THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM Page 15

  Chotu said, ‘Don’t play with me. You can’t hide from me. No one can. I can see the guilt inside you. What are you hiding, Aravind?’

  ‘Oh, so is that it? You cannot feel these creatures lying underground, but you can see my guilt?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chotu. ‘You killed him. You saw him at the school when you arrived here, and you remembered the old fight you had about his toy boat, and all those things his parents said to you, and you killed him.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  Chotu grabbed Aravind’s arm and pulled his sleeve back to reveal the needle punctures on his arm. ‘No, this is crazy.’ He spread out his arms wide and looked around. ‘All of this is crazy. What we did here as kids—that is crazy. What we’re doing now, digging up the earth in search of… of those things—that is crazy. And you—she’s got you, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Who the hell is she!’

  ‘The creature!’ Chotu said. ‘The creature has got you!’ Then he hesitated. ‘I cannot feel her, though. But why?’

  ‘Let go of me, puppet boy.’

  ‘But I can feel you. I can feel your guilt. I can feel your anxiety to hide something from all of us. I can feel Sarayu, Chanti, Thatha. I felt the whole village. How come I cannot feel her?’

  ‘They’ve wisened up to you. What other explanation is there?’

  Chotu frowned in thought and looked away. ‘Yes, what other explanation is there…’ Then he turned back to face Aravind. ‘But you… you killed Ramana.’

  ‘Chotu,’ Aravind said slowly. ‘Listen to me. I did not kill Ramana. In fact, yesterday, I dreamed that it was Sarayu who killed Ramana.’

  ‘Sarayu…’

  ‘Yes, Sarayu. I don’t know if you noticed, but did you see how she looked at the body when we went to the school yesterday? Did you see how much she was enjoying it?’

  ‘Yes…Yes.’

  ‘And she was that way even when we were kids. Remember, when we burnt Sarama, she was the most enthusiastic about it all. Do you remember how she yelled and celebrated that day?’

  Chotu looked down, blinking rapidly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did she cry when her father died?’

  Chotu shook his head. ‘But you didn’t, either.’

  ‘I was older, Chotu. I was practically a man by then.’

  Chotu looked closely at Aravind. ‘You… you’re tricking me. Wait! Don’t come closer! You’re tricking me. You know that I am on to you, so you’re giving me this story of Sarayu. No, no, it was you.’

  ‘Wait, Chotu—’

  Baring his teeth and groaning, Chotu held him by the shoulders and pulled him forward, smashing their foreheads together.

  Aravind’s head reeled. He staggered away and felt his forehead. His hand was dry to the touch of his fingers, but his eyes saw nothing and everything at the same time. He saw the grey sky, the concrete rim of the well rotate like a wheel, the advancing figure of Chotu, arms wide apart.

  ‘You… were going to drown me,’ he was saying.

  Aravind raised his hands and pushed out blindly, only to feel huge hands grip his wrists, separate them and pull.

  CLANG!

  ‘You were going to drown me and kill me and now you killed him he saved me and you killed him and you lied and you now belong to the devil you’re going to kill all of us if I don’t kill you—’

  Aravind backed up against the wall of the well and threw his arms against it, palms pressing and frantically feeling around for something he could use. He gripped the concrete and yanked at it. None of the stones gave way. In front of him, the figure was again approaching amid a melee of dancing trees, disappearing stars and the dry, cracked earth.

  Hands gripped his shoulders, fingers wrapped around his collar bone and…

  CLANG!

  ‘Let me find something to break your head with oh my head hurts so much oh no it is bleeding I need to find something to break your head with oh yes oh yes something something something…’

  This time, Aravind’s right hand found a loose concrete stone. He closed his fingers around it and waited. Chotu was waving the stick in his hand, closing the gap between them once again.

  When he thought Chotu was within reach, Aravind pushed himself onto his feet with his left hand and swung blindly with his right.

  He did not hear anything, his ears were still reeling with the blows to his head. He closed his eyes and shut out the world outside. His hand and the rock had met something solid and hard, something big, and his fingertips had felt hair.

