The House of Blue Mangoes (33 page)

He was at the tall steel gates of the prison as soon as they opened the following morning. He managed to get the Superintendent to agree to his seeing the prisoner ahead of visiting hours. For much of the day Aaron lay in a stupor, his breath rattling in his throat like dry leaves shifting in the wind. Looking at his wasted body, Daniel shuddered at the torture Aaron must have been subjected to. What had they done to him, this strong, beautiful youth, someone he remembered as being so impossibly fine that it seemed life couldn’t leave even the slightest scratch on him? But they hadn’t been able to touch his spirit, that much was clear from his brief encounter with his brother. No, they could do whatever they wanted, but they couldn’t destroy the steel that invested men like Aaron, like his Joshua-chithappa . . . What was it about such men that in their fleeting span they shone so brightly that everyone else was cast into their shade? And why did they last so briefly? Did their Creator embed some fatal flaw in them so that they were destroyed before they were forced to the level of ordinary men? Was it ordained that they lived and died heroically so they were forever perfect in the eyes of all who beheld them?

Late that afternoon, Aaron opened his eyes, struggled to focus them on Daniel. The hate flared. When he spoke, his voice was so soft that Daniel could barely hear him. ‘Why are you still here?’

‘I’ve come to get you out of here, thambi. Get you well again. Bring you back to the family.’

‘What family?’ Aaron hissed. ‘Abraham-chithappa told me a long time ago what this family was all about. I’ve no use for any of you.’ The weak voice was contemptuous. Slowly and painfully, Aaron turned his back on him.

Suddenly furious, Daniel wanted to shout, ‘Do you know how we’ve suffered? Do you have any idea, you miserable little wretch? Do you know that amma went mad when she heard you’d gone to prison? Do you know Rachel is dead, thatha is dead? Do you know the terrible time we’ve been through . . .’ To his horror, Daniel realized that he hadn’t just been thinking the words in his head, in his anger he’d actually said them. He fought to control himself. What did he want to do, kill Aaron? Was there nothing he could do right, where his brother was concerned?

Aaron turned back to him, his eyes huge and bright in his wasted face.

‘What did you just say?’

‘Nothing, nothing, I didn’t mean the words to slip out, sorry, thambi, I didn’t mean to upset you . . .’

‘Amma . . . Rachel . . . Thatha . . .’ The pain in Aaron’s voice was unmistakable.

‘I’m so sorry, thambi, I’m such a stupid fool. Please . . . we’ll have all the time in the world to talk when you are better. You mustn’t exert yourself, rest . . .’

Aaron interrupted him, ‘Is there more? Tell me, is there more?’

‘Thambi, we can talk later. Please . . .’

The bruised lips formed a short sentence: ‘No time!’ And then Aaron said, struggling to get the words out, ‘I wish I’d known, I wish I’d known, all these years hating amma . . . you . . . my God, anna!’

A great joy flooded through Daniel’s anguish when Aaron used the honorific for older brother. He leaned forward, took his brother’s hand, bony and with the knuckles abnormally pronounced, in his own. ‘Rest, thambi, you must rest . . .’ Daniel said, tears spilling down his cheeks. ‘We’ll all be back together very soon . . .’

‘What have I done . . .’ Aaron began, when he was overcome by a coughing fit.

‘Enough, thambi, we’ll talk later, this is doing you no good. Here, take your medicine . . .’

Aaron waved the medicine away. ‘Let me finish, anna, I don’t have much strength left.’

Tears continued to drip down Daniel’s face. He made no effort to wipe them away.

Aaron said, ‘So many regrets . . . little I can do about them now. I wish I could see amma, Rachel . . .’

‘But you will . . .’

‘I don’t think so, anna, not them, not my beloved Chevathar.’ Aaron paused, then pressed on. ‘You know, one of the things I thought obsessively about when I was in prison, the only thing which kept me going, was memories of Chevathar. I had no use for my family, chithappa had seen to that, but Chevathar, oh Chevathar was always with me, it kept me alive. It’s ironic, I kept running away from the place, but it grew to be the most important thing in my life . . .’ His voice tailed off as his energy ebbed away. Over Daniel’s protests, Aaron struggled to speak again, finish what he was saying. ‘Isn’t it curious how we always realize the important things when it’s too late? Perhaps that’s His way of reminding us how useless and insignificant we really are.’

