The Illicit Happiness of Other People (34 page)

He comes back at seven in the morning and stands at the gate to take the house by surprise. Nothing stirs. He waits. That is his talent, he knows how to wait. After about an hour, he sees the maid come down the lane. He is struck again by her face, a face that is hard but very aware of its own frugal beauty. She is probably in her early thirties, middle age for maids, but there is
much left in her that a man can see. She does not look famished like the other maids, her breasts are full and proud, and she is fleshy in a shapely way. She must be the queen of her slum. She is an anomaly; women like her usually do not survive as maids. She walks towards him, her head bent, and when she raises her eyes they look with the incurable contempt that all Tamil maids have for men who are not film stars.

‘Is Somen Pillai in the house?’ he asks her.

She walks away without a word.

‘Does he live in this house?’

She rings the doorbell. Somen’s mother opens the door and is startled to see Ousep at the gate so early. She shuts the door in his face. Ousep waits to see how the morning unfolds. The maid leaves in about an hour, which is not unusual. When the man and wife emerge, they are in office clothes. They lock their door, and do not meet Ousep’s eyes when they go past him. They walk to an old grey scooter that lies by the side of the lane. The man kicks it many times until it roars into life. His wife sits on the pillion holding his paunch, and they leave.

The large padlock on the front door has a melancholy finality about it. Has Somen really abandoned his parents and vanished for ever? But if the truth is that Somen has gone missing, his parents just need to tell Ousep that. Considering what a nuisance he is, that would be a simple solution to get rid of him. Surely there is no shame in telling Ousep that they have lost their son to philosophy. There is no shame in saying that to Ousep. But they have not done that. In fact, they have insisted that their boy lives with them. Also, there is still the glow of life in their eyes. They do not look like parents who have lost their child.

He returns in the evening but the house does not see him any more. The door does not open, the couple do not emerge to
face him. He rings the doorbell several times but there is no response. He can hear the sounds of life inside but the Pillais have decided to ignore him.

OUSEP IS IN FULL view of all the women who are standing on their balconies to bid goodbye to their husbands. He is across the lane, facing Block A, and smoking two cigarettes at once. He looks to his left once again, down the whole stretch of Balaji Lane. The car will appear any time now at the far end.

Men on scooters leave the building, one after the other, giving him cold glances. Some women on the balconies disappear, some appear muttering prayers. The figure of Mariamma, unexpectedly, stands on her balcony. She pulls his shirts from the wire, without affection it seems. She sees him and is, naturally, puzzled. Ousep standing quietly on the road, she has never seen that before. She vanishes inside, but she is probably watching through the curtains.

He sees a woman approach; she walks slowly past him carrying an empty basket. She is going to the vegetable market. He does not know why but he is unable to take his eyes off this plump, unremarkable, asexual woman. Her face is calm and unseeing, and it reminds him of the great peace of failure, the peace of simply giving up.

When the car finally appears, he is not sure whether this is the one he has been waiting for. The man had said it would be black, and the car is black, but it is surprisingly grand and obscene. He has never seen such a car before, and it comes towards him like an object from another time. A scooter going in the car’s direction veers to the edge of the road and stops
because the lane is probably too narrow for the two of them to pass and the scooter has accepted its inferior position. As the car passes, the man tilts his scooter to his left, like a dog about to urinate. Guards from the other blocks run out into the lane to stare at the back of the car. One of them salutes. The car stops near Ousep. The guard of Block A, in his cheap military outfit, points a finger at the steering wheel and laughs in mild confusion, which looks like a type of sorrow. He has never seen a left-hand drive before, never knew such a meaningless trick was possible. Ousep throws his cigarettes away and gets into the back seat. The car smells like another country, which it is, in a way. Krishnamurthy Iyengar, in the back seat, looks smaller than Ousep had imagined. He is, as before, in an oversized shirt buttoned at the cuffs, his silver medals pinned on the third button, eight fountain pens and a tiny black torch in his shirt pocket.

‘A gift from my son,’ Iyengar says. ‘It took one year to reach me from America. Chevrolet Cavalier, it is called.’

‘I’ve never been inside anything like this.’

‘It is the only car I have, Ousep. I didn’t bring this to scare you.’

‘I was surprised when you called me.’

