The Illicit Happiness of Other People (33 page)

‘And his clothes? They were clean and smart?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he use the word “I” to refer to himself? Was he aware of his self?’

‘I don’t remember,’ Ousep says.

‘Did he have plans? Did he have a concept of the future, his own future?’

‘I can’t be sure.’

‘Still,’ Iyengar says, leaning back and resting his head comfortably on the chair, ‘he could be the corpse. There is a corpse in this boy, I feel.’

THOMA HAS TRIED EVERYTHING to diminish Mythili in his mind. He has searched her face for the hint of a moustache, he has imagined her naked and laughed at her shame, he has imagined her on the commode though he does not really believe she would ever do anything as cheap as that. But all his methods have failed and he now accepts that he must quietly suffer his adoration.

‘Do you know about the sun and the moon?’ he asks to show her his range of interests. They are in her room, she sitting with her legs folded on her bed, and he sitting on a plastic chair facing her.

‘What about the sun and the moon?’

‘The sun is a thousand times larger than the moon.’

‘So?’

‘But they are positioned in space in such a way that from Earth they appear to be the same size in the sky.’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘Unni told me that.’

‘So what if they are the same size?’

‘They are exactly the same size in the sky, Mythili. It is a mystery how they ended up where they are in space so that they look equal in the sky. They are where they are because that is the only way there can be life on Earth.’

‘But that is circular logic,’ she says.

Thoma pretends he knows what circular logic is, he nods his head.

‘I have an English teacher,’ Mythili says. ‘She tells us, “Girls,
isn’t it amazing that the boiling point of water is exactly one hundred degrees. What a nice round number the Lord has given us.”’

Thoma laughs to show he understands. They fall silent, as they usually do. But he knows they have a lot to talk about these days. He does not have to bring up Unni any more, she asks him herself. She is very curious to know what his father has discovered. Thoma tells her the bits and pieces he has gathered from his father’s drunken confessions to the ceiling fan, and from what his mother has told him. Mythili’s face grows sad when she listens.

She usually lifts her mood by recounting her memories of Unni – most of them unremarkable things, which she greatly exaggerates. Like Unni’s mind-reading abilities. ‘How could Unni know which card I had picked. Remember, Thoma? I started taking the whole pack of cards to my room, shutting the door and then picking a card. And when I stepped out, Unni would guess it correctly. Then I started going to the terrace like a fool to pick the card. But he would always guess what was in my mind. I have picked a card and torn it into many pieces, too, but he would always guess it.’

She goes on and on as if she really believes that Unni could read minds, and she has this annoying smile on her face. Thoma cannot bear it any more. He tells her, ‘It was a trick. He didn’t read your mind. Nobody can read minds.’

‘But then how did he do it?’

‘He didn’t do it. He didn’t do anything.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I did it.’

Mythili’s face turns serious; she has never looked at Thoma with so much concentration. He tells her, ‘Remember? I was always around when you picked the card. I was this little boy
whom nobody noticed. I was invisible. That’s what Unni told me and he was right. I would be standing right behind you when you picked the card. In your room, on the stairway, on the terrace, I was always around. But you never saw me. Unni taught me how to make the signs to pass the message to him behind your back. Sometimes Unni would pretend that he could not guess the card. Then we would wait for you to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and I would slip the card in one of your books.’

She folds her arms, and looks away with a sad smile. ‘I wish you had not told me, Thoma,’ she says. ‘It was my sweetest memory of Unni.’

Thoma had once promised Unni that he would never reveal the secret. ‘Many, many years later, Thoma, she will ask you, “How did Unni do it?” But you should not tell her. You must never tell her.’

‘I will not tell anyone, Unni. It is our secret.’

‘Our secret, Thoma. Only two people in this world know this secret. Unni Chacko and Thoma Chacko.’

Thoma feels a powerful silence within him. It is not sorrow or shame, or anything as ordinary as that. It is merely silence, there is no other way to describe it. He sees his betrayal of his brother for what it is – an act of pettiness. Thoma asks himself why he is petty and why Unni never was. Unni did not want anything. Unni Had No Expectations from Life. So Unni had no reasons to be afraid. Thoma wants so many things from the world, from people. That is why he is afraid, and that is why he is petty.

