I Am an Executioner (7 page)

He did not answer, but continued, annoyingly, to stand there.

“Young man, the
Madras Mail
arrives at three thirty-eight. You are early.”

He shyly shook his head. At this point, thoroughly distracted from my work—I was preparing a letter, tactful but firm, to my nominal supervisor, who was also my fiancée’s uncle, the Manager of Outbound Trains and Village Personnel in Madras, petitioning him hastily to fill the position of administrative secretary in my office, a post that had been too long vacant, resulting in my having to perform such unpleasant tasks as penning with my own hand these letters of complaint, rather than dictating them, as would be more becoming to someone of my
position—thoroughly distracted, I rose and approached my visitor. (By the way, there is no such thing as a “Manager of Outbound Trains.” You are taking strange liberties. Anyway, let it be.)

When I approached him, R. folded his hands in respectful greeting. I realized that he was not a mere boy, as I had first suspected. In fact, only a couple of years separated us.

“Namaskaram, sir,” he said. “My name is Rombachinnapattinam R., father being Rombachinnapattinam N———, grandfather being Rombachinnapattinam V———. I am knocking on doors of kindly recommended Brahmin professionals because—”

“Yes, yes.”

“—because I am badly in need of a job to feed myself and my good mother—”

“Your good mother …”

“My good mother, good sir, and my good wife, myself being recently engaged for marriage. Being recently engaged, good sir, I do not know what to do, and come humbly to you for guidance and the generosity of your good offices, as I have been highly recommended by the late Dr. T. Lumbodharan, headmaster of Rombachinnapattinam Higher Secondary School, who had oftentimes told me that the order and capacities of my mind are not those of the average or commonplace person.”

“The order and capacities of … dear fellow, do speak slowly!”

“Good sir. My name is Rombachinnapattinam R. Father being Rombachinnapattinam N———. Grandfather being Rombachinnapattinam V———.”

“Good God.”

“Good sir!”

“Ha!”

Immediately, I forced a cough to mask my impetuous guffaw. A sweaty, twice nervous, villagey youth like R. come begging at
my office would normally have earned from me a brief hearing and a curt dismissal. But there was something about this hapless fellow that made me a little hesitant to show him the door too quickly. I felt an unaccountable warmth toward him. His pitiable shyness, his touching excitement on meeting a man so far above him in accomplishment and station—a nervousness that amounted to a strange exuberance, his simple courage in thus approaching me, and the fact that he was a needy Brahmin and had been recommended by my own late headmaster—all this disposed me to deal gently with the odd fellow. He stood before me with hands clasped meekly on his ample stomach, looking up with large, beseeching eyes. A drop of sweat rolled in and out of the furrowed flesh of his brow, wormed its wet way down the crest of his capable nose, and hung for one pendulous moment.

Before it completed its descent, I had made an impetuous decision. “How is your handwriting, young man?” I asked him.

“Quite legible, sir,” he replied.

And on the spot, I hired him as my secretary. After conveying to him the particulars of the job, I asked him to report the following morning, presentably, in shirt and sandals.

Why did I take such a decision? It was one of those moments when the electric current of instantaneous affection arranges in its circuit a haphazard constellation of objective facts, arranges them in one’s mind into an apprehension or intuition, that is less than a reasoned judgment but more than a whim, but which has the feeling of a definite conclusion.

In short, I have no idea why I took the decision. But I had no qualms about my choice, and I called for Dhananjayan Rajesupriyan to bring us tea, as a sort of celebration. Dhananjayan had been outside sweeping the platform, and when he came in carrying a platter with two steaming tumblers, he glanced at portly young R. sitting across from me, and promptly spilled the scalding tea all over my desk, soaking my moot half-finished letter, and sending warm dribbles onto R.’s lap.

Such clumsiness was unlike Dhananjayan, so, rather than
thrash him, I only twisted his ear until he yelped. Then I apologized to R. with profusion, and the good man good-naturedly took his leave.

