by Kiran Desai
But when, at 4.05 a.m., according to schedule, the DC and Mr Gupta were seated in the government jeep going down the driveway that led from the bungalow to the road, they had not proceeded more than a few yards when suddenly the driver braked. There, blocking the driveway, spread out all over, was a huge and motley collection of bundles and bed rolls, of broken chairs and tables, battered pots and pans galore, some dirty quilts and old pillows with stuffing coming out of them … Even an ancient rustyspring bed and two skinny goats were visible in the predawn light! What was more, they could hear a dreadful banging and clanging, and a loud scraping coming from the servants’ quarters that stood just to the side of the driveway.
‘What on earth is going on there?’ said the DC as Mr Gupta leapt from the jeep to find out. The air was filled with the musty smell of mouldering objects that had clearly not been out in the open air for years.
Mr Gupta returned a minute later. ‘It is the cook – he is leaving for his ancestral home. He says he is not going to stay here to be insulted in his old age. I think, sir, it is all unfortunately about the cutlets. I told him: “Kindly move your belongings from the driveway immediately.” But he says he is too old to do anything quickly and as it is he does not care at all.’
‘Oh dear, we will be late,’ said the DC, and they were forced to descend from the jeep and move for themselves, all the odds and ends the cook had collected over sixty-five years in government service. Who knows how the old man had managed to drag it all out in the first place? As they worked, the cook continued the racket he was making from inside his lodgings.
It was quite some time before they had nudged the stubborn goats into the bushes and succeeded in clearing all the cook’s belongings from the path. In fact, a whole half-hour was wasted before the driver, the DC and Mr Gupta were able to continue upon their way.
At precisely this time in the army cantonment area, the lights were blazing from the barracks and men, already dressed in khaki uniforms, were gathering about the flag pole. At the appointed time the Brigadier appeared as well and, marching to the main gates, spick and span, he got into his personal jeep.
‘Ready?’ he barked. ‘Well, then, onward mar—’
It was at this point, even though the sky was only just beginning to lighten, that he spotted, with his eagle eyes, his heart’s desire: there, in the old mulberry tree by the gate, the modest green pigeon who had so long teased, maddened and seduced him with its liquid notes, its reminders, sweet … piercing … of the old film songs that his mother had listened to when he was a child. Ah, that haunting sadness, that limpid voice pouring heart-rendingly from the throat of Lata Mangeshkar, a voice that sang of death and lost love, of lotus-flower feet and sandalwood skin, of long dark eyes, of loneliness, and the ache, the dreadful ache, of memory. All this and more he remembered from the few notes that sounded in the trees by his house. All this and more, he thought, from this small, drab bird sitting silent now upon the branch.
‘A net!’ he hissed. ‘Quick, a net, a net …’ Urgently, he prodded a surprised soldier with his baton. Then, snatching a monkey net from the startled man, he jumped from the jeep and threw it at the green pigeon in a blind desire to capture this elusive bird, to keep it by him as he lived in the army cantonment, to torture himself with the memory of his childhood, of his mother, whom he had loved so fiercely …
The net was far too big and too heavy, of course, for a single man to toss after a bird, and it travelled only a few feet before falling to the ground with a heavy thump, a pile of cumbersome nylon rope. With a slight flutter past his ears, the green pigeon rose and, before his horrified eyes, flew away, high over his head, to who knows where.
‘Damn!’ The Brigadier smashed his fist down upon his palm. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’ It was a bad omen. But then, who was he to believe in omens? ‘Forward march, you damn fools,’ he said angrily to his men when he became aware of the stares turned in his direction. And they hurried off, having forgotten meanwhile to wait for the DC and Mr Gupta, who finally alerted their attention by blowing their horn loudly as they approached, driving full speed about the bends in the road, catching hold of whatever part of the jeep they could as they rattled and leapt over the rubble. When they caught up and the procession was complete, they started again. Now, hopefully, there would be no more delays. ‘Come on now. Move quickly, we are late … Double march … Left, right … Left, right … One, two … One, two … Left, right. Left –’
And they double-marched, it is sad to report, left right left, straight into another pile of suitcases and bedding rolls spread mysteriously upon the road.
