Velutha, Vellya Paapen and Kuttappen lived in a little laterite hut, downriver from the Ayemenem house. A three-minute run through the coconut trees for Esthappen and Rahel. They had only just arrived in Ayemenem with Ammu and were too young to remember Velutha when he left. But in the months since he had returned, they had grown to be the best of friends. They were forbidden from visiting his house, but they did. They would sit with him for hours, on their haunches—hunched punctuation marks in a pool of wood shavings—and wonder how he always seemed to know what smooth shapes waited inside the wood for him. They loved the way wood, in Velutha’s hands, seemed to soften and become as pliable as Plasticine. He was teaching them to use a planer. His house (on a good day) smelled of fresh wood shavings and the sun. Of red fish curry cooked with black tamarind. The best fish curry, according to Estha, in the whole world.
It was Velutha who made Rahel her luckiest-ever fishing rod and taught her and Estha to fish.
And on that skyblue December day, it was him that she saw through her red sunglasses, marching with a red flag at the level crossing outside Cochin.
Steelshrill police whistles pierced holes in the Noise Umbrella. Through the jagged umbrella holes Rahel could see pieces of red sky. And in. the red sky, hot red kites wheeled, looking for rats. In their hooded yellow eyes there was a road and redflags marching. And a white shirt over a black back with a birthmark.
Marching.
Terror, sweat, and talcum powder had blended into a mauve paste between Baby Kochamma’s rings of neckfat. Spit coagulated into little white gobs at the corners of her mouth. She imagined she saw a man in the procession who looked like the photograph in the newspapers of the Naxalite called Rajan, who was rumored to have moved south from Paighat. She imagined he had looked straight at her.
A man with a red flag and a face like a knot opened Rahel’s door because it wasn’t locked. The doorway was full of men who’d stopped to stare.
“Feeling hot, baby?’ the man like a knot asked Rahel kindly in Malayalam.
Then, unkindly, “Ask your daddy to buy you an Air Condition!” and he hooted with delight at his own wit and timing. Rahel smiled back at him, pleased to have Chacko mistaken for her father. Like a normal family.
“Don’t answer!” Baby Kochamma whispered hoarsely. “Look down! Just look down!”
The man with the Rag turned his attention to her. She was looking down at the floor of the car. Like a coy, frightened bride who had been married off to a stranger.
“Hello, sister,” the man said carefully in English. “What is your name please?”
When Baby Kochamma didn’t answer, he looked back at his cohecklers.
“She has no name.”
“What about Modalali Mariakutty?” someone suggested with a giggle. Modalali in Malayalam means landlord.
“A, B, C, D, X, Y, Z,” somebody else said, irrelevantly.
More students crowded around. They all wore handkerchiefs or printed Bombay Dyeing hand towels on their heads to stave off the sun. They looked like extras who had wandered off the sets of the Malayalam version of
The man like a knot gave Baby Kochamma his red flag as a present.
“Here,” he said. “Hold it.”
Baby Kochamrna held it, still not looking at him.
“Wave it,” he ordered.
She had to wave it. She had no choice. It smelled of new cloth and a shop. Crisp and dusty
She tried to wave it as though she wasn’t waving it.
“Now say “Inquilab Zindabad.”
“Inquilab Zindabad,” Baby Kochamma whispered.
“Good girl.”
The crowd roared with laughter.
A shrillwhistle blew.
“Okay then,” the man said to Baby Kochamma in English, as though they had successfully concluded a business deal. “Bye-bye!”
He slammed the skyblue door shut Baby Kochamma wobbled. The crowd around the car unclotted and went on with its march.
Baby Kochamma rolled the red flag up and put it on the ledge behind the backseat. She put her rosary back into her blouse where she kept it with her melons. She busied herself with this and that, trying to salvage some dignity
After the last few men walked past, Chacko said it was all right now to roll down the windows.
“Are you sure it was him?’ Chacko asked Rahel.
`Who?” Rahel said, suddenly cautious.
“Are you sure it was Velutha?”
“Hmmm…?” Rahel said, playing for time, trying to decipher Estha’s frantic thought signals.
“I said, are you sure that the man you saw was Velutha?” Chacko said for the third time.
“Mmm… nyes… m… m… almost,” Rahel said.
“You’re almost sure?” Chacko said.
“No… it was almost Vehitha,” Rahel said. “it almost looked like him…”
“So you’re not sure then?”
“Almost not.” Rahel slid a look at Estha for approval.
“It must have been him,” Baby Kochamma said. “It’s Trivandrum that’s done this to him. They all go there and come back thinking they’re some great politicos.”
Nobody seemed particularly impressed by her insight.
“We should keep an eye on him,” Baby Kochamrna said. “If he starts this Union business in the factory… I’ve noticed some signs, some rudeness, some ingratitude. The other day I asked him to help me with the rocks for my scree bed and he—”
“I saw Velutha at home before we left,” Estha said brightly. “So how could it be him?”
“For his own sake,” Baby Kochamma said, darkly, “I hope it wasn’t. And next time, Esthappen, don’t interrupt.”
She was annoyed that nobody asked her what a scree bed was.
In the days that followed, Baby Kochamma focused all her fury at her public humiliation on Velutha. She sharpened it like a pencil. In her mind he grew to represent the march. And the man who had forced her to wave the Marxist Party flag. And the man who christened her Modalali Mariakutty. And all the men who had laughed at her.
She began to hate him.
From the way Ammu held her head, Rahel could tell that she was still angry. Rahel looked at her watch. Ten to two. Still no train. She put her chin on the windowsill. She could feel the gray gristle of the felt that cushioned the window glass pressing into her chinskin. She took off her sunglasses to get a better look at the dead frog squashed on the road. It was so dead and squashed so flat that it looked more like a frog-shaped stain on the road than a frog. Rahel wondered if Miss Mitten had been squashed into a Miss Mitten-shaped stain by the milk truck that killed her.
With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat-shaped holes in the Universe.
There were so many stains on the road.
Squashed Miss Mitten-shaped stains in the Universe.
Squashed frog-shaped stains in the Universe.
Squashed crows that had tried to eat the squashed frog-shaped stains in the Universe.
Squashed dogs that ate the squashed crow-shaped stains in the Universe.
Feathers. Mangoes. Spit.
All the way to Cochin.
The sun shone through the Plymouth window directly down at Rahel. She closed her eyes and shone back at it. Even behind her eyelids the light was bright and hot. The sky was orange, and the coconut trees were sea
