Blood Money (6 page)
It was quite a crush in the little house. Hex looked out at the rain, already pouring as if through open taps from the veranda roof. ‘Great. We have to walk home in this.’
The ground looked like a dark lake, the surface frosted with the constant blast of raindrops. Less fastidious than Hex, Alex leaped out into it. ‘Last one in the water’s a sissy.’
Paulo grabbed Li’s arm and ran into the open, dragging her along. They nearly slipped over in the wet mud but recovered with a kind of skidding movement, like snowboarders doing a duet.
Amber let out a whoop of delight and leaped into the nearest puddle.
Alex looked back as they splashed across towards their own house. ‘Where’s Hex? The big girl’s blouse – is he afraid of getting his feet wet?’
‘I’ll get him,’ shouted Amber, waving the others on ahead. She ran back through the downpour to Naresh’s veranda and peeked inside.
Hex was sitting at the little palmtop screen with Bina, Radha and Sami clustered around him. Naresh sat to one side but was listening too as Hex spoke. Amber looked at the scene. Behind her, Li and Paulo were having a mud fight. Their shrieks of delight mingled with the pounding of the rain. Inside, Hex was reading to three frightened girls.
‘Look, here’s a site set up by people who’ve donated kidneys. It says:
My mother gave a kidney so that my son could live a normal life. I owe everything to her.
Here’s another:
My doctor said I needed a transplant, but the waiting list was two years. Without hesitation, my brother said, can I donate one of mine? Thanks to him, I have never been on a machine and am fit and well today. He is too.’
My mother gave a kidney so that my son could live a normal life. I owe everything to her.
Here’s another:
My doctor said I needed a transplant, but the waiting list was two years. Without hesitation, my brother said, can I donate one of mine? Thanks to him, I have never been on a machine and am fit and well today. He is too.’
Amber stepped into the open doorway. ‘Your mum will be all right,’ she said gently. ‘And she’s really helping somebody.’
6
O
RGAN
T
HIEVES
RGAN
T
HIEVES
Up on the scaffold at first light, Hex, Li, Amber, Alex and Paulo could see how the rains had changed the landscape. The parched fields were turning green. The ground, previously dry as a bone, had turned to thick mud and was crisscrossed by the tracks of people, animals and vehicles. As the sun grew hotter, steam rose, obscuring the trees.
Stacks of roof tiles were laid out like packs of cards along the planks of the scaffolding. The first job of the morning had been to unload them from Pradesh’s lorry. The hot sun had already dried out the timber roof-frame, so they were able to get on with nailing the tiles into position. This was the last stage that they had to complete before the rains started in earnest. Radha and her friends were hard at work too, fetching supplies. Soon the air was full of the rhythmic sound of hammering.
Below them, the day unfolded. People went out into the fields and hitched cattle to ploughs. The hairdresser arrived in a smoky diesel van and set up his chair next to the standpipe. Soon he had a queue of customers. A large grey cow wandered loose along the street, snuffling the ground for food. A thin figure in rags the colour of the mud moved around the hairdresser, picking up rubbish swept in when the ground turned into a lake. The people in the queue chatted to each other but never acknowledged him. It was as though they couldn’t see him. Paulo had read about the untouchables – people in the lowest class of the caste system who did the dirty jobs such as cleaning and rubbish disposal and lived in their own part of the village. He was amazed that such otherwise friendly people could ignore the man.
Alex had a view over the other side of the village. For a few minutes now he had been watching someone in the distance, coming towards them. The figure walked slowly, as though it carried a great burden of troubles. Now he looked up again. Recognition hit. He sat bolt upright on top of the roof ridge.
‘That’s Mootama!’
Everyone looked round, then at the figure who laboured slowly through the slippery mud, her skirts splattered. She looked as though she had been walking for a long time.
Radha stood up on the scaffold and let out a piercing whistle across the fields. ‘Dad! Mum’s back!’ She gathered her skirts, clambered carefully down onto the sloppy ground and splashed towards the bedraggled figure.
Amber was sitting next to Hex. ‘She’s back already? I thought she’d be gone for days.’
