The Tusk That Did the Damage (19 page)

“You left him?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

She folded her arms. “Now you care what I want?”

I began to protest, but she shushed me and glanced toward my mother’s room. “I need something to drink. Come sit with me.”

I thought she meant to have a cup of warm milk, not my mother’s gooseberry wine. She poured two glasses and placed the bottle on the kitchen table between us. My mother was very proud of her home brews and refused to listen when we begged her to experiment with a milder fruit. One whiff and this one would pucker the whole throat.

Leela seemed to have no qualms. She downed a glass at once and closed her eyes as the wine stole through her like an old song. In this shut-eyed state, chin in her hand, she began to tap a pattern on the surface of the table, and I looked on her as I had never looked before, with an open kind of ardor.

Her eyes met mine; I held her gaze. Who knew gooseberry wine could be the very elixir of audacity? If she wanted to ask me why I was staring so, if she was keen to know the true nature of my deep-down feeling, so be it: I was ready to confess.

“He is planning something, isn’t he?”

Of course I was crestfallen by her question. And surprised too by the ease in her tone, given her earlier hoopla. “He will stop after this one.”

“He will stop when teeth grow out my nose.” She burped impressively and patted her chest. “When are you planning to go?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Why do you think? When Madame comes round again, how will I lie to her without knowing the truth?” Leela sat back, much offended by my hesitation. “Do you think I will blabber to the next fishmonger that comes along?”

“We do not get many fishmongers.”

“You know my meaning.”

“You may blabber to Ma, which would be worse.”

“I did not blabber about your girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend? Which …”

Her mouth went stern. “Never mind which. Do you trust me or not?”

“Yes. No.” At that hour she could have convinced me to eat mulch, such were my powers of reasoning. “We leave Wednesday. Tomorrow. At dawn.”

She poured me more. “You and who else?”

“Fellow named Alias.”

She blinked at the name, three times fast.

“You know him?”

She shook her head.

Leela was keen to know every particular, from where we would enter to what we would eat, which I suspected were merely symptoms of a wife’s busybody curiosity. “You know the dead banyan
on the edge of Old Raman’s farm, the one split by lightning? From there we will enter.” Time to time she nodded dimly as if only half attached to my words.

When the bottle was empty, she turned it around in her hands. She murmured something about tiny ships being raised within bottles like this. I was not listening in full. My eyes were on her belly, gently insisting against the front of her nightdress.

“Does it kick?” I asked.

The question took her by surprise. “Just once,” she said softly. “Never since.”

“Give it time.”

She contemplated me with those heart-gripping eyes. For once they were free of reproach, only hopeful, as if my words held the power of premonition.

I should have stopped there. I should not have scooted forward in my seat, should not have asked, “Can I?”

Her brow furrowed. Shame arrived, belated yet crushing. I willed her to raise the bottle and crack me unconscious.

But then she clasped her hands below her belly as if cradling a gift.

Slight as it was, her nod was an invitation.

I sat on the edge of my chair and placed both palms on the firmness of her middle. She held very straight and still and I could feel the boy, I could feel him stirring and turning as if to greet me. Maybe such fetal motions would be deemed medically impossible by higher minds, but what is the language of science where the mysteries of life are concerned? I was captivated by the finger-length boy. I was captivated by his mother too: the smell, the velvet feel of her. So many years of want plus whiskey and
wine will make a beast of any man, though I have no excuse for what I did then. There is some I do not remember, but I remember her hair, her smell, something sodden and wild around her neck, and a sourness to her cheek, and though I knew her face, the salty angle of her throat lay bare and new to me. This close, she was nothing like I had imagined and yet perfect. She was everything, everything.

She whispered a few words I did not catch. I withdrew my face mere inches from hers.

“Make him stay,” she said.

I leaned back to look clearly upon her features. Her eyes, so dreamy a moment ago, had turned dark and desperate. I withdrew, but she clutched my arm. “Talk him out of it. You are the only one who can.”

I recoiled from her brittle fingers, sought support from the edge of the table. Her face was a miserable plea. She would do anything. Anything.

