‘That’s what Unni used to say. Girls remember everything. I am beginning to forget his face, can you believe that? Some days when I try to think of him I cannot remember his face. I have to come home and see his photograph on the wall. You know where the frame of Jesus Christ used to be, we have a big picture of Unni there now.’
‘I remember his face very well,’ she says.
‘But when he died you were only as old as I am now.’
‘I was thirteen, you are twelve. Big difference.’
‘It’s just one year.’
‘Big difference.’
She says they must now stop chatting and focus on the maths. ‘Angles,’ she says.
‘That night,’ Thoma says, remembering something, ‘my father and I saw you walking to your door that night. Where were you coming from?’
‘Nowhere,’ she says. ‘I thought I heard a sound outside our door. I went to look. I went up the steps to see if the sound was coming from the terrace.’
‘You were wearing proper clothes.’
‘What does that mean, Thoma?’
‘You were wearing clothes you usually wear when you are outside your house.’
‘I was outside my house, wasn’t I?’
Thoma whispers, ‘What do you think the sound was?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are very brave, Mythili.’
She shows him her palm and says that there are angles between her fingers.
Thoma wonders whether he is in love with her. Strangely, he has not thought of it before. And the question terrifies him because the fate of love in Madras is neatly divided into four kinds of suicide. Lovers who know that their parents will never let them marry go to a cheap hotel room, get into wedding clothes and eat rat poison. If they elope instead, their parents will consume the same rat poison. If it is only the girl’s parents who object to the marriage, she is most likely to immolate herself. Men who are spurned by girls almost always hang themselves from a ceiling fan. Men very rarely set fire to themselves for a girl.
‘If there are no angles between two lines, the value of the angle is either zero or 180 degrees. Thoma, idiot, are you listening?’
‘Mythili, you think Unni died because of some love problem?’
She makes a fist and knocks his head with her knuckles. How do all the bloody women in Madras know how to do this? He feels humiliated for a moment but then Mythili rubs his head.
He is glad he washed his hair with soap. ‘You must listen, Thoma,’ she says.
But they do chat about this and that. He has figured out that the best way to get her to talk is to talk about Unni.
‘Mythili, do you know the names of all the players in the national women’s basketball team?’
‘Of course not. Who would know something like that?’
‘That’s what Unni said. He said nobody would know the
women’s basketball team. He said when you want to impress someone just make up ten names of girls and claim that this is the Indian women’s basketball team. Nobody will be able to check.’
She takes a thick strand of hair that is falling over her face and pushes it behind her ear. ‘Unni was always up to something,’ she says. ‘Remember how he used to read my mind? How do you think he did that, Thoma?’
Yes, he remembers. Unni would ask her to pick a card from a pack and put it back. He would then stare deep into her eyes, as she giggled or fluttered her eyelids in an exaggerated way. And he would guess the card she had picked. He was right every time, and Mythili would be stunned. She would ask him to leave the room when she was about to pick the card, and she would hide the card, chew it or even tear it into many pieces, but Unni would just walk in and guess it right. She even started going up to the terrace to pick the card in private, but Unni always guessed the card. Some days he would pretend that he was unable to read her mind because of too much activity inside her head. But the next morning, when she opened her school bag or a notebook, she would find the card she had picked. And she would shriek so loudly that Thoma and Unni could hear her in their house.
‘You think he could really read minds, Thoma?’
Thoma cannot bear it, but he doesn’t say anything.
‘You know what he told me?’ she says. ‘He told me that once upon a time in this world there lived a secret race of humans with supernatural powers. They invented cheap magic tricks and spread them far and wide so that people believed all supernatural acts to be just magic tricks. That’s what Unni told me. I still remember because I used to think that Unni was one of those supernatural people.’
‘I think Unni was good at some tricks. He did not have
supernatural powers. I am very sure he had no supernatural powers, Mythili. I think only Pele is supernatural.’
‘Pele?’ she says, spitting out the word. ‘From where did you pick Pele?’
‘Pele is a great man,’ he says. ‘Do you know who he is?’
