Between the Assassinations

by Aravind Adiga

  On Sundays, he took Maria along to Mass at the cathedral; construction stopped in the morning, to let people in, but as they emerged, they could see the contractors getting ready to resume work in the evening.

  “Why doesn’t Madam come to Mass? Isn’t she a Christian too?” Maria asked as they were leaving church.

  He took a deep breath. “The rich do as they want. It’s not for us to question them.”

  He noticed Mrs. Gomes talking to Maria; with her open, generous nature, which did not distinguish between rich and poor, she was becoming more than just a mistress to Maria, but a good friend. It was exactly as he had hoped.

  In the evenings he missed his drink, but he filled the time by walking about, or by listening to a radio and letting his mind drift. He thought, Maria can get married next year. She had a status now as a cook in a rich woman’s house. Boys would line up for her back home in the village.

  After that, he figured, it would be time for his own marriage, which he had put off so long, out of a combination of bitterness, poverty, and shame. Yes, time for marriage, and children. Yet regret still gnawed at him, created by his contact with this rich woman, that he could have done so much more with his life.

  “You’re a lucky man, George,” Mrs. Gomes said one evening, watching him rub the car with a wet cloth. “You have a wonderful sister.”

  “Thank you, madam.”

  “Why don’t you take Maria around the city? She hasn’t seen anything in Kittur, has she?”

  He decided that this was a clear opportunity to show some initiative. “Why don’t we all three go together, madam?”

  The three of them drove down for a drive to the beach. Mrs. Gomes and Maria went for a walk along the sand. He watched from a distance. When they returned, he was waiting with a paper cone filled with roasted groundnuts for Maria.

  “Don’t I get some too?” Mrs. Gomes demanded, and he hurried to pour some nuts out, and she took them from his hands, and that was how he touched her for the first time.

  It was raining again in Valencia, and he knew he had been at the house almost a year. One day, the new mosquito man came to the backyard. Mrs. Gomes watched as George directed the fellow around the gutters and canals in the back, to make sure not a spot was missed.

  That evening, she called him to the house and said, “George, you should do it yourself. Please spray the gutter yourself, like last year.”

  Her voice became sweet, and though it was the same voice she used to make him move mountains for her, this time he stiffened. He was offended that she would still ask him to perform such a task.

  “Why not?” She raised her voice angrily. She shrieked, “You work for me! You do what I say!”

  The two of them stared at each other, and then, grumbling and cursing her, he left the house. He wandered aimlessly for some time, then decided to visit the cathedral again, to see how the old fellows were doing.

  Nothing much had changed in the field by the cathedral. The construction had been held up, he was told, because of the rector’s death. It would start again soon.

  His other friends were missing-they had left the work and returned to the village-but Guru was there.

  “Now that you’re here, why don’t we…” Guru made the gesture of a bottle being emptied down a throat.

  They went to an arrack shop, and there was some fine drinking, just like in old times.

  “So how are things with you and your princess?” Guru asked.

  “Oh, these rich people are all the same,” George said bitterly. “We’re just trash to them. A rich woman can never see a poor man as a man. Just as a servant.”

  He remembered his carefree days, before he was tied down to a house and to Madam-and he became resentful at having lost his freedom. He left early, shortly before midnight, saying that he had something to take care of at the house. On the way back, he staggered drunkenly, singing a Konkani song; but another pulse had started to throb beneath the lighthearted film number.

  As he drew near the gate, his voice dropped down and died out, and he realized he was walking with exaggerated stealth. He wondered why, and felt frightened of himself.

  He opened the latch of the gate soundlessly, and walked toward the back door of the house. He had been holding the key in his hand for some time; bending down to the lock and squinting at the keyhole, he inserted it. Opening the door carefully and quietly, he walked into the house. The heavy washing machine lay in the dark, like a night watchman. In the distance wisps of cool air escaped from a crack in the closed door of her bedroom.

