The Illicit Happiness of Other People (11 page)

Unni said that there were thousands of Human Sentiments and many of them had not been named in any language. He said every person had at least one emotion that only he or she felt and no one else in the world could even imagine the feeling. ‘Even you, Thoma, among the many things you feel
there is one that only you can achieve and no other person in the world.’

‘I know what it is, Unni, but don’t tell anyone,’ Thoma had said in a whisper.

‘What is it, Thoma?’

‘In the mornings, soon after I wake up, my penis grows on its own.’

‘My God, Thoma, are you serious?’

‘I promise.’

‘Thoma, you are one of a kind.’

‘I am?’

‘You are a mutant, Thoma.’

‘What do mutants do?’

‘A mutant has abilities other humans do not have. You are a mutant, Thoma.’

It was the happiest moment in Thoma’s life, even though Unni did say, ‘But it is a talent, Thoma. It is not a sentiment.’

‘That’s what even I thought, Unni. It is a talent. But I do have feelings that others may not feel. I can smell the earth after it rains.’

‘Many people can, actually.’

‘Really? There is something else, then. Nobody else can even imagine it. Sometimes when I feel sad, when I think of the way our mother talks to herself, how our father comes home drunk, how we never go out as a family because we don’t have any money, when I think of all that I feel a sorrow in my throat, it becomes a ball, and you know, Unni, I actually enjoy it. I like the pain in my throat and the way tears flow from my eyes. Someone who is looking at me may think that I am suffering. But I am enjoying it, too.’

‘Thoma, you are really very different from others.’

‘I am a mutant.’

‘No. What you told me, that makes you a Unique Person. People go through their entire lives not knowing what is special about them. But I think you’ve found it at such an early age. What you told me about how you feel, nobody has that feeling, Thoma.’

‘Can you think of a name for it? I don’t want it to be unnamed. I want people to know that there is such a sentiment.’

‘Only the Oxford dictionary is allowed to decide on new words, Thoma.’

Unni went to the phone and dialled a number. ‘Is that the Oxford Dictionary Limited?’ Unni said. ‘I want to speak to the editor, please … Sir, good morning. My brother Thoma Chacko appears to have discovered his Unique Emotion …’

Thoma was so excited he was jogging on the spot and trying to get Unni’s attention by waving his hand.

‘What is it, Thoma?’

‘Tell him, I am from St Ignatius School.’

Unni said into the phone, ‘I am sorry to keep you on hold, sir. As I was saying, my brother Thoma Chacko, a day scholar at the St Ignatius High School for Boys, has discovered an emotion that is unique to him and he proposes that it be named. Yes … yes … of course. What happens to him is that on some days his sorrow feels like a ball in his throat and he begins to enjoy the whole thing.’

Many weeks later, Unni brought him a pocket Oxford dictionary that was so new that it was still in its plastic casing. Unni opened it and showed him the word ‘Self-pity’.

‘That’s the word they made for you, Thoma.’

Thoma held the dictionary in his nervous hands and saw with a shudder in his heart what he had done. He had created an English word even though it was borrowed from two existing words.

‘They have not mentioned my name,’ he said.

‘They don’t mention names, Thoma.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s the way they are.’

Thoma is not a kid any more, he knows what Unni did, but he still remembers the excitement of the day and he remembers it through a happy scent.

His mother is probably nervous. ‘Wonder what is taking them so long to open the door,’ she says.

‘You’ve to ring the doorbell,’ Thoma says.

‘I didn’t ring the bell?’

‘No, you didn’t.’

She begins to shake with laughter, and that makes him laugh too.

Mythili’s mother opens the door and is surprised by what she sees. She does not realize it but she is slowly shutting the door. She stares with a sullen face, and if she stays that way for a second more Thoma and his mother will be shamed. She manages a smile just in time. ‘Come in,’ she says, but she moves back only two feet. She is still holding the door. Mariamma launches one leg in; the other is still outside. The door is ajar and there is no way Thoma can enter.

