a silver platter.

“What are you doing?” she asked from the doorway.

“We can't take any nonsense. Why didn't you buy grapes also?”

“As if God cares whether you give banana or apple. Are you trying to bribe, or what?”

“I like taking decent fruit to the temple, that's all,” said Sripathi.

“You are also coming to the temple with me?” Nirmala was surprised.

“Why, you have a problem with that?”

“On festival days I have to go down on my hands and knees and beg you to come with me. Why you have become so holy all of a sudden?” she teased.

“I have to ask Your Highness for permission before I pray even? Not enough that I have to ask about everything else that goes on in this house? Henh? Are you my wife or my jailor?”

“Okay, baba, okay,” she said. “I was only joking a little bit, and you go and get angry.”

That night, there was a huge orange balloon of a moon floating in the sky. From where he lay, he could see the sky, dark and busy with stars, even though the moon occupied centre stage. Nirmala had left the balcony door open to let in some cool air. They used to sleep with that door open all the time, but Sripathi had woken up a few nights ago, seen the white towels floating dimly like ghosts—outlined by their own light against the inky sky—and nearly had a heart attack. Ghosts frightened him now. He had become more aware than ever that the world was full of unseen things, old memories and thoughts, longings and nightmares, anger, regret, madness. They floated turbulently around, an accumulation of whispery yesterdays that grew and grew and grew. These days Sripathi could not bear the insubstantial—sorrow, pain and other abstractions that couldn't be surgically removed like an extra thumb.

On the bed beside him, Nirmala stirred and sat up suddenly. “Listen,” she whispered, her eyes wild. “Listen, did they do it all properly?”

“Do what?” he asked, annoyed with her for disturbing the silence of his night.

“The rites. For our daughter. Did they close her eyes with coins? And put one in her mouth as well?”

“I already told you all the details, Nirmala, as soon as I came back. Now go to sleep. I have work tomorrow.”

“No, tell me again. Did they? And who washed her body? Did they wash her hair as well? It is not auspicious otherwise.”

Sripathi shook Nirmala by the shoulders. “Stop this nonsense,” he said. “What does it matter now? Everything is finished. Did you hear? Finished. She is dead, and after death, nothing matters. Maya is beyond all these rituals.”

Nirmala turned on him fiercely, her eyes on fire. “Nothing ever matters to you, henh? Like a stone you are. My poor child has gone like a beggar, without any proper rituals, and you say it doesn't matter? Her soul will float like Trishanku between worlds. It will hang in purgatory for ever. Did they at least dress her in unbleached cotton?”

Nirmala rocked herself on the bed, looking dry-eyed into the darkness as if she could see Maya there. Sripathi sat silently beside her. I have not turned to stone, he wanted to say. I am full of tears, but if I let go I will not be able to carry on walking this hard path to the end of my life. Control is everything now.

“Now, if she had died
before
her husband,” continued Nirmala relentlessly, “it would have been better for her. She would have gone to Yama-raja as a sumangali in her bridal finery with her wedding beads around her neck and kum-kum on her forehead.”

Sripathi couldn't stand it any longer. “Stop this foolish postmortem analysis you are doing,” he said sternly. “We have a child to bring up now, and you are behaving like one yourself. We have lost our daughter, that is true, but think of that little one in the next room. She has lost her parents. Do you think I don't feel as wretched as you?” he asked in a gentler tone. “Henh?”

His words fell softly in the silvery grey silence of the room, and he was surprised and suddenly embarrassed that he had laid himself bare like this.

“Did you at least see her before … ?” asked Nirmala, soothed by the hand stroking her head. He used to do that to the children as well, she remembered. Such a fond father he was. What evil spirit had suddenly entered his mind and turned him against his child?

“Yes, I told you already, I saw her. She looked peaceful, as if she was simply asleep,” replied Sripathi. He didn't tell her that Maya's scalp had been shaved for surgery and that Alan had no face left. He couldn't tell her about the greyness of their frozen skins, the dark blue lips, the dreadful immobility as they lay in the morgue. Dr. Sunderraj had warned him that the cost of keeping them in the morgue would be very high, but Sripathi had insisted. He had not wanted to see their lifeless bodies, but he had needed to be absolutely sure that there had been no mistake. It was his daughter's voice that he needed to hear, and her laughter. But it was better than not seeing anything but a box of ashes and a gravestone.

In the end, all he said was, “Yes, I saw them both. He was a handsome boy, our son-in-law. And Maya died knowing that we would take care of Nandana. Yes, she knew that.”

Nirmala lay down again and put her forearm over her eyes to curb the tears that continued to well out of her like a spring from a dark, echoing cave. Sripathi slid down until he was flat on the bed, his body separated from Nirmala's. Ever since that telephone call months ago, she had kept this thin space between them, an invisible line of anger, one that he dared not cross. For thirty-four years he had curved his body against her back. In the beginning, and for years after, just the touch of her buttocks against his crotch had given him an erection. Slowly that desire had faded into a simple need for warmth and companionship. He knew how that stiff back tensed like the branch of a bamboo tree when she was annoyed, its relaxed doughy softness when happiness filled her, the small red
mole like a monsoon beetle edging towards the valley of her spine, the curve of dark, sunburnt skin just above the line of the old cotton blouse she wore to bed, the generous dimples that marked the beginning of her buttocks. Sripathi couldn't bear the distance any more. Timidly he touched Nirmala's shoulder, ran a finger down the hollow of her back, the rich, smooth skin like old silk. She shrugged her shoulder as if to flick off a fly, but he recognized that motion. It meant, I am still angry but … So he kept his hand there, fingered the red mole, and when she didn't jerk away, he folded himself against her.

“I am sorry,” he whispered, his hand gently stroked her hair, loving the soft surge of it against his palm. “I wish I could undo the past.”

Nirmala breathed in deep and the breath travelled through her and into him.

“We performed all the rites. Dr. Sunderraj got the Hindu Temple priest to do it for Maya. Alan's ceremonies were done in the church,” he whispered.

“I have asked Krishna Acharye to arrange a puja for their souls,” said Nirmala after a long, quavering silence. “On Thursday. And then we will take the ashes to the sea.”