“Shameless boy, tu t’en moques, soit sérieux. The people of the city are in need of care and what do they get? This baragouin.”
“What is the good lady saying?” he asks.
I was in my madness, remember, Eyes, it comes to me that I can ask him anything and there’s one thing that I want more than anything in the world, yet I’m afraid to ask. A desperate business is hope, not to be encouraged if you can be content with small happiness, but the curse of human beings and this animal alike is that whatever you have, always you want more. Ever since I realised my feelings for Nisha, a wish for one thing has been growing in me, day by day as I sit beside her, smell the perfume of her hair and her skin, it has become fiercer, I think unless I do something I will die, this desire will devour me and now a moment has come when I might at least ask for what I want. I cannot let it pass.
You will be disappointed, whispers a voice. Ask! shouts another.
Now or never. I take courage and say what’s in my heart, “Sir, she wishes you to do an operation to make me stand up straight and walk on two legs.”
Now I’m down on fours looking up at this important doctor, so impatient am I for what he will say that my eyes remove from his, down his nose slide and settle on his lips, ready I’m for his reply. The lips purse and chew, he’s thinking. Such a big doctor, I was right to ask, a grand professor.
Turning to Ma he says, “Madam, I must be plain with you, whatever could have been done for this boy, the time is long past. He will have to get used to his condition. There is absolutely no hope, this boy will never walk or stand up straight again.”
Ma’s asking something but I’m unable either to hear or reply. In my head a thing flees away shrieking like a bird, eee-chip-chip-chip, the sound of the world dwindles to an eerie hum. I am looking at a shelf in the professor’s room. On it is a jar, a big round glass jar of liquid that flashes like it’s full of sunlight.
“What did you think, it’s that easy?” says a gnarly voice in my ear. “Quit staring by the way it gives me the creeps.” Glaring at me from inside the jar is a small crooked man. An ugly little monster, his hands are stretched out, he has a wicked look on his face, as if he’s just picked your pocket and is planning to piss on your shoe. Such an expression, I forget my own troubles and start laughing. There’s something weird about him. Looks like someone’s peering over his shoulder, a second head is growing out the side of his neck.
The doctor follows where I’m looking and turns to Ma still as if I don’t exist, his lips move, I see rather than hear the words, “Be grateful this boy’s no worse, madam, that could have been him in the jar. Half of those who were expecting on that night aborted and as for the rest, well let’s just say some things were seen in this town that were never seen before.”
The jar starts bubbling and shining, Ma’s reply when it comes sounds like she’s by a waterfall inside a huge cave, this time I don’t even catch the words.
“Hey you, standing there like a fucking Sadda Miyã ki tond, what the fuck are you looking at?” The creature’s frowning through the glass of his jar.
“You, mate,” I’ve said still laughing. “You are in a right fucking mess.”
“Bugger off,” says he, “if you can’t stop staring. Know what you look like to me? Come pressing your nose like a snail’s foot on the glass, huge round eyes are waving, even slime do you leave from your snout’s unwiped, fuckers like you have no consideration.”
“Hey hey, I too get stared at.”
“Then you know better,” he says. “Anyway, shut up and listen. Long I’ve waited for a one like you. I need your help. You have to get me out of here.”
“Here’s where?” I ask. “This office, this hospital?”
“This jar, stupid. You wouldn’t want to be in here, believe me, it’s like being trapped in an egg.”
“Up a hen’s bum?” This strikes me as so funny, hooting with laughter I’m.
“Your back is twisted,” says he with great bitterness, “but at least you are alive. Me, I’m still fucking waiting to be born.”
“Sorry, forgive,” says I. “Your situation is worse than mine.”
“I feel myself sinking,” says the little creature. “I drift down into a place where it is all dark, you open your mouth but there is no air just the black stink of it filling your mouth and eyes and nose, burns too, this fucking stuff they’ve got me in. Cunts want to study me, but they look for the wrong things. See this second head, Animal miyañ? It’s the clever one with the ideas. Such stuff it thinks, thoughts you could spin a world on. The one in front is dumb, sits swallowing liquid like a fish listening to all the shit these doctors talk. Number two knows what’s what. It’s stuffed with secrets they’d love to get their hands on, secrets of plants, minerals, lead to gold, mermaids, sun, moon, laughter, immortal life, all this class of thing’s there, locked up in the other head, this info must never fall into their hands. You must free me.”
I’m about to ask him how I can do this when the roaring recedes, Ma’s voice is buzzing in my ears, I am dropped back into this life where I find her looking questioningly at me, so I’ve told her I can’t understand a thing the great doctor is saying, but he’s sure to be talking shit as people like him always do.
“Il raconte les conneries, comme toujours.”
She gives a snort. “As usual.” Well, I am fully back.
“What is she saying?” asks the doctor.
“She is praising your wisdom, doctor sahib and asking, what might be that creature in the jar?”
“A child of the poison,” says the mullah of medicine. “We call it parapagus.”
“Now what’s he on about?” demands Ma.
“He says you have a voice like a nightingale.”
She simpers, “Oh get away with you.” I can’t tear my eyes away from the little bugger in the jar, I could swear he is winking at me.
“She thinks I hear voices,” I tell him.
“Should fucking hope so,” says he, “why else do you have ears?”
This is how I met my mate the Khã-in-the-Jar, I call him that because in Khaufpur you call a friend Khã like in other places they say mate or yaar, plus he’s in a jar.
TAPE FIVE
The big thing that happened in Amrika, when it I saw it on the tele do you know what I did? I clapped! I thought, fantastic! This plane comes out of nowhere, flies badoom! into this building. Pow! Blam! Flowers of flame!
It’s night, outside rain’s dripping golden off the roof of Chunaram’s chai house, turning Paradise Alley to glue. We’re inside drinking tea, I’m going “Fucking brilliant! Bollywallah special-effects, forget it!”
Zafar looks at me and says, “You fucking idiot, Animal, this isn’t a movie. This really happened. It’s a terrible accident that just happened.”
Really upset he must be, who almost never swears.
“Wasn’t an accident,” chips in someone. “The plane didn’t even try to miss.” The tele is going crazy, playing the crash over and over again. Commentators are shouting. No one knows what’s happening. Nine-fingered Chunaram, our host of the chai shop, smooth-talking ex-leper, kebab-genius, doesn’t care what the fuss is about, in heaven the fucker is. From all over the Nutcracker, people drawn by the commotion are coming running through the mud. Chunaram’s tin shack is crammed with gawpers, some at least will buy his tea and snacks. Thrilled he’s to see the tele earning its keep. Bribes must be paid to run the wire that steals electric from the munsipal. Pays to invest.