Animal's People (20 page)

“You're right, nothing. Nisha, she's his daughter, says he won't even listen to his old records.”

“He must have been good, to make records.”

“The best. Somraj Pandit was famous. They used to call him the Voice of Khaufpur. The internest tells how he would sing cranes and waterspouts.”

“Not sure I follow you,” she says.

“Well…”

Alas, what kind of integrity have I, who'd promised Pandit Somraj not to repeat the things he confided to me and here's babbling to a foreign doctress? Eyes, just now I mentioned betrayal, that's what this is, but it's happened, as these things do, without planning. You go with the heart, where it leads, but the heart is blind. I've jawed on for at least an hour. Elli's full of questions about Pandit Somraj, about his wife, his fame as a singer. Some things I should not have told her.

“Frogs?” she says, “did you really say frogs?”

“Yes.”

“Bizarre. Was he joking?”

“Not he. Since the Kampani's poisons tore his lungs, and took his wife and son, Somraj Pandit rarely laughs. Nor will he sing aloud. Out of his suffering he makes songs that he alone can hear.”

“That is so sad,” she says. “I shouldn't laugh at the frogs.”

“Only one joke has Pandit Somraj.
Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni, Sa,
these are the notes which all recognise. Somraj says that for him the octave now runs
Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Khã, Si, Khã, Si.”

Eyes, this is the pandit's joke, he tells it against himself. It's not meant to be funny, it's a way of spitting in the eye of fate, of saying fuck you to the world which so carelessly mangled his life. Of course this joke is wasted on you, dear Eyes, first because no one has ever mangled you, but chiefly because you don't speak our language.
Khã
and
Si
are not really notes in the scale, if you join them they make
khaañsi
, which means “cough.” What Somraj is saying is, every time I start to sing I begin coughing and can't stop.

No need to explain this to Elli, so good's her Hindi. “That poor guy,” she says. “How bitter he must be. Maybe I should go across there and take a look at that cough.”

Next day near lunchtime Nisha and I are in the kitchen, preparing food. Her dad is giving the lizard a singing lesson. We can hear him trying a phrase
sochha samajha mana meetha piyaravaa
over and over again. Comes a knock on the door. Nisha's hands are floury, so I've gone.

Outside is Elli with a serious look on her face. No greeting for me even. “Is Pandit Somraj in?”

“Elli doctress, he's teaching.”

Says she, “It's important.” Only then does she give a small smile and ask, “Animal, please fetch him here.” So I've knocked on the music room door to deliver the message, in a little while Pandit Somraj arrives.

“Good morning, Pandit Somraj, I need to talk to you.”

“Doctor Barber, good afternoon.” Doesn't look like he wants to let her in.

“Animal tells me you're a decent person to whom I can speak openly. As you know I've opened the clinic across the road. People are staying away. Can you throw any light on this?”

My god, how devious is Elli. No wonder she showed such an interest in Somraj. Conned me, she's. Does believe he's the villain of this affair.

Somraj Pandit looks taken aback. Such a brash approach to discussion, it's not the Khaufpuri way. Says he, “I'm sorry, I know nothing of your clinic. Was there anything else? I have a student here, we are in the middle of a lesson.”

“Why are people being told not to come? Whoever's done this, they've done a bad thing.”

“I'm sorry, I can't help you,” he says, and starts to close the door.

“You must.” Elli's sounding kind of desperate. “You must, please. At least tell me why it's happening. Why do you believe I am connected with that Kampani? I detest it as much as you do.”

“If people are not coming, that is their affair. It is not for me to tell others what to do.” He turns. The lizard Shastri's in the hall behind, staring. Somraj gives him a nod, I guess he thinks this is the end of the conversation.

“Wait,” says Elli. “I'm sorry, too, but that's not good enough. I think you know why people are staying away. I think you know exactly why. And you've misjudged me. You have treated me most unfairly. I have given up everything to come here and do this work.”