‘Yes, Thoma, I know who Pele is. Everybody knows Pele.’
‘He is a genius.’
‘Yes, he is a genius.’
Thoma is comforted that he has created reasonable competition for Unni.
‘Pele is mind-blowing,’ he says. ‘Only Pele is supernatural.’
‘But what a dumb name, though,’ she says. ‘Pele. How funny.’
Thoma cannot believe it. This is the moment he has always been waiting for but now he feels he is going to faint. This is a miracle. The first miracle in his life.
‘Not his real name,’ he says softly.
‘Pele is not his name?’
‘His real name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento.’
‘How do you know these things, Thoma? Not bad.’
‘He was a Russian spy,’ he says.
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘He used to work for the KGB. KGB is the Russian secret service.’
‘I know what KGB is,’ she says.
‘Usually girls do not know what KGB is,’ he says. ‘In fact, very few people in the world know what KGB stands for.’
‘What does it stand for?’
‘Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti.’
She rubs his head fondly. ‘I think you read a lot, Thoma.’
‘A lot. I read all the time.’
The whole day, Thoma wanders down the lanes of Kodambakkam with a Sense of Well-being and with sympathy for everybody he sees on the road because Mythili does not know them. He chooses only the short lanes because he fears that if he walks down a long street, Mythili will appear at the other end and he will forget how to walk, and she will know that he is just an ass. In the days that follow, he walks up and down his house, from the front balcony to the rear, for a glimpse of Mythili. Sometimes his path crosses that of his wandering mother, and they smile politely as if they are pedestrians greeting each other. He develops a nervous reverence for Mythili’s school uniform, which she hangs out to dry every evening. He looks at it only discreetly. The best part of his day is the time before he goes to sleep when he imagines that he is dying and that Mythili, in her school uniform, is crying softly for him, hiding in her bathroom. And the times when he is with her, he tries to distract her from maths by talking about Unni. And when she is not looking, he looks carefully at her, the way she used to stare at Unni when he was not looking – with a blank, serious face.
IT IS NOT THAT Ousep Chacko has abandoned the investigation again, it is just that he does not know how to proceed. After he was discharged from the hospital he resumed the probe, though he did not know what he was looking for any more. He has met everyone who appears to matter, except for Somen Pillai. There is no one else left to meet or to confront. He has met Simion Clark, too. That was a week ago.
Simion Clark turned out to be a tall, fit man in his forties who was at once Caucasian and Indian, with cautious eyes
behind square glasses, thin severe lips, hair the colour of dirt, and a pronounced arse. He stood in the doorway, unnaturally erect, and stared with mild hostility. There was a bit of unpleasantness at first as Simion insisted he was Albert Fernandes. But he slowly relented because he knew his cover was blown and he knew it was silly to defend his position. Also, he was curious.
His flat was small and it was further diminished by three massive leather sofas that faced each other. Simion pretended to be relaxed. It is easier for men with long legs to appear that way.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked.
‘You don’t have a scar, Simion, which is surprising.’
‘I said, “How did you find me?”’
‘Usually, men like you in Madras have scars.’
Scars from the times when they were attacked by cruel mobs of men who did not understand their way. The description of Simion as given by Balki had suggested to Ousep a pattern he was familiar with. The descriptions of the others later only confirmed that. Simion was one of those classy men in Madras who liked to be teachers in a boys’ school, who were very strict, who inflicted pain, who spanked boys, who liked to teach subjects that needed a lab, where they could meet young boys behind shut doors. And in Madras, men like Simion are accustomed to fleeing. When Ousep began asking around in the gay underground, it turned out that Simion was not hard to find. A gay Anglo-Indian was just too conspicuous in the city. Simion also wrote for the editorial pages of the
Indian Express
under the name of Roy Gidney, tirelessly demanding legitimacy for homosexuality. The man even had a big following.
‘I want to know why Unni did that to you in the class,’ Ousep said.
‘Is that why you are here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I want to know my son better.’
‘Why don’t you just ask him?’
‘Because he is dead.’
