The Cripple and His Talismans (3 page)

The doors of the two armoured trucks open. From each armoured truck steps a human form that is hard to behold. I feel normal in their presence. These are not figments of an armless man’s delirium. These are lepers. I try to remember the hum of darkness, thinking it will soothe me, but I cannot.

The only thing that differentiates the lepers is the cloth that covers them from lower belly to knee. One is black, the other white. Perhaps this is why I have been sent here, to feel better about myself. In the presence of the diminished, greatness can be achieved. Arm or no arm, I am now a giant.

The armoured trucks make sense. If an ordinary vehicle were to transport these two, they might not make it here. They are so fragile, the wind might blow their fingers off. The engines shut off.

Silence.

We could have heard a bird chirp in another universe.

A sound: the scraping of feet.

The leper in black holds one leg and walks, assisting the leg itself with a hand that is wrapped in bandages. The other has a stronger walk but his face has receded more, itching to kiss skull. They walk to the centre of the circle and face each other. I cannot see their eyes and I am glad. The In-charge positions himself between the two.

A little girl, no older than ten or eleven, with long black hair parted from the centre into two neat plaits, runs to the lepers with two garlands in her hands. Faces with the geography of hell are treated to the scent of heaven. The lepers bend low to accept their garlands. They are humble.

“Sisters and brothers,” shouts the In-charge. “To see so many good persons in one gathering warms me. Our custom will remain the same as always. We will start after our prayer.”

Something touches my feet. I look down, and it is a beggar seated on the ground. He has no legs. He extends his arm. I do not know what to do. He takes my hand. I feel someone’s palm on the stump of my left shoulder. It is a eunuch’s. I look around and everyone is holding hands — acid women connected to eunuchs, eunuchs to amputees, amputees to beggars.

What are they all praying for? Their limbs to grow back? I tell myself that destiny exists; if not, what can explain my body being touched by these people?

Then the In-charge raises his arms, looks to the sky and closes his eyes. He chants, and I have never heard anything like it. It is the song of a dying man sending his last words to heaven, asking the ones who are already there to come receive him. Everyone joins in. Slowly the chants fade, as if large birds are transporting these sounds on their backs and carrying them far away from us.

I open my eyes only when I hear the shuffling of feet. The In-charge stares at his watch. “It’s midnight,” he says. “Let the games begin!”

He then lifts the little girl in his arms and joins the crowd.

The lepers walk to opposite sides of the circle.

The one in black screams. It is a summons to all the lepers of the city; in every sewer, under every bridge, beside every beedi shop, there is a leper who hears it and feels the juice of life in his sores.

The one in white does not move, but his fingers are curled into a fist. He waits for the other to come to him.

Now the two are only feet apart.

They are illuminated by the headlights.

The one in white strikes first; a blow to the face.

The crowd roars. A eunuch shouts to the skies: “Forgive them!”

Forgive whom? For what?

The beggar beside me spits, whether in disgust or glee I cannot tell. He thumps his tin can to the floor repeatedly.

The one in white moves again. With great force he steps onto the other’s foot. There is a deep hole in it, near the ankle. The outer rim of the hole is black, the inner rim is yellow and the core is white as ivory. With his heel still dug in, the leper in white thrusts his hands onto his opponent’s chest, pushing him away. He lifts his foot and watches the leper in black fall to the floor. The sight is terrifying. Three toes lie on the concrete.

I look for the In-charge, for some signal to explain this horror, but he is not visible. I want to look away, but the only sound I hear is that of the beggar’s tin can beating the concrete.

In the glare of the headlights I see the whites of the lepers’ eyes. The vanquished one does not recover from the onslaught. He lies on the ground, as torn as the garland petals that lie by his feet. He looks to the sky. Is there a spirit world up there? Is there a separate one for lepers? Does the soul of a leper have leprosy?

At this moment I could donate the excess of blood in me to each hospital in the city, it pounds so hard, gushes so furiously. It could spurt from my mouth and make the city brighter.