Somraj's turned back again. The look in his eyes, it seems almost like pain, but could be contempt or pity or any number of shades of annoyance. At last he sighs. “You had better come inside.”

He leads her into the music room, where he was giving Shastri his lesson. There's a harmonium on the carpet. “Please,” says Somraj. “Sit. Will you have something? Tea? A glass of squash?”

“Look,” says she, “this isn't a social call. I haven't come to pass the time of day, or ask after your health, although I have to say you don't look at all well. In fact if you have any sense you'll let me find out what's wrong with you, and you'll…you'll stop stopping other people…”

“Stop stopping?”

“You know exactly what I mean,” snaps Elli in Inglis.

All this time Shastri and I are peering in through the door. Nisha's there too by now, shooting hostile glances at Elli from her big brown eyes. “Dad, is everything all right?”

Says Somraj to Elli, “If you've a problem let us discuss it sensibly. Not shouting. All right, I'll be frank with you. When we heard there was a clinic to be opened by an Amrikan, an Amrikan person about whom nothing was known, people here became fearful.”

“Go ahead,” she says, “I'm listening.”

“Leave us please,” says Somraj to the three of us in the doorway. Two obey, the third, whose head lower to the floor's not so easy to spot, remains.

“Is it difficult for you to understand?” asks Somraj. “Amrikans don't have a good reputation in this town.”

“Wait one moment,” says Elli, holding up a hand. “Whatever you're about to say, I won't have that dumped on me. I'm not ashamed to be Amrikan, there's plenty to be proud of in Amrika, there's good and bad, like everywhere else. In this world there are two kinds of people, those who help others, and those who don't. Me, I'm the first kind, I can say this because I'm here to help. Yet you, or someone you know, has told people to stay away from my clinic, and that's a wicked thing to have done. So before you start on about me being Amrikan, you better decide, which kind of person are you?”

“Mrs. Barber…”

“Mrs. nothing,” she interrupts. “It's Doctor Barber if you must, but since we're neighbours I'd prefer it if you called me Elli.”

“Doctor Barber, the fact is people here know nothing about you, where you came from, who is funding you, whether you are working for someone. If you understood this place better, you would know why such questions matter.”

“That's the second time you've mentioned understanding, Pandit Somraj. Understanding is a two-way thing. Usually it's the result of something called conversation, which takes two. If you wanted to know about me, you could have come and asked. But you did not. And as for justice, you put me on trial without informing me you were doing so, trumped up stories and played on people's fears without knowing anything at all about me, you found me guilty of what I do not know, and you passed your sentence. I have put my whole heart and everything I own into that clinic, and I'm not going to let you or any other prejudiced bastard fuck it up.”

“Now please calm down,” he says. As for me, how I am wishing that Elli was saying these things to he who deserved to hear them, not the poor pandit, who although she doesn't know it is on her side.

“No I will not fucking calm down. It's about time you heard a thing or two. I know all about your committee. What you might not know is that many of those people, the same people you claim to represent, really want to come to my clinic. Some of them as you well know, are very ill. I tell you, if there is a single death in this neighbourhood that I could have prevented, it will be on your head and your conscience.”

Why won't he tell her he opposed the boycott? But now there's an even grimmer expression on the face of that grim man. “Since you are being blunt I will also be blunt. I will not swear at you, as you have at me, but let me tell you that if you collected every swear word in every language, every filthy term of abuse, melted them together to make one word so hateful, so utterly revolting, so devoid of goodness that its mere utterance would create horror and loathing and hatred, that word would be…”

“Amrikan?”

“…No, it would be the name of that Kampani. Have you been to the square where the court is? Yes? You must have seen, no matter what time you go there, that there are always a few people outside, with banners. If the court is in session, they may chant. You have been here long enough to have seen this.”

“I have seen it and I'll gladly join you in those protests, but what the hell has this got to do with me?”

“Everything,” says he. “It has everything to do with you. You see, the Kampani—” One of those bad coughs begins fighting its way up from his lungs, he struggles to quell it but can't.

“You should really let me see to that,” says Elli.

