THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM (14 page)

Chapter Nineteen

1984

G
opalam stood by the edge of the well and looked down at the water. The mid-day sun burned the metal railing under his feet, but he was impervious to pain by now. The muscles of his face relaxed, like the rest of his body. Sweat trickled down onto his cheeks, but he made no movement to wipe it off. It caused him no discomfort.

He felt nothing of either the fear or the fascination he had once felt at the sight of water. As a child, he had been the only one in his group of friends who did not go swimming on summer afternoons. While they skipped and danced their way to one of the wells in the village, he stayed back on one excuse or the other. One day he would come down with a headache, another day he would have to help his mother, and sometimes he would have homework to finish. It was strange, this fear of water. All his life, he had never understood why it dogged him so.

But now it didn’t matter, of course. A frog leaped from a crevice in the wall into the water and swam across to the other edge.

You too, Gopalam?

She had not opened her mouth. She had not resisted any of his movements. Not a sound she had made—of fear, of pain, of disgust—no, nothing. But she had kept her eyes open. She had watched him all through the act. And those eyes had said, ‘You too, Gopalam?’

He looked at his watch. There were two more hours to go before they would notice that Surekha had not got up from her sleep. Maybe a few more hours would elapse before the doctor arrived and told everyone that she had died of poisoning. How long would it be before someone asked where
he
was?

He thought of Prabhakarayya without any of the cold, vengeful anger that had once consumed his being. Now he thought of him with a deep sense of empathy, as
one of us
. Once you share an experience like that with a man, he thought, he becomes your brother for life.

Prabhakarayya, seated in his cane chair, one leg regally crossed over the other, pointed shoes, ring-laden fingers, spotless clothes…

‘Money? You want money?’ he had said that night.

‘Yes, Karnam gaaru. I… I went to the doctor today.’

‘Oh, no,’ Prabhakarayya said, examining one of his rings carefully. ‘I keep telling you to stop smoking those beedis, Gopalam. How many times did I tell you to stop, hmm?’

‘The doctor said there is a hole in my lung…’

‘A hole! That will not do, will it now, Gopalam?’

‘No, Karnam gaaru
.
’

‘And an operation must cost a lot of money, no?’

‘Yes, Karnam gaaru. If you could do this as a favour to an old friend…’

‘Gopalam.’ Prabhakarayya looked up and smiled. ‘Is this
what you think of me? All these years, and this
is how you’ve understood me? Of course I will lend it to you. How much do you want?’

When Gopalam told him the amount, Prabhakarayya’s smile broadened. ‘And your salary?’

Gopalam told him.

‘So on your salary, it will take you twenty years to repay the principal.’

‘Twenty?’

‘Yes,’ Prabhkarayya said, nodding regretfully. ‘Twenty. And the interest?’

‘I will do something, Karnam gaaru. I will do anything and give it back to you.’

‘Of course, Gopalam,’ Prabhakarayya said softly. ‘Of course. We’re friends, you and I. Why such big words? We will write up something just as a formality and you can have your money. Okay?’

Somebody then brought out a book, a sheet of carbon paper and a pen. Prabhakarayya got to work. After a moment, he stopped and said, ‘Gopalam, you know you don’t have to pay me back
in money
.’

‘I… I don’t understand, Karnam gaaru.’

It was then that Prabhakarayya’s smile had become the broadest. ‘You can ask your wife to help you as well, you know,’ he had said. ‘Surekha can come and work here in the house for a few days… Don’t worry, I will look after her well… There will be the odd errand here and there that she can help with… In four to five months, your loan will be repaid.’

Gopalam had stalked out in anger that night, but he had returned the following week to tell Prabhakarayya that Surekha would be coming from the day after. That night, he had left Prabhakarayya’s house with a packet full of money.

‘A woman’s self-respect does not mean anything if she doesn’t have a husband,’ his mother had said. ‘Tomorrow, after your husband is gone, what will you do with all your self-respect?’

