Temporary People

by Deepak Unnikrishnan

  —Good friend, Mathai said.

  He then hosed the body down, dried it with rags, before wrapping the corpse with banyan leaves, tying it with twine, before digging a hole in the earth, near the bedroom window of the old woman who had died, who spent some nights talking to this dog as she lay in bed, telling him what she planned to do the next day, that her grandson was coming to live with her, that it embarrassed her that her medication made her fart all the time.

  The dog’s grave was near the pepper tree Mathai’s own son had helped plant, a tree the dog’s spirit would now inhabit, still watching over the house like before, without being able to bark or sniff or pee, but in two years the house would sell, the siblings would splinter, and men would show up with machines and saws, cut everything down, level the ground, destroy the dog, which became part of a tree, strip it all away, as though there had been no old lady, no house, no children, no tame parrots, no crows, no Botswana, no pickle, no Mathai, no dog, no life.

  CHABTER SIX

  THEY BROUGHT GULF MUKUNDAN home in a rickety taxi from Kochi Airport. Satheesh, his youngest brother, helped him out of the vehicle. The Amby had broken down twice on the highway. Neighbors surrounded the car. The men were expected hours ago. “Make way!” yelled Satheesh. “Nothing to see here.”

  “ ,” a voice cried out.

  Satheesh drew his brother closer. “Who said that?”

  The taxi man honked. “Forgot to pay, Boss!”

  “Welcome home, !” someone else yelled.

  The taxi man was getting impatient. “Settle your account, Boss!” he shouted. He revved the engine. He honked again.

  Mukundan’s bedridden mother wondered about the commotion. She hadn’t been told of this. The doctor had warned them earlier in the week when he stopped by to check on her. “She may go into shock when she sees him,” he said. “Or she may get better. I just don’t know.”

  “What’s out there?” the old woman yelled.

  Grown men jeered as Mukundan passed. Satheesh shushed them. They didn’t care.

  Mukundan’s wife, advised by Satheesh to stay home to prepare herself, greeted her husband at the door.

  Gaunt, the lawyer warned over the phone. Skin like rock. Eyes like lemons.

  She touched his face, felt the roughness of his stubble, grabbed an arm and wrapped it around her shoulder. Light, so light. His skin had splotches, as though he were about to molt. She looked for their son. He was there. Young Saji held his father’s pant leg tightly. He was delighted to have his acchan back. He inhaled Mukundan’s sweat, patted his thigh, where the muscles had atrophied.

  “Acchan, acchan,” Saji kept saying. And just kept looking at the man he hadn’t seen in three years. Had it been that long? He knew his father had been in prison, that he had been pardoned, that just this morning he breakfasted with fellow inmates somewhere in Abu Dhabi, before he was put in a police van with other pardoned men and driven to a waiting Indian Airlines flight. And here he was now. In the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house he built with Gulf cash. The first person to do so in town, the man to see if a nephew, niece, or distant cousin needed work papers drawn up, who advised Gulf-bound dreamers where to try their luck. Whether it was more profitable working in Das Island or Al Ain. If Dubai held better prospects than Manama. If housing in Khalidiya was cheaper than Tourist Club. Whether knowing all of this was worth the trouble, that money was directly proportional to effort. And that if they chose to go, life was bearable—and their families wouldn’t forget them.

  Mukundan, a patient man, never lied. “There are so many of us there,” he’d share. “You learn to cope. Longing for the homeland is what marks you out to be a Gulf-party man.” And the men would listen to Gulf Mukundan, their Gulf-party man with Gulf-party connections, Gulf-party money, and Gulf-party status.

  People liked to say Mukundan knew the Gulf so well he must’ve roamed the sands in an earlier life as a Bedu. There was no other way to explain his assimilation, his ease with the place. The man’s contacts were first class. His Arabic was superb. He knew police in the labor department, broke fast with his Arabee bosses during Ramadan. And he felt no shame calling in favors, sending parcels back home through various contacts, bailing out laborers, introducing struggling business owners to loan sharks who promised lower interest rates. He even helped fast track the necessary paperwork if a body in the morgue needed to be sent home for burial. Gulf Mukundan was what everyone in town aspired to be.

