“Rahel,” Ammu said, “do you realize what you have just done?”
Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu.
“It’s all right. Don’t be scared,” Ammu said. “Just answer me. Do you?”
“What?” Rahel said in the smallest voice she had.
“Realize what you’ve just done?” Ammu said.
Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu.
“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?” Ammu said. “When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
A cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel’s heart. Where its icy legs touched her, she got goosebumps. Six goosebumps on her careless heart
A little less her Ammu loved her.
And so, out the gate, up the road, and to the left. The taxi stand. A hurt mother, an ex-nun, a hot child and a cold one. Six goosebumps and a moth.
The taxi smelled of sleep. Old clothes rolled up. Damp towels. Armpits. It was, after all, the taxi driver’s home. He lived in it. It was the only place he had to store his smells. The seats had been killed. Ripped. A swathe of dirty yellow sponge spilled out and shivered on the backseat like an immense jaundiced liver. The driver had the ferrety alertness of a small rodent. He had a hooked Roman nose and a Little Richard mustache. He was so small that he watched the road through the steering wheel. To passing traffic it looked like a taxi with passengers but no driver. He drove fast, pugnaciously, darting into empty spaces, nudging other cars out of their lanes. Accelerating at zebra crossings. Jumping lights.
“Why not use a cushion or a pillow or something?” Baby Kochamma suggested in her friendly voice. “You’ll be able to see better.”
“Why not mind your own business, sister?” the driver suggested in his unfriendly one.
Driving past the inky sea, Estha put his head out of the window. He could taste the hot, salt breeze on his mouth. He could feel it lift his hair. He knew that if Ammu found out about what he had done with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man, she’d love him less as well. Very much less. He felt the shaming churning heaving turning sickness in his stomach. He longed for the river. Because water always helps.
The sticky neon night rushed past the taxi window. It was hot inside the taxi, and quiet Baby Kochamma looked flushed and excited. She loved not being the cause of ill-feeling. Every time a pye-dog strayed onto the road, the driver made a sincere effort to kill it.
The moth on Rahel’s heart spread its velvet wings, and the chill crept into her bones.
In the Hotel Sea Queen car park, the skyblue Plymouth gossiped with other, smaller cars. HJ’I:p H.thp Hsnooh-snah. A big lady at a small ladies’ party. Tailfins aflutter.
“Room numbers 313 and 327,” the man at the reception desk said. “Non-airconditioned. Twin beds. Lift is closed for repair.”
The bellboy who took them up wasn’t a boy and hadn’t a bell, He had dim eyes and two buttons missing on his frayed maroon coat. His grayed undershirt showed. He had to wear his silly bellhop’s cap tilted sideways, its tight plastic strap sunk into his sagging dewlap. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to make an old man wear a cap sideways like that and arbitrarily re-order the way in which age chose to hang from his chin.
There were more red steps to climb. The same red carpet from the cinema hall was following them around. Magic flying carpet.
Chacko was in his room. Caught feasting. Roast chicken, chips, sweet corn and chicken soup, two parathas and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Sauce in a sauceboat. Chacko often said that his ambition was to die of overeating. Mammachi said it was a sure sign of suppressed unhappiness. Chacko said it was no such thing. He said it was Sheer Greed.
Chacko was puzzled to see everybody back so early, but pretended otherwise. He kept eating.
The original plan had been that Estha would sleep with Chacko, and Rahel with Ammu and Baby Kochamma. But now that Estha wasn’t well and Love had been re-apportioned (Ammu loved her a little less), Rahel would have to sleep with Chacko, and Estha with Ammu and Baby Kochamma.
Ammu took Rahel’s pajamas and toothbrush out of the suitcase and put them on the bed.
“Here,” Ammu said.
Two clicks to close the suitcase.
Click. And click.
“Ammu,” Rahel said, “shall I miss dinner as my punishment?”
She was keen to exchange punishments. No dinner, in exchange for Ammu loving her the same as before.
“As you please,” Ammu said. “But I advise you to eat. If you want to grow, that is. Maybe you could share some of Chacko’s chicken.”
“Maybe and maybe not,” Chacko said.
“But what about my punishment?” Rahel said. “You haven’t given me my punishment!”
“Some things come with their own punishments,” Baby Kochamma said. As though she was explaining a sum that Rahel couldn’t understand.
Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn more about punishments soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. You could spend your whole life in them, wandering through dark shelving.
Baby Kochamma’s goodnight kiss left a little spit on Rahel’s cheek. She wiped it off with her shoulder.
“Goodnight Godbless,” Ammu said. But she said it with her back. She was already gone.
“Goodnight,” Estha said, too sick to love his sister.
Rahel Alone watched them walk down the hotel corridor like silent but substantial ghosts. Two big, one small, in beige and pointy hoes. The red carpet took away their feet sounds.
Rahel stood in the hotel room doorway, full of sadness.
She had in her the sadness of Sophie Mol coming. The sadness of Ammu’s loving her a little less. And the sadness of whatever the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man had done to Estha in Abhilash Talkies.
A stinging wind blew across her dry, aching eyes.
Chacko put a leg of chicken and some finger chips onto a quarter plate for Rahel. “No thank you,” Rahel said, hoping that if she could somehow effect her own punishment, Ammu would rescind hers.
“What about some ice cream with chocolate sauce?” Chacko said.
“No thank you,” Rahel said.
“Fine,” Chacko said. “But you don’t know what you’re missing.”
He finished all the chicken and then all the ice cream.
Rahel changed into her pajamas.
“Please don’t tell me what it is you’re being punished for,” Chacko said. “I can’t bear to hear about it.” He was mopping the last of the chocolate sauce from the sauceboat with a piece of paratha. His disgusting, after- sweet sweet. “What was it? Scratching your mosquito bites till they bled? Not saying `Thank you’ to the taxi driver?”
“Something much worse than that,” Rahel said, loyal to Ammu.
“Don’t tell me,” Chacko said. “I don’t want to know.”
He rang for room service and a tired bearer came to take away the plates and bones. He tried to catch the dinner smells, but they escaped and climbed into the limp brown hotel curtains.
A dinnerless niece and her dinnerfull uncle brushed their teeth together in the Hotel Sea Queen bathroom. She, a forlorn, stubby convict in striped pajamas and a Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo. He, in his cotton vest and underpants. His vest, taut and stretched over his round stomach like a second skin, went slack over the depression of his belly button.
When Rahel held her frothing toothbrush still and moved her teeth instead, he didn’t say mustn’t.
He wasn’t a Fascist.
They took it in turns to spit. Rahel carefully examined her white Binaca froth as it dribbled down the side
