Chacko took the shortcut through the tilting rubber trees so that he would have to walk only a very short stretch down the main road to Comrade K. N. M. Pillai’s house. He looked faintly absurd, stepping over the carpet of dry leaves in his tight airport suit, his tie blown over his shoulder.
Comrade Pillai wasn’t in when Chacko arrived. His wife, Kalyani, with fresh sandalwood paste on her forehead, made him sit down on a steel folding chair in their small front room and disappeared through the bright pink, nylon-lace curtained doorway into a dark adjoining room, where the small flame from a large brass oil lamp flickered. The cloying smell of incense drifted through the doorway, over which a small wooden placard said
Chacko was too big for the room. The blue walls crowded him. He glanced around, tense and a little uneasy. A towel dried on the bars of the small green window. The dining table was covered with a bright flowered plastic tablecloth. Midges whirred around a bunch of small bananas on a blue-rimmed white enamel plate. In one corner of the room there was a pile of green unhusked coconuts. A child’s rubber slippers lay pigeon-toed in the bright parallelogram of barred sunlight on the floor. A glass-paned cupboard stood next to the table. It had printed curtains hanging on the inside, hiding its contents.
Comrade Pillai’s mother, a minute old lady in a brown blouse and off-white mundu, sat on the edge of the high wooden bed that was pushed against the wall, her feet dangling high above the floor. She wore a thin white towel arranged diagonally over her chest and slung over one shoulder. A funnel of mosquitoes, like an inverted dunce cap, whined over her head. She sat with her cheek resting in the palm of her hand, bunching together all the wrinkles on that side of her face. Every inch of her, even her wrists and ankles, were wrinkled. Only the skin on her throat was taut and smooth, stretched over an enormous goiter. Her fountain of youth. She stared vacantly at the wall opposite her, rocking herself gently, grunting regular, rhythmic little grunts, like a bored passenger on a long bus journey.
Comrade Pillai’s SSLC, BA and MA certificates were framed and hung on the wall behind her head.
On another wall was a framed photograph of Comrade Pillai garlanding Comrade E. M. S. Namboodiripad. There was a microphone on a stand, shining in the foreground with a sign that said Ajantha.
The rotating table fan by the bed measured out its mechanical breeze in exemplary; democratic turns— first lifting what was left of old Mrs. Pillai’s hair, then Chacko’s. The mosquitoes dispersed and re-assembled tirelessly.
Through the window Chacko could see the tops of buses, luggage in their luggage racks, as they thundered by. A jeep with a loudspeaker drove past, blaring a Marxist Party song whose theme was Unemployment. The chorus was in English, the rest of it in Malayalam.
No vacancy! No vacancy!
Wherever in the world a poor man goes,
No no no no no vacancy!
“No” pronounced to rhyme with door.
Kalyani returned with a stainless-steel glass of filter coffee and a stainless-steel plate of banana chips (bright yellow with little black seeds in the center) for Chacko.
“He has gone to Olassa. He’ll be back any time now,” she said. She referred to her husband as addeham, which was the respectful form of “he,” whereas “he” called her “eli,” which was, approximately, “Hey, you!”
She was a lush, beautiful woman with golden-brown skin and huge eyes. Her long frizzy hair was damp and hung loose down her back, plaited only at the very end. It had wet the back of her tight, deep-red blouse and stained it a tighter, deeper red. From where the sleeves ended, her soft arm-flesh swelled and dropped over her dimpled elbows in a sumptuous bulge. Her white mundu and kavath were crisp and ironed. She smelled of sandalwood and the crushed green gram that she used instead of soap. For the first time in years, Chacko watched her without the faintest stirring of sexual desire. He had a wife (Ex-wife, Chacko!) at home. With arm freckles and back freckles. With a blue dress and legs underneath.
Young Lenin appeared at the door in red Stretchlon shorts. He stood on one thin leg like a stork and twisted the pink lace curtain into a pole, staring at Chacko with his mother’s eyes. He was six now, long past the age of pushing things up his nose.
