The Hero's Walk (46 page)

“Well, how many lengths do you want today? One or two?” asked the girl. She drew out a string of jasmine for Putti to see how tight and full the buds were and how closely they were strung on the banana fibre.

“Two. And make sure you measure it all the way to your elbow. No cheating. I am watching with both eyes,” Putti warned.

The girl held one end of the string between her index and middle fingers and allowed it to unravel until it reached the crook of her elbow before doubling it back. Then she carefully snipped it off with a small pair of scissors, folded it into a slice of banana leaf and handed it to Putti.

“You don't want champa or rose today? Very nice white roses, see. Smell and see,” offered the girl, handing one to Putti.

“Silly girl, who smells flowers before offering them to God?” Putti dropped a few coins into the basket and turned away. There were rumours that the flower girls raided gardens before dawn for their baskets, but Sripathi could not imagine this delicate child thieving.

The Burmese Wife emerged on her balcony, her hair wound up in a thin cotton towel. “Girl, come up here also!” she shouted.

More women appeared on their balconies to summon the flower girl, and soon the world was awake. Sripathi put down his
newspaper and writing material and made his way down the stairs. To his surprise, his mother was still lying in bed. Usually, she was up and ready for breakfast before he came down.

“Sripathi, will you go to Dr. Menon and get me some medicine?” she asked as soon as he came down. “I am feeling dizzy and sick.”

“Just take a spoonful of the syrup he gave you the last time,” he said. “I will be late for work again.”

“Anyway, you are leaving that stupid job, so what does it matter when you go? I am really not well,” whined Ammayya. She emerged from under the mosquito netting and shuffled slowly to the door of her room.

Sripathi looked at his mother, her shorn scalp silver with a dusting of new hair, her skin haggard and yellowish in the early light. She did look unwell. With something approaching sadness, he gazed at her, and saw beyond the craggy features the hope and beauty that had once been there. “I'll send Arun,” he said gruffly. “You can tell him exactly what is wrong. But if you are really feeling bad, maybe we should take you to the hospital.”

“No,” said Ammayya flatly. “I want to die in my own home.”

“Don't talk like that, Ammayya. You will be okay. It is probably all those laddoos you ate yesterday.” Or because you cannot swallow the idea of Putti and that crook's son, Sripathi thought.

When he left to catch the bus to work he found a group of men clearing the debris in front of the house.

“Hello, brother,” called Gopala from across the wall. “You won't have problems with my truck fellows any more.” He smiled cheerfully. “You have any other problems you want fixed? Tell me, we are kin now.”

“
Your
trucks? Those truckers work for you?”

Gopala smiled proudly. “My father owns six of them. Goddess Lakshmi has showered prosperity on us.” He folded his palms and piously touched them to his forehead.

Sripathi did not know how to respond. He had never been crooked in his entire life so far, he had always followed the rules. He had plodded down the straight line of duty and honour, and here was this rogue clearing the mess with one wave of his violent hand. The mess that his own people had created, probably at his orders too. Come to think of it, the Munnuswamy house was the only one on the street that had a spotless stretch of road before it. Perhaps he and Arun were the fools in this world and Gopala was the wise man who used any means to survive. Did he ever feel a twinge of conscience? What if Sripathi asked him about the beating that Arun had received? Would he just smile his white, radiant smile and say, “We are kin now, and your son is like my nephew,” and send his goondas out to fight Arun's hitherto unarmed battles with knives, broken bottles and sticks? And Putti, his foolish, loving sister, how would she live in that house, her own goodness compromised by the knowledge of her husband's villainy?

Gopala's rich bass tones interrupted his thoughts. “You want my car to drive you to work?” he asked.

“No, it is okay,” said Sripathi hastily, unwilling to be the recipient of any more favours. “Thank you for clearing the gates for us. Very kind of you.”

“You only have to ask, Sripathi-orey, that's all. I see that there is too much water collecting in your compound. If you want my Boys will fix that also. Simply have to break the wall at the back. What do you say?”

“I'll ask my mother, Gopala,” said Sripathi, shuddering inwardly at the thought of how Ammayya would react to
this
offer of help. “She is very touchy about some things.”

