The Ivory Swing (16 page)

They waded to the edge of the paddy, getting on with the normal business of envying each other's life.

25

“Couldn't we take a taxi?” the children pleaded.

But the taxis were not at Shasta junction and they stood waiting for the bus for nearly an hour in the mid-afternoon heat, without benefit of shade. Consequently they missed Anand who had gone to their house with the news that had come over his father's radio.

It is not a good day to be entering the city, he thought when he found their house empty. No. The time is most inauspicious.

The bus ride was overcrowded and uncomfortable, not unlike any of the others. But something was different about the arrival. The streets were full of movement and chanting, of marchers and banners. That in itself was not unusual, demonstrations being as common as buffalo carts. But it was as though the entire city was involved, seething and clustering in rival factions.

As people dropped from the sides of the bus, Juliet could see out the window. Stores were boarded up, some had been smashed and looted. Carts laden with plantains and coconuts and obviously destined for the market were standing abandoned and at the mercy of pilferers.

People in the bus were calling to people in the street. The passengers broke into agitated high-pitched jabbering. A message was flying from mouth to mouth with ripples of shock and excitement.

“What is it? What is it?” Annie asked everyone at large.

Someone eventually answered her in English: “Mrs Gandhi has been arrested. Janata groups are celebrating. And Congress groups are protesting. They are fighting each other.”

Anxiety closed in on Juliet's heart like a cramp. She and Annie were sharing a seat close to the back on the far side from the door, the children on their laps. David was out of sight somewhere at the front in the men's section.

“We've got to get off,” Juliet said urgently.

But of course it was impossible until the terminus was reached. Or until the same desire was felt by the mass of bodies between their seat and the door.

Annie seemed lit by inner excitement. “Think of it!” she bubbled. “We're right in the fist of history.”

Juliet was thinking that it was not, after all, so pleasant to be caught in the clutches of history, that she would prefer to be watching it, abstract and detached, on a television screen somewhere in the suburbs of another world, where the children were safe from harm. Or to have been marooned in the vegetable safety of her rice paddy, oblivious to large events.

The bus was creeping slowly forward as a sea of demonstrators massed around it Juliet looked out the window again, and promptly covered Miranda's eyes.

A man was lying writhing in the middle of the road, bleeding profusely. The crowd stood around him in a circle, watching. No one came closer to him than about six feet. They just stood there, staring, staring.

Monstrous, Juliet thought, sick with horror. Inhuman! She pressed her head against the bars of the window and screamed to the man: I'll help you! But no sound came out of her throat. A jab of realization came to her: A dying body must not be touched. The Hindu prohibitions against pollution.

She could feel panic, hysteria, coming upon her like a tidal wave. She held it back with the wall of her will. One thought staccatoed across her nerve ends: Get the children to safety.

And then came a sudden lurching sensation of seasickness. The bus rocked from side to side and its cargo erupted into a conflagration of screaming. So this is death, Juliet thought, as the road rushed up to her eyes.

And what she felt was not fear, but rage, a rage so vast and violent that she knew, for an instant before the blackness swallowed her, that she would be able to tear the bus apart like tinfoil to get them out.

Her head hurt abominably and there was an enormous crushing weight on her body. She could hardly breathe. Where am I, where am I? she wondered frantically, feeling panicky, claustrophobic. A coffin, she thought. Buried alive. And she passed out momentarily again from the horror of it.

When she came to she could smell her own blood and felt it wet and sticky on her face. Then she realized that Miranda's hair was in her mouth, that Miranda was packed tight into her arms like a leaden doll. And everything came back like the dark sudden swoop of a crow. Her mind tensed and coiled like a cobra about to defend itself.

The door must be above us, thank god, got to heave off the weights, climb out, thank god we're at the back, door almost directly above.

“Annie!” she bellowed, the cry muffled by Miranda's hair, the road and the bars against her cheek.