‘She should be,’ said Hex. ‘And she would hardly be walking. Maybe something went wrong.’
They watched in silence as Radha greeted her mother, linked her arm through Mootama’s and led her towards the house.
Li needed a bigger hammer. She could see it on the ground, about four metres down. The ladder, though, was over at the other end of the building. Li decided to take the quick way down. She leaned forwards, tucked her knees into her chest, somersaulted off the rafter and landed lightly on her feet on the ground.
‘Wow!’ said a voice. ‘Can you teach me to do that?’
Li whirled round. ‘Bina! What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been demoted. I’m no longer mother, just plain old Bina. Is there anything I can do?’
‘Yeah,’ said Li. ‘Come and help us at the north end – it’s the last bit that needs tiling.’ She steered Bina towards the ladder. ‘Er – we’ll take the normal way up.’
They climbed to the north end of the roof. Paulo and Amber were working there now, fixing the ridge tiles.
‘How’s your mum?’ said Amber. ‘We saw her coming back.’
Bina picked up an armful of tiles. ‘She’s OK. They sent her home. She only had one kidney anyway.’
Paulo stopped hammering. ‘She only had one kidney?’
‘The other one was stolen.’
Her words stopped all activity: Paulo and Amber, their hammers poised to strike; Alex, bringing more nails; Li, making her way along the ridge; even Hex at the far side, collecting more tiles.
‘Someone stole her kidney?’ said Alex.
Bina nodded slowly. ‘Years ago, she was ill. She had bad stomach pains and went to hospital. I was small at the time, but I remember she was in a lot of pain, before and after. There was this clinic funded by a charity, so we didn’t have to pay. They said she had a gallstone and they had to operate. But now the doctors say her kidney was taken out as well.’
Alex was disbelieving. ‘Somebody removed her kidney and she never knew?’
Bina shook her head. ‘Until now. She went for the tests – all those blood tests Hex told us about. She matched and everything. So the doctors examined her and that’s when they saw her scar. It goes all the way round from her back to her front, like this . . .’ Bina drew a line with her index finger.
Hex and Li had come closer so they could hear. When Bina drew the scar for them, they winced. It went from the middle of her back, around the bottom of her ribcage and almost to her breast bone. They remembered what Hex had said about how the surgeons removed a rib. How painful that must be they could only imagine.
Bina wiped something away from her eye and Paulo realized she was crying. He put an arm around her. Bina sat quietly for a moment. When she next spoke her voice was quiet and angry. ‘Mum was sick for months after that. She couldn’t walk properly for two weeks. She couldn’t lift anything. I had to fetch all the water – it was before we had the standpipe. She had to have painkillers for such a long time. We thought it was because of the stone. But it was because someone stole her kidney.’
Some movement down in the street below caught Amber’s attention. A yellow vehicle, splattered with mud, was bumping over the ruts in the unmade road. ‘Hey – do you often get taxis coming out this far?’
They all looked at the vehicle.
‘It might be passing through,’ said Hex.
But it didn’t. Once it reached the standpipe, the driver braked and cut the engine. A figure got out of the back. He was overweight; that was the first thing they noticed.
‘He obviously doesn’t work in the fields all day,’ said Amber. After a week of being among people who were lean from hard work, someone who obviously ate a lot more than he needed to fuel his body was very noticeable.
Bina had gone pale. ‘That’s the kidney man. What’s he doing back here?’
7
T
RILOK
RILOK
Trilok leaned on the taxi to get his bearings. There was the standpipe, the telephone box; nearby the half-built school. As he remembered, the house he wanted was the second one, with the veranda that had the pink fabric in the doorway. Mootama’s house. The fabric billowed as though somebody was beating it; little clouds of dust puffed up from underneath it. Somebody inside was sweeping the floor. Good. She was at home.
He had to think how he would handle the situation. He wasn’t expected. He wondered what sort of reception he’d get. He didn’t often turn up uninvited. Usually people asked him to come to them. They’d say:
Trilok, find me a kidney. Trilok, sell my kidney.
