Tikkipala (36 page)

At last she let out a small sigh as though something had satisfied her and calling Nirmal to her, told him, ‘Even though you have been a big disappointment to me, I expect you to come and see me at the club, not only because you amuse me, but also because you need a good meal every now and again.'

People all over the country began to hear of the mineral coated statue in the bustee, and came from as far as Delhi and Bombay to see it. Some even tried to commission Nirmal to make things for them. Wealthy people offered Nirmal considerable sums to create leaping greyhounds for their portals or lions for their roof corners. A woman came, imploring Nirmal for a male nude for her hallway. They could not understand it when Nirmal said firmly, ‘I don't do that kind of thing.'

The Raja began to say, ‘It's lucky he discovered he was not suited to fertiliser.' He tried to commission the young man to create him a classical Greek nude for the asoka tree avenue. Nirmal was polite in his refusal because the Raja had once tried to be kind to him.

When Devi went with a piece of scolecite for the statue Maw and Nirmal were so concentrated on their work that they hardly noticed. Nirmal said ‘Lovely,' and put the precious thing casually on the ground.

‘Look at it,' shouted Devi, making the people gathered round giggle with pleasure. ‘It has taken a million years to make and in the whole of your life, no matter how hard you try, you will never make anything as beautiful.'

Nirmal straightened and stared at her. She looked gorgeous, he thought, when she was angry. It made her eyes shoot sparks and sent flame-red patches into her cheeks.

Maw was gazing at the pair of them. There was something in his expression that worried Devi.

Maw said, ‘My people made a statue a thousand years ago. She became a goddess and came if we needed her to help us. Now she has grown old…' his voice tailed away as though overcome with sadness. Then he said more brightly, ‘If a statue comes alive that is big enough, it can kill all your enemies. It can destroy the world if it is huge enough.' The Ama stone buzzed sweetly against his ribs.

Nirmal flinched, taken aback by the ferocity of Maw's words. Then laughed, saying. ‘I am an artist, not a soldier, Maw. And also statues never come to life except in stories.'

Some weeks later Devi was surprised to find Maw sitting on the Bidwar palace veranda instead of out in the bustee, helping Nirmal with his statue.

He was wearing his white tennis shorts and aertex shirt. He looked up, smiling, as though he had been waiting for her. ‘I thought you might like to come to the club with me for a game of squash,' he said.

‘How lovely.' Devi was surprised. She did not remember him ever inviting her before. She felt touched. ‘Let's go.'

Sangita, standing at the window of her laboratory, saw them come out together and was seized with the sudden desire to shout out a warning. I'm going crazy, she thought. This is a sign of senility. What kind of danger can there possibly be in my granddaughter and a young man going to play a game of squash? But all the same, even as the pair went to the car, the feeling of unease stayed with her.

Khan opened the car door to let Devi in and felt annoyed when Maw got in too, as though he was a sahib now and Khan still a servant. Khan had never ceased to be suspicious of Maw. ‘Once a tribal, always a tribal,' he would tell his wife. ‘If I was the Raja I would have sent the fellow back to the jungle a long time ago.'

Maw played his usual game, powerful and brilliant, while in the gallery the women gathered to watch, hanker and work out yet new ways of trying to capture the glorious young man.

‘When you think he has lived in the palace for two years, and in all that time Devi has seemed to be totally unaware of how attractive he is. If it was me I'd have gobbled him up long ago,' they said to each other.

When the game was over, Maw and Devi sat with towels round their necks and he drank chilled lime, she had a gin and tonic, and from afar, male club members muttered, ‘I can't understand what these women see in him.'

‘Tell me about your parents,' Devi said.

‘My mother was the Mawa. That was our queen.'

‘And your father?'

‘That is more complicated,' said Maw.

‘OK, don't tell me if you don't want,' laughed Devi.

Khan, driving them back, wondered if Madam was drunk because she was laughing so much.

In the palace, Maw said, ‘I have never seen your collection of minerals.'

Devi gazed at him. ‘Would you like to?'

