Tikkipala (50 page)

‘I thought you tree people could do it anywhere,' said the driver.

‘I have become civilised,' said Maw.

The lorry driver followed him into the hut. Though there was not enough time for a woman, he thought, he could down a quick arrak.

As the driver stood gulping down the fiery alcohol, he heard a voice from beyond the kitchen door shout out, ‘Hey, what are you doing. Don't meddle with those lids.'

And Maw's voice answering, ‘I am looking for water. I want a drink.'

‘Well, that's not water in there, fellow,' the man said. ‘That's arrak, waiting for our customers, the Sita Timber wood cutters, so you leave it alone. If you want water, there's a tin of it over there.'

There followed the sound of water slopping and being poured.

Later the lorry driver would remember this and relate it to the police.

Maw returned to the lorry and sat down, smiling.

The lorry driver glanced at him and said, ‘You look pleased. There's nothing like a good shit for cheering a man up.'

Maw did not reply, but went on smiling because tonight, when the stomach acids of the Tikki started to burn through the intestines of the wood cutters, their dying screams might be even louder than the cries made by Pala in his agony. The stomach acids kill a man very slowly, and there is no antidote for it in the whole world.

After getting back to the hill palace Devi could not bear to let Tikkipala out of her sight for a moment.

It was evening. Devi went out through the palace and onto the lawn. Smells of biryanis, subsi and moglai murghi were coming from the kitchen. There were jasmine flowers blooming by the wall. The sun was setting behind the high jungle, making it look as though it wore a halo. The sound of the Tikki's screaming had stopped ringing in her ears and now she only heard the merciful crowing of waking jungle cocks and the moo of thag cattle. She felt the sensation of someone near. Because of the horror of yesterday, she flinched, startled, as a figure emerge from the shadows.

Maw. He held something against his chest, keeping it carefully as though it was precious.

She was not completely certain it was him till he came really close. It was not only because he stood with his back to the blaze of ever decreasing light, but because she did not imagine he would ever dare show his face down here again, considering what he had tried to do.

She said, ‘You should be in prison. You should be hanged. You and your stinking tribal people. You killed Anwar. Now I know.'

‘No,' whispered Maw.

‘Go away, you bastard,' hissed Devi. ‘No one wants you here. Don't imagine you can come and live with us again after what you have done.'

‘We didn't kill Anwar,' he said.

‘Where is he then?' So many years of curiosity and now suddenly it seemed as though he knew, could satisfy it. Could have satisfied it all the time.

‘My grandmother was called Mawa,' said Maw. ‘When she was thirteen and ready for marriage, Coarseones managed to come into our jungle and a sickness struck our people.'

‘Who cares. You deserve anything you get,' said Devi brutally.

‘Our young men, who had gone out hunting, came in contact with tree cutting Coarseones and died. There was no one unrelated and of the right age to marry Mawa.' Maw fell silent.

‘Go on,' she said.

She felt him shrugging in the dark. ‘My people pulled the boy, your Anwar, up the rock tunnel.'

‘What?' She swung upon him trying to work it out.

‘We can go up and down from the high to lower jungle. We always have. The way has been our most precious and well kept secret.'

‘Why are you telling me now, then?' asked Devi.

‘Because it doesn't matter anymore.'

‘Then what happened to Anwar?'

‘They looped him off his horse and pulled him with a ligament.'

‘Then ate him, I suppose, or fed him to your filthy goddess.'

‘He was my grandfather,' said Maw. ‘They married him to Mawa when he was fifteen.'

‘Then what? Where is he?' She did not even know why she was talking to this treacherous man who had tried to murder her child but, because of a life time of curiosity, could not resist asking.

Maw shook his head. ‘The elders said that he had made Mawa pregnant and now he was no longer any use to us so our people did not mind when he disappeared.'

‘Disappeared where?' asked Devi.

‘They said he went home,' said Maw. ‘But it was long before I was born so I don't really know.'

Devi stood, staring, taking this in. ‘Then…' She worked this out slowly, reluctantly. ‘We are relations…'

‘I suppose so,' said Maw.