Dhananjayan Rajesupriyan was a lad of nineteen. A Vaishya from a poor and backward family of tinsmiths, he had been with me since the opening of our railroad station in 1908, some twelve months previous, an event which truly was the most exciting occasion in the memory of our southern village of Rombachinnapattinam. True, it was not much of a station—a mud hut with one large office, and a palm-roofed platform, but it bore the seal of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. And I was its manager. Yes, its manager—at the tender age of twenty-four. See, we Rombachinnapattinam Iyers have a comfortable kind of greatness in our genes, a tendency toward the early achievement of plummy bureaucratic positions—a trait I urge you (wouldn’t writing be easier if you found a sinecure?) not to squander. In my case, success was the consequence of certain strategic positionings on the part of my mother. Through her extensive network of distant family connections, she had secured for me a marriage to the niece of the aforementioned Manager of Outbound Trains. The engagement ceremony was some months hence, but I was already enjoying the fruits of the union.

My managerial post was made immeasurably more pleasant by the presence of my cleaning person and Man Friday, Dhananjayan Rajesupriyan. Dhanu was diligent, neat, and responsible; indeed, I delegated to him much of the drudging work of managing the station—selling tickets, cleaning and maintaining the tracks, raising and lowering the flags—and he ably handled it all, on top of his more menial chores. But his youth made him sometimes impulsive and irritable.

For example, later that day, he apologized to me most gravely for having spilled the tea. I assured him it was no matter, but then he frowningly added, “But I don’t like that fellow.”

“Don’t like him!” I asked, surprised but not a little amused by his effrontery. “Bold boy! Why not?”

“Because I think he is
odd
.”

“Why, Dhananjayan Rajesupriyan, he is no odder than you, my good man,” I laughed. In truth, I was a little touched. Dhananjayan was very protective of me, and he felt obliged to be skeptical on my behalf.

“Dhanu,” I asked, in a mood to express my appreciation, “after work today, take me to your father’s tin shop.”

“But my father is not there today,” Dhananjayan protested.

“And do you need your father for everything, silly boy?” I asked. “Can’t you do me a simple favor by yourself?”

As my peon and I walked away from work that afternoon, and found ourselves alone outside the empty tin shop, and I had glared into silence the nakedly staring neighbors, some of whom had the temerity to shout rudely at me as I passed; after we were inside and had closed the door, Dhananjayan did not bother to point out that my roof was of tile, not tin. And after I had taken from Dhanu the rough, sweet kisses and greedy caresses for which I relied on the boy, I removed two annas from my cloth purse and pressed them in his palm, telling him all the while that he was a badly behaved young man, who, unless he shaped up, would amount to absolutely nothing—our respite over and my tenderness requited, my manager’s personality was again ascending.

(May I interrupt myself? The preceding paragraph is unspeakable, disgusting, implausible, and totally unlike me. You have a vulgar imagination! I know that to you I am just a man in a photograph—and indeed, I appreciate your efforts in bringing me to a kind of puppetlike life and transcribing my words as I speak them, even down to these too clever asides—but please consider that no doubt I was a real man, with an impeccable reputation in my time. What will people think? In any case, I am eager to get through this and have done with it, so leave it be.)

Like you, Dhananjayan—diligent, dutiful chap—smiled grimly, ignoring my admonishments. He endured my affectionate pinch
on his nose, and clasped the money perfunctorily. What was going on in young Dhanu’s head, I don’t know, but I meant those annas only as a token of affection, not as a price for his silence!

And in any event, the next day, Dhanu and I spoke not a word of our pleasures the previous evening—pleasures which in the moment seemed each time simple and necessary, but which nevertheless gave me afterward a queasy feeling, a sense that I was doing something secretly monstrous. This morning held a particular distraction: when I arrived at work, R. was already there, cheerfully seated on the floor, scribbling in his tea-stained and stiff-paged notebook. The shirt he wore was threadbare, long faded of any decipherable color. He’d pushed his sleeves past his elbows, but when he rose to greet me, they slipped two inches past the tallest of his fingers. On his feet were thin and cracked chappals, and his vaishti was the same one, tea-spattered, that he had worn the previous day.