  He hugged the rim of the well and panted, keeping his eyes shut, willing the pain to go away. He felt his forehead. There was no moisture.

  Gradually, little by little, his senses returned. ‘Help,’ he said slowly. ‘Help.’

  Then he realized he had not said those words. He had heard them. Now the cry of help sounded in Chotu’s voice. ‘Help.’

  ‘Chotu!’ Aravind opened his eyes.

  ‘Help…’ There was a red smudge on the side of Chotu’s head, starting above the left eyebrow and extending to the temple. His hand was clasped over it. He looked up at Aravind and said, ‘Help.’ His fingers, immersed in red, felt around his wound clumsily, trying to find the cut and plug it.

  Aravind lurched forward and bent down by Chotu’s side. Taking his arm under his own shoulder, Aravind tried to heave him off the ground. He only succeeded in rolling him on his side. With a determined groan, he tried again. Chotu thrashed to the left, groaning again and again.

  Aravind felt the wound with his own hand and sighed with relief. ‘It’s not a deep one.’ He tore off the edge of Chotu’s shirt and tied it around his head. ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said can you walk?’

  Chotu closed his eyes in response. ‘The sixth… the sixth… dream.’

  ‘Oh this is great,’ Aravind said, feeling under Chotu’s nose for breath. ‘This is just great.’ He held him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘Oye! Chotu!’ When there was no response, he stood up and dragged Chotu to the well and propped him up. ‘This is just great. You faint on me now, when there is no one else around, and you have to be so damned heavy.’ He saw a fresh trickle of blood soak the piece of shirt. ‘And you’re bleeding. Just great.’

  He back-pedalled along the path, keeping him in view. ‘Hang in there,’ he whispered. ‘Just hang in there. I won’t be long gone.’ The image of the well became smaller and smaller, and Chotu, with the white cloth tied around his scalp, head hung over his shoulder, eyes closed, receded in view. But the wound appeared to grow in size. The farther he ran, the bigger the red spot became. ‘I am going to get help,’ he cried out, ‘I will get Chanti and Sarayu here. Hang in there!’

  Then he turned and ran.

  As he ran, Chotu’s voice rang in his ears. Whose was the sixth dream?

  Chapter Twenty Two

  1984

  She was coming back for them all, Subbai knew. She was hunting them down, one after the other. First it was Sundarayya by the lake, then it was Gopalam in Saraswatamma’s well, and now, here was Mangayya by Mandiramma Banda, his head split in two.

  It had not been a single hit, that much was obvious. Mangayya’s skull was wounded in multiple places, as though he had repeatedly run into the stone head first, like a ram. Some of the cuts were so deep, they left no one in doubt as to how ferocious each attack must have been.

  ‘The crazy man finally lost it,’ someone said.

  ‘Yes, it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?’

  Mangayya had always been the village nut. There was never a night when he would not be found at the sarai shop. He was never seen without a roll of tobacco in his mouth. And he spoke in nothing but the choicest of abuses, which he dished out with a gleeful grin.

  There were two reasons why no one took him seriously. One, he simply did not matter. What Mangayya said or did, and why, only Mangayya knew. Why he would roam around the village in the dead of night, singing songs, why he would sometimes disappear f
or days on end without explanation, why he would dance at death processions and weep at weddings, no one knew. And to be honest, no one really cared.

  Two, a more pragmatic reason, was that he was one of Prabhakarayya’s men. Though the exact nature of their relationship was unknown to many in the village, Subbai knew for a fact that full jugs of milk and ghee made daily trips from the money-lender’s house to the drunkard’s. Subbai, like the rest of the village, took this to mean that Mangayya, though he did not matter to the rest of the village, mattered a great deal to Prabhakarayya. So it was best to leave him alone, and yes, if it came to that, to tolerate him.

  ‘Oh, it’s only Mangayya,’ they said, when he came to their functions uninvited and ate directly from the giant food bowls with his bare hands. ‘One day, he will walk into a well and die.’

  ‘One day, he will go to Ellamma Cheruvu at night and she will take care of him.’

  ‘One day, he will fall asleep on the road and the red bus will run him over.’

