bees on each nostril offered him yellow laddoos in a box. Estha shook his head. She smiled and coaxed, her kind eyes disappeared into slits behind her glasses. She made kissing sounds with her mouth.
“Try one. Verrrry sweet,” she said in Tamil.
“Sweet,” her oldest daughter, who was about Estha’s age, said in English.
Estha shook his head again. The lady ruffled his hair and spoiled his puff. Her family (husband and three children) was already eating. Big round yellow laddoo crumbs on the seat. Trainrumbles under their feet. The blue nightlight not yet on.
The eating lady’s small son switched it on. The eating lady switched it off. She explained to the child that it was a sleeping light. Not an awake light.
Every First Class train thing was green. The seats green. The berths green. The floor green. The chains green. Darkgreen Lightgreen.
To Stop Train Pull Chain, it said in green.
Ot pots niart llup niahc, Estha thought in green.
Through the window bars, Ammu held his hand.
“Keep your ticket carefully,” Ammu’s mouth said. Ammu’s trying-not-to-cry mouth. “They’ll come and check.”
Estha nodded down at Ammu’s face tilted up to the train window. At Rahel, small and smudged with station dirt. All three of them bonded by the certain, separate knowledge that they had loved a man to death.
That wasn’t in the papers.
It took the twins years to understand Ammu’s part in what had happened. At Sophie Mol’s funeral and in the days before Estha was Returned, they saw her swollen eyes, and with the self-centeredness of children, held themselves wholly culpable for her grief.
“Eat the sandwiches before they get soggy,” Ammu said. “And don’t forget to write.”
She scanned the finger-nails of the little hand she held, and slid a black sickle of dirt from under the thumb-nail.
“And look after my sweetheart for me. Until I come and get him.”
“When, Ammu? When will you come for him?”
“Soon.”
“But when? When eggzackly?”
“Soon, sweetheart. As soon as I can.”
“Month-after-next? Ammu?” Deliberately making it a long time away so that Ammu would say
“As soon as I get a job. As soon as I can go away from here and get a job,” Ammu said. —
“But that will be never!” A wave of panic. A bottomless bottomful feeling.
The eating lady eavesdropped indulgently.
“See how nicely he speaks English,” she said to her children in Tamil.
“But that will be never,” her oldest daughter said combatively… “En ee vee ee aar. Never.”
By “never” Estha had only meant that it would be too far away. That it wouldn’t be now, wouldn’t be soon.
By “never” he hadn’t meant, Not Ever.
But that’s how the words came out
For Never they just took the 0 and Tout of Not Ever.
They?
The Government.
Where people were sent to Jolly Well Behave.
And that’s how it had all turned out.
Never. Not Ever.
It was his fault that the faraway man in Ammu’s chest stopped shouting. His fault that she died alone in the lodge with no one to lie at the back of her and talk to her.
Because he was the one that had said it
“And we’ll be able to afford it because it will be Ours!” Estha said with his enduring pragmatism. His eye on the main chance. Free bus rides. Free funerals. Free education. Little Man. He lived in a cara-van. Dum dum.
“We’ll have our own house,” Ammu said.
“A little house,” Rahel said.
“And in our school we’ll have classrooms and blackboards,” Estha said.
“And chalk.”
“And Real Teachers teaching.”
“And proper punishments,” Rahel said.
This was the stuff their dreams were made of. On the day that Estha was Returned. Chalk. Blackboards. Proper punishments.
They didn’t ask to be let off lightly. They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.
Without warning the train began to move. Very slowly.
Estha’s pupils dilated. His nails dug into Ammu’s hand as she walked along the platform. Her walk turning into a run as the Madras Mail picked up speed.
“Ammu!” Estha said as she disengaged her hand. Prising loose small finger after finger.
“Ammu! Feeling vomity!”
Estha’s voice lifted into a wail.
Little Elvis-the-Pelvis with a spoiled, special-outing puff. And beige and pointy shoes. He left his voice behind.
On the station platform Rahel doubled over and screamed and screamed.
The train pulled out. The light pulled in.
Twenty-three years later, Rahel, dark woman in a yellow T-shirt, turns to Estha in the dark.
“Esthapappychachen Kuttappen Peter Mon,” she says.
She whispers.
She moves her mouth.
Their beautiful mother’s mouth.
Estha, sitting very straight, waiting to be arrested, takes his fingers to it. To touch the words it makes. To keep the whisper. His fingers follow the shape of it. The touch of teeth. His hand is held and kissed.
Pressed against the coldness of a cheek, wet with shattered rain.
Then she sat up and put her arms around him. Drew him down beside her.