“For years,” says Somraj when he's got back his breath, “the Kampani has been saying that the damage to people's health has been exaggerated, it would like to have studies which show that things here are normal, that the last effects of the disaster are vanished.”

“Yes,” says Elli, “I know all about this idiotic theory that I have come to do some sort of health survey, but surely you realise that a proper study can't be done in weeks, it's impossible, besides which we all know what the result would be. Things are not normal here, anyone with eyes can see that.”

“The studies need not be real. All they need's someone willing to fabricate them. A doctor, for example.”

“That's outrageous and unfair!”

“Then why did you come here? What sort of woman gives up her life in Amrika and comes to a place like this, to help people for no reward? Either you are a saint, or someone with a different purpose. So which are you?”

“I'm no saint, but how can I prove to you or anyone else what my motives are? You'll believe me or not as you choose.” Elli's turned bright red, her hands are shaking. “This is not fair, you've already decided I am guilty!”

“It is a very unusual person who gives up so much.”

“No more unusual than one who hears music in frogs!”

After blurting this, she gives a guilty glance at me, who's already turning tail to run.

“I am so sorry,” says Somraj, “this is not in my hands.” Without shifting his head he says, calm as you like, “Animal, kindly tell Shastri we will resume his lesson.”

I did not dare face Somraj. I left the house while the lizard's lesson was still going on and stayed away from the Chicken Claw for two weeks. One night I dreamed that I was dragged before Somraj's friends in his music room. Somraj said, “Now we shall hear
raga Animal
,” and began to whack my arse with a shoe. The musicians listened enraptured to my cries then exclaimed “Wah! Wah!” Nisha and Zafar were there too, clapping. Nisha said, “Animal, I never knew you could sing so nicely.”

One morning Farouq comes bumping up on his bicycle. “Kyoñ salé, where have you been hiding?”

“Not been hiding.”

“So why have we not been favoured with your presence?”

“Busy been, I've.”

“Zafar wants to see you.”

“Can't go right now.” My one regret about staying away from the Claw is that Zafar has not been getting his pills, but the thought of meeting Pandit Somraj fills me with dread. “I'm busy.”

“Oh I can see that,” he says with full sarcasm. “What are you doing? Sitting here playing with your lund? Found a girl? Been shagging her arse off, have you?”

“Might have.”

He gives a nasty laugh. “You've never fucked a woman in your life.”

“I have!” It's the old lie.

“I don't believe you. Go to Laxmi Talkies, get yourself laid. Thirty bucks, no problem.”

“Is that what they charge you?”

“Don't be cheeky.” Farouq gets off his bike, leans it against our wall and deliberately stands in front of me so I have to twist my neck upwards to see his face. For a moment I wonder, is he going to strike me or kick me?

Says Farouq looking down at me, “Muharram is coming, brother Animal, have you forgotten your boast? Are you going to walk on the coals? Will you have the guts?”

Well, if one thing I learned on the streets, it's that you never back down. “Listen, you Yar-yilaqi heap. I'll walk over your fire not just once, but twice.”

“That I would like to see,” says he.

“You shall.” I'm monitoring his shoes in case I have to leap backwards.

“I'll hold you to this promise.”

“You can.”

“I will,” says he from above. “Come on, Zafar is waiting.”

“What does he want me for?”

“Your friend the doctress. Well, you'll see for yourself.”

Farouq has to lift me onto the carrier, then we're bumping over the rough track of Paradise Alley, the stony sludge of Seven Tailors, with Jara's running along behind. “Seems the shopkeepers all love you,” says Farouq, hearing first Baju then I'm Alive yell as we rattle past.

“I am their favourite customer.”

Outside Somraj's house, there's a crowd gathered. On the clinic side of the street, in the shade of the mango are three tables set, sitting behind them are Dayanand, Suresh and Elli. On each table is something different.

I drop from Farouq's bike and stand gaping.