Got to heave off those bodies like a whale surfacing, got to climb out, the door, lift out the children, and all the people one by one until I find David. She sobbed and heaved.

“Juliet!”

“Mommy!”

She heard them both muffled above her.

“Jonathan!” She shouted and wept and laughed, “Oh Annie, can you move? Climb on me! Get to the door!”

“I'm trying, I'm pushing, it's giving, it's beginning to move.”

“Stand on me!”

“I'm trying!”

She was being pummelled by layers of bodies gyrating, pushing, kicking. She could take it, she could take anything, a belting, a kick in the teeth, thank god for movement. She felt the stab of a heel on her spine, Annie's, please god.

Then an easing. Jonathan somehow standing on the window bars beside her head, bending over her, crying and stroking her sticky face, murmuring Mommy, over and over. Miranda still leaden and silent in her arms.

“Juliet!” A shriek of triumph. “I've done it!”

She looked up. She was in a canyon, bodies banked up on either side, Annie's feet swung wildly above her. Thank god for brash cultural indifference, Juliet thought. Thank god for jeans. Annie's hands were curled round the bars of the window above. She hefted her body along, monkey-walking hand over hand along the bars.

“I'm there!”

Her legs swung back and forth, up. Missed. A backward lurch. Up, up, a foothold. The silhouette of Annie against the sky. Someone else, a man, joined her from outside. The two sat astride the step, their legs hooked around it, and reached down inside.

Arms, arms, arms, stretched up to them. They lifted, hoisted, a body rose. Then another. Another. They were passing people out. Ten bodies. Then Jonathan. He stood on the edge of the seat reaching up across the aisle. They leaned down to him. Juliet kissed the calves of his legs.

“Hang on tight, darling!”

He arced up, poised in the doorway, was over.

“Juliet!” Annie was screaming over the rolling waves of moaning and wailing that filled the bus. “Juliet! Hand up Miranda!”

Miranda was a dead weight. Juliet heaved, pushed, she thought her blood vessels would burst. She was sitting at last, cradling Miranda, seeing her face for the first time. It was covered with a network of red rivulets spiralling out from a gash on her right temple. Her skin was white, her lips bluish.

“Oh god,” Juliet whimpered, kissing the blue lips, the white cheeks, with a life-giving frenzy. Miranda's eyelids flickered, gently as a funeral shroud stirs in the flames. And Juliet sobbed and laughed and goaded her aching body to further action. She slung Miranda across her shoulder, stood on the seat edge, reached for the seat above her across the aisle. Her arms threatened to buckle.

Annie descended, agile and divine as Hanuman the monkey god, took Miranda, passed her up to the man in the doorway. Miranda disappeared over the step, handed down to the magical outside, to life.

Juliet and Annie, suspended from seat backs, spanning the aisle, hugged each other with their legs. Juliet's skirt ripped sharply from ankle to thigh. She was free to move. There was more reaching and straining and muscles roaring with pain. And Juliet sat finally across the door step, only the sky above her.

Like resurrection, she thought, breathing deeply.

It was a seven-foot drop to the ground. A man was waiting to catch her. It was David! She jumped into his arms and they clung together, kissing.

The rhythm of rescue went on and on.

Juliet, sitting at the roadside with Miranda in her arms, watched as Annie and a young man reached and pulled and swung over to David. The young man …? It was Prem again! The Marxist student, the specialist in market-place disasters.

Near the front end of the bus, slowly and fitfully, a trickle of men were clambering awkwardly out of a smaller space where the window bars were broken. And she realized that was how David must have escaped.

There were no ambulances in Trivandrum to come sirening to the rescue of the wounded. People helped one another as best they could. A couple of doctors, who must have been in the crowd when the bus went over, were moving among the worst cases, staunching heavy bleeding with bandages. Juliet went on rocking the children, crooning to them. The afternoon sun dipped towards the horizon.

