“Very unlikely,” Estha said.
“Anyway, after Mammachi, Velutha, and then—”
“Who’s Velutha?” Sophie Mol wanted to know.
“A man we love,” Rahel said. “And after Velutha, you,” Rahel said “Me? What d’you love me for?” Sophie Mol said. “Because we’re firstcousins. So I have to,” Rahel said piously. “But you don’t even know me,” Sophie Mol said. “And anyway, I don’t love you.”
“But you will, when you come to know me,” Rahel said confidently.
“I doubt it,” Estha said.
“Why not?” Sophie Mol said.
“Because,” Estha said. “And anyway she’s most probably going to be a dwarf.”
As though loving a dwarf was completely out of the question.
“I’m not,” Rahel said.
“You are,” Estha said.
“I’m not”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. We’re twins,” Estha explained to Sophie Mol, “and just see how much shorter she is.”
Rahel obligingly took a deep breath, threw her chest out and stood back to back with Estha in the airport car park, for Sophie Mol to see just how much shorter she was.
Maybe you’ll be a midget,” Sophie Mol suggested. “That’s taller than a dwarf and shorter than a… Human Being.”
The silence was unsure of this compromise.
In the doorway of the Arrivals Lounge, a shadowy, red-mouthed roo-shaped silhouette waved a cemently paw only at Rahel. Cement kisses whirred through the air like small helicopters.
“D’you know how to sashay?” Sophie Mol wanted to know.
“No. We don’t sashay in India,” Ambassador Estha said.
“Well, in England we do,” Sophie Mol said. “All the models do. On television. Look-it’s easy.”
And the three of them, led by Sophie Mol, sashayed across the airport car park, swaying like fashion models, Eagle flasks and Made-in-England go-go bags bumping around their hips. Damp dwarfs walking tall.
Shadows followed them. Silver jets in a blue church sky, like moths in a beam of light.
The skyblue Plymouth with tailfins had a smile for Sophie Mol. A chromebumpered sharksmile.
A Paradise Pickles carsmile.
When she saw the carrier with the painted pickle bottles and the list of Paradise products, Margaret Kochamma said, “Oh dear! I feel as though I’m in an advertisement!” She said Oh dear! a lot.
Oh dear! Oh dearohdear!
“I didn’t know you did pineapple slices!” she said. “Sophie loves pineapple, don’t you Soph?”
“Sometimes,” Soph said. “And sometimes not.”
Margaret Kochamma climbed into the advertisement with her brown back-freckles and her arm-freckles and her flowered dress with legs underneath.
Sophie Mol sat in front between Chacko and Margaret Kochamma, just her hat peeping over the car seat. Because she was their daughter.
Rahel and Estha sat at the back. The luggage was in the boot.
Boot was a lovely word. Sturdy was a terrible word. Near Ettumanoor they passed a dead temple elephant, electrocuted by a high tension wire that had fallen on the road. An engineer from the Ettumanoor municipality was supervising the disposal of the carcass. They had to be careful because the decision would serve as precedent for all future Government Pachyderm Carcass Disposals. Not a matter to be treated lightly. There was a fire engine and some confused firemen. The municipal officer had a file and was shouting a lot. There was a Joy Ice Cream cart and a man selling peanuts in narrow cones of paper cleverly designed to hold not more than eight or nine nuts.
Sophie Mol said, “Look, a dead elephant.”
Chacko stopped to ask whether it was by any chance Kochu Thomban (Little Tusker), the Ayemenem temple elephant who came to the Ayemenem House once a month for a coconut. They said it wasn’t
Relieved that it was a stranger, and not an elephant they knew, they drove on.
“Thang God,” Estha said.
“Thank God, Estha,” Baby Kochamma corrected him.
On the way, Sophie Mol learned to recognize the first whiff of the approaching stench of unprocessed rubber and to clamp her nostrils shut until long after the truck carrying it had driven past.
Baby Kochamma suggested a car song.
Estha and Rahel had to sing in English in obedient voices. Breezily. As though they hadn’t been made to rehearse it all week long. Ambassador E. Pelvis and Ambassador S. Insect.
RejOice in the— Lo-Ord Or-ways
And again I say re-jOice.
Their Prer NUN sea ayshun was perfect.
The Plymouth rushed through the green midday heat, promoting pickles on its roof, and the skyblue sky in its tailfins.
Just outside Ayemenem they drove into a cabbage-green butterfly (Or perhaps it drove into them).
Chapter 7.
Wisdom Exercise Notebooks
In Pappachi’s study, mounted butterflies and moths had disintegrated into small heaps of iridescent dust that powdered the bottom of their glass display cases, leaving the pins that had impaled them naked. Cruel. The room was rank with fungus and disuse. An old neon-green hula hoop hung from a wooden peg on the wall, a huge saint’s discarded halo. A column of shining black ants walked across a windowsill, their bottoms tilted upwards, like a line of mincing chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley musical silhouetted against the sun. Butted and beautiful.
Rahel (on a stool, on top of a table) rummaged in a book cupboard with dull, dirty glass panes. Her bare footprints were clear in the dust on the floor. They led from the door to the table (dragged to the bookshelf) to the stool (dragged to the table and lifted onto it). She was looking for something. Her life had a-size and a shape now. She had half-moons under her eyes and a team of trolls on her horizon.
On the top shelf, the leather binding on Pappachi’s set of
Rahel groped behind the row of books and brought out hidden things.
A smooth seashell and a spiky one.
A plastic case for contact lenses. An orange pipette.
A silver crucifix on a string of beads. Baby Kochamma’s rosary.
She held it up against the light. Each greedy bead grabbed its share of sun.
A shadow fell across the sunlit rectangle on the study floor. Rahel turned towards the door with her string of light.
“Imagine. It’s still here. I stole it. After you were Returned.” That word slipped out easily. Returned. As though that was what twins were meant lot To be borrowed and returned. Like library books.
Estha wouldn’t look up. His mind was full of trains. He blocked the light from the door An Estha-shaped Hole in the Universe.
Behind the books, Rahel’s puzzled fingers encountered something else. Another magpie had had the same