Ousep had not expected Simion to be stunned by the news. His farcical composure was gone and there was no strength in him. ‘How did that happen?’ he asked. When Ousep told him, Simion looked lost and confused. He went to the bathroom and shut himself in for over ten minutes. When he emerged, his nose was red, as if he had had a good cry. He asked Ousep to leave but did not insist. He sat with his hands folded and took several minutes to weigh his options. Ousep had not conveyed any direct threats to make his life hell, but Simion was smart enough to see the sense in cooperating.
Simion rose again, and this time he disappeared into a room, probably his bedroom. He did not shut the door. He returned with a sheet of paper and handed it to Ousep. It was a full-length caricature of Simion, a flawed portrait but somehow efficient. There was a touch of Unni in the art, but strangely, it was a diminished Unni.
‘He must have been thirteen when he drew this,’ Simion said. ‘He gave it to me in the school corridor. I think he admired me as a teacher, I think he did. I am a good teacher, a bit strict, but I am good. I am not strict for the filthy reasons you presume, but yes, I am strict, I care. And Unni at thirteen was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. His face, I will always remember his face.’
Simion was so infatuated with young Unni that he would become tongue-tied in his presence. He was too nervous even to speak to him. He thought if he spoke to him or if he even
looked at him beyond a passing glance he would stray. As Unni grew up, Simion could see that the boy was not gay. ‘What a shame, what a waste. With that face, that body, what a waste. There was something about him, about the way he moved, that was divine.’
Ousep had longed to hear this, longed to know his son as a subject of unashamed love, but he was offended by the idea of Unni as the sexual fantasy of a man. ‘I am not a bad person, Mr Chacko. I try to be a good man,’ Simion said. ‘In every school I’ve worked at, I’ve tried to control myself. And when I was in that school I tried harder than ever. But it is tough for a man like me in a city like this. It is very hard.’
Simion used to take the train to school. He had an old sky-blue Fiat but he took the train because he wanted to travel on a particular morning train, in a particular second-class compartment, in the predetermined tight squeeze of a predetermined corner. That corner was legend in the folklore of homosexuals. In that corner, men stood feeling the bodies of other men like them. Eyes met, affections were conveyed, plans were made, all in great caution because a single bad judgement would have meant a violent attack by outraged men. On good days, virgin adolescent boys in search of male flesh made their way to the corner to see for themselves whether the legend was true, ‘if paradise really existed in Madras’. They came to be felt and loved and promised a more elaborate time.
‘Such a beautiful creature came one day to the compartment. He looked me in the eye, stood close to me. I felt the tightness of his young body, I imagined him being mine. In the crowd of men I placed my hand on him and I could feel him come to life. But he was nervous, naturally, very scared. When the train stopped at the next station he rushed out and disappeared. He went away, just like that. I knew I would never see him again.’
Simion reached school that morning, stirred and insatiate. All morning, he was distracted by the apparition of the exotic boy on the train. He was unable to focus on his classes. That afternoon he was in the lab, alone, and wishing the thoughts would go away. He saw a little boy of around ten pass by in the corridor. ‘I don’t know why I called him in and started talking to him. I don’t know why I started massaging his thighs. That’s all that happened.’
Unni walked in at that instant, and saw what was going on. He asked the little boy to leave, and held Simion in a steady gaze. ‘I could not figure out what he was thinking but it was the most shameful moment of my life. When I was caught like that, it should not have been Unni. I went on my knees and joined my palms and begged him to forgive me. I told him I was quitting the school at that very moment, I accepted that I did not deserve to be a teacher.’
But Unni surprised him. He convinced him that he should stay. Unni said, ‘Things happen. We cannot control ourselves all the time.’
Simion decided to stay. But the next day, when he entered Unni’s class, the boy knew what he was going to do. ‘I don’t know why he did that. My beautiful Unni, I don’t know why he did that. I don’t know, I really don’t know. I think of him often and I ask myself why he was so cruel to me. I ask that even though I deserved it.’
Unni had found his Philipose. That was what it was about.