Finally Annie and Prem lowered themselves into the bus, then reappeared in the doorway and called instructions to David. After a time, with people scurrying into boarded-up stores, a pulley of cloth and rope was set up. A number of elderly people were ferried to the outside by this method.

Then Annie called again from the doorway: “David, there are ten dead. I'm going to stay and help but there's no point in your staying any longer.”

David nodded and went to his family.

26

Mr Matthew Thomas's daughter-in-law was bringing tea. The doctor, Jacob Mathai, was cleaning the gash on Miranda's forehead and the cuts and grazings on the side of Juliet's face. He had been fetched from his house, a few streets away, by Matthew Thomas.

It had been impossible to find a taxi or an auto-rick, and they had walked all the way, David carrying Miranda. It was only now, in the security and peace of the doctor's presence, of sipping tea, that they began to speak of the bus.

“I couldn't understand how you got out before me,” Juliet said. “But then I saw that one set of bars was broken. Thank god for that!”

David stared at her, arrested by a singular thought, like a pilgrim suddenly surprised by illumination. “I did that,” he said with a slow dawning of wonder. “I broke those bars.”

“You
did?”

“I hardly noticed I was doing it, isn't that amazing? I was next to that window when the bus went over and I never let go of it. I was so frantic to get to you and the children, I just ripped … They were in the way.”

He looked at his hands, holding them out in front of him, turning them over wonderingly, incredulously. They seemed to him invested with miraculous powers, quite external to himself and his own knowledge of his body. He felt an overwhelming respect for them, as for something apart, separate beings.

“I was standing on something,” he said, puzzled. “I kept digging in, to get a better grip on the bars.”

He closed his eyes, his forehead creased in concentration.

“Bodies! Faces! I was standing on faces. I remember looking down and seeing mouths and eyes!”

“I am going to give everyone tranquillizers,” the doctor said.

It was already dark. The doctor took Matthew Thomas aside to give certain instructions, and then mercifully they were in the car retreating to the calm of their coconut grove.

Prabhakaran came running out of the darkness as the car wound slowly through the trees.

“Apyam
,” Juliet told him. Accident. Disaster. But she could not think of any other Malayalam words to explain what had happened.

“Mr Thomas,” she begged, her speech blurred off into sleep. “Tell him.”

The car was still moving slowly and Prabhakaran bobbed along level with them, conversing through the window with Matthew Thomas.

“Ai! Ai!”
he kept exclaiming with alarm as he heard the story.

Then he went running off in the direction of the rice paddy.

“He says he is going to bring someone to help,” explained Matthew Thomas.

Yashoda, Juliet thought drowsily.

When Annie jumped finally from the bus doorway to the ground she was surprised by the way her legs crumpled under her like rice before a scythe. She was surprised by the trembling and the aching of her arms when she tried to push herself upright again.

Someone, the young man with whom she had worked side by side for hours, leaned over and helped her up. He steadied her with his arm, keeping it around her waist. She laughed shakily, looking up at him.

“This is crazy,” she said. “Do you realize that after all these hours we don't even know each other's names? I'm Annie.”

“My name is Prem.” He smiled. “You are most remarkable, Annie. Very brave and strong.”

“Thank you. Right now I feel horribly weak.”

“We are needing sleep. I will take you to the house of my family. You will come?”

He did not wait for an answer but propelled her from the lee of the bus's underbelly into the human mêlée. She moved meekly along with him, though it was difficult to make any progress through the crowd. Here and there flares stabbed the darkness, illuminating the chaos. Somewhere further down the road a building was burning like a monstrous torch. A line of police,
lathis
flailing, was advancing down Mahatma Gandhi Road from the northern end where the police barracks were situated. Annie remembered, with a flash of amusement, having noticed the sign from the bus on the way in.
Commissionerate of Police
it had said in Indian English.

Retreating from the police
lathis
, the crowd was becoming more dangerously and explosively compressed around the market entrance where the overturned bus and stalled cars, taxis, carts, buffaloes, jammed the street.