‘Oh, no,’ roared the Brigadier. ‘What now?’
‘Who would have thought there’d be so many problems at this hour?’ said Mr Gupta, lowering a scarf he had wrapped about his mouth to keep the chill out. ‘We especially chose this time for lack of traffic and obstructions, and now just see what is happening.’
There, swaddled in even more woollens than Mr Gupta, in the midst of a sea of suitcases, was the CMO, giving orders to a small army of servants in front of his bungalow. Several cars spilled from his driveway on to the road.
‘What are you doing, fatso?’ shouted the Brigadier.
The CMO turned pale. ‘Are you referring to me?’ he asked with dignity. ‘If so, I think you should keep your words to yourself until you know the state of my health!’
‘Move,’ shouted the Brigadier. ‘Move, move, move yourself and your bloody belongings. Now!’
‘But where are you going?’ asked Mr Gupta.
‘Don’t start up a conversation … We are late, can’t you see?’ The Brigadier turned on him.
‘Due to health problems, I have been forced to take vacation leave in Kasauli. Every now and then, you know, in times of stress –’
‘Just move,’ shouted the Brigadier in purple rage. ‘Move your hundreds of damn suitcases.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the DC, watching the ensuing hullabaloo, ‘and I myself signed that vacation leave. I suppose it was my fault.’ He was feeling very nervous and miserable again. Clearly all the decisions he had made had been bad ones. First the cook and the insult to his cutlets and then the CMO and his vacation. Now the problem with the monkeys would just get worse, a scandal would erupt, his father would hear of it and feel embarrassed … Oh, it was a terrible business. If only he had gone into computers, that would have been a nice quiet life …
In a while they began to move again. But: ‘Do not go that way, sir,’ advised an alert sweeper man from the CMO’s house. ‘You will be stopped again in front of Vermaji’s house as soon as you turn the corner. His wife is moving out. It is a very shameful matter.’
Dark as a monsoon cloud, the Brigadier spat out orders for the cavalcade to back out of the road they had come on and to take another and, for that matter, much longer route out of town. By the time they finally reached the orchard, no doubt the monkeys would have disappeared and they would have to repeat this ridiculous charade another day.
They turned the corner on to the new road and, no sooner had they proceeded a short way down its pot-hole-ridden length than, there in front of them, they spotted the dumpy shape and brightly painted sides of the Hungry Hop van.
‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’
A black stream of dirty exhaust billowed and puffed into the army men’s faces.
25
In the orchard, meanwhile, things were remarkably quiet. In a corner, something in a big pot steamed and simmered with a gentle bubbling sound. It had been bubbling all night already, in preparation for the monkey catchers’ arrival. Kulfi slept near it. As the men absorbed themselves in catching the monkeys, she had thought she would somehow, by hook or by crook, direct the fall of one of the animals right into the cooking pot. Then she would drown it immediately away from attention into a delicious gravy. This was the plan. How exactly it would work, she was not quite certain, but she knew that in the midst of the ensuing confusion she would manage it. The scent of
herbs and fruit, of spices and seasonings, filled the air and consequently everyone who slept on the hillside that night dreamt of food, from the watchman’s shed at the top of the road, all the way down into the valley where the police superintendent was still wrapped cosily in his blanket. They dreamt of magnificent banquets, of ladles and spoons so big that battalions of cooks had to be employed in carrying them through vast fogs of steam to simmering cauldrons that spluttered and glowed …
‘A bushel, a drachm, a pint,’ muttered Kulfi in her sleep. ‘A peck, a coomb, a sack, a hogshead, a scruple, a ton. Sandal, madder, cassia, orris root.’ She turned restlessly. ‘Gall nut, cinnabar, mace. Senna, asafoetida, quail eggs, snail eggs, liver of a wild boar, tail of a wild cat …’ She turned around again. ‘Nasturtium leaves, rhododendron flowers, cicada orchids!’ She sat bolt upright. The delicate white and wood-green flowers of the cicada orchid. What would her dish be without them? A tasteless dish, not even half what it should be, a failure, a disappointment. An utter disaster.