His appearance filled me with pity—he must have been poor indeed, and before even seating him, I instructed him on the location of my favorite tailor, and pressed a few annas from my own purse into his hand, telling him it was an allowance provided by the Railway for the outfitting of its employees. Then I showed him to his desk, advised him on the locations of our files, explained the timetables and the receipts. I have a very particular method of organization, which I decribed in no small detail, and he absorbed it all with great equanimity. I directed him on the arrangement and processing of the bags of mail that we were charged with transferring, letters from the people of Rombachinnapattinam to other towns throughout the Madras Presidency, and vice versa. He observed everything closely, and I could already see that he would be an attentive and fastidious clerk to me.

I then provided him with inkwell and pen, and without delay commenced my first dictation to my superior in Madras:

“To the Manager of Outbound Trains and Director of Village Personnel, Mr. P. Seshamurthi,

“Dear Sir,

“In numerous previous letters I had written to you explaining my urgent need for a personal secretary. As I had told you, I have already set aside money from the budget for this necessary addition to my staff. You, sir, insisted that, after reviewing available applications, no suitable candidate could be found. Because no suitable candidate could be found, you advised me to give up on the idea of having my own clerical assistant. You explained that all other village managers were making do without a personal secretary. Of course, you made the mistake of thinking Rombachinnapattinam a ‘village,’ whereas it should more properly be called as a ‘town,’ but leave it. You also urged me to return the funds to the general budget from which I had removed them.

“I am now happy to report to you that our trouble has been resolved. Just yesterday, the young man penning this very letter walked into my office and presented to me his curriculum vitae. His credentials are impeccable. He has held numerous high-level secretarial clerkships.” Here, I paused to exchange a wink with R., but R., thoughtfully engaged with his work, did not even look up. While writing this letter, R. had shed the previous day’s frantic energy, and was applying himself with transporting calm. “Moreover,” I continued, “his diction is superb, his manner refined, his appearance meticulous.” I continued in this vein for some time, heaping praise upon my new hire.

“In conclusion,” I said, “I very much look forward to seeing you on the occasion of my engagement to your niece some weeks hence. Until then, I remain your humble servant,” & c. Upon concluding, I asked R. to show me the finished letter.

R. rose and placed the piece of paper in my outstretched palm, and I observed that the first page was beautiful: he had written precisely what I had said, and with an elegant and flowing hand.

But at the top of the second page, the handwriting became jagged and uneven. Then the line broke in mid-sentence, and the rest of the page was filled with—how shall I describe it?—bizarre and outlandish marks that fell upon my eyes with a certain kind of violence. The bulk of the page was entirely covered like this. For a moment I panicked, worried that my vision and focus might suddenly have left me; I rubbed my eyes and blinked, and strained hard at the page, but it did not change. It was entirely unintelligible.

I thrust the paper toward R. “What is the meaning of this?” I asked him.

He stared blankly at the page for some seconds, as if not seeing what I meant to show. Then, slowly, his eyes resolved on those appalling marks, he nodded his head in acknowledgment, and calmly he told me, “Yes, I see. My mind must have wandered.”

His explanation was so simple, unadorned, and unbothered that I began to doubt myself. Was my initial shock unwarranted? Perhaps this was a simple mistake, something like an inkblot. After all, up till this moment he had been, in all things, anxiously meticulous, somewhat in my own mold. Yes: It was his first day, after all, and didn’t I owe him some time to adjust? I decided to let the matter pass. He sat down again, and again I dictated the latter part of the letter, and indeed, this time his transcription was flawless.

I put the strange incident out of my mind, and for the next several days R. was in fact an exemplary employee, early to arrive, late to leave, dressed now in a properly tailored shirt. I found myself drawing Dhananjayan’s attention to R.’s punctiliousness, his energy, his cool and alacritous demeanor in the face of all tasks and challenges. “Study him,” I told Dhanu. “You should strive to behave more like R.”

“Am I not also a good help to you?” young Dhananjayan plaintively asked.

“A good help? You? Ha!” I replied, with unwarranted irritation, unwilling, as I inexplicably found myself some days, to spare a compliment for this speck of a boy. “Dhananjayan Rajesupriyan, you are a bad help. You walk slowly, and your nose is always running. You remind me of a donkey.” (Pardon me, but need you paint me so rude? It is true, I was strict with this boy you’ve imagined, and I regret it; but he would have his revenge in time.)