As a long bout of coughing shook the sick man, Daniel swiftly administered the sleeping potion; Aaron couldn’t be allowed to exert himself any more. As it took effect and his brother’s ravaged face began to relax, Daniel leaned back.

Just then Aaron’s eyes opened. ‘You should go back, anna, take our family back to where we belong,’ he said slowly. ‘Don’t have the regrets I do. You may not be much like me, but you’re the last of us . . .’

Aaron slept the rest of the day. Daniel persuaded the Superintendent to let him spend the night in the infirmary. He lay awake, listening to his brother’s laboured breathing, praying that he would recover. In the early hours he nodded off. He thought he heard his brother say ‘Jayanthi’, and watched the woman, young, beautiful, with eyes so black they seemed to absorb all light, go to him . . .

In the morning, when he awoke, Aaron was dead, the beginnings of a smile on his lips.

51

A few furlongs from Chevathar, the landscape unfurling outside Daniel’s jutka matched exactly the landscape kindled in his memory. The road was a shimmering blue-black stripe scored in the red soil. Small clusters of huts rose from the living earth, punctuated every so often by a more pukka construction, blue, green or white, all shawled and swathed by the dull green of coconut, and the duller olive of areca nut. Deep emotion swept him as he absorbed the familiar details. Lord, how could I have stayed away so long? Aaron was right, Chevathar is where we belong. He leaned as far as he could out of the carriage to take in everything that offered itself up to his remembering eye.

They passed into an uninhabited stretch. This rock-and scree-strewn landscape possessed a beauty that owed nothing to nostalgia. The hand that had painted this landscape of God had, from time to time, daubed a brilliant mad contrast to the sober earth tones of the background – the jewelled red of a coral tree, spliced with the violent vermilion of flame of the forest, the yellow slash of laburnum, mellowed only by the soft violet of jacaranda. Each new vista that he soaked in affected him more powerfully than the one that had preceded it.

‘I will recover Chevathar for you, Aaron,’ he vowed, ‘I’ll recover it for all of us. I’m only sorry it took me so long.’ As he had often done, he wondered now if a return to Chevathar was the restorative that his mother needed. His mind went back to the immediate aftermath of his brother’s death. When he had returned to Nagercoil he had kept the news from Charity; he didn’t know if she’d be able to cope with it. She had asked him how Aaron was, and he’d told her that he was well, and she’d seemed satisfied. Three days later, as he was preparing to go to work, she came up to him. ‘I dreamed last night that Aaron was with his father in Heaven.’ When Daniel looked at her, thunderstruck, she said, her voice eerily flat, ‘You’re a good son, Daniel, but you shouldn’t lie to me.’ He’d been terrified that she would have another breakdown but she had grieved so much, it seemed to have exhausted her of all emotion. It hurt him to see her empty eyes, her lack of interest in her grandchildren and the family, but he was also relieved that she was doing no damage to herself. As the weeks slipped by, and her condition showed no signs of deteriorating, he began to make plans for his journey to Chevathar.

Meenakshikoil, which he reached in the short twilight hour, was a revelation. Slabs of light from the busy vegetable market revealed a town that had stretched and grown. The road through town passed two schools that hadn’t existed when Daniel left Chevathar, a brand-new jail and a profusion of shops. They finally came to the old bridge that led to the village.

As the jutka rattled over it, Daniel strained to take in every sight, absorb every smell and sound. The village seemed much the same, except that there were a few more houses of brick and mortar, and it seemed dustier and dirtier than before. A medley of dogs snapped at the jutka for a couple of minutes, then the horse pushed through and they were rolling past Anaikal and the acacia wasteland, from which the smell of ordure wafted as of old. The Murugan temple had been spruced up, he noticed. A few more minutes and they were at the Big House.

Daniel was disconcerted by what he saw. It was as if the vitality and grandeur he had associated with his old home had been sucked out. The great neem and rain trees, the profusion of palms, the teak that grew behind the house, all outlined in black against the grey fur of the sky, seemed positively malevolent, dead spirits threatening the house they had once sheltered. Even in the half-light, Daniel could see that the house itself was in an advanced state of disrepair. The roof had lost half its tiles, windows hung from their hinges, it obviously hadn’t been whitewashed in years, and dead leaves and other detritus clogged the courtyard. He walked around the house. The place seemed lifeless, and then a dark shadow came leaping out of the gloom and he evaded the dog just in time. He picked up a stone and flung it, and the animal took off with a yelp. He wandered around the house, pounding at windows and doors, and finally a weak voice quavered, ‘Who is there?’