On the first table is propped a huge drawing of a human body. On it are marked all the places where the Kampani's that-night-poisons have damaged people, such as eyes, lungs, joints, womb, brain. These are marked in red. In blue are marked the places which have been harmed by drinking the poisoned water, breasts, again womb, stomach, skin. Blue and red spirals are coming from the head, which is also being banged by a hammer, above all hangs a dark grey cloud with lightning.

“For each harm,” Dayanand is saying, “we have a good treatment, which is free. So stop suffering. Come and get help for your pains. Don't listen to false rumours.”

People round the table are pointing to the things from which they suffer. Hammer is for headache. Must be. I get them badly myself, often just before I'll go mad. “Giddiness, fainting fits,” says Dayanand to a woman who's looking at the spinning spirals.

“I thought so,” she says. “Is this treatment truly free?”

“Fully,” replies Dayanand. “It is excellent modern treatment. It will help you. Go, register with the lady inside, today itself the doctor will see you.”

So this woman has gone into the clinic, as she vanishes inside, so other people are coming out. I wonder what will Zafar and Co. be making of this? I guess we are all learning that Elli doctress does not easily give up.

“Hurry up,” says Farouq, who has parked his bike and come to find me.

“Wait. What's the cloud?” I ask Dayanand, who looks none too pleased to see me.

“It is depression. Lightning is anxiety.”

“Oh yes? Who drew them, you, was it?”

“Don't take the piss,” he says. “Piss off.”

“Okay,” says I, and've gone into Somraj's house to meet my fate.

First thing inside is Nisha greets me with a lund-throbbing hug. “Animal, where have you been? You stopped coming for lunch. Is my cooking so bad?”

“Not at all, is your dad around?”

“No. Do you need to see him?”

“Not important,” says I. Hoo, relief.

Zafar is sitting in the garden, peeling a fruit with his knife, like the first time I met him. “Animal, good you're here. We have this problem. You've seen outside, the sideshow?”

“Seen.”

“Well that's just today's fun. Yesterday Elli doctress was seen coming out of the office of Zahreel Khan.”

“Who very much admires her bloblos,” says I, myself recalling them.

“Leaving aside the bloblos,” he says wearily, “that was yesterday's fun. Since you vanished we have also had the music wars.”

“Music wars?”

Says Nisha, “Every evening. Whenever my dad plays any music, or if he's giving a lesson, there comes this loud music from across the road.”

“Elli doctress has a thing called piano,” says I. “I have seen it. She learned it because her mother was ill.”

“Well it's making my father ill,” says Nisha. “I have never seen him in such a state. Walking up and down he's, like a fishguts, holding his head.”

“Oh that's terrible!” says I, certain now of an arsewhacking by the angry pandit and his mates.

“Papa says that his brain is being chewed by this Elli doctress.”

Says Zafar, “I think that not until the moon starts spinning backwards will we understand what's going on in Elli doctress's head. Until then, Animal, there's you.”

“Me? What can I do? I know, I'll make you a cup of tea.”

“Namispond,” says he.

“Jamispond,” says his adoring echo. “You are friendly with her, find out why she went to see Zahreel Khan.”

I've managed to slip one of the black golis into Zafar's tea, then gone back outside, where are sat Elli doctress and her staff trying to convince the Khaufpuris. On the second table are picture leaflets about tuberculosis and how to stop it spreading. Here's Suresh explaining that TB is contagious, yes, but with a few precautions you can easily protect yourself, plus you can help those who are suffering. “We will teach you. All treatments and medicines are free. Just go inside and register.”

“How can this be a bad thing?” someone asks.

Others agree, “So many will benefit.” “It's just what's needed.”

By now there's a regular stream of folk coming and going from the door of the clinic. At this rate the boycott will soon be over.

On the third table are many sheets of paper, Elli doctress is waving a pen at people. “Come and sign!”

“What is this?” a man asks.

“It's a petition,” says Elli in a loud clear voice. “It is addressed to Pandit Somraj and his committee. It says, please do not stop the people from getting the good free treatment they need. Support this clinic. Encourage people to make good use of it.”