Later in the evening, he walks to the churchyard, leans on the bare white trunk of a eucalyptus tree and stands facing Unni’s grave, and tells him what has happened. Thoma does not move his mouth when he speaks to his brother. There is
too much shame in appearing to talk to yourself, as he knows better than most people. He talks about this and that, updates Unni about their mother and the state of their father. And he describes Mythili to him. ‘She is taller than her mother now, Unni. She speaks very softly now, she does not scream, she does not fight, she does not sing, actually she does not talk a lot now. She is not a motormouth any more.’

Thoma remembers the times when he was in the care of Unni, how they walked hand in hand, how they played and how they laughed. How Unni would come steaming in when boys tried to push Thoma around. And he remembers the day Unni took him all around Madras in a suspenseful search for ‘the white sugar cane, which does exist, Thoma, somewhere in the city there is a white sugar cane’. They went in crowded buses, and in the train, they walked and ran down the roads in search of the white sugar cane and returned home telling each other that they would set out again to hunt another day.

Thoma stands in the churchyard until it gets dark, and when he leaves he is glad that he does not feel scared to be alone in a place like this any more. He wants to believe in ghosts, he really does hope that in this world there are ghosts.

THE CLOSEST OUSEP HAS come to seeing the future is when he goes down the mud lane to Somen Pillai’s house. This evening, too, he knows what is about to happen. Before he reaches the gate, the door on the pink front of the house opens and the man and wife emerge on to the porch, whispering to each other. They stand with their elbows on the short iron gate, and wait for him to arrive. Somen’s father is bare-chested, his mother is in a sari. Ousep can see their bellies. And their deep navels that
gape at him as if they are the alert eyes of a long, indestructible tropical marriage.

‘Somen is not home,’ the mother says.

‘Where has he gone now?’

‘He has gone to a friend’s house and he will be late.’

Ousep searches the windows, searches for the furtive movement of a shadow, for a curtain moving an inch, anything that would give a sign that his quarry is inside, but there is nothing.

The father says, ‘You’ve started coming here every day, Ousep. What has happened?’

‘Does he live here any more?’ Ousep asks.

‘This is his home.’

‘I have been trying to meet him for the last six months.’

‘We have told you many times he does not want to meet you.’

‘Why?’

‘You must ask him that,’ the mother says.

‘That is what I have been trying to do. I’ve been trying to meet him. But, obviously, you don’t want that. You refuse to tell me which college he goes to, you refuse to tell me where he goes every day and what he does.’

‘It is not our fault if he does not want to meet you,’ the father says.

‘Is he in the house right now?’

‘We’re getting a bit tired of this, Ousep.’

‘I met a boy,’ Ousep says, ‘Sai Shankaran. You know him. He says Somen has run away from home.’

‘That’s nonsense – you go and tell Sai Shankaran that. Our boy is with us.’

‘Sai Shankaran says your boy may have gone somewhere to die in peace.’

‘Ousep,’ the father screams, ‘I have sympathy for you because of what happened to your son. But don’t wish that on everyone. I am not a drunkard. I feed my family, I keep them happy. My son has no reason to kill himself.’

‘Can I come inside? Let’s talk.’

‘The ceiling fan is not working,’ the father says. ‘So it is very hot inside. We must stand outside and talk.’

Somen’s mother looks incredulously at her husband and goes away inside as if she wants to search for a far corner and burst out laughing. Ousep holds the hand of Somen’s father and asks him softly, ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘What am I doing?’

‘Why don’t you let me meet your son?’

‘You see a deeper story in things, Ousep. Boys these days are busy. They leave early, they come home late. He is twenty, he is busy. And when they don’t want to meet someone they just don’t meet them. They are young people, they have their own minds. He does not want to talk about Unni, and there is nothing we can do about it. He will not meet you. He will never meet you.’

The man leans forward and whispers, ‘Ousep, just give up. Children do strange things when they are seventeen. That’s the age of madness. What can we do? Maybe there was a girl. There is always a girl. Move on. Get back to your life.’

‘This is my life. Unni is my life. I will be coming back, Pillai.’