Prem held Annie firmly by the arm and rammed his way through the mess. Quite suddenly they broke through its farthest reaches into the deserted market. He led her down the labyrinth of by paths between the empty stalls, out into a back road behind the bazaar. They seemed to walk for a long time on endless alleys as narrow and unpaved and rutted as the little country thoroughfares that linked the houses and estates out in Krishnapuram. Annie was surprised to find such roads so close to the centre of the city.

The houses which lined the alleys were mere hovels, packed mud huts with low thatched roofs. Prem stopped in front of one, beckoned her to follow him. They had to stoop to enter the door which had no covering. He put his finger to Annie's lips to indicate silence and crept into the black recess.

As her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, Annie could see that there was just one room. Two shapes were curled on sleeping mats at one end, three smaller shapes at the other end. At the back of the room was a low platform with a few cooking vessels on it.

Most people, Annie remembered, went to bed at nightfall and rose at dawn. They could not afford the coconut oil to burn lamps after dark. Blessed are the poor, she thought wonderingly, overwhelmed by the poverty and the soft sounds of slumber, for they shall sleep peacefully through the upheavals of history. But then she felt glib, seeing the starkness of the little hut, remembering the bruised and shattered bodies at the bottom of the bus, and she thought instead: for they are the wretched of the earth.

She felt suddenly that she might vomit and hurried outside. When Prem tiptoed back with two rolled mats under his arm she was leaning against the wall of the hut, shivering and drenched with sweat, retching in dry convulsive spasms. Prem dropped the mats in alarm and took her in his arms. He set her on the grass, a rolled mat under her head, and went back into the hut for a small vessel of water.

Gently he bathed her face. The night breeze and the water refreshed her.

“I'm all right now,” she said, sitting up.

“There is not room for us to sleep inside,” he whispered. “And outside it is cooler. Always I sleep outside when I come home.”

“Where do you sleep when you're not at home?”

“At the university I have a room.”

Behind the hut there was a circular clump of banana palms. The parent tree had been removed leaving a ring of young palms like a living picket fence. Prem pushed through an opening and spread the mats on the grass inside.

Like a secret turret, Annie thought, gazing up through the broad plantain fronds at the night sky luminous with stars.

They lay on the mats facing each other, holding hands, and fell promptly into a chaste and exhausted sleep.

Matthew Thomas was gently carrying Jonathan from the car. He had already settled Miranda on her bed. Both children had fallen asleep in the car. Juliet and David, heavily drugged by Jacob Mathai, had barely managed to get from the car to their bed, and were sprawled across it fully dressed, in a deep sleep.

Matthew Thomas lowered Jonathan onto his bed, stumbling a little in the dark. He had found the switch but the power was off, and as he felt his way back to the main room his bare foot squashed something slippery and cold. Frog, he thought. They were always hopping around the cool floors of houses in the evening. Poor little fellow, he murmured, reaching down and picking it up. It seemed all right and he put it on the window-sill.

Then he bumped against the rim of a wall niche and something fell to the floor. He felt for it with his hands and found broken pieces. Sandalwood! Its bruised fragrance bled into the room. He was appalled.

He took the pieces to the window and held them up against the moonlight.

It was the flute player; it was Krishna himself! Matthew Thomas felt ill with the inauspiciousness of the accident. Had he broken a household image of the Nairs? Or something belonging to Professor David and Mrs Juliet? It was impossible to tell since the Westerners, he had observed, had a strange habit of buying sacred objects of other faiths as though they were souvenirs. He hoped the statue was theirs because it would be easier to make amends. If he had desecrated a Hindu shrine, he trembled to think of the consequences. In either case, he would buy the costliest replacement he could find.

He could hear the boy now, moving around in the dark kitchen.

“What are you doing?” he called softly.