  And then he shagged a man.

  Raped him, the victim claimed. Got caught. And here he was now. Three years later. Standing next to his loyal wife and young son. Back home. The Gulf-party .

  Saji stayed by Mukundan’s side for hours, guarding the man like only a child could protect his father. He was there when visitors, relatives, and friends of the family arrived. Looking bullish. It didn’t matter. They asked Mukundan the questions they came to ask.

  Mukundan deflected the barrage well. When pressed to talk about life behind bars, whether AC was provided in desert jails, if there was torture, what exactly did he do, Mukundan patted his son. “Not in front of the boy,” he’d say. “Later.”

  “They asked you to convert? Is that why they let you go?”

  “Later.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Saji. “Talk, talk.”

  “Yes,” they said. “He’s old enough.”

  “Later,” Mukundan replied. Curt.

  Saji listened as well wishers assured Mukundan they didn’t believe in gossip. People talk, everyone kept saying. “Let them,” said Mukundan.

  “Look,” said Mukundan’s uncle, “you know what they’re calling you? Calling us? Is it true a newspaper published photos after police arrested you?”

  “Not with Saji here,” repeated Mukundan. “Later.”

  OK, sure, sure, is what people said, but out of earshot, while they were putting on their shoes, pulling out umbrellas, done saying their goodbyes, back in their cars or scooters, or waiting at the bus stop, as rain bulleted the smoggy town, they bitched about Mukundan’s reticence, couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to clear his name, that it was OK if he busted a hooker’s face, simply confirm it was a Filipina or one of those African bitches, not some man, for heaven’s sake, not a former friend, both caught in the nude. The confession could only help him, grant that poor lady he married some relief, save that boy of his from a life of shame. Otherwise, the town’s young would never let Saji forget his father was better off neutered. The kids in school would draw a mustache on a mango, fuck it with a stick, and force Mukundan’s boy to watch. Or they’d call him Little .

  Saji didn’t care what the family well-wishers thought. Acchan was home and Saji was going to protect him. He was a big boy now. Eight. His mother had told him where his father was two years ago, put in prison for fighting. “We know you are big enough to handle it,” she told him. “Don’t believe what people tell you,” she warned. “Your father needs you. He expects you to take care of me.”

  Saji intended to watch out for his father, too. He had gotten bigger in his father’s absence—tallest among his cousins. When Mukundan needed to use the toilet, Saji refused to let him go alone. “Coming, too,” he said. Mukundan took him with him. “Turn around,” he said, and Saji obeyed. Finally, at night, after the visitors left, his mother pried her son away. “Let me claim him for a while,” she smiled. “Tomorrow, he’s yours,” she promised. Saji relented. But he grew restless sleeping on the cot laid out next to his grandmother’s bed. He made his way back to his parents’ room. The door was shut, but a light was on, slinking through the cracks like melted bars of gold. He heard them fucking. His mother was loud. Guttural. It was as though she was being torn apart, and she wanted the whole town to hear; it’s possible everyone did.

  All night. With Saji curled up by the door, his parents fucked all night. His mother cried a little every time they finished. But his father, Saji barely heard his father. If he knew any better, he would’ve wondered about that.
His father used to be a grunter. Years ago, when Mukundan had been home on leave, he reached for his wife, assuming Saji to be asleep. Mukundan covered his wife completely back then, like shade. Then shadow. Erased her with his body. Their whispering roused Saji. He turned, out of habit, towards his mother. He couldn’t spot her silhouette in the dark. He felt his stomach tighten. He squinted. “Amma!” he shouted. “Amma!” And that’s when they knew their son was awake. Aware. Mukundan placed one palm over his son’s eyes, the other on his tummy, as his wife fixed her nightgown. “Relax, son, Amma’s here, we were just talking.” Saji didn’t remember any of this while he slept outside his parents’ bedroom door. It wasn’t important. His father had returned home.