“Mon, go and call Latha,” Mrs. Pillai said to him.
Lenin remained where he was, and, still staring at Chacko, screeched effortlessly, in the way only children can.
“Latha! Latha! You’re wanted!”
“Our niece from Kottayam. His elder brother’s daughter,” Mrs. Pillai explained. “She won the First Prize for Elocution at the Youth Festival in Trivandrum last week.”
A combative-looking young girl of about twelve or thirteen appeared through the lace curtain. She wore a long, printed skirt that reached all the way down to her ankles and a short, waist-length white blouse with darts that made room for future breasts. Her oiled hair was parted into two halves. Each of her tight, shining plaits was looped over and tied with ribbons so that they hung down on either side of her face like the outlines of large, drooping ears that hadn’t been colored in yet.
“D’you know who this is?” Mrs. Pillai asked Latha.
Latha shook her head.
“Chacko saar. Our factory Modalali.”
Latha stared at him with a composure and a lack of curiosity unusual in a thirteen-year-old.
“He studied in London Oxford,” Mrs. Pillai said. “Will you do your recitation for him?” —
Latha complied without hesitation. She planted her feet slightly apart.
“Respected Chairman”—she bowed to Chacko—”mydearjudges and”—she looked around at the imaginary audience crowded into the small, hot room—”beloved friends.” She paused theatrically.
“Today I would like to recite to you a poem by Sir Walter Scott entitled `Lochinvar.’” She clasped her hands behind her back. A film fell over her eyes. Her gaze was fixed unseeingly just above Chacko’s head. She swayed slightly as she spoke. At first Chacko thought it was a Malayalam translation of “Lochinvar.” The words ran into each other. Like in Malayalam, the last syllable of one word attached itself to the first syllable of the next. It was rendered at remarkable speed:
“O, young Loch in varbas scum oat of the vest
Through wall the vide Border his teed was the be:
sTand savissgood broadsod he weapon sadnun,
He rod all unarmed, and he rod al lalone..
The poem was interspersed with grunts from the old lady on the bed, which no one except Chacko seemed to notice.
Whe swam the Eske river where fird there was none;
Buitair he alighted at Netherby Gate,-
The bride had cansended, the galla ntcame late.”
Comrade Pillai arrived mid-poem; a sheen of sweat glazed his skin, his mundu was folded up over his knees, dark sweatstains spread under his Terylene armpits. In his late thirties, he was an unathietic, sallow little man. His legs were already spindly and his taut, distended belly, like his tiny mother’s goiter, was completely at odds with the rest of his thin, narrow body and alert face. As though something in their family genes had bestowed on them compulsory bumps that appeared randomly on different parts of their bodies.
His neat pencil mustache divided his upper lip horizontally into half and ended exactly in line with the ends of his mouth. His hairline had begun to recede and he made no attempt to hide it His hair was oiled and combed back off his forehead. Clearly youth was not what he was after. He had the easy authority of the Man of the House. He smiled and nodded a greeting to Chacko, but did not acknowledge the presence of his wife or his mother.
Latha’s eyes flicked towards him for permission to continue, with the poem. It was granted. Comrade Pillai took off his shirt, rolled it into a ball and wiped his armpits with it. When he finished, Kalyani took it from him and held it as though it was a gift. A bouquet of flowers. Comrade Pillai, in his sleeveless vest, sat on a folding chair and pulled his left foot up onto his right thigh. Through the rest of his niece’s recitation, he sat staring meditatively down at the floor, his chin cupped in the palm of his hand, tapping his right foot in time with the meter and cadence of the poem. With his other hand he massaged the exquisitely arched instep of his left foot.
When Latha finished, Chacko applauded with genuine kindness. She did not acknowledge his applause with even a flicker of a smile. She was like an East German swimmer at a local competition. Her eyes were firmly
