The Royal Ghosts, page 11
I nodded. Well, why not? Maybe I could send Rumila photos of these women and get her opinion.
Two months have passed since Rumila left, and I haven’t heard from her. The government has been dismantled, and a new government has taken its place, one that represents a mixture of political parties. But the new regime is already turning out to be as corrupt and oppressive as the old one, and already those criticizing it are being tossed in jails across the country. I’m sure that one of these days the police will knock on my door and whisk me away for writing one of my increasingly scathing columns. Perhaps I’ll disappear like Mohan, whose whereabouts are still unknown.
My mother’s attempts to find me a bride are not meeting with much success. Most families she’s approached have told her no after learning of my height. A few families reneged after they discovered I was the legendary corpse. I know that Rumila would have laughed at this. “Not only are you a pudkay, Suresh, you are a dead pudkay,” she’d have said, and I’d have said, “Better Dead Than Never.”
Sometimes I wonder why I allowed her secret to become my secret, why I thought it necessary to hear about Mohan from her own lips. And I wonder how things would’ve turned out had I told her about Mohan right away, the morning I got out of jail. Much to my dismay, I keep imagining a scene where I tell her what I learned, and she owns up to her past, and we end up laughing about the whole thing. Sometimes this picture makes me restless, especially when I’m at work, and whatever I’m doing at the moment—writing a column, discussing strategy with my colleagues—suddenly I begin to lose interest, and I find myself fighting the urge to simply get up and leave.
The Weight of a Gun
JANAKI WENT TO THE Maru Ganesh temple early in the morning to pray for her son. She stood before the small shrine, her eyes closed, palms together. Bhola often spoke of the voices inside his head. He covered his mouth with his hand as he laughed at the secret jokes he heard throughout the day, and sometimes he spoke into his hand as if it were a walkie-talkie.
She circled the shrine three times and headed back home. Last night, after she’d already gone to sleep, Bhola rapped on her front door, shouting, “Ama, Ama.” At first she thought she was dreaming about him, as she often did. But when she opened the door, he barged into her living room and said, “I need to buy a gun. Give me some money, Ama.” He’d tied a rope around his waist to hold up his pants and had bunched up his hair on the top of his head with a rubber band. His eyes scanned the room, then he strode into her bedroom.
“What do you need the gun for?” she asked quietly as she followed him. Over the years she had learned to act calmly when he became agitated—her tone baffled him at first, but it sometimes slowed him down.
“I am joining the Maobadis,” he said, turning to face her. “They need me. They’ll make me a commander if I can get a gun.” He whispered something into his palm.
“A gun costs a lot of money,” Janaki said.
“I only need three thousand rupees, Ama.”
She talked him into sitting on her bed, then went to get him a plate of dal-bhat from the kitchen. She always had food ready for him, knowing that he often didn’t eat enough. Since he’d moved into the single room on the top floor of her house about a year ago, he had started cooking for himself, and Janaki knew that sometimes he went hungry for a day or two. “You can sleep upstairs,” she’d told him when he first moved out. “But come downstairs to eat.” He’d narrowed his eyes and said, “I know what you’re up to. You’re going to poison me.” Of course that was just his madness talking, and when he came downstairs he did eat her food, with relish, and usually asked for more.
Now when she returned to her bedroom with his food, he was feeling around under her mattress, where she used to stash her money when he was younger.
“First eat,” she said. “Then we can talk about money.”
“My comrades need me,” he said. His desperate look reminded her of when he was about seven or eight and a neighborhood bully had snatched his marbles. “My marbles, Ama,” he’d say, “not his.” And she’d scour the neighborhood to find the thief, twist his ear, and get her son’s marbles back. At that time, Bhola’s madness hadn’t revealed itself. The only faintly suspect thing he did was stare at the picture of Lord Shiva in the kitchen for minutes on end.