I stumbled out into the night. I heaved my innards onto dirt, my stomach in revolt, expelling everything but the memory of her eyes when I backed away, how they turned tired and resigned in the way of old widows.

Soon afterward I surrendered to sleep. I suspect Leela stayed awake for some time. I did not see her remove Samina Madame’s business card, which she had kept in the tin beneath Jayan’s prison letters. I did not hear her pick up the phone with trembling hands, the dial spinning like the cylinder of a gun.

I am sure that Leela wanted only to scare my brother. She did not want her baby to inherit her own sufferings, and there
was not a thing between heaven and hell she would not do for its sake. Her actions would cause many to call her a snake and a traitor, but they did not hear what awoke me later in the night, her weeping and weeping without knowing this was only the prologue to her sorrows.

On the boy’s birthday, Old Man bought him a Choco-bar. Mani-Mathai lapped at it so slowly and carefully the ice cream began to melt in sticky ribbons down his wrist. He saved the stick and set it on the ledge above his cot, which had so recently belonged to his uncle.

Aside from this, the day resumed its routine. Feeding, resting, mucking, bathing. With Romeo gone, replaced by one of Parthasarathi’s pappans, the very air seemed to loosen. Why he had left, no one could say, but Old Man noticed that the departure gave way to a fresh affection between Mani-Mathai and the elephant, whose trunk arched in question whenever the boy came near. Once, Old Man watched the boy reach up and place his hand on the side of the elephant’s face, as if in reassurance. From this gesture, Old Man saw there was something Mani-Mathai was not saying, perhaps to do with his uncle’s sudden exit.

§

That afternoon, the wind blew so strong, Mani-Mathai felt he could sit on it and sail away. This remark drew a smile from Old Man, who told him to sail off to the kitchen and get some coconut husks for the bath.

Mani-Mathai was trotting across the yard when Romeo’s voice, sudden as gunshot, stopped him.

Boy!

Mani-Mathai turned slowly, uncertain. His uncle was ambling down the drive, grinning with his too-perfect teeth. A blue plastic bag swung from his hand.

It’s your birthday, isn’t it? Look—I remembered.

Romeo dangled the bag like bait. Mani-Mathai asked what was in it.

His uncle fished out a brightly colored package with the word
BULLET
emblazoned in red. You like firecrackers, don’t you? These will make your heart jump out your mouth—

Old Man won’t allow crackers. He says the elephants get enough noise at work; they should have some peace at home.

Since when do you obey his every order?

Since he gave me your job.

Romeo lost his smile and suddenly the boy understood why his uncle had returned. How sorry Romeo looked, how deflated without the drink to puff him up. He had lacquered his hair
with a pomade in order to make himself more presentable, in the unlikely hope of regaining his old position. He smelled like a fruit-flavored candy.

Mani-Mathai had no plan to help his uncle, though he had not disclosed to Old Man the incident with the pitchfork, fearful that doing so would invoke some twisted form of revenge and maybe the meddling of his father. And in small part, he was afraid that Romeo was right, that Old Man might endorse the use of pitchforks.

An awkward silence passed, filled only by the sound of Romeo scratching his fruity scalp. Well, he said. I don’t give a wet fart for Old Man’s orders. Boys should be boys, I say.

He held out the blue plastic bag.

I have work to do, said Mani-Mathai.

Just take the blasted thing. It doesn’t bother the elephants, I’ll show you—

But Mani-Mathai was already walking away.

§

By evening, the sky had turned a jewel blue, lighter at the edges, rich at heart. The Gravedigger was being led back toward the stalls, freshly bathed and drowsy. The bath had doused him in
the sort of peace he had not known in weeks, lying on his side with the water rivering over his belly, Old Man humming, husks scratching, and the song joined with the scratch in a rhythm so soothing the Gravedigger fell asleep.

Now he was eager to eat from the mounded panna that awaited him. But a wrong whiff was gusting from the direction of the stalls, something foul and familiar.

Darkness seeped into the periphery of his vision. He was desperate to flee that smell. He wrung his head lightly but kept walking, urged on by Old Man.

As they neared the stall, the Gravedigger scented Romeo. The pappan who had stabbed him, who might force him into the stall and stab him again. Who was squatting over something on the ground.