Neither of them mentioned Tikkipala.

‘Why have you come?' asked Devi, fiercely.

‘To tell you this before it is too late,' said Maw. ‘Because I might be the last person who knows. Now I must go for I have one last piece of work to do.' With a gentle finger he reached to touch her cheek but she shook him away. When she looked round, Maw was gone.

An hour later, the priest appeared, babbling. It took all of them some time, during which he had to be sat down and given glasses of brandy, before anyone could understand what he was talking about. And even when they understood, they all found it hard to take it in.

As he had approached his little church, he said, he had felt the silence coming from it. ‘When I opened the doors and went in, people sat upon the benches, old and young and little children. Their heads were bowed and I told myself, ‘They are at prayer. At
last they have discovered God.' I noticed that some of the babies had fallen to the floor where they lay very still. I wondered why their mothers did not pick them up. As I walked along the aisle, I thought, how still they are. It was only when I had climbed into the pulpit and opened my mouth to speak, that I realised they were all dead.' He began to blub, his nose running and his eyes red.

‘Dead? All dead?' cried Devi. ‘How can that be?' Her contempt for Maw grew even greater, because he had escaped the death of his people as well as trying to kill her child.

When news reached Mr Dar that the people of the tribe had all died, he said, ‘In that case it is time to wind up our operation in the high jungle.'

‘What can you mean?' cried the manager. ‘So much money has been invested in it. We can always find other workers and send them up there.'

But Mr Dar only said, ‘I have no need for the high jungle logging operation any longer. I will come, myself, to supervise the final arrangements.'

‘We will prepare for your visit, sir,' they told him hastily, and raced round preparing meals, tents, bedding and clothing for the journey.

The Raja and his family were going back to Bidwar. Khan was delighted. ‘Perhaps they will have learnt a lesson from all these bad events. Perhaps they will see now that these high jungle places are not suitable for civilised people,' he muttered to himself as he put petrol in and filled the radiator with water.

Somehow Devi and her father had lost their appetite for the hill palace. Even Nirmal was relieved, saying that perhaps high places were bad for creativity. ‘I have
not been able to make anything worth while here,' he said and began to be eager to return to his studio in Bidwar.

The priest was coming with them, for he had no congregation now. He spent most of the past two days curled in a chair, whimpering at intervals, and saying, either, ‘You should have seen her, the filthy yeti,' or ‘dead, dead, every single one.'

Tikkipala had become very pleased with himself and important. He too had become repetitive, saying to anyone who would listen, ‘I was got by a giant. I bet you've never seen one. She was going to eat me!' All his life grown ups had either listened to him patiently and for a very short while, when he told them tales of his lizard encounter, his trike crash or how he had found a snake skin. Quickly they would shut him up and sometimes not listen to him at all, telling him, ‘Not now, Tikkipala, can't you see I'm busy.' But lately, amazingly, everyone had started listening eagerly to everything he said.

‘And when she carried you up the mountain did she make a noise?'

‘Did she give you food?'

‘Did you try to talk to her?'

They became so eager for his answers that he began to give himself the little pleasure of holding back. ‘Can't remember,' he would say.

‘Oh, come on, darling, you must remember.'

After a while he began to give himself a new pleasure. He started embroidering a little. ‘She wore enormous earrings.'

‘I never saw them,' said Devi.

‘But don't forget what stress you were under,' said Nirmal and urged Tikkipala, ‘What were they like? Made of stones? Of metal?'

Tikkipala cast his mind around and tried to remember someone with earrings. ‘Like Ayah's.' he said at last.

Mr Dar's driver was taking the car over some especially bumpy road, wishing that sir, who was so moderate in all other things, would get himself a simple sturdy Ambassador for this kind of journey, when a tall figure came out so suddenly that the driver had to come to a screeching halt to avoid running him over.

Mr Dar, who was asleep in the back seat, woke abruptly and asked, ‘What are you stopping for?'

‘This fellow won't get out of my way,' said the driver, gesturing.

Mr Dar sat up and saw a naked dark skinned youth, holding some kind of bundle in his hands. The youth was in the middle of the narrow road, leaving no room for the car to pass.