  George breathed slowly. His one thought, as he staggered forward, was that he must avoid walking into the washing machine.

  “Oh, God,” he said suddenly. He realized that he had banged his knee into the washing machine and the damn machine was reverberating.

  “Oh, God,” he said again, with the dim, desperate consciousness that he had spoken too loudly.

  There was a movement; her door opened, and a woman with long loose hair emerged.

  A cool air-conditioned breeze thrilled his entire body. The woman pulled the edge of a sari over her shoulder.

  “George?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want?”

  He said nothing. The answer to the question was at once vague and full of substance, half obscure but all too present, just as she herself was. He almost knew what he wanted to say; she said nothing. She had not screamed or raised the alarm. Perhaps she wanted it too. He felt that it was now only a matter of saying it, or even of moving. Just do something. It will happen.

  “Get out,” she said.

  He had waited too long.

  “Madam, I-”

  “Get out.”

  It was too late now; he turned around and walked quickly.

  The moment the back door closed on him, he felt foolish. He thumped it with his fist so hard that it hurt. “Madam, let me explain!” He pounded the door harder and harder. She had misunderstood him-completely misunderstood!

  “Stop it,” came a voice. It was Maria, looking at him fearfully through the window. “Please stop it at once.”

  At that moment, the immensity of what he had done struck George. He was conscious the neighbors might be watching. Madam’s reputation was at stake.

  He dragged himself up to the construction site, and fell down there to sleep. The next morning, he discovered he had been lying, just as he had done months before, on top of a pyramid of crushed granite.

  He came back, slowly. Maria was waiting for him by the gate.

  “Madam,” she called as she went into the house. Mrs. Gomes came out, her finger deep into her latest novel.

  “Maria, go to the kitchen,” Mrs. Gomes ordered, as he walked into the garden. He was glad of that; so she wanted to protect Maria from what was coming. He felt gratitude for her delicacy. She was different from other rich people; she was special. She would spare him.

  He put the key to the back door on the ground.

  “It’s okay,” she said. Her manner was cool. He understood now that the radius had increased; it was pushing him back every second he stood. He did not know how far back to go; it seemed to him he was already as far back as he could be and hear what she was saying. Her voice was distant and small and cold. For some reason, he could not take his eyes off the cover of her novel: a man was driving a red car, and two white women in bikinis were sitting inside.

  “It’s not anger,” she said. “I should have taken greater precautions. I made a mistake.”

  “I’ve left the key down here, madam,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The lock is being changed this evening.”

  “Can I stay until you find someone else?” he blurted out. “How will you manage with the garden? And what will you do for a driver?”

  “I’ll manage,” she said.

  Until then, all his thoughts had been for her-her reputation in the neighborhood, her peace of mind, the sense of betrayal she must feel-but now he
understood: she was not the one who needed taking care of.

  He wanted to speak his heart out to her and tell her all this, but she spoke first.

  “Maria will have to leave as well.”

  He stared at her, his mouth open.

  “Where will she sleep tonight?” His voice was thin and desperate. “Madam, she left everything she had in our village and came here to live with you.”

  “She can sleep in the church, I suppose,” Mrs. Gomes said calmly. “They let people in all night, I’ve heard.”

  “Madam.” He folded his palms. “Madam, you’re Christian like us, and I’m begging you in the name of Christian charity, please leave Maria out of-”

  She closed the door; then he heard the sound of it being locked, and then double-locked.

  He waited for his sister at the top of the road, and looked in the direction of the unfinished cathedral.