He followed her up the stairs and along the marble corridors. ‘I have been living here for nearly three years and I have never seen inside your room,' he said.

A statue of a young woman carved from green malachite stood on the stairs. The Raja had recently bought it from a young Calcutta artist.

‘The marble came from the jungle where you once lived,' said Devi.

Maw gave a wince of pain and asked, ‘May I touch it?'

Devi nodded.

A tingling feeling stung Maw's fingers when they came in contact with the stone, as though his skin could feel the place where the Tikki had walked.

‘Look,' said Maw, and leaning his waist against the statue, let the bulge of the Ama stone press against it. And Devi thought that for a moment she saw the stone breast rise and fall as though the girl was breathing.

Then he turned and put his arms round Devi. He was very gentle. The new young hairs on his upper lip brushed her face and tickled her skin. She was twenty six and he was seventeen.

‘Her name means ‘goddess',' thought Maw, as he led her to her bed.

Devi flinched as a muddled version of this thought came to her.

He gently removed her clothes. Like someone in a dream, like a person hypnotised, Devi let it happen to her. Her mouth would not let out words. Later she could not even have explained why she permitted it.

Devi watched Maw putting on his clothes. He did not look like Maw any more. He was too tall, too dark, too stern. He made her feel afraid.

She felt bewildered. She felt shivery and extra naked. She had drunk too much, she knew. A couple of gins at the club and a beer during the game. Could it have been that? But all the same that did not seem enough to explain what had happened.

Maw said, without turning round, ‘Thank you.'

‘What do you mean?' cried Devi, sitting up. ‘Thank you for what?' She felt suddenly offended.

‘For giving me a chance to save my people.'

‘Oh, that was my father. Not me,' Devi said. He had never thanked her for anything before. She felt relieved.

The tree cutters in the high jungle captured two tribal women and brought them to the thags in the hill palace. ‘Really cheap, only five hundred rupees each.' They were little naked creatures, rather thin, but nothing much wrong with them that a bit of good food wouldn't cure.

‘And from the look of them and the way they behave, they are probably both virgins,' laughed the tree cutters. ‘You'll be making a profit out of them within a month.'

On an impulse, before going to the Bidwar Club, Devi put on a sari. She felt disappointed to see only Queenie there, seated regally as usual, in her wide wicker chair. She looked up from her paper and, for the first time, smiled a welcome. ‘I am so glad you are properly dressed for once,' she said. ‘You are quite nice looking when you try.' She peered at Devi over the top of her glasses and added, ‘Once we all had a hope that you and my grandson, Nirmal, would become united.'

In spite of herself Devi felt her face heat up.

‘For I have sometimes had the feeling that, in spite of all your professed reluctance for the married state, you find my grandson attractive,' Queenie went on.

‘What rubbish,' cried Devi hotly. ‘He and I are friends. We get on quite well. There is and cannot ever be anything more between us.'

‘Why?' asked Queenie, her gaze still on Devi's face.

‘I don't want to discuss it,' said Devi, biting back fury. ‘He doesn't find me attractive either.'

‘Are you sure about that?' said Queenie.

‘Yes, I am sure. Yes I am sure.' Devi was aware that she was talking rudely loud, yet could not stop herself.

‘You may be mistaken,' said Queenie.

For hours after, Queenie's words went echoing round Devi's brain. ‘You might be mistaken.' Was she? No, of course not. But? Suppose…

She went to the club several times over the next few days. Sometimes Nirmal never arrived. Sometimes he came, with his thoughts clearly somewhere else and his mind on clay embedded with mineral stones.

Devi did not know what Sangita's reaction would be to the episode with Maw. Most probably terribly shocked. But because she had no mother, nor any other woman to confide in, so was unable to resist hinting at her new experience to her grandmother. She did not tell Sangita who the young man was.

‘In my day such a thing would have been unthinkable but I understand it is what all the girls do these days,' said Sangita. She did not sound shocked. ‘Of course, in my day, if such a thing was known, it would put a stop to her finding a husband,' she added.

‘I'm not going to get married anyway,' laughed Devi. ‘So it won't matter.'