‘He is having his coffee,’ Mythili’s mother says. The word ‘he’ from her mouth has always referred to Mythili’s father, who is in the hall, minding his own business. Mythili is sitting beside him, on the sofa. She is in a sleeveless pink top that reaches to her knees, and her bare legs are together. She is careful that way, she was always womanly even when she was a little girl. Some girls, they are careless when they sit. They don’t know that boys, especially the older boys, are always searching for ‘The Gap’, they are always on the lookout for it. Mythili probably knows, she is very shrewd.

But she seems somewhat naked right now. It is not just her legs, Thoma can see most of her shoulders and arms. She is this way only when she is indoors. If she wants to go to the front balcony she has to wear other clothes and tie her hair in a ponytail. The thought of Mythili being forced to obey the rules pleases Thoma. He imagines giving an instruction to her and she meekly obeying. That may never happen, but he enjoys the thought.

‘I’ll come later,’ Mariamma says.

‘But what is it?’ Mythili’s mother asks.

‘I was wondering if Mythili can teach Thoma for an hour three days a week. He needs help, it seems to me.’

She catches Mythili’s eye, and the girl smiles in a distant way, as if she is a stranger. That is unfair. There was a time when she used to shadow his mother, and say that she liked Mariamma more than her own mother.

‘But she is going to be very busy,’ Mythili’s mother says. ‘You know the exams are coming.’ She turns to her daughter and says, ‘You are going to be very busy.’

‘Yes, I’m going to be very busy,’ Mythili says.

Mythili’s mother then steps out of her house and shuts the door. ‘There is something I’ve to tell you, Maria,’ she says. She has never been able to accept that Mariamma’s name is not Maria. ‘The money I gave you two months ago, just two hundred rupees, I know, but it would be nice if you could return it soon. Things are a bit tight right now.’

A jolt of shame runs through Mariamma. She does not realize it but her lips have vanished into her mouth. She smiles sheepishly at the floor, like a moron. ‘I was going to return it in just a few days, meant to tell you that,’ she says, and heads back home.

She wanders through the vacant rooms of her house, tossing a ball of crumpled newspaper in the air and catching it with one hand, whispering to herself what she has become. ‘Girls
who were village idiots when Mariamma was something, they are proud women now and Mariamma a beggar.’ Occasionally, her voice rises and Thoma finds it unreasonable that in the middle of all this she should remember his grandmother, who has nothing to do with the day’s humiliation. ‘I have better things to do, Annamol, than make tea.’

She whispers a question a teacher had once asked her about the gold bullion, and how her answer was so brilliant the class was stunned. She walks this way, up and down the rooms, tossing the ball of paper and muttering compliments to herself.

Thoma imagines a day many years in the future when he would arrive in a black car so broad that it would have to be parked outside Block A, and all the people of the building would assemble on their balconies to take a look at the car. He would emerge from the car wearing dark glasses. His tight white shirt and white trousers and pointed white shoes gleaming in the sun. Then Mariamma would slip out of the car in a sari made of gold. And he would look up at Mythili’s mother and throw a huge quantity of notes at her, most of which would somehow reach her third-floor balcony. She would look down at her own belly in shame. Then, for some reason, he would run in slow motion, his hair flying.

Thoma follows his mother as she now walks a bit faster through the rooms, her hands beginning to flay, her fingers stiffening to point at things. The ball of paper falls from her hand. He picks it up and gives it to her. She takes it without looking at him and resumes her march towards another yellow wall. He walks behind her, very close.

‘Tell me a story from your village,’ he says.

‘Later,’ she says without affection, as if it were just another voice inside her that had made the request.

He wonders how Unni used to do it. He could make her snap out of her grouses. He had Technique, that was what
Unni had, but Thoma is not as smart. He tails her, wondering what he must do to make her laugh. She is slowly getting louder, she is remembering the same old grudges, the subject of her anger is not the humiliation of the morning any more.

