The God of Small Things

afternoon. “Is everyone here?” she asked.

“Oower Kochamma,” the Blue Army in the greenheat said. “We’re all here.”

Outside the Play, Rahel said to Velutha: “We’re not here are we? We’re not even Playing.”

“That is Exactly Right,” Velutha said. “We’re not even Playing. But what I would like to know is, where is our Esthapappychachen Kuttappen Peter Mon?”

And that became a delighted, breathless, Rumpelstiltskin-like dance among the rubber trees.

Oh Esthapappychachen Kuttappen Peter Mon.

Where, oh where have you gon?

And from Rumpelstiltskin it graduated to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

We seek him here, we seek him there,

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

Is be in heaven? Is be in hell?

That demmedel-usive Estha —Pen?

Kochu Maria cut a sample piece of cake for Mammachi’s approval.

“One piece each,” Mammachi confirmed to Kochu Maria, touching the piece lightly with rubyringed fingers to see if it was small enough.

Kochu Maria sawed up the rest of the cake messily, laboriously, breathing through her mouth, as though she was carving a hunk of roast lamb. She put the pieces on a large silver tray.

Mammachi played a Welcome Home, Our Sophie Mol melody on her violin.

A cloying, chocolate melody. Stickysweet, and meltybrown. Chocolate waves on a chocolate shore.

In the middle of the melody, Chacko raised his voice over the chocolate sound.

“Mamma!” he said (in his Reading Aloud voice). “Mamma! That’s enough! Enough violin!”

Mammachi stopped playing and looked in Chacko’s direction, the bow poised in midair.

“Enough? D’you think that’s enough, Chacko?”

“More than enough,” Chacko said.

“Enough’s enough,” Mammachi murmured to herself. “I think I’ll stop now.” As though the idea had suddenly occurred to her.

She put her violin away into its black, violin-shaped box. It closed like a suitcase. And the music closed with it.

Click. And click.

Mammachi put her dark glasses on again. And drew the drapes across the hot day.

Ammu emerged from the house and called to Rahel. “Rahel! I want you to have your afternoon nap! Come in after you’ve had your cake!”

Rahel’s heart sank. Afternoon Gnap. She hated those.

Ammu went back indoors.

Velutha put Rahel down, and she stood forlornly at the edge of the driveway, on the periphery of the Play, a Gnap looming large and nasty on her horizon.

“And please stop being so over-familiar with that man!” Baby Kochamma said to Rahel.

“Over-familiar?” Mammachi said. “Who is it, Chacko? Who’s being over-familiar?”

“Rahel,” Baby Kochamma said.

“Over-familiar with who?” “With whom,” Chacko corrected his mother. “All right, with whom is she being over-familiar?” Mammachi asked.

“Your Beloved Velutha—whom else?” Baby Kochamma said, and to Chacko, “Ask him where he was yesterday. Let’s bell the cat once and for all.”

“Not now,” Chacko said.

“`What’s over-familiar?” Sophie Mol asked Margaret Kochamma, who didn’t answer.

“Velutha? Is Velutha here? Are you here?” Mammachi asked the Afternoon.

“Oower, Kochamma.” He stepped through the trees into the Play.

“Did you find out what it was?” Mammachi asked.

“The washer in the foot-valve,” Velutha said. “I’ve changed it. It’s working now.”

“Then switch it on,” Mammachi said. “The tank is empty.”

“That man will be our Nemesis,” Baby Kochamma said. Not because she was clairvoyant and had had a sudden flash of prophetic vision. Just to get him into trouble. Nobody paid her any attention.

“Mark my words,” she said bitterly.

“See her?” Kochu Maria said when she got to Rahel with her tray of cake. She meant Sophie Mol. “When she grows up, she’ll be our Kochamma, and she’ll raise our salaries, and give us nylon saris for Onam.” Kochu Maria collected saris, though she hadn’t ever worn one, and probably never would.

“So what?” Rahel said. “By then I’ll be living in Africa.”

“Africa?” Kochu Maria sniggered. “Africa’s full of ugly black people and mosquitoes.”

“You’re the one who’s ugly,” Rahel said, and added (in English) “Stupid dwarf!”

“What did you say?” Kochu Maria said threateningly. “Don’t tell me. I know. I heard. I’ll tell Mammachi. Just wait!”

Rahel walked across to the old well where there were usually some ants to kill. Red ants that had a sour farty smell when they were squashed. Kochu Maria followed her with the tray of cake.

Rahel said she didn’t want any of the stupid cake.

“Kushumbi, ” Kochu Maria said. “Jealous people go straight to hell.”

“Who’s jealous?”

“I don’t know. You tell me,” Kochu Maria said, with a frilly apron and a vinegar heart

Rahel put on her sunglasses and looked back into the Play. Everything was Angry-colored. Sophie Mol, standing between Margaret Kochamma and Chacko, looked as though she ought to be slapped. Rahel found a whole column of juicy ants. They were on their way to church. All dressed in red. They had to be killed before they got there. Squished and squashed with a stone. You can’t have smelly ants in church.

The ants made a faint crunchy sound as life left them. Like an elf eating toast or a crisp biscuit.

The Antly Church would be empty and the Antly Bishop would wait in his funny Antly Bishop clothes, swinging Frankincense in a silver pot. And nobody would arrive.

After he had waited for a reasonably Antly amount of time, he would get a funny Antly Bishop frown on his forehead, and shake his head sadly. He would look at the glowing Antly stained-glass windows and when he finished looking at them, he would lock the church with an enormous key and make it dark. Then he’d go home to his wife and (if she wasn’t dead) they’d have an Antly Afternoon Gnap.

Sophie Mol, hatted bell-bottomed and Loved from the Beginning, walked out of the Play to see what Rahel was doing behind the well. But the Play went with her. Walked when she walked, stopped when she stopped. Fond smiles followed her. Kochu Maria moved the cake tray out of the way of her adoring downwards smile as Sophie squatted down in the well-squelch (yellow bottoms of bells muddy wet now).

Sophie Mol inspected the smelly mayhem with clinical detachment. The stone was coated with crushed red carcasses and a few feebly waving legs.

Kochu Maria watched with her cake crumbs.

The Fond Smiles watched Fondly.