For four months after that, lying in his bed and nursing his chest, he had watched her go every morning. He would lie in bed, staring at the gate, until she returned just after nightfall. She looked the same—a bit tired, perhaps, but essentially the same—and yet she changed. She was irredeemably changed.

Not once had they talked about the errands she ran at Prabhakarayya’s house. At the end of the four months, Prabhakarayya had marched to his place, and after partaking of the steaming hot tea that Gopalam’s mother had made for him, he had grandly torn up the piece of paper, declaring him a free man.

‘Get better soon, Gopalam,’ he had said. ‘I hate
to see an active man like you in bed like this.’

Get better soon, Gopalam.

The words came to his ears, dancing, swaying, as though on the back of a breeze. Only there was none blowing. There was sweat on his cheeks and burns on his feet, but there was no relief in the air. And yet the words danced and swayed.

Had it changed anything? Had it left anything unchanged?

Had there been even one night in those four months when he entered Surekha’s room and left it without feeling like his head had been sawn off? Had he bought her a bunch of chamanti
flowers from the temple even once? Had he accompanied her to the movie at Saraswatamma’s house even once since then? Had he looked upon her with love—pure love—a love untainted by guilt and hate?

No. To all those questions and more, the answer was no.

You too, Gopalam?

It was as Avadhani put it. ‘We’re all parts of a chain. The one above us stamps on us. We stamp on the one below us.’

Wherever he went, he saw the grinning face of Prabhakarayya. He would smile at Gopalam whenever they met, place a hand on his shoulder if the situation permitted, and he would ask, ‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘And how is Surekha?’

How is Surekha?

He had been thinking of Prabhakarayya that evening at the sarai
shop. Avadhani had been there too. And when Chakali Sanga hobbled to the shop and asked for one more packet and was turned away, Avadhani had looked up and asked, ‘Oye Sanga, when will you give Gopalam his money?’

‘I don’t have it,’ Sanga muttered.

Avadhani looked at Gopalam and lifted his eyebrows.

Stamp those under you.

‘You don’t have to pay with money, Sanga,’ Gopalam heard himself say.

The drunkard’s eyes flashed in greed. ‘What did you say, babu? I don’t have to pay you?’

‘Not with money.’

‘What… what do you mean, babu?’

‘You could…ask Lachi to come by my house for Shivaratri… you know, run a few errands around the house.’ And pathetically, he had added, ‘Just for the night.’

Just for the night
.

She had not screamed, she had not scratched, she had not tensed for one moment. She had just stared back at him like a corpse would. And her eyes asked the same question again and again, in disbelief, ‘You too, Gopalam?’

Outside, the pathetic drunkard drank and sang his troubles away, Avadhani’s soothing voice in his ear, ‘Gopalam will look after Lachi for tonight. You don’t worry about her. Drink. One more?’ And a packet of sarai
would pop.

Yes, pathetic, pathetic fool of a drunkard
. He had repeated the words over and over in his mind with such force that they spilled over onto his lips, and he had said nothing more than that all night in response to her empty stares. ‘Pathetic, pathetic fool of a husband, you’ve got. An animal! A bastard! There! Out there, drinking, when I am here with you!’

And her eyes would only say, ‘You too?’

In that one night, he had struck off the memory of Prabhakarayya. By stamping on the person under him in the chain, he had become Prabhakarayya’s equal, which was why he was now feeling a strange sense of kinship with the man.

Surekha had to go; what was left of her but an empty shell? He could see that she had known. She might not have known the details, but she must have got the gist. Surekha was good like that. So when he had suggested it was time, she had merely nodded. Her only question was what would happen to Chotu.

‘Mother will look after him,’ he had said, and she had nodded again.

Poison for her—painless, swift. Drowning for him—excruciating, slow.

A crow cawed once in the distance, as if giving the signal. He jumped.

Chapter Twenty