‘And you would like to know why I called you, of course,’ Iyengar says, but he does not say anything else for a while. When the old man had called early this morning he had said, in between coughs, ‘Don’t have any expectations, I just want to meet. There is nothing more to it.’

The car leaves Balaji Lane and heads towards Arcot Road. The whole way, people stare as if the Chevrolet is at once a foe and a beautiful woman, which is the same thing in a way. ‘I’ve been thinking of calling you the whole week,’ Iyengar says. ‘Then I decided that if I am ever going to meet you, now is the
time. Now as in today, this morning. Because I am going to the airport.’

The old man sinks into a comfortable silence once again, so Ousep says, ‘I don’t see the connection.’

‘I am going to America,’ Iyengar says. ‘I am giving a talk at Johns Hopkins. Then I am going to spend some time with my son and his family. Then my daughter and her family. Because I am a jobless old man.’

‘So, you didn’t want to wait. Is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know if you could have waited?’

‘What I want to say is that I want to talk to you in the car, when I am on the way to the airport. Yes, that’s what I want to say. Because that way I can say what I wish to say and just get rid of you. You may have questions and more questions, but I don’t have the answers. I want to say what I have to say, drop you somewhere on the way, and go away.’

‘And what is it that you want to say?’

Iyengar runs his fingers through his silver hair, and appears to gather his thoughts, though he has surely had a lot of time to do that.

‘Unni told me something one day,’ Iyengar says. ‘He told me that in the greatest stories of the world there are always opposites – there is the superhero and the supervillain, the good and the evil, the strong and weak. He asked me if the Corpse Syndrome had an opposite condition. Are there people in this world who feel very alive, who feel every moment of their days as if life inside them is the greatest force in the universe. People who are hopelessly happy. I told him that for some strange reason neuropsychiatry does not deal with such conditions – it deals with conditions that need a cure. The anti-corpse
would not need a cure. The anti-corpse is the aspiration of mankind. And Unni said, “I am the anti-corpse.”’

‘Doctor, why would a person who is so happy choose to die?’

‘It is possible,’ Iyengar says slowly, with unfathomable caution, ‘it is possible that Unni Chacko was not what he thought he was.’

Ousep feels an enormous weight on his chest, as if a powerful adolescent boy is holding him in a fierce embrace. ‘Do you believe that, Doctor?’

‘Or, Unni was everything he thought he was, and we do not understand the happiness of other people. Maybe happiness has nothing to do with life, maybe we are overestimating the lure of life.’

‘So what are you trying to say, Doctor?’

‘Just this, what I told you. That’s all I wanted to say.’

‘But what do you make of it?’

‘See, that is the problem, Ousep. My opinion is not important. It would be unfair, too. I have not formally studied him.’

‘Be unfair. Tell me.’

Iyengar considers his own wrinkled fingers, then his tired palms. He says, ‘Many times in my career I have wondered if some of my patients are in my room only because they have seen beyond what the normal brain can see. What I am trying to say, very inarticulately, is this. What if Unni was a person who could see more than others? What if he saw the world in a form that he could not explain?’

‘What if he didn’t, Doctor? What if he was just deluded?’

‘That was what Unni was trying to find out, Ousep. Can’t you see?’

‘So why did he have to die?’

‘I don’t know, Ousep. I cannot answer that question.’

They are caught in the morning traffic on Arcot Road, and
the car has not moved in several minutes. Urchins who have lost different body parts are banging at the car windows. They are not as miserable as people imagine, according to a boy who once claimed he was unbearably happy and then decided to jump off a building.

‘So you’ve said what you wanted to say, Doctor?’

‘I have,’ Iyengar says. ‘Ousep, before you go, I want to know if you have found the corpse.’

‘No.’

‘That boy, Somen Pillai, you could not meet him?’

‘No. I don’t know where he is. Every time I go to his house, his parents tell me he is not at home. I go at odd hours but I have been unable to meet him or even see him. But one of the maids on the lane said something odd. I don’t know what to make of it.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that she has heard from someone who has heard from someone else and so on that Somen has shut himself up in a room for over two years. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

‘It makes complete sense, Ousep. A corpse is most likely to do just that.’

‘Are you saying that the boy has been inside the house all this while?’

‘Much longer than that even.’

‘And his parents have been locking the door and leaving him inside?’

‘Possible.’

‘Are you sure about this, Doctor?’