“I am searching for Mrs Juliet's oil lamps and matches,” the boy replied. “I have brought the lady of whom I spoke. She will sleep here tonight to watch over the children.”

He emerged from the kitchen bearing two small brass lamps, the glow from their wicks casting a pale halo around him. In that soft golden light Matthew Thomas and Yashoda first saw each other. They made formal greeting.

“Namaskaram.”

“Namaskaram.”

She was the age of his daughter Kumari, and as beautiful. Perhaps, a disloyal thought surfaced, even more beautiful.

“I am Matthew Thomas,” he explained. “I am a friend of Professor David and Mrs Juliet and the children. After the accident they were walking to my house. The doctor has given them sleeping medicines.”

“Prabhakaran has been telling me,” she said.

Her voice was like nightwinds in jasmine bushes, filling the air with a lilting sighing fragrance. “My name is Yashoda. I also am a friend of Mrs Juliet and of Annie. Please tell me, where is Annie? Is she hurt?”

He did not answer, caught in the spell of her almond-shaped eyes. I should not be here, he thought nervously, alone with a Nair lady. Where is her husband?

“She is hurt,” faltered Yashoda. “It is my fault. I am inauspicious, I am bringing misfortune … oh Annie … I am so evil, so evil.” She began to weep. “Annie is not …? She is not …?”

“No, no, what are you saying?” he asked, terrified.

Prabhakaran ran to Yashoda, flinging his arms around her.

“I do not know Miss Annie,” Matthew Thomas said with alarm. “Professor David has told me she is not hurt.”

“Oh … oh …” Yashoda was half laughing with relief, half crying.

She ruffled Prabhakaran's hair abstractedly and he looked up at her with adoration.

Matthew Thomas felt like new green rice bowing before the monsoon. He swayed with emotions he had forgotten he ever felt. Far too many things had happened in one night.

“I am happy that you have come to take care of everyone,” he said awkwardly. “Now I will he returning to my house.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

They bowed to each other. They murmured
namaskaram.

He was just slipping his feet back into his sandals at the door when Jonathan screamed. Matthew Thomas and Yashoda both ran to the bedroom. Jonathan was writhing and raving in the grip of a nightmare. He ran back and forth in jerky little lines, his steps erratic and frenzied as though he were on hot coals.

Shaking with fear because he had never seen such a thing before, Matthew Thomas tried to lift him. He wished he had paid Jacob Mathai to come with them. He had his arms around the child but Jonathan, whose eyes were open but blindly glazed, screamed piercingly and beat him off with a terrified flurry of his arms. He was jabbering incoherently an occasional word intelligible: “Mommy, Mommy … taxi … yes, yes, holding tight …”

Every time Yashoda or Matthew Thomas tried to calm him, to hold him, he screamed and beat them off in a paroxysm of panic. His cries pierced the heavy sleep of David and Juliet. They half woke, tried to get to his room, bumping into walls. Yashoda went to them.

“We are here, we are here,” she said. “We will take care.”

She led them back to bed.

Jonathan's night terror lasted about four minutes, though it seemed endless. Yashoda and Matthew Thomas stood as near as they dared, helpless, trying merely to guide his staccato steps away from walls and beds. The screams faded to whimpers, he collapsed suddenly into Yashoda's arms, exhausted. She tried to lift him, Matthew Thomas helped her, and together they got him back to bed.

“I think I should stay,” he said.

She nodded assent.

She sat on the edge of Jonathan's bed, taking the sweating little hand in hers, stroking his arm. Matthew Thomas sat on Miranda's bed. Every few minutes he felt the sleeping child's forehead, ran his fingers lightly over her cheek and hair. Prabhakaran set the oil lamps on the window-sill and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them. Whenever the flame dimmed he would trim the lamps with more coconut oil and fresh wick.

Hours passed. Jonathan had two more night terrors, similar to the first one. Each time Miranda stirred and tossed and moaned but did not wake.