I could make dying oxen dance.

The In-charge reappears. He raises both his arms. I wish I could raise mine. I have raised my arms in the past, but only to pull things down, curtains and people alike. It is sometimes more convenient to raze lives than raise them.

The In-charge walks to the centre of the circle and goes to the lepers. No, he walks past them and comes toward me.

Do not come here. I do not wish to be singled out, a sparrow among lions.

An endless row of eyes stares at me.

It is easy to stand on a pulpit and lecture about how the world sits on a dog’s tongue, that each time the dog licks excrement it coats the world with a layer. That we are all bad people, and that we must be punished. I ask all holy men to stand here today. Wisdom will escape them like worms from fruit. They will feel naked and shake, and hope that their eyes do not meet a leper’s.

“You must be part of the proceedings,” the In-charge says.

“Please, I’m okay,” I reply. I would give my other arm to be somewhere else.

“You must earn your right to be here.”

“I don’t understand.” I say that to buy time.

“Come with me,” orders the In-charge.

He holds my hand and takes me to where the leper in black is on the ground. The other leper looks on.

“Now help him up,” the In-charge tells me.

“But he’s a leper!”

“I’m aware of that.”

“But if I touch him.…”

“Help him.”

“Why me?”

“You must earn the right to be here.”

“No one told me that.”

“Do it. Now.”

I look around.

I extend my arm.

For the leper on the ground, it is a shaft of light.

He holds it with both hands. His hands are hot.

I lift him.

The crowd disperses. They turn and go on their way, to their brothels, their begging spaces and their drinking cells.

“Why is everyone going?” I ask.

“They are mere spectators. This is
your
moment.”

“My moment?”

“It is why you have met me. Help this man here. He is the victor.” He turns to the leper in black.

“But he lost,” I say. “The one in white tore off his toes!”

“The winner is he who loses his ugly parts. The loser is he who is left with them.”

The leper in black, the one who has been relieved of his rotting toes, looks surprised. The lepers must not have known the rules of the fight. They were tricked. And rightly so, or else they would have ripped off their own body parts.

“It’s his turn to be free,” says the In-charge.

“Free?” I ask.

“He has done his time. As his body slowly comes apart, he will be relieved of it. He will be cleansed soon.”

The leper in black bows his head. The one in white snarls and walks away.

“What about him?” I point to the one in white. I am conscious of the manner in which we speak, as though the lepers are not part of our world.

“He gathered the festering parts, so he lost tonight. He’s not ready. He must do more time.”

“What does all this have to do with me?”

The In-charge whispers into the leper’s ear. The leper then looks at me from the corners of his eyes. He turns slowly toward me. I hope he does not touch me.

The leper puts his hand in his mouth.

He bites hard onto his forefinger. He does so as though he is eating a dark biscuit.

Pthuck.

A snap, like that of a dry twig.

The finger stays in his mouth, caught between his teeth. If I give him a matchstick, he might smoke it. He picks it out of his mouth.

“Take it,” says the In-charge.

And dip it in my tea? Offer it to others as a vintage cigar?

“It’s an offering,” urges the In-charge.

“I’m okay,” I say.

“The victor must relinquish his finger. One by one, he will renounce all his body parts until he ceases to exist. Only then will he be cleansed. You cannot let him down.”

“But …”

“It’s crucial that you take it.”

“I …”

“Do it!”

“Can’t he give it in a bag?”

“Listen, friend, do it for your own sake.”

I extend my arm, a naughty child holding his hand out for the schoolmaster’s cane.

“Is this how you accept an offering?”

I cup my hand.

The finger feels scaly. A dry piece of dog shit.

The leper taps the stump of my arm.

He comes close to my ear. His breath captures the essence of an entire hospital.

“Baba Rakhu,” he whispers.

Not far from Jalebee Road is an old burnt-down mill by the sea. I stop to rest in its ruins. As I left the games, the cries of the lepers tried to pull me back. That is why it took me an hour to get here.