‘Go and get your corpse, Ousep. Do what you have to do. I’ve lost all interest in mine, but go, Ousep, go and find your corpse.’

IT IS NOON, AND the people who live on the narrow mud lane take in the sight – the town alcoholic and a dwarf key-maker, who is holding three large metal rings filled with hundreds of keys, are going somewhere. To open a door, perhaps.

As Ousep had expected the door is locked. Somen’s parents are away at work. The lock looks particularly large in the small hand of the midget key-maker, who is a delicate and dignified man. He makes a sound through his nose and dismisses it as an easy job. He looks up and laughs at a joke he is about to crack. ‘What if this is not your house?’ He shoves various keys inside.

A frail old man, in a blinding white shirt, appears at the gate. He stands there with his hands joined behind his back, and looks. Within minutes four more old men and two old women appear behind the gate. They stand still, asymmetrically, as if they are in an abstract dance, and they look at Ousep without affection. The key-maker is kneeling on the doormat, scratching the teeth of several keys with an iron rod and inserting them into the lock. On occasion he turns to the small gathering of curious retired people. The crowd slowly grows, and now the housewives too have joined the assembly. The dwarf is increasingly confused and his glances are longer and more frequent. He looks at Ousep with mild suspicion but decides not to understand the situation.

Ousep sees the furious grey scooter at a distance, racing down the lane carrying Somen’s parents. As it approaches, Ousep can see that the man is in a murderous rage. When he stops the scooter by the side of the lane, he just leaves the handlebar and charges at his house. The scooter falls with Mrs Pillai still on the pillion. The crowd moves towards her but Somen’s father is unaffected. He starts kicking the key-maker, who is now delirious as he fends off the kicks with carefully observed movements of his hands. He points to Ousep and
screams, ‘I thought it was this man’s house.’ He manages to run away at a full sprint, carrying his three metal rings. He dashes across the lane without slowing down or even looking back. In fact, he gains speed as he reaches the end of the lane.

Pillai thrusts a finger at Ousep. ‘Don’t push me, Ousep, this has to end right now. You are losing your mind.’

‘Somen Pillai is inside,’ Ousep says.

‘That’s not true.’

‘Then all you have to do is show me in and I will believe you.’

‘This is my home, Ousep, I decide who will enter this place.’

‘Take me to Somen.’

Somen’s mother goes into the house crying; she is followed by her man, and they bang the door shut. Ousep looks at the small angry crowd and says, ‘Think about it, when was the last time you saw the boy? Where is that boy? What happened to that boy?’

Ousep begins to come here every night, fully drunk. He rings the bell several times but he knows the door will not open. He stands outside the gate and screams the boy’s name. He walks up and down the lane, screaming, ‘Somen Pillai, speak to me, speak to the father of Unni Chacko.’ He is at the gate in the mornings, sober and elegant. He is there when the maid arrives, he is there when she leaves. He stands smoking his cigarettes as Somen’s parents appear in office clothes and secure the door with two padlocks. He stands and watches their sullen departure on the old grey scooter. He does this every night and day. He won’t stop, this is his final stand.

Thoma’s mother says, ‘Your father has gone crazy.’ Ousep has stopped going to work. He wakes up at dawn these days and goes somewhere, he returns and sits till noon in his room with
Unni’s cartoons and a magnifying glass, which he runs over the comics. Some days he spreads out all the pages of Unni’s comics and cartoons on the floor, climbs on the bed and tries to get a top-angle view. Then he leaves home again. When he returns at night he is as drunk as ever, but he does not stop at giving a speech from the gate. He has started going to some of the homes in Block A, he asks to speak to the boys inside. He wants to know everything everybody knows about Unni. Last week he banged on Mythili’s door and fought with her father, who threatened to call the police. He has started wandering around the city at night and waking Unni’s friends from sleep. People have started slapping him around. That’s what Mariamma says. Some nights Ousep comes home with bruises. Thoma and his mother sit on his bed and clean his wounds, which is strangely the most peaceful moment in Thoma’s life. The sight of his father, alive, safe at home, sleeping like a child, and Thoma taking care of him. Something has happened to Thoma, too. He feels stronger. After his betrayal of Unni he is repulsed by the idea of pettiness and fear. He does not ask himself any more whether he will make it across the giant span of life. He knows he will. He sees clearly that he does not have the option of being ordinary.