Trilok, find me a kidney. Trilok, sell my kidney.
It was a real blow to find that Mootama had already lost a kidney. She was a perfect match for old Gopal. And Gopal was difficult because he’d rejected a kidney before. To find that this woman was such good material was a blessing indeed. And then it had all gone wrong.
As Trilok stood there collecting his thoughts, his phone rang. He took it out of his shirt pocket and glanced at the screen. Gopal again. Without even answering it, he could hear the man’s rasping voice, knew what he was going to say:
Have you gone back to that woman yet? I can’t hang on for ever while you start searching again. That woman matches me. End of story. You’ve found your donor. Do whatever you have to, but I want her.
Trilok had heard those same words many times in the short time since the doctors had examined Mootama and sent her packing.
Have you gone back to that woman yet? I can’t hang on for ever while you start searching again. That woman matches me. End of story. You’ve found your donor. Do whatever you have to, but I want her.
Trilok had heard those same words many times in the short time since the doctors had examined Mootama and sent her packing.
Trilok turned his phone off. He didn’t need to hear that all over again for yet another time. He took a deep breath and made his way towards the house. Might as well get on with it. He stepped onto the veranda. The pink silk wasn’t moving so much now, but he could hear the swish of the broom in another part of the room. He knocked on the wooden balustrade to announce his presence. The way he saw it, at the moment, everybody had lost out: Gopal; himself; but also Mootama, who needed money or she wouldn’t have come to him. All he was trying to do was put things right.
When the man walked up to Mootama’s house and knocked, Bina looked horrified.
Paulo put a hand on her arm. ‘Do you want us to come down with you to see what he wants?’
She was about to answer when she saw Naresh striding in from the field. ‘It’s all right. Dad’s going to see.’ She put her head down and concentrated on counting out tiles.
Paulo and the others got the message: she was worried but she didn’t want to talk. They went back to work, but they were all wondering the same thing. Why had the kidney man come back? While they worked, they kept a careful eye on Mootama’s house.
After about thirty minutes the pink sari curtain was snatched aside. Mootama stormed out. She stood on the veranda, leaning on the balustrade and taking deep breaths. Then she put her face in her hands. Her shoulders began to shake.
Amber, hammering nails into tiles, watched. Would someone else come out after Mootama, to offer comfort or to persuade her back inside? No one did. Clearly inside the house the conversation carried on with just Naresh.
She looked over at the taxi, which was still waiting. The driver had dozed off, his arm hanging down outside the window like a thick dark rope and his head lolling on his shoulder.
She looked back at Mootama. What had the kidney man said to upset her so much? And what was he saying now to Naresh? She bashed another nail in, hard.
Between hammer blows, she heard shouts. At the other end of the roof, Pradesh was shouting to the others: ‘Rain. We must get down. It’s too dangerous to be up here.’ His next words were drowned by an immense clap of thunder, as if the sky was splitting.
Amber finished the tile she was on and made her way to the scaffold. The rain began to pelt down. She looked again at the house with the pink sari.
From their quarters, the five friends saw the portly figure of the kidney man rush out of the house, pull open the taxi door and climb in.
‘Why did he bother to come back?’ said Li.
‘I wonder,’ said Hex.
Something in his voice made everyone turn and look at him: Paulo, scrubbing at his curls with a towel, paused; Amber stopped unlacing her boots; Li, undoing her plait, paused, her fingers twined in her hair.
‘I have a theory,’ said Hex, ‘but it’s not nice.’
Paulo pulled the towel off his shoulders and hung it on the drying rail. ‘Spill the beans, Hex.’
Hex sat down. ‘He wants her kidney, right?’
‘Yes, but he can’t be trying to get her to sell her other one,’ scoffed Amber. ‘She can’t live without any kidneys. Don’t be a dumb-ass.’
‘Not such a dumb-ass,’ said Hex. ‘Why has he come back? Why doesn’t he find a kidney somewhere else? He’s come back to persuade her to sell.’
Outside, the sky was the colour of gunmetal. A thunderclap like a gunshot made them all jump.
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