Leaning out of the window Mr Dar shouted, ‘Get out of the way, fellow.'

‘I need to speak to you,' said Maw, coming round to the window.

‘Drive on,' cried Mr Dar. ‘The way is clear.'

But before the driver could get going, Maw opened the door and leapt in.

‘It is no use thinking you can rob me,' said Mr Dar calmly. ‘I never carry anything. You are wasting your time.' He seemed perfectly unperturbed.

‘I have not come to rob you,' said Maw. ‘Just to tell you something.'

‘Tell me, then get out,' snapped Mr Dar.

‘The driver must get out. I cannot say it if he is listening.'

‘What rubbish. Get out of the car this instant. Driver, haul the fellow out.'

The driver, who was not accustomed to hauling people, made some feeble snatches in Maw's direction.

‘Go, get out, driver,' said Maw gently. ‘I am trying to save your life.'

By the time the Raja and his family reached Bidwar, everyone had heard about Tikkipala's capture. The club was packed. There had not been so many people in it since Diwali. People could not wait to set eyes on the little boy who had been kidnapped by a giantess.

‘It's in all the papers,' said Queenie. ‘You and Tikkipala are famous.'

‘Photographers from Bombay want to come and do a full page feature this afternoon,' said Srila.

‘You'll have to wear your very best suit and smile nicely,' Mala warned Tikkipala. Since his kidnap he had taken to behaving badly, making funny faces when people began to question him, squinting his eyes and dragging his mouth out with his fingers. ‘She looked like this. She looked like that,' he would tell people.

‘Don't listen to him,' laughed Devi. ‘He's always talking rubbish these days.'

Next day, on the front pages of the papers, instead of pictures of Tikkipala and his mother, there was one of Mr Dar and another of Maw.

Devi snatched the paper up and read ‘Mr Dar of Sita Timbers and another man died in a mysterious explosion on the road to Parwal. The second man is thought to be a young tribal by the name of Maw, who had been adopted by the Raja of Bidwar and it is thought that he was responsible for the bomb. So far no one knows the motive for this suicide killing. The driver, who was unhurt, said that just before the bomb went off he heard the youth say to Mr Dar, ‘You are my grandfather.'

Anoo gasped as he read this. His hand shook so that the paper rattled. At last, still clutching it, he rose and went through the palace to the wing where his mother, the Ranee of Bidwar, lived.

‘Ma, I have something extraordinary and terrible to tell you,' he said. ‘Sit down.'

She sat and waited.

He gave the paper. ‘Read that,' he said.

She read it, then looked up. ‘So? I always said that Maw was trouble.'

‘Ma, don't you understand. This means that Mr Dar of Sita timbers is Anwar. He is your lost son, my lost brother.'

Sangita got up sharply. ‘My dear Anoo, what rubbish you talk. Why will none of you accept that a person can be twice born? Forget all this nonsense. You are sounding as bad as you father, with this kind of talk.'

Anoo showed the article to Devi and Nirmal. Nirmal looked alarmed. ‘How lucky Mr Dar is dead,' he said. ‘Because he was the true Raja of Bidwar, wasn't he? If he had come back he would taken the palace from you, and then where would I have made my statues?'

The Raja did not reply, but gave Nirmal a glance which was more savage than any words could have been.

Tikkipala no longer slept in a cot. He had a real bed like a grown up person only smaller. He also had his own bedroom. But after the episode at Parwal, even though he was back in the Bidwar palace, he still refused to sleep alone and insisted on coming into Devi and Nirmal's room.

‘Is it because you are frightened of the Tikki? She is dead and you are quite safe now,' said Devi.

Tikkipala was scornful. ‘I wasn't afraid of her. I thought she was silly.'

‘Why won't you go to your room then?' said Nirmal. ‘Your mother and I want to be alone.'

‘Why?'

‘We just do.' In the end they had to wait till the little boy fell asleep.

When Nirmal touched the place between Devi's breasts he could not find Devibidartis. ‘Where has it gone?' he asked.

Devi sighed. ‘It's gone forever. Forget it,' she said.