She would have to go and fetch this flower, wouldn’t she? She must have it, this exquisitely flavoured, graceful, transparent flower that hinted of moss and forest. She must have it and she must have it immediately! She looked around to see how the night was thinning … It was almost dawn. There was just enough time for her to go up the hillside and back before the monkey catchers arrived. Hurriedly dressing, she took up her spade, her sickle and a coil of rope and disappeared into the shadows, passing as she did so, the spy, who was already hiding in the bushes awaiting the morning’s drama.
Running a high temperature because of the excitement and nervousness he was experiencing, he awaited the dawning of this day that would, he was determined, in the midst of chaos, deliver to him the opportunity he had been waiting for so long: the opportunity to discover exactly what stewed in those cauldrons of Kulfi. ‘If you have a monkey, you will not get lice. To make curd, don’t unsettle the milk. Does a pond clean the mud at its bottom? Does the rain wash the sky? As is the wood, is the meat cooked upon it.’ The past few months had turned him into a man tormented. The lines in his head were like jungle vines entangling him, smothering him. He would have to break free, prove his character to the world. And to himself.
As Kulfi passed by on her way to the forest, she walked so near to where he was squatting, the edge of her sickle knife tickled his nose, but she went on without noticing him.
She did not stop to check on Sampath either, or the rest of the family, which was all for the best, since otherwise she might have noticed the absence of Pinky, who was already waiting under the tamarind tree for Hungry Hop, dressed and ready, just as planned, although she was in an extremely bad temper for some reason she was not able to determine. Yes, who knows why, but she was feeling exceptionally irritable, dissatisfied and angry. Maybe it was just a lack of sleep. As she waited, she hit against the side of the road with a stick. If only Sampath had come along, she would have had somebody to talk to …
But Sampath sat in the guava tree, encased in absolute stillness like a fossil captured within a quiet moment of amber. The watchmen had been dismissed for once, so the monkeys might not be disturbed on this, their last night in the orchard; that they might be in the tree, barely awake, when the monkey catchers arrived.
Sampath had been sitting still a long while. He had watched as the last of the sun disappeared the evening before, as the hills turned soft and blue like woodsmoke and as the bushes, gathering shadow since late afternoon, merged with the darkening air. He had felt the breeze against his cheek, heard the sound of the crickets start up, the first frog’s awkward inquiry into the evening, its rising, ginger croak growing stronger with the night that leaked from the soil and ran from the dark shapes about him. It had seeped from the black bellies of the underground tubers, from the hidden pods of seeds and flowers, from the inky beetles and the hollow-hearted bamboo. He saw the white petals of the night flowers unfold, a speckling of bright stars appear above him; smelled the jasmine his mother had planted and the poisonous datura, watched the wan moths ford the blackness to hover lovelorn over a tobacco flower. Lifting his finger, he traced the magical shapes of constellations, creating them at whim, then let his hand drop back into his lap again.
The night wore on. Down below, all was silent. Still Sampath sat and watched. Once he felt a flutter of terror about his heart, but he did not follow it to its source, did not think ahead to what was to happen the next day, and the flutter died down as quickly as it had started. Hour upon hour went by. The hour of midnight passed. It was Monday, the last day of April, and all was quiet in the orchard. The family slept and the monkeys were silent in the guava tree.
There were ways of thinking about darkness. He could steel himself against it, Sampath thought, close his eyes tight, wrap himself up in his quilt. Or he could let all its whisperings, all its shades of violet, float into him. This impersonal darkness could be comforting as no human attention ever was. He felt the muscle in him relax, and as time drew on he felt strangely calm, felt his thoughts drop away and a strange strength enter into him, a numbness seeping into his limbs. From exhaustion, or resignation, or faith in some new inspiration, who knows? He could not feel the trunk of his body any more, but his senses were not numbed. They grew sharper and he was acutely aware of every tiny sound, every scent and rustle in the night: the stirrings of a mouse in the grass, the wings of a faraway bat, the beckoning scent that drew the insects to hover and buzz somewhere beyond the orchard. Underground, he could hear water gurgling, could hear it being drawn into the trees about him; he heard the breathing of the leaves and the movements of the sleeping monkeys.