“Oh yes, oh yes, mother comes first.” Gopala wagged his head and flashed another smile at Sripathi, who hurried away to the bus stop.

Clouds rolled in by three o'clock that afternoon and by evening it had started pouring again. Putti, unable to stand on the terrace that
had become her refuge from Ammayya, was obliged to sit in the living room while her mother shot barbed comments at her from her veiled bed. To everybody's surprise, she refused to eat lunch, claiming that Putti had driven her appetite away by her shameless behaviour.

“Is she all right?” Nirmala asked uneasily. “She never refuses food.”

“Ammayya has been feeding on anger,” said Putti bitterly. “One day without food won't hurt her. Why can't she be happy for me? She never wanted me to get married, I know. Why should I care how she is feeling now?”

But at night, when Ammayya skipped her dinner as well, Putti's guilt overwhelmed her. “Why aren't you eating anything?” she asked her mother, peering through the dirty mosquito net. “Did you drink the medicine that Arun brought for you?”

“What do you care?” muttered Ammayya and then retreated into complete silence. She didn't respond when Putti offered to press her legs, as she did most nights before bed, or even to massage her head with warm oil. And when her daughter got into bed, she turned her back on her, refusing to gossip before drifting off to sleep as was her habit. Putti lay in the dark, miserably listening to the endless rain tapping on the window panes and against the verandah floor, and whooshing through the gutters. The fan creaked as it rotated. Light filtered in from outside through the stained-glass window panes and made the room glow eerily for a while. At about eleven o'clock, the power went off, plunging everything into a profound darkness. Putti heard Nirmala singing to the child, the kitten mewing in its closed basket in the dining room, and eventually the clock striking twelve upstairs. Finally, silence descended. The old house rocked gently on its heels and settled down to sleep.

At about three o'clock, a muffled thump woke Putti. She scrabbled around the bed sleepily, wondering what had made the sound.
Another thump, like an explosion. She peered through the mosquito netting, but it was too dark to see anything. If Ammayya did not close those wretched windows so tightly, she might have had some light from the street. But then she remembered, the power had failed. With a sigh, Putti reached in the gap between the two mattresses and fished out the torch. She shone it around the room and saw nothing. Now she could hear a gurgling sound, as if there was water bubbling somewhere.
Inside
the house, not outside where the patter of rain was loud and constant. Had someone left a tap on in the bathroom? With the torch in one hand, Putti pulled on the edge of the mosquito netting, releasing it from under the mattress where it had been tucked securely. She prepared to slide out quickly, so that no mosquitos could get in. Her bare feet landed with a splash in cold, oily water. Putti screamed and drew them back inside the netting. She turned the torch towards the floor, and the light shimmered and danced on the black water that was lapping quietly against the walls, reaching up the legs of the bed. Putti couldn't believe what she was seeing. For a few moments she wondered wildly whether the sea had somehow worked its way into Big House. She reached down cautiously and touched the surface of the water to assure herself that she was not dreaming. Something floating by brushed her hand, and when she shone the torch at it, she saw that it was a crescent of feces. Putti gagged in revulsion and wiped her hand frantically against the mosquito netting. She still couldn't fathom what had happened, but knew that she didn't want to drown in sewage. Soggy sheets of newspaper were slowly sinking into the water—all of Ammayya's stolen newspapers from under the bed, realized Putti. The thought of her mother brought her up short. If the sea was flooding through the house, they would be the first to drown. They had better go to the uppermost floor, and fast.

“Sripathi! Arun!” she shouted, hoping that somebody upstairs would hear and come down to help. There was no response. Putti
yelled a few more times, intermittently shaking her mother and prodding her in the plump rolls of flesh that seeped out from the sides of the loose, faded blouse she wore to bed. Her mother merely swatted her hand away and continued to snore. Exasperated, Putti seized a pouch of skin close to her mother's belly and pinched it hard, feeling a definite pleasure in the violence of the action. All her anger against Ammayya and her strategies to keep Putti a spinster were expressed in that twisting, cruel pinch. She felt no guilt later on, assuring herself that she was only trying to get her mother out of bed and to safety. Ammayya responded with a squeal of pain and a flailing of her heavy arms.

“What?” she demanded blearily. “What?”