She goes to the kitchen and wags a finger. Her lips curl in, her head tilts, her jaws stiffen in the fury of the words that do not emerge out of her mouth, and she points a finger at the ceiling. Thoma stands with her, he mimics her scowl and points a finger at the ceiling. Both of them stand this way for a few seconds. Until she relaxes her arm and looks at him with a hand on her hip. And she shakes with laughter. Thoma feels the relief of happiness, and for the first time in his life the air of triumph in his chest. What he had intended to achieve he has attained. That has never happened before. That a motive is followed by its realization may seem natural to most people but not Thoma. When Unni wanted to draw a cow, he drew a cow that was almost alive. Thoma cannot do that. His cows look like white sofas. When Mythili used to say that she was going to sing a song, she would shuffle a bit, swallow and sing exactly the way she had intended. And long after she stopped and looked shyly at Unni, there would be the silence of joy in the room. But the melodies that play in Thoma’s mind, when they come out through his throat, even he does not recognize them. And down there on the playground nobody ever asks him to bowl because the ball can go anywhere in the world. They let him bat only because it does not make a difference to anybody. But today, Thoma had wished to do something, he had a goal, and he achieved it. Carried away, he continues to stand with his lips curled in and a menacing finger threatening the ceiling. She laughs again, but not as much.

MARIAMMA IS WAITING IN the dark, her back against the wall, legs spread out straight on the floor, her big toes interlocked. Ousep will come any time, swaying and stumbling, screaming his laments. If she is lucky he will come quietly on the arms of strangers, like a new cupboard. Once, the men had carried him straight into the flat below. That woman had shrieked as they tried to walk in with him. They tried to calm her down, saying that he was not dead, and they asked her the location of his bed. How that woman screamed.

After the incident, which was a few months ago, Mariamma sees a recurring dream. Ousep on the arms of able men being taken into an orderly home; the tidy woman of the house, with jasmine flowers in her hair, opens the door, then screams in fright and asks them to get out. The men carry Ousep to another home and ask the woman there to show them where his bed is. That woman, too, yells uncontrollably and throws objects at them. They go on this way, carrying Ousep to every home in the world, to be turned away by indignant women. Finally, the bearers of Ousep Chacko arrive at the door of Mariamma, who quietly shows them his bed. It is a dream that makes her sad sometimes, but at other times she shakes in her sleep with laughter.

Every time she sits this way waiting for him she feels a familiar fear in her stomach, though what is about to happen is a scene that occurs every night. The rosary moves between her fingers, but her lips mumble other things. One night, a night like this, she will be waiting but Ousep will not arrive. The phone will ring and a policeman will tell her, ‘A man has been found dead on the road.’

‘Then it is him,’ she will say. ‘That is how Ousep Chacko would go. Like a dog.’

‘What must we do with the body?’

‘In his wallet you will find some cash. If you bastards steal it, you and your children will suffer till the very end of time.’ That is what she will say, she has enough strength inside her to say that. But when she thinks about the matter more calmly, she decides to exclude the policeman’s children from her curse.

But will the call ever come, will Ousep ever fall? Drunkards do live long. They are careful people, especially when they walk on the road. No man has greater purpose than a drunkard.

The thought comes to her, not for the first time, that she could burn him when he is asleep. She could pour kerosene on him and light him up. Men burn their wives all the time and get away with it, don’t they? Burning girls, this country is full of burning girls, full of accidents in the kitchen. It is time a man went this way. She tries to think of the details of the plot but it fills her with gloom, which is a type of sloth. She tries to concentrate but as always her mind wanders. She thinks of her hill, the rubber trees, the plantain groves, and the birds that did not have names. She thinks of Unni, from his infant stare to his calm adolescence, and his tireless search for rogues among animals.

When he was six or seven, or maybe younger, she is not sure, he used to pretend that he was blind or that he was deaf. He could play it so well and for so long that she would get worried. The days he claimed he was blind he would walk to school exactly like a blind child, holding her hand all the way and stumbling on things. And when he said he was deaf, he would not flinch even when he heard a sudden blaring horn on the road. Some days his teachers complained about this. But surely he was pretending, it was a game. What else can explain it?

The thoughts of Unni, strangely, remind her of a screwdriver. She wonders why. Why would Mariamma think of a screwdriver? Is it something Unni had told her? And she
realizes that earlier in the day she was thinking about the screwdriver on Ousep’s bookshelf. It is an odd object to find in his room, it was not there before. Ousep is not a man who fixes things, he has probably never struck a nail on its head in his entire life. So why is the screwdriver lying there in the room of a man who never fixes things? Because he wants to dismantle something. But what?