Pillai goes back into his house and shuts the door. Ousep tries to understand the home. A home is a person. If you stare long enough at its face you begin to see beyond the façade. It is a small, simple house embedded at the end of the lane in such a way that there is only one point of entry or exit. All the windows are shut, which is strange for a house in Madras, and all of them have curtains, which is not surprising. On the
terrace, just about twelve feet above the ground, there are some clothes drying. From what he can see, there are no jeans or T-shirts among them. There is nothing on the surface of the house that indicates the presence of a young man.

In the houses that flank the narrow lane there are people standing in the doorways, behind their windows and on the terraces. He goes up to a woman who is standing at her gate holding her infant. He asks her, ‘Have you seen Somen Pillai today?’ The woman spreads her sari over her chest, toys with her pendant and says, ‘I have not seen him in a while. What happened?’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

That makes her think. Four men of four generations emerge from her house and step out to talk to him. They are amiable people, that is the nature of the world. People who do not know him always offer him the option of respect. He is an elegant man in daylight, a man with a greying French beard.

They have not seen Somen Pillai for a long time but they don’t remember when they last did. He walks across the lane to another house and asks the same question. ‘I see you here often,’ an old woman says. ‘I see you going to their house. Do you want some water to drink? It is a very hot day.’

‘It is a very hot day.’

‘My granddaughter says the world will soon become ice. But there is no evidence of that in Madras. Do you think the world will turn into ice?’

‘When did you last see Somen Pillai?’

‘I see his sister once every three months or so. She comes for the weekend. She goes to a medical college in Kerala. Girls are so smart these days. But the boy, I have not seen him in a long time. Never struck me before you asked. I’ve seen him grow up on this lane. I’ve seen so many grow up on this lane, it did
not occur to me that I have not spotted the boy in ages. Maybe he has gone somewhere far away to study. They all go away, don’t you know? Why don’t you ask his parents?’

Ousep goes to every house and asks. Nobody has seen Somen Pillai in a long time. ‘Why don’t you ask his parents? They live right there,’ a man says, wiping his scooter, which is parked inside the house, near the front door.

‘I did ask them but they are not telling me. Something is wrong. I think the boy has gone missing.’

‘How can a boy go missing? I heard he goes to Loyola College.’

‘That’s what they told me once. I’ve checked. He doesn’t go there. He has gone missing.’

‘Why are you asking about the boy?’

‘He has borrowed a lot of money from people I know and now he has gone missing.’

By the time Ousep reaches the end of the lane it is clear to him that Somen Pillai has not been seen on the lane for an indefinite period of time. It is possible that he has been dispatched to a college in another city and his parents do not want him to be bothered by Ousep. But if that were true the boy would still be visiting home once in a while as his sister does. What Sai Shankaran had said begins to make sense. Somen Pillai has probably gone somewhere to die in isolation. The way Unni died was too conspicuous, setting off a relentless father on a trail. Somen probably did not want to draw too much attention. He wanted to be presumed lost. But why?

Ousep returns to Somen’s house at midnight, his walk unsteady, hair tempestuous. This time the house does not see him come. He stands at the gate and asks, ‘You can’t see well in the dark?’ He goes up to the front door and begins to pound it. The lights go on. Somen’s father looks through the window.
He glares in fury but in a moment turns nervous. The man studies the night outside to see whether Ousep has brought any muscular friends along. When he is reassured that the drunkard has come alone, he opens the door and stands with tight fists, legs parted. Ousep withdraws, walks backwards in kung-fu steps and holds his hand as if it is a cobra about to strike.

‘Master, I’ve come to meet Somen Pillai,’ he says.

‘What’s wrong with you, Ousep, are you drunk?’

‘Is he back? Has Somen Pillai returned home?’

‘Why have you been bad-mouthing us to our neighbours, Ousep, have you lost your mind? You’ve been telling everyone that the boy has gone missing. You’ve been telling everyone that he has borrowed money from people.’

‘Is Somen Pillai home?’

‘Don’t come here ever again. I warn you, Ousep. Don’t push me.’

The door shuts, there are sounds of all the latches and locks being invoked. Ousep screams, ‘Where is Somen Pillai? Where is Somen Pillai? Where is Somen Pillai?’

Lights go on in the houses on the lane. People stare from their windows. It is a moment Ousep is familiar with, a moment in the night. Lights going on in homes, people peeping through their windows, seeing him in a way they would never have imagined in the light of day, and everybody agreeing without a word that they are better than him. This lane, too, now knows of Ousep Chacko.