In those days, both Janaki and Bhola’s father, Ananda, who now lived with his new wife in another part of the city, didn’t make much of it. “He’s a thinker,” Ananda used to say. “He’s just contemplating.” But over the years, Bhola developed a religiosity that surprised his parents. By the time he turned fifteen, he was constantly praying. He’d memorized Hanuman Chalisa, the Gayatri mantra, and a host of other sacred invocations. His lips seemed to move silently all the time. “He’s going to be a priest,” Ananda said, only half jokingly. By that time Janaki sensed something was wrong with her son. “What do you need to pray for?” she asked him once. “We’ve given you everything. What can God give you that we can’t?”
“You think you’re better than God?” Bhola said testily. “You want to go to hell?”
When he began to say that there were people inside his head who threatened to kill him if he didn’t pray hard enough, and when he accused strangers on the street of plotting to imprison him, Janaki took him to a local clairvoyant one afternoon, suspecting that her son was haunted by an evil spirit. She persuaded him to go by telling him that the clairvoyant specialized in prayer and could help him. A relative had suggested she consult a psychiatrist, but Janaki was afraid that doing such a thing would brand Bhola as crazy, stigmatizing him for life.
The clairvoyant was a college girl who was said to be possessed by a goddess, and she answered the door dressed in a saffron Padma Kanya College sari, a tube of lipstick in her hand. “I have to go to class now,” the girl said. “I only see people in the early morning.” But when Janaki insisted, the girl set down her lipstick, went to wash her hands, and sat on a straw mat on a dais in the corner of the room. Small statues and pictures of gods and goddesses surrounded her. Janaki and Bhola followed her and sat on the floor in front of her. Instantly, the girl’s eyes fluttered and a voice came out of her mouth that was different—hoarser, faster. “You like to play marbles, huh? Do you go to school? Do you get good grades?” she asked Bhola.
“He’s become very religious,” Janaki said.
The girl spoke in a rapid burst of Newari that Janaki didn’t understand.
“Is everything . . . all right with him?” Janaki asked.
The girl let out a sigh and said, “He’ll have problems.” She pointed to her own head. “Bad spirits have pushed themselves into his mind.”
Bhola was staring at the girl, his mouth slightly open as if transfixed by her face.
“What should I do? Can you do anything?” Janaki asked.
“Wait,” the girl said. Then her lips began to move. With her fingers she drew circles in the air around Bhola’s head, then said, “His father. His father will leave you. Go to the Dakshinkali temple and make an offering of a goat, then feed him fish soup with some ginger.”
“Feed my husband?”
“No, no, your son. Feed him fish soup every day for a month.”
“He’ll be fine then?”
The girl’s eyes fluttered and her earlier voice emerged. “I’ll be late for class. I have an exam today—I have to go.”
When sacrificing a goat at Dakshinkali and feeding Bhola fish soup did nothing, Janaki did take him to a psychiatrist, who met with them and prescribed some pills. But the pills only made Bhola more restless, more fearful and paranoid. A second psychiatrist said that Bhola suffered from a debilitating mental disease, schizophrenia, that had no known cure. He prescribed a medication that he hoped would help control it. These pills seemed to calm Bhola down, but after a few days he abruptly refused to keep taking them, saying they were shrinking his stomach and would starve him to death. Desperate, Janaki once again turned to shamans and soothsayers. But no matter how many chickens she sacrificed to goddesses, no matter what strange concoctions she made to drive the evil spirits away, the voices inside his head continued their harangue.
Now he refused to touch the dal-bhat she’d brought him. “My comrades have forbidden me to accept food or drink from you,” he said.
“Who are your comrades?”
“That’s top secret,” Bhola said with a sly smile. “You might tell the government, and then they’d get caught. So, no, that question I cannot oblige.”
It didn’t completely surprise Janaki that he was obsessed with the Maobadis. After all, everyone talked about them—in the shops, on the radio and television. The newspapers continually printed their photos: the top leader with his solemn eyes; the second-in-command, the tall doctor. Janaki didn’t understand how these ordinary-looking men could be responsible for spilling so much blood. Finally she said to Bhola, “I can’t give you money for a gun.”