  The next morning, after a breakfast of steamed plantains and eggs, Gulf Mukundan told his son they were going to go out for the day. Dressed in clothes still warm from the iron, they took the bus to the city. The first thing they did when they arrived was to stop for sweetmeats, buying extra for later. Then they caught a matinee show at Wonderful Theaters. “Super pitcher, son,” the man told Saji as he handed him the tickets. “Lots of dishoom-dishoom. Too good, I tell you, tooo, tooo good!” Lunch was buttered chapatis and chili chicken, all washed down with cola. Mukundan suggested they stop by a bookshop next, where they bought comics, notebooks, and color pencils. They haggled with a vendor selling glass bangles after that, before waiting in line at the liquor shaap to buy a bottle of Old Monk rum. A tubby man hurried by them as the line inched onward, ignoring Mukundan’s attempt to get his attention. “I know him,” said Mukundan to his son. “Got him that warehouse job in Jebel Ali Free Zone.” By evening, as the shop and street lights swelled with light, like expanding stars, the air full of crickets and moths, father and son were both fat and giddy.

  On the journey back, in a speeding bus with seats the color of pond scum, as the crows, too, were flying home, Saji asked Mukundan if he went to jail because he almost killed someone, as Amma said he had. “Not intentionally,” said Mukundan.

  “Did you mean to?” Saji asked.

  “It’s complicated,” said his father. “I broke the law.” He wanted to say more. “There is a time for things,” he explained. “When you are old enough to take the bus on your own, you will understand.”

  What to tell the boy? That he was in charge of arranging the women that fateful weekend, and that bitch-ass Filipina pimp botched it? That only two showed up to service six, and that he’d been waiting with Dileep, an old schoolmate and one of his roommates, to go next? That they couldn’t help themselves when they heard their four friends ferociously humping the woman with the lisp—“Ma num is Europe,” she had said, as everyone got introductions out of the way—and her partner, the woman named Brazil? “Welcome to India!” the men had whooped with excitement.

  “No kiss,” the women warned. “More dirhams kiss kiss, OK?”

  The men consented. “ ’Kay ’kay! No kiss kiss.”

  “An’ take bath,” said Europe. “No bath, no this.” She shielded her pussy with her palm.

  The women needn’t have worried. The men had showered and shaved.

  How to tell a boy this, his boy, that as they waited, drawn to the sounds of palms slapping ass, the odor of paid sex, Dileep asked Mukundan if he ever wondered what it was like to be a woman. “To be impaled,” he said. “To be opened up, you understand?” Mukundan said no. “I’ve thought about it,” Dileep said. “C’mon, we’ve all thought about it. You, too, right?”

  It was an invitation. It must have been only that. As young boys going on eleven, they had experimented on each other, practicing stuff they saw in films, role-playing. They kissed in private, sucked on each other’s tongues after eating fruit-flavored candies. Then as they grew more comfortable with each other, their fingers wandered over to their cocks. They jacked each other off a couple of times. No sucking, that was gay shit. Yet after fooling around for a year, they stopped, amicably ending whatever it was they were doing. It was as though their lust for each other needed to fade in order to accommodate a stronger yearning for pussy. It was also as though nothing had ended because nothing had begun.

  They never spoke of what they did, even in jest. Then, as young men in the Gulf, they ended up tag-teaming some nanny from Colombo. None of them moved after they were done— their legs were all touching. It had excited him. But this—what Dileep was suggesting—was different; it was something broke sex-starved laborers did, or men in taxis by Muroor Road. Not them. Sensible forty-something men. Fathers. Men with wives. Respected breadwinners, men with class. But Dileep was looking at him. “Maybe it’s nice, you know?” he wondered aloud to Mukundan. “To be someone’s bitch, pounded like that.” How to tell a boy this, his boy? That he reached for his friend then, kissed him, held him down. Inhaled the man as he sucked his tongue. They were sober, crazily alive. It had been so easy, returning to boyhood. Like blinking.