  ‘One day, a crow will peck his eyes out.’

  But no one had ever said, ‘One day, he will run into Mandiramma Banda again and again until his head splits open like a pumpkin.’ And yet, here they were, proclaiming that it had always been ‘a matter of time’.

  None of them were sad, Subbai saw. In fact, their faces displayed no recognizable emotion—maybe there wasn’t any. To them, this was just an occasion to come out and watch a spectacle. If it had been a dog or a pig that had smashed its skull on the rock, they would have done the same thing.

  ‘Poor boy,’ he heard someone say.

  Subbai knew better. The boy was fourteen, and though he always came last at school, he knew how to live. There he was, standing away from the mob, lungi folded up to his knees, beedi playing between his lips, surveying the road that led away from the village. Subbai knew the boy would not stay in Palem for long. Why would any young person live in this place?

  Where would he get the money from, though? Prabhakarayya would probably loan him some. Or he would keep something from his father’s belongings for himself. After all, everything in Mangayya’s hut now belonged to him, didn’t it? He would surely be able to garner something—some old silver plates, his mother’s jewellery, maybe some money that Mangayya had hidden away?

  No, Subbai thought. There was nothing ‘poor’ about that boy. He had a feeling he would do just fine. If there was any time to pity him, it had been when he was born. How much longer did his mother survive after giving birth to him? And hadn’t that been the first trigger of madness in Mangayya that later consumed him so completely?

  But this—this was no madness. No matter how crazy he was, Mangayya was not a sadist. He was childlike in his inability to withstand pain. During summer afternoons, he would make a big show of the ground burning his bare feet. He would wrap himself in a thick shawl and a monkey cap even on slightly nippy nights. When the doctor visited him and gave him the needle, everyone in the village would know from the howls, first of protest, and then pain, that came from his shack.

  And yet, he had relentlessly gored the stone till it smashed his head and he bled to death. No one seemed to be questioning it even though it was all wrong. Just like Gopalam’s death had been all wrong. A man who had been terrified of water all his life and kept away from it had killed himself by jumping into a well. That somehow did not sound right. And what of Sundarayya? Eaten alive by a langur—even that had been swallowed by the people of the village without a murmur.

  Of course, all of them had something in common. If she had come back, then all of this would make sense. Even the fact that people were not questioning any of these deaths. Yes, it would all fall in place.

  Subbai turned and started to walk. Behind him the crowd dispersed too, one by one. Only the solitary figure in the folded lungi remained, never changing his position, never averting his gaze from the path. Subbai looked over his shoulder at the boy and shuddered involuntarily. How chilling it was to even think of being that young again.

  He felt an immediate need to be back home, in familiar surroundings. He picked up his pace and turned the bend around Ibrahim Bhai’s sweet shop, wondering for a moment if he should pick something up for Sarayu. But no, the need inside him grew sharper. It prodded him straight in the direction of his house.

  He had never asked himself why he had done it. No, not once in all these years. And yet today, when he saw Mangayya staring at the sky and smiling at it as though he knew who had struck him down, all he could think of was her. He had never noticed her as a child. As a child, he had had eyes only for Gowri. He still had eyes only for Gowri, but for that one fateful night…

  What had started it? He frowned in an effort to remember. He felt sweat gather under the collar of his shirt in spite of the cool, morning Godavari breeze. His mouth was parched, and licking his lips, his tongue felt as if it was scraping over rusted iron.

  He remembered the sarai shop quite well. All three of them were there—Sundarayya, Mangayya and he. Sanga was there too—of course he was, otherwise how would all of this have happened? And Avadhani—yes, Avadhani was telling him what a great woman Lachi was and how lucky he was to have her.

  Yes, and then what happened?

  He stopped at the entrance to his house, and it seemed to him he had walked through a similar door that night, and there had been something—something fragrant and nascent and nubile—on the other side. Waiting for him. Waiting to spit on him. In all these years, he had walked through this very door so many times, and yet, he had not thought of the similarity once.

  All the others had had reasons for doing it. But what had been his? Had he had a reason then? Could he think of one now?