“You’re a worthless mother. That’s why Baba left you.”
Janaki flinched. “Don’t speak to me that way, Bhola.”
“Are you giving me the money or not?” Something flickered in his eyes. He’d never been violent, but if he thought those rebels were his friends, who knew what he might do?
“I can’t give you money,” she said quietly.
Bhola hurled the plate of food across the room, and rice and dal scattered all over the floor. “The comrades will hear about this,” he said and stood. “I’ve an appointment to meet them in the hills tomorrow.” And then he left.
Janaki stared at the food, her head reeling, then she took a deep breath, stood, and tidied the floor. When Ananda was with her, she at least had someone to talk to about Bhola, but a year ago Ananda left her, after twenty years of marriage, for a woman who worked in his office. He’d announced it bluntly in the kitchen, right after they’d finished dinner. Bhola was at the window, watching passersby on the street below and speaking into a pen.
“How long?” she’d asked. She meant to ask him how long he’d been seeing this woman, but the rest of the words remained inside her.
Ananda shook his head. “I’ve known her about a year. Please forgive me, Janaki. I didn’t know it would come to this, but Sukumaya and I have decided to live together now.”
Janaki stood there. “What about Bhola?”
“He will be fine. He’ll come and visit me.” Ananda told her that she could continue to live in the house—he’d pay the mortgage—and that she could keep the rent from the shop on the bottom floor for her monthly expenses. She didn’t ask him what he’d live on, but he explained, “I’m going to sell that land in the village.” She was too numb to argue with him that they’d talked about transferring his family’s land to Bhola’s name, in case something happened to the two of them.
Later that night, as she lay down in bed and turned off the light, she felt Ananda slide next to her. She quietly got up, went to the living room sofa, and lay down there, shivering a bit because she hadn’t taken the blanket with her. A few minutes later, he came to her and gently placed the blanket on her body She lay still, and he said, “It has nothing to do with you, Janaki.”
She didn’t speak.
“It’s just that . . . with her I’ve begun to feel a lot of things.” In the dark he seemed to be searching for words to explain more, but when he spoke, he only said, “I’ll move out the day after tomorrow. Our house will be ready by then.”
Bhola was seventeen then and didn’t fully understand what was happening. “What did you say to Baba?” he asked the morning Ananda packed his things and took a taxi to his new house. “Why is he leaving us?”
“He has something important to take care of for a while,” Janaki said. “You can go visit him.”
“You’re a bad person,” Bhola said, and with his index finger drew a circle around her head. After his father moved out, Bhola got worse. He refused to bathe, brush his teeth, or comb his hair. One day he disappeared for two nights, and when he returned home, his clothes were in tatters. After that, Janaki took him to the hospital and checked him into the psychiatric ward for three weeks. There he developed a fantasy about running away to Bombay to become a movie star. “Amitabh Bachchan has promised me a role in his next movie,” he said to the doctors and nurses. Janaki visited him daily and stayed by his bed, reading him stories or playing cards with him, and one afternoon Ananda dropped by with a small cassette player, which he presented to his son. The two listened to songs on the new player, and Janaki went down to the yard, where she sat under a tree and watched some ducks bathe in a large puddle of water. When she went back up an hour later, Bhola was asleep and Ananda had left. He didn’t visit his son in the hospital again.
After Bhola returned home from the hospital, he told Janaki that he didn’t want to live with her anymore, and when he started shoving his clothes into a large plastic bag, Janaki panicked and offered him the room on the third floor that she’d been using for storage. After some persuasion, Bhola agreed, on the condition that she’d never come up and that he’d cook his own food on a portable stove, as if he worried she’d poison him. She feared he would leave the stove on and burn down the house, but she had no choice. From then on, she listened closely to his loud footsteps on the stairs, and when she was sure he’d left, she slinked upstairs, opened his door with an extra key, tidied up the room, and made sure everything was okay.