“What should I do?”

“Just sign your name, write a comment, if you have one.”

The man makes a mumble, he jabs at the paper then moves off.

“Doesn't know how to write.” Hidden as I am by the edge of the table, it takes her some time to see me.

“Animal! Thank goodness, I've been wanting to talk to you. Wait right there, don't go anywhere.” She looks over to Suresh. “At least one hundred have signed. How many registered inside?”

“Madam, seventy, more than.”

“Good.” She's turned back to me. “Animal, can you spare me a few minutes?”

“Elli doctress, what are you doing?”

“I am telling these people that Pandit Somraj is unfair. He should not be stopping them from getting treatment.”

“Good morning, Doctor Barber,” says a voice like death. Somraj is standing right there beside us.

People around kind of hold their breath. All heads turn to Elli doctress, she is looking like what old folks call a duck on thunder. So the heads turn back to Somraj, stood there grim as ever.

“Pandit Somraj,” says Elli, collecting her wits. “Since you are here I would like to present you with this petition.” She's gathered up all the sheets of paper and thrust them at him.

“I will be happy to receive it,” he says politely, not taking the sheets. “Before that, there is something I would like to do.”

A crowd of Khaufpuris presses close. What a rabble of turbans, dhotis, burqas, saris, a wave of Khaufpuri breath, perfumed with betel and supari.

“Get back you scum,” I'm shouting, “you will step on my fucking fingers.”

Says Somraj, “I would like to sign it.”

Then people are goggling, because for the first time anyone can remember, Pandit Somraj is smiling.

“What do you mean, you would like to sign it?” asks Elli, who's gone like a cut beetroot.

“Like this,” he says. He picks up a pen and signs. “Collect more signatures. When you have finished, please bring them to me.”

Then he's gone into his house, still smiling, leaving behind a babble of voices plus one astonished doctress sat holding her papers.

“Elli doctress?”

She says at last, “That horrible man, he's just making mockery. How dare he? Suresh, did you see what he just did?”

“Madam, Somraj Pandit has signed the petition.”

“I know he has signed the damn petition.” Her voice has gone high. “Can you believe it? The petition is aimed against him, and he has signed it himself.”

“Madam, Pandit Somraj has a reputation for fairness, maybe he feels he is being unfair.”

“But if he feels he is being unfair, why doesn't he just be fair? I give up with this town, I don't think I will ever understand it.”

Next she's ghurr-ghurred me. “Animal, will you sign?”

“Not I.”

“Why not? If even Pandit Somraj can sign it, why can't you? Come on, sign your name.”

“It's not a proper name,” says I. Somraj can do whatever he likes, never will Zafar say anything to the man he calls “abba.” But me?

“Sign!”

“When all's said, what kind of a name is Animal?”

“Have some guts.” It's like she's read my thoughts. “You're a free human.”

“I am not a human.”

“You're always saying that. You don't really believe it.”

“Of course I believe it, because it's true.”

“So then, what else is true?”

I've thought about this for a moment, then said, “Give me the pen.” Under all the signatures and crosses, I write:

“There, Elli, I've made you a poem.”

Growls the blood-tuskery voice before I can stop it:

My lips have uttered human speech, the last sacrifice of the slaughtered beast.

“I am so sorry,” she says later, when we are inside her clinic. “I should never have said that about frogs. It was stupid.”

To this I've replied nothing. I may be pissed off with Elli, but I'll never criticise in case she gets angry and stops my treatment. If your mission in life is to look after number one, sometimes it means biting your tongue, but there's usually another way to get at a person.

“Elli, how do you expect people round here to trust you, if you go visiting people like Zahreel Khan?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Namispond Jamispond.”

“Well, I got nowhere with the gentleman across the road. He's got quite a nerve, hasn't he? Listen to this.”

She sits at her piano, opens the lid and thumps her hands down. There's a sound like rumbling thunder. Jara lifts her head and yips. Elli makes more great crashing sounds.