Here and there in the branches near him, the season’s last guavas loomed from amidst the moonlit leaves. One, two, three of them … so ripe, so heavy, the slightest touch could make them fall from the tree.
He picked one. Perfect Buddha shape. Mulling on its insides, unconcerned with the world … Beautiful, distant fruit, growing softer as the days went by, as the nights passed on; beautiful fruit filled with an undiscovered constellation of young stars.
He held it in his hand. It was cool, uneven to his touch. The hours passed. More stars than sky. He sat unmoving in this hushed night.
In the van the Hungry Hop boy was growing more hysterical as he drove. What did he want? He wanted to meet Pinky just as they had planned. No. What he wanted was to turn around and go back to his comfortable bed. Then he wanted to wake up and go downstairs for his morning parathas, cooked just he way he liked them. No. What was he thinking? He remembered all of his sisters and aunties waiting for him. In fact, it never happened that he was allowed to eat even his breakfast in peace.
Pinky saw the van appear around the bend in the road that curved down the hillside below her and picked up the bundle of belongings she had brought with her: ‘At last!’ But then, mysteriously, she saw the van turn on to an unpaved farm road and disappear again. She couldn’t have imagined it, could she? From lack of sleep? But that wasn’t like her at all. It must be that fool of a boy. Would she really be able to stand him after all? Well, she would give him a beating with her stick. Just then, the van reappeared. Once more she picked up her bundle. And then …
What!
It made a neat beetle-like turn and disappeared again! ‘To hell with that bloody van,’ yelled the Brigadier. Surely this could not be happening? But again and again, driving sometimes in front of them or sometimes behind, disappearing into side streets, then reappearing, was the icecream van! ‘I am going to shoot him,’ the Brigadier vowed, speaking quietly all of a sudden. ‘I tell you, I am going to shoot that lunatic dead.’
‘Aiii, sir,’ said Mr Gupta, sitting up and squawking like an alarmed bird. ‘Don’t do that, sir. He is only an ice-cream vendor.’
White-faced, the DC hung on to the side of the jeep. What were things coming to? He was caught up in a nightmare. He wasn’t even awake and this was a grisly awful nightmare.
Mr Chawla went to check on Sampath. �
��They will be here soon,’ he said and went back along the path to rejoin Ammaji, who was awaiting the police superintendent at the entrance to the orchard, along with all the roadblock policemen. But the police superintendent was still in bed. For he had decided the night before, in the hope that he might be demoted, to absent himself from this sensitive operation. Happily, with his blanket pulled over his head, he dreamt and snored.
For a minute, the orchard was empty. ‘Aha!’ thought the spy, still hiding in the bush where Kulfi had passed him a little while ago. The cooking pot stood bubbling enticingly as he darted out towards it and, his heart in his mouth, he clambered up the tree beneath which the pot stood. He would position himself above the cauldron so that he might watch exactly what was going on. In his pocket was his collection of vials and string; hopefully, he would be able to take samples from the gravy while seated above it … A man possessed, he edged his way along the branches.
The langurs moved restlessly as morning dawned. The army crawled up the bazaar road. In the back of the Brigadier’s jeep lay the Hungry Hop boy, trussed up with monkey nets, firmly tied to keep him from making any more trouble down one way streets. ‘Let me go,’ he had cried, struggling. ‘Let me go. Today I have to decide my life.’
‘You are not deciding anything,’ the Brigadier had replied. With a scarf taken from Mr Gupta, he tied up the Hungry Hop boy’s mouth.
And the Hungry Hop boy fidgeted and struggled in silence, borne towards Pinky despite his vacillations.
‘There they are, Sampath,’ shouted Mr Chawla when he caught sight of them. ‘Sampath! They are here!’