A few months later, at the crowded market in Asan, Janaki saw Ananda with Sukumaya, a thin woman with smooth skin and large, attractive eyes. She wore a bright orange sari, her wrists crowded with bracelets and bangles. She was bargaining with a vegetable vendor, and Janaki watched them with a feeling of detachment. She stood there, a packet of cumin seeds in her hands, and when Ananda turned and spotted her, he quickly ushered his new wife away.
Back home from the Maru Ganesh temple, Janaki went up to Bhola’s room. After he left the house in a huff last night, he hadn’t returned. On the floor was his filthy bedding, and two giant cockroaches, feelers twitching, scurried across the room.
Janaki swept and mopped the floor, then tidied up his clothes. As she was making his bed, her fingers touched something hard. She lifted the mattress, then froze at what she saw. She gingerly lifted the thing with two fingers; it was heavier than she thought—she’d never seen one before except in movies. It had a brown handle and was rusted in spots. There was a bulge in the middle where she imagined the bullets went. Did it even work? Where did he get the money to buy it? Who sold it to him? And why had he asked her for a gun? Holding it carefully, she peeked out the window. People were going about their business. Two women carrying babies on their backs laughed as they talked. A young man, his hands in his pockets, sang loudly as he passed by. Voices drifted up. Fear tightened her stomach: Bhola might use the gun on himself.
She found a plastic bag under the bed and wrapped it around the gun with great caution, terrified that it would suddenly fire. She left the house and found herself thrust into the cacophony of the Makhan Tole marketplace. I should have gone another way, she thought, brushing against the pedestrians, fearful that the package would slip from her hands. She headed toward Ratna Park, where she boarded a minibus to go to Ananda, who lived in Balaju. On the minibus, Janaki clutched the gun under her shawl, feeling the cold metal against her belly.
When she knocked on Ananda’s door, Sukumaya answered. Janaki had never spoken to her, although she had run into her and Ananda a couple of times in the city after that first day at the market. Janaki and Ananda had done all the talking, mostly about Bhola, while Sukumaya had stood timidly behind him. “Is he home?” Janaki asked now. Her eyes fell on Sukumaya’s large belly, and Janaki swallowed. Soon Ananda would have even less time for Bhola.
Playing nervously with her hair, Sukumaya said he was visiting a friend.
“I’ll come back, then,” Janaki said.
Sukumaya said something so softly Janaki could barely hear her. “Please have some tea first,” Sukumaya repeated, louder this time.
What a strange woman, thought Janaki, who had expected Sukumaya to act at least a little sullen. Well, why not? Janaki thought. Let’s see what this woman is all about. And maybe Ananda would come home soon, and she could show him the gun.
She followed her into the living room and took a seat on a plush velvet sofa while Sukumaya went to the kitchen. The walls were covered with photos of Ananda and Sukumaya together: at their wedding, with mountains in the background, outside a temple. Janaki’s eyes fell on the one picture of Bhola, when he was five. She remembered that one—he’d refused to smile, and when they’d forced him to, he’d bared his teeth. She peered at the photo to see if she could detect something different in his eyes that might indicate how he’d turn out later. But she found nothing.
Sukumaya came back with two glasses of tea and a plate of biscuits. An awkward silence hung in the air as they sipped their tea, then Janaki said, “And you are well? Your health is well?” She almost asked whether she was pregnant, but she barely knew the woman, and she certainly didn’t want to be mistaken.
Sukumaya nodded.
She can’t be more than a few years younger than me, Janaki thought. Ananda had never mentioned her age.
Sukumaya blurted out, “I am expecting!”
“That’s what I thought. How far along are you?”
“Already five months. When you were carrying your son,” Sukumaya said, setting her cup of tea down and leaning forward, “did you feel like something horrible was growing inside you?”
“No,” Janaki said, nearly choking on her tea at the odd question.
“Did you ever feel that the baby would come out all wrong, perhaps missing an eye or a leg?”
Janaki said no. She wondered whether Sukumaya, too, was touched in the head.
“I feel like that all the time.” Her face became slightly contorted.
“If you feel like that, why don’t you ask your mother to come stay with you for a while? Let her take care of you.”