A sizzling smell: sulfur, match.

The boy took a few running steps forward, shouting at Romeo.

Romeo leaped back from the thing on the ground, baring his teeth, plugging his ears. A plastic bag drifted and whispered in the wind.

A fuse, hissing like a plague of cicadas …

And then, the bullets.

In the end, what broke the Gravedigger’s mind was not merely the
stab stab stab
of the firecrackers, nor even the sight of Romeo. It was the pomade coming off the pappan’s hair, the sticky pineapple rot that slid through the air and up his trunk, shocking his head with a memory from a day long ago, the day his mother roared and sank, the day her thud ran electric through the earth, the day the gunman walked away with her tail—a sticky pineapple rot wafting off his hair.

All the days between then and now collapsed.

Shadows piled like ash at the edge of the Gravedigger’s vision, closing around his target.

§

Run! Old Man yelled, chasing after the Gravedigger, who had broken free of the changala and was now charging at Romeo.

The other pappans scattered, as Old Man would have done were it not for the fact that he had lost sight of Mani-Mathai. Through the maelstrom, Old Man shouted for the boy.

It happened in moments, unfolding beyond his control, so that all Old Man could ask of his fate was:
So soon? So soon? So soon? So soon?

§

The Gravedigger snatched up Romeo in his trunk and slammed him twice against the side of the stall, until his head went loose as a fruit about to drop. The Gravedigger felt someone yanking on his chain, igniting his abscess. He stumbled back—a muffled grunt beneath him—and felt the easy crush of flesh underfoot.

By now, the bullets had stopped, but still the singed smell.

A muttering came from down below. It was the boy, who had run up to Old Man, who was not Old Man, who was a limp, dead thing. The boy fell to his knees by the dead man’s head, placed a hand on the dead man’s cheek. He recoiled as if scalded.

His eyes traveled up to the Gravedigger. A moment of stillness passed between them. What was broken could not be mended, neither for Old Man nor for the elephant.

The boy’s eyes went small with anguish. He rocked and bowed and held Old Man’s head as if he meant to take it away. But it was for the Gravedigger to take the body away. It was for the Gravedigger to restore the silence of all things.

Lifting his foot over the boy, this is what he did.

§

Once there was a clan who came across a pile of bones, picked clean by birds. The bones had belonged to a young cow they had known, and the adults took turns sniffing and cradling her
remains. Still a calf then, the Gravedigger had stood between his mother’s legs and watched as she dipped her trunk into the hollows and sockets of the skull. A deep-sea murmur in his ears. This was how he learned to grieve the dead.

The memory came back to him as he wrapped his trunk around the pappan’s ankle and pulled him next to the corpse of the boy, trailing a dark sweep of red. Old Man was last. The Gravedigger touched his breathless mouth and locked that smell in some chamber of his brain. Then he curled Old Man into his trunk and laid him across the others. He covered the bodies in panna leaves before limping toward the mountains.

§

In the forest, wild elephants wanted nothing to do with the Gravedigger, not with the death stench of man tattooed into his skin. He would pad quietly to the watering hole, where a clan was taking rest, but as soon as they caught the tidal stink of his coming, they shrieked and clamored away. Even the forests had changed over the years of his absence, blighted by dying bamboo, patched with green and gold farm.

No sight was stranger than the treeless swaths through which he and his clan used to cross, taking shady refuge beneath the ribs of the trees. Little remained of the rosewood and aanjili, only stumps like rivets in the earth.

On hot days, the abscess on his ankle throbbed like a second heart, inviting a musth that left him shrieking and tearing at the
trees. The bouts were fewer and farther between, but each time the noises invaded his thoughts and drowned him in fury.

Those were not his final killings.

The Gravedigger thought of Old Man more often than he thought of his own mother; the recollections passed over him slowly, throwing shadows. He remembered Old Man’s musk, fresh upon the air, the stepping-stones of his spine. How he hummed at times. How he appeared in the anakoodu that very first morning, his sun-dark body in the white square of light. The Gravedigger’s mind ran back and forth between now and then, a depthless stream of memory.