For much of the journey, his uncle’s perfidy (for even though Aaron had taken his secret with him, it had been easy enough to work out) had alternately enraged and mystified him. Why had Abraham done it? Why had he and his wife turned Aaron against his family? He could easily imagine the broad strokes of their campaign, the detail was unimportant now – Abraham and Kaveri filling Aaron’s confused mind with carefully invented facts about his mother and himself abandoning Chevathar and the soil of their ancestors for the dazzle of Nagercoil, their prosperity and their neglect of him. Aaron’s pride would have done the rest. And it was all so unnecessary. Neither he nor Charity had asked Abraham for anything, not even remonstrating with him when he had failed to send them the annual pittance he had promised them. And his brother? Why hadn’t he bothered to check? Daniel thought of the last words his brother had uttered. Was this what Aaron wanted him to return to? Or had he been gone too long to see the house in this dilapidated state?

He was taken aback by his first sight of Abraham Dorai. His uncle had always been skinny, but now the bones leapt out of his face and chest. Clad only in a filthy dhoti, he looked like a mendicant. He blinked at the man in front of him, not recognizing Daniel for a long instant, then a grimace stretched his features.

‘Daniel-thambi, is it really you? Vaango, vaango.’ He raised his voice in a shout for his wife and then came forward to greet his nephew. Kaveri emerged and greeted Daniel as effusively as her husband had. And then for a time they stood around, unsure of how to proceed. Daniel was astonished to see how husband and wife had grown to resemble each other – their features had settled and arranged themselves in patterns that could have been lifted from an identical mould. He remembered how they had been. Kaveri, short, plump and fair, and Abraham, tall and dark. Now their faces were lined, hair white. Decades of a childless marriage could do that to you, Daniel mused. He found the thought unexpectedly humorous. But there was nothing funny about the way they had conducted themselves. Through their avarice and selfishness, they had divided his family, dishonoured Solomon, brought about the death of his brother and the madness of his mother.

Grimly he agreed to stay the night. He refused dinner, asking only for a glass of water. Kaveri brought him a tumbler of buttermilk and left to prepare a room for him to sleep in. He drank it sitting on the veranda, as his father had often done, and listened as Abraham began to talk about how hard times had been. All the villages had been sold or taken over by the Government for non-payment of dues, and now he owned only thirty acres of land here and in a village to the north. That was the reason he hadn’t sent Charity the regular remittances of baskets of mangoes and rice, as agreed.

‘You are evil people,’ Daniel said. ‘I spoke to Aaron before he died and he told me everything.’

Kaveri had just come out on to the veranda and she began weeping noisily. ‘Oh, that poor misguided boy. How much we loved and looked after him, and now he’s gone, Jesu have mercy on his soul. When will our sorrows come to an end, after all the sacrifices we’ve made . . .’

Daniel cut in, his voice cold. ‘The only sacrifices you’ve made are for your own personal gain. If half the things I’ve heard . . .’ That was all it took. His aunt and uncle, tears seeping down the rills and furrows on their faces, bent to touch his feet, at which he sprang up in horror. They asked him to forgive them. It was only their poverty and indebtedness that had made them behave so badly. They spoke long into the night as mosquitoes and other insects whined about their ears. As he listened, Daniel grew at first furious, then sorry. He pitied their miserable lives, and the covetousness and insecurity that hadn’t given them a moment’s peace. When they began to get repetitive and dramatic he stopped them, and pronounced judgement. He had first thought he would punish them but had now decided otherwise. He would pay them three thousand rupees, exactly what his mother and he had received from them for the house and land, and they would leave Chevathar for ever. The old man and woman began to cry as soon as he said this, and Daniel was persuaded to revise the terms a little: the compensation would be the same, but they would be allowed to keep a couple of acres of rice and coconut, and build themselves a small house in the village to the north of Chevathar. ‘I’m showing you more mercy than you ever did to my mother, or to me. I hope to God I’m doing the right thing,’ Daniel said, before dismissing them from his presence.