  DAY SIX: THE SULTAN’S BATTERY

  The Sultan’s Battery, a large black rectangular fort, appears high up to your left as you go from Kittur to Salt Market Village. The best way to explore the fort is to ask someone in Kittur to drive you up there; your host will have to park the car by the main road, and then the two of you will have to walk uphill for half an hour. When you pass through the arched doorway, you will find that the fort is in an advanced state of decay. Although a plaque from the Archaeological Survey of India declares this a protected site and speaks of its role in “enshrining the memory of the patriot Tippu Sultan, Tiger of Mysore,” there is no evidence of any attempt to preserve the ancient structure from the onslaught of creepers, wind, rain, erosion, and grazing animals. Giant banyan trees have germinated on the walls of the fort; their roots smash between the stones like gnarled fingers reaching into a mouse hole. Avoiding the thorns and piles of goat shit, you should walk to one of the holes in the walls of the fort; here, hold an imaginary gun in your hands, close an eye, and pretend that you are Tippu himself, firing down on the English army.

  HE WALKED QUICKLY toward the white dome of the Dargah, a fold-up wooden stool under one arm, and in the other a red bag with his album of photographs and seven bottles full of white pills. When he reached the Dargah, he walked along the wall, not paying any attention to the long line of beggars: the lepers sitting on rags, the men with mutilated arms and legs, the men in wheelchairs, the men with bandages covering their eyes, and the creature with little brown stubs like a seal’s flippers where he should have had arms, a normal left leg, and a soft brown stump where he should have had the other leg, who lay on his left side, twitching his hip continuously, like an animal receiving galvanic shocks, and intoning, with blank, mesmerized eyes, “Al-lah! Al-laaaah! Al-lah! Al-laaah!”

  He walked past this sorrowful parade of humanity, and went behind the Dargah.

  Now he walked past the vendors squatting on the ground in a long line that extended for half a mile. He passed rows of baby shoes, bras, T-shirts bearing the words NEW YORK FUCKING CITY, fake Ray-Ban glasses, fake Nike shoes and fake Adidas shoes, and piles of Urdu and Malayalam magazines. He spotted an opening between a counterfeit-Nike seller and a counterfeit-Gucci seller, unfolded his stool there, and placed on it a glossy black sheet of paper with gold lettering.

  The golden words read:

  RATNAKARA SHETTY

  SPECIAL INVITEE

  FOURTH PAN-ASIAN CONFERENCE ON SEXOLOGY

  HOTEL NEW HILLTOP PALACE NEW DELHI

  12-14 APRIL 1987

  The young men who had come to pray at the Dargah, or to eat lamb kebabs in one of the Muslim restaurants, or simply to watch the sea, began making a semicircle around Ratna, watching as he added to the display on the stool the photo album and the seven bottles of white pills. With grave ceremony, he then rearranged the bottles, as if their position had to be exactly right for his work to begin. In truth, he was waiting for more onlookers.

  They came. Standing in pairs or alone, the crowd of young men had now taken on the appearance of a human Stonehenge; some stood with their hands folded on a friend’s shoulder, some stood alone, and a few crouched to the ground, like fallen boulders.

  All at once, Ratna began to talk. Young men came quicker, and the crowd became so thick that it was two or three men deep at each point; and those at the back had to stand on their toes to get even a partial glimpse of the sexologist.

  He opened the album and let the young men see the photos in plastic folders inside. The onlookers gasped.

  Pointing at his photographs, Ratna spoke of abominations and perversions. He described the consequences of sin: he demonstrated the passage of venereal germs up the body, touching his nipples, his eyes, and then his nostrils, and then closing his eyes. The sun climbed the sky, and the white dome of the Dargah shone more brightly. The young men in the semicircle pressed against one another, straining to get closer to the photographs. Then Ratna went in for the kill: he shut the book and held up a bottle of white pills in each of his hands. He began shaking the pills.

  “With each bottle of pills you will receive a certificate of authenticity from Hakim Bhagwandas of Daryaganj in Delhi. This man, a greatly experienced doctor, has studied the wise books of the pharaohs, and has used his scientific equipment to create these magnificent white pills that will cure all your ailments. Each bottle costs just four rupees and fifty paise! Yes, that is all you need to pay to atone for sin and earn a second chance in this life! Four rupees and fifty paise!”