  The sound of a needle puncturing an air-filled sac came from inside. Yes, that would be Sarayu pinning needles into her doll. The girl hardly ever said a word all day to her parents. She would lie by the mat and talk to her doll, sometimes pushing the needle in and twisting, sometimes turning the head all the way around so that she could be made to stand with her feet facing one way and her head the other. When he or Gowri would comment that it looked grotesque, Sarayu would giggle and blush.

  He had known—nothing stayed a secret in Palem—that his daughter had been spending time with Mangayya’s son. Maybe, in that sense, what happened this morning was a good thing. The boy would go away, and maybe with passing age, his daughter would outgrow this love for—he looked at the needle methodically stabbing away at the neck of the doll. Love for what?

  ‘Sarayu,’ Gowri called from inside. ‘Is your father home?’

  ‘Haan, Amma.’ In and out the needle went.

  ‘Are you there?’ Gowri said from inside. That was for him. Whenever she had to call him from the kitchen, she always said, ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Haan,’ he said, raising his voice.

  ‘I don’t know what is happening in this village. Three deaths in four days. Shastri gaaru thinks there is something in the air. He said we should cleanse our house. He said we should all wear the lingam around our necks to protect ourselves.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He untied the cloth around his neck and ran his fingers through his hair. They could cleanse their house all they want, but was she going to stop? On all three occasions, the deaths were painful and slow. Maybe he could go one up over her yet. If he had no choice but to go, he would go his own way.

  No needles would go into his neck. He went into his room and closed the door behind him. The muffled sound of Gowri’s voice still came to his ears. ‘We have to somehow find the money to pay him, but what is more important, you tell me. Our money or our lives? Something is very wrong with this village, I tell you…’

  He rummaged through the clothes in the shelf and found Gowri’s favourite sari. It was a milk-white chiffon with tiny blue flowers printed all over it. She had worn it on their wedding night. Hair braided and neatly arranged with a bunch of jasmine that mixed with the night air, hips swaying in tune to the breeze, she had stood by his cot that night and tapp
ed suggestively at the ground with her foot to get his attention. And when he looked up, she had smiled and raised her eyebrows at him as if to say, ‘What?’

  ‘Are you there? Why are you so silent? Shall I ask Shastri gaaru to come tomorrow and do the offering?’

  He unfolded the sari, one fold at a time. The sound of Sarayu’s needle pricks drowned out the words of his wife. He held the sari at one end and looked up at the beam that supported the roof. He had seen a hanging once. He’d heard people say that it was one of the most painless forms of death possible. You jumped, you heard a click of your spine disengaging, and that was it.

  He threw the end of Gowri’s sari over the beam and tied it into a knot. He pushed the cot to one side and carried a stool to the spot directly under the noose. Gowri’s words still floated into the room, interspersed by those horribly loud pin pricks. Each time the needle pushed its way through, it seemed the doll released its final breath.

  ‘Sarayu, is your father there?’ Gowri was saying.

  ‘Haan, Amma’ Sarayu said. Prick, prick, prick.

  He stood on the stool and fit the noose around his neck. He experimented with the tightness. How much was enough? Deciding after a moment of hesitation that tighter was probably better, he raised himself on tiptoe and closed his eyes. With a quiet count to three, he kicked the stool away.

  There was no click, and he did not die. The noose slid to the top of his neck and under his chin, suspending him in mid-air as his legs thrashed wildly for support. ‘Aah!’ he cried out, while trying to use his hands to hold the noose and pull himself back up, but they felt heavy as lead on his side. His hands refused to rise above his shoulders. ‘Aah!’

  He heard frenzied steps outside the room. The door flew open and Gowri stood at the entrance, looking up at him in shock. Wrapped around her waist, he saw the arm of Sarayu, peeping out of one eye from behind her mother.

  Gowri lunged forward to support him, and at the same time, Subbai’s hands rose above his head. But they held the sari right on the knot and pulled, tightening it around his neck instead of pulling him up. At exactly that instant, his legs thrashed again, sending his body into a wave that, on the downward motion, sent his head deeper into the head of the noose. The sari tightened around the top of his spine.