The mill resembles an ancient temple. I stand under a half-eaten archway. There are hubs in the walls, carved out for the gods. Under the moon the hubs hold light, tempting us to drink it. If only we could drink light.

Dark leaves move in the trees. I walk toward a slab of stone in the distance. On either side of me there is exposed brick. I hear the waves hit the shore. I want to sit by the sea and watch the small boats in the distance. Men are sea urchins at heart. We like being lost at sea, being rescued and given little huts to live in on the shore. But as time goes by, we lose ourselves in the water again. I take my place on the stone. It is cold. I stare into the night and wonder if the sea looks as widowed during the day.

I used to have an apartment by the sea. I never saw the sun rise because I was too busy drinking gold of my own the night before. When your head aches, you shut out the sound of waves; only the splashing of whiskey is heard, as your shaking hand raises the bottle to your mouth. I used to drink water, too. Water is a wonderful drink. It clears out the toxins to make way for more potent ones. Waves do the same. That is why they foam.

I think too much. I must shut down my brain and only see. But then I see too much. For example, right now, a woman stands in front of me. I do not know where she has come from. She carries the glow of caves. Maybe she was born from the salt of the sea. I am surprised but not scared. After the leper fight, anything else is a song.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks.

I look down at the stone I sit on.

“Not the stone,” she says. “I’m talking about the rainbow.”

Ruins do that to people. They see lions in the moonlight, licking honey from the hands of a child.

“It’s just come out,” she says. She looks at the archway that I stood under only moments ago.

“You mean the archway is in the shape of a rainbow?”

“That’s not an archway. It’s a rainbow.”

I do not argue, only make certain that I still have the leper’s finger in my pocket. It has no use now, and maybe it never will. It is a fitting token for a man seeking the truth about his lost limb.

“I would like your help,” she says.

Help is a cunning dog. It comes to you on all fours, and as you bend lower to pet it, scratches your eyes out.

“I have lost my family in the fire that burnt this mill,” she says.

“I don’t have any money,” I tell her. In the distance I hear transport trucks. The strain on their engines tells me they are moving uphill.

“What will I do with money?” she says. “I’m already dead.”

I do not ask her why she thinks she is dead. Maybe she means the loss of her loved ones has killed her soul.

“I sell rainbows,” she says. “It’s my job.”

“Where do you get them?” I do not know what else to ask.

“I make them myself. When I have sold enough, I shall be free to return to my husband and son. Until then, I must live in these ruins.”

“How much for one?” I ask. I get up from the stone and slap the dust off my legs.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “I must convince you that the archway is a rainbow. That will be considered a sale.”

“But it is an archway,” I protest.

“Exactly. That’s what makes my job difficult.”

When I had both my arms, the people I met were ordinary. They were perfectly formed, but ordinary. Ever since my loss, I have run into beasts who hold the meaning of the earth between their teeth.

“Please,” she says. “I want to be with my family again.”

I take a hard look at the archway. It is damp. “I see the rainbow,” I tell her.

She shakes her head and looks to the ground. “No sale is that easy. Walk with me to where the boats sail.”

I have walked this way many times before, holding a bottle, running my hands through my hair, catching the wind in my fist and sending it back to the sea. In the dark, I have used these walls to press against the insides of a woman’s thighs. I have heard each wave come in to the shore and call their names in alphabetical order: Aarti, Damini, Gauri, Hema, Layla, Payal, Roxanne, Reshma, Tarana, Zeenat. The tips of my fingers knew their hips better than the silk that once covered them.

From a distance, the small boats look as if they can be toppled over with a finger. Perhaps that is the meaning of my gift. I will stand on the shore and overturn boats with the leper’s finger, send fishermen to the bottom of the sea.

“Look down,” she says. “What do you see?”

There is sand and gravel. Large pieces of stone are visible, too. I assume they are the remnants of the mill. There are also bits of rusted broken glass.

“Do you see the sand?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“What colour is it?”

“Black.”

“No, it’s white.”