  In the evening, dead tired from the heat, he boarded the 34B bus with his red bag and fold-up stool. It was packed at this hour, so he held on to a strap and breathed in and out slowly. He counted to ten, to recover his strength, then dipped a hand into the red bag, taking out four green brochures, each of which bore the image of three large rats on the cover. He held the brochures up high in one hand, in the manner of a gambler holding up his cards, and spoke at the top of his voice:

  “Ladies and gentlemen! All of you know that we live in a rat race, where there are few jobs and many job applicants. How will your children survive, how will they get the jobs you have? For life in this day and age is a veritable rat race. Only in this booklet will you find thousands of useful general knowledge data, arranged in question-and-answer form, that your sons and daughters need to pass the civil service entrance examination, the bank entrance examination, the police entrance examination, and many other exams which are needed to win the rat race. For instance”-he took a quick breath-“the Mughal Empire had two capitals; Delhi was one of them. Which was the other? Four capital cities of Europe are built on the banks of one river. Name that river. Who was the first king of Germany? What is the currency of Angola? One city in Europe has been the capital of three different empires. Which city? Two men were involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was one of them. Name the other man. What is the height of the Eiffel Tower in meters?”

  Holding the pamphlets with his right hand, he staggered forward, bracing himself as the bus bumped over the potholes of the road. One passenger asked for a pamphlet and handed him a rupee. Ratna walked back, and waited near the exit door; when the bus slowed down, he dipped his head in silent thanks to the conductor and got off.

  Seeing a man waiting at the bus stand, he tried to sell him a collection of six colored pens, first at a rupee a pen; then at two pens a rupee; finally offering three for a rupee. Although the man said he would not buy, Ratna could see the interest in his eyes; he took out a large spring that could give much amusement to children, and a geometrical set that could make wonderful designs on paper. The man bought one of the geometrical sets for three rupees.

  Ratna headed away from the Sultan’s Battery, taking the road toward Salt Market Village.

  Once he got to the village, he went to the main market, took out a handful of change, and sorted it out on the flat of his palm as he walked; he left the coins on the counter of a shop, taking in exchange a packet of Engineer beedis, which he put into his suitcase.

  “What are you waiting for?” The boy i
n charge of the shop was new to the job. “You have your beedis.”

  “I usually get two packets of lentils too, included in the price. That’s the way it’s done.”

  Before entering his house, Ratna ripped open one of the packets with his teeth and poured its contents onto the ground near his door. Seven or eight of the neighborhood dogs came running, and he watched them crunch the lentils loudly. When they began digging at the earth, he tore open the second packet with his teeth and scattered its contents on the ground too.

  He walked into his house without waiting to see the dogs devour this second lot of lentils. He knew they would still be hungry, but he could not afford to buy them a third packet every day.

  He hung his shirt on a hook by the door, as he scratched his armpits and hairy chest. He sat down on a chair, exhaled, muttered, “O Krishna, O Krishna,” and stretched out his legs; even though they were in the kitchen, his daughters knew at once that he was there-a powerful odor of stale feet went through the house like a warning cannon shot. They dropped their women’s magazines and busied themselves with their work.

  His wife emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of water. He had begun smoking the beedis.

  “Are they working in there-the maharanis?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” the three girls, his daughters, shouted back from the kitchen. He did not trust them, so he went in to check.

  The youngest, Aditi, crouched by the gas stove, wiping the leaves of the photo album with a corner of her sari. Rukmini, the oldest sister, sat beside a mound of white pills, which she was counting off and pouring into bottles; Ramnika, who would be married off after Rukmini, pasted a label on each bottle. The wife was making noise with plates and pots. After he had smoked his second beedi and his body had visibly relaxed, she built up the courage to approach him:

  “The astrologer said he would come at nine.”

  “Uhm.”

  He burped, and then lifted a leg and waited for the fart. The radio was on; he placed the set on his thigh, and slapped his palm against his other leg to the beat of the music, humming all the while, and singing the words whenever he knew them.