  Someday, he must tell the boy how it felt to ease into a man like that. The comfort it gave him, an unexpected bliss. Dileep’s legs locked around his hips. Dileep, smiling. It made Mukundan smile, too. They were both smiling when Brazil walked in on them to grab a drink of water. She laughed. “Sorry,” she said. “So, both you homos?” Dileep bucked, throwing Mukundan off him. Kicking him repeatedly in the ribs. Like a madman hitting a tethered goat with a hammer.

  “He make me do,” Dileep yelled in English, grabbing his pants. “Force me to!” Mukundan steadied himself and punched his friend hard in the ribs. He hit him again. And again. Dileep staggered. Brazil backed away.

  “What you doing?” she yelled. “Stop! You kill ‘im!” Mukundan turned around and picked up an object from the shelf, an ashtray. He swung. “Please, man! Sir, you stop!” she yelled, clutching her cheek. “STOP, MAN! SIR! SIR!” Within seconds, butt-naked Europe was by Brazil’s side, yelling with equal ferocity, as two of Mukundan’s roommates tried restraining him. Brazil cupped her nose. “Boken, boken,” she sobbed. Europe screamed louder. One of the men tried to calm her down.

  “More money, give more money, OK?”

  “What he did to face?” she said.

  “We fix face, OK?” the man said. “OK?”

  “No OK!” Europe screamed. That’s when the man hit Europe.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” he said. Then the men, including Dileep, began kicking the women.

  “Please, sir, no money, free, everything free!” Mukundan went to the bathroom to wash his dick.

  The tenants in the flat next door called the shurtha. The building watchman came, too. He banged on the door. “Whatever you’re doing, open up now! Police coming!”

  The shurtha arrived within minutes; a patrol car was stopped for dinner nearby. Mukundan refused to talk. He put his trousers back on, accepted the charges, the sentencing, the lashes, the mandatory counseling. He asked a friend to call his wife. She wouldn’t find out for over a year what the charges were. Or that Brazil lost teeth, got deported to Manila with her buddy Europe. That Dileep drowned in a bucket of water in prison a few weeks into his sentence. He didn’t know how to tell his son all this. Perhaps one day. Not now. He wouldn’t know where or how to start, or to confess that he didn’t regret what he did, and may do it again. He wasn’t sorry. But Saji was waiting for a response; something needed to be said.

  “My friend Sunil says Amma’s lying,” said Saji. “You went to jail because you stuck your tongue down some boy’s throat, Sunil says.”

  “You believe Sunil?”

  “No,” said Saji.

  “Why not?”

  “If I tell you, promise you won’t tell Amma?”

  “Of course, son.”

  “I stick my tongue down boy throats all the time. They kiss back. They suck back. I’m not in jail.”

  “Sunil, too?” Mukundan asked.

  “Sometimes,” said Saji. “But he only lets me suck his tongue if I kiss his neck first… You tell Amma?”

  “No,” said Mukundan. “Can you keep a secret, too?”

/>   “I am the best secret keeper,” said Saji.

  “In Abu Dhabi, I had two jobs,” whispered Mukundan. “Shop manager most days; weekends, I pretended to be a building.”

  “No, you lying,” said Saji. “You’re too short to be a building.”

  “It took some time to learn how to do it,” Mukundan said. “Every night, I stared at construction bricks. I mean, you have to choose your bricks, see what they’re like. You’ve got good bricks, shitty—don’t tell Amma I said that—bricks, and so-so quality bricks. But then I’d see one I liked. And I’d take it home. Just to have a look, know what I mean, son?”

  “I pretend I’m a fish sometimes when swimming in the pond,” said Saji.

  “And do the fish come to you?”

  “Yes,” said Saji. “They swim by my ankles, my ears.”

  “Are they telling you secrets?” said Mukundan.

  “I don’t understand what they’re saying,” admitted Saji.

  “Keep listening,” said Mukundan.

  “What’s it like being a building?” said Saji.

  “I was a little two-story building,” said Mukundan. “My friends didn’t recognize me. They’d walk past me. But after a while, I started confiding in people, you know. About my skill, that I could become this building. And you know, I started getting calls. Friends pulling in favors. One friend rented me out to bad women who did dirty things for bad men, charging high rates, making my friend and me a lot of money. But I got greedy, son.”