She screamed when she saw the dark shape hovering over her, the torchlight under her face turning her into a creature from nightmare. “Don't touch me! I'll give you everything,” she whimpered, holding her arms over her face.

“Ammayya, it's me, Putti.”

The old woman sat up quickly and glared at her child. “Why you are waking me up in the middle of the night? What is wrong?” It was the first time that evening that she had spoken to her daughter.

“Ammayya, the sea is inside our house. Big mess it is. We have to climb upstairs immediately,” said Putti frantically.

“Henh?” said Ammayya baffled.

“Get out of bed. We have to go upstairs. Otherwise, we will drown,” she repeated slowly. “Look at that.”

She shone the torch at the floor, around the room, and a horrified Ammayya gazed at the water eddying around the legs of their bed and lapping at the rosewood dressing table. The lower edges of the Belgian mirror eerily reflected the net-shrouded bed like a white island marooned in the stinking, obsidian sea. For once she was bereft of words. She allowed Putti to rip the mosquito netting aside and push her off the bed. The stench assailed her as soon as they had begun to wade through the cold, disgusting mess.

“Why so bad it is smelling?” she whispered, clinging to Putti, who was gagging continuously now, the torch shaking in her hand.

“Ammayya, there's kakka in the water and all kinds of other dirty things,” said Putti brutally, hating her mother for clinging to her, for having sucked her life away.

“I thought you said it was the sea,” wailed Ammayya. “Now you are telling me that I am walking in shit water?” Her skin crawled at the sly touch of the liquid. “Ayyo deva! Ayyo swami! Ayyo-ayyo-ayyo!” she howled. She was polluted for all eternity. She was soiled for ever. Nothing could wash away this stink, this putrefaction, this muck that only the toilet cleaner ought to touch. She felt bile gurgling up her throat and retched drily. “Oh Sathyanarayana!” she called to her favourite god. “What treachery is this? What have I done to you to deserve this? Putti, are you sure?” she begged.

“Can't you smell it?” She shone her torch around and Ammayya moaned with disgust. She was
walking
in somebody's excrement?

“Whose is that?” she asked faintly.

“What do you mean
whose
, Ammayya?” demanded Putti. Now her anger had been replaced by contempt for her mother. How could she have been scared of this pathetic creature for forty-two years? she wondered. “All the drains on this road are connected. So it could be our neighbour's for all I know. Maybe Chocobar man's. Maybe Munnuswamy's. Does it have a name on it, you want me to check?”

“Why you are making fun of me, my beloved child?” asked her mother, trying to wade through the water without disturbing it. She shut her eyes tightly and allowed the tears to trickle out. Real tears. She imagined the foul liquid on the floor seeping up through her orifices into the sacred parts of her body, corrupting her from the inside out. She would never be able to clean herself. Never. She wailed once more and then fell silent, except for the violent retching sounds that burst out of her as they made their way to the staircase
which, beyond the first three steps, was dry. Putti shook off her mother's clutching hand, forcing her to hold on to the bannister and climb up slowly. She yelled again for Sripathi and Arun and Nirmala, her voice bouncing off the moist walls, startling against the silence. She could hear shufflings and whispers of wakefulness as her shouts filtered through deep sleep and dreaming eyes.

“Was that Putti?” she heard her sister-in-law ask. “I heard someone shouting.”

“Wake up, wake up!” screamed Putti. “We are all going to drown. The sea is here!”

“Sea? What sea?” That was Sripathi. “Is she dreaming or what?”

They all gathered sleepily on the first-floor landing. After a few minutes of what-ing and where-ing and why-ing, during which Arun ran down the stairs to make sure that his aunt was not hallucinating, Sripathi decided that the best thing to do was to call the Munnuswamys for help from the terrace. Ammayya wouldn't go anywhere until she had washed her legs with soap and water.

“Rama, Sita, Rama, Sita,” she murmured, while she scrubbed her legs. She was trembling all over and had to be helped out of the bathroom by Nirmala, who wrapped her in a bedsheet. Nandana was roused, lifted out of bed by Arun, and the family climbed up to the terrace. She woke just as Sripathi finished his struggle with the bolts on the terrace door.