‘Quite right,' agreed Sangita briskly.

Things were going well at the hill palace. The new women were a great success in spite of their constant weeping.

As time had passed the thags felt increasing sure that Madam was not coming back, and never would. She was now perfectly settled in the civilised city of Bidwar.

Then, disaster. A message came to say that Devi Madam was arriving in a few days, and have the place ready for her and a meal prepared.

There was a ghastly gasp of horror then everyone started running and shouting.

Women were hustled wildly out into the garden, drums and buckets of arrak were grabbed up and rushed away to be hidden in outside buildings. Mats stained with body fluids were grabbed up and thrust into corners, pots and cups were whirled away and hidden. Whole cars were shoved into the bushes or covered with sacking. Thags burst into areas in which tree cutters were already lying with women and tried dragging them away. Scuffles arose with furious men refusing to get up, saying that they were not going to be done out of what they had paid for.

Khan could have wept when Devi announced they were off to the hill palace again. He even went to the Raja and begged to be let off this time. ‘My wife is puking again,' he said, ‘and also I am not suited to countryside and all such violence.'

The Raja was sympathetic but firm. ‘You are the only one I trust, Khan. And your lady wife will be all right for I shall look after her myself. Also it will not be for long. Devi Madam has to be back here within a month, so off you go and have a nice time.'

‘A nice time,' thought Khan bitterly, as he loaded the car up.

As Khan started up the car, Maw opened the door, got in and sat next to Devi. She gave him a sharp look of surprise. Several times since the last trip with her father, she had suggested that he might like to go back and visit his people. ‘I will arrange for
you to go by train and have a car waiting at the other end if you like.' Maw had refused ferociously.

‘Are you coming?' she asked.

‘Yes. I would like it,' he said softly. She was touched by his expression which seemed to her to be both tender and caring, as though, because of the night they had spent together two weeks ago, he now minded about her. ‘In fact,' she thought as she gazed back dizzily into his luminous dark eyes, ‘He is looking at me with affection.' Was it possible that beautiful cool Maw had fallen in love with her? Devi could not stop glancing at him. He did not say anything to fuel her suspicion though. He did not ask after her comfort, or make any particular effort on her behalf. It was just that he looked at her in a perfectly new way, as though she had become precious to him. Had that act of love two weeks ago touched Maw's heart in a way that nothing else had in all the time he had lived with her?

While Devi and Maw were travelling to the hill palace, mobs gathered round Nirmal's statue and hurled stones and broken baskets at it. Apparently one of the reporters had described it as an insulting image of the goddess Kali, and though Nirmal shouted and yelled, ‘It is not Kali, it is not meant to be Kali,' the furious shouting was so loud that no one heard him. And even if they had, they would not have stopped, because there is nothing so delightful as being part of a righteous crowd, and destroying something spectacular in the name of virtue.

Devi heard the yelling and the screaming long before the car rolled into the Parwal grounds and when they came in sight of the palace she could hardly believe her eyes.
The grounds were thronged with struggling men. They rolled and grunted in the flower beds, thumped each other on the porch, or hurled each other over the gravel with ferocious roars of fury. Watching them and yelling shrill encouragement, as though they were spectators at a cricket match, were several gaudily dressed and highly made-up girls.

Nirmal ran round and round his statue, trying to rescue fallen crystals, trying to put back the statue's nose then replace her broken knee caps. But as fast as he tried to mend her, more people appeared to pelt her. They began to arrive from every side, lured by the sounds of shouting and excitement. They came running out of houses, leapt off passing buses, appeared out of side streets. Then, seeing what was happening, joined the mob, hurling filth from rubbish heaps at Nirmal's statue till she became sticky with gutter water and her face became shiny with rotten fruit. After a while her expression started to look almost merry with muck, and sludge started running from her head like moving hair. Someone threw the corpse of a dog at her, and bits slammed against her thighs, rotten paws stuck to her stomach, the tail got lodged inside her ear and the dog's head slithered down till it rested between her thighs, a mouldering dog face peeping out from among the goddess' pubic stones.