“Jamispond,” says his adoring echo. “You are friendly with her, find out why she went to see Zahreel Khan.”
I’ve managed to slip one of the black golis into Zafar’s tea, then gone back outside, where are sat Elli doctress and her staff trying to convince the Khaufpuris. On the second table are picture leaflets about tuberculosis and how to stop it spreading. Here’s Suresh explaining that TB is contagious, yes, but with a few precautions you can easily protect yourself, plus you can help those who are suffering. “We will teach you. All treatments and medicines are free. Just go inside and register.”
“How can this be a bad thing?” someone asks.
Others agree, “So many will benefit.” “It’s just what’s needed.”
By now there’s a regular stream of folk coming and going from the door of the clinic. At this rate the boycott will soon be over.
On the third table are many sheets of paper, Elli doctress is waving a pen at people. “Come and sign!”
“What is this?” a man asks.
“It’s a petition,” says Elli in a loud clear voice. “It is addressed to Pandit Somraj and his committee. It says, please do not stop the people from getting the good free treatment they need. Support this clinic. Encourage people to make good use of it.”
“What should I do?”
“Just sign your name, write a comment, if you have one.”
The man makes a mumble, he jabs at the paper then moves off.
“Doesn’t know how to write.” Hidden as I am by the edge of the table, it takes her some time to see me.
“Animal! Thank goodness, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Wait right there, don’t go anywhere.” She looks over to Suresh. “At least one hundred have signed. How many registered inside?”
“Madam, seventy, more than.”
“Good.” She’s turned back to me. “Animal, can you spare me a few minutes?”
“Elli doctress, what are you doing?”
“I am telling these people that Pandit Somraj is unfair. He should not be stopping them from getting treatment.”
“Good morning, Doctor Barber,” says a voice like death. Somraj is standing right there beside us.
People around kind of hold their breath. All heads turn to Elli doctress, she is looking like what old folks call a duck on thunder. So the heads turn back to Somraj, stood there grim as ever.
“Pandit Somraj,” says Elli, collecting her wits. “Since you are here I would like to present you with this petition.” She’s gathered up all the sheets of paper and thrust them at him.
“I will be happy to receive it,” he says politely, not taking the sheets. “Before that, there is something I would like to do.”
A crowd of Khaufpuris presses close. What a rabble of turbans, dhotis, burqas, saris, a wave of Khaufpuri breath, perfumed with betel and supari.
“Get back you scum,” I’m shouting, “you will step on my fucking fingers.”
Says Somraj, “I would like to sign it.”
Then people are goggling, because for the first time anyone can remember, Pandit Somraj is smiling.
“What do you mean, you would like to sign it?” asks Elli, who’s gone like a cut beetroot.
“Like this,” he says. He picks up a pen and signs. “Collect more signatures. When you have finished, please bring them to me.”
Then he’s gone into his house, still smiling, leaving behind a babble of voices plus one astonished doctress sat holding her papers.
“Elli doctress?”
She says at last, “That horrible man, he’s just making mockery. How dare he? Suresh, did you see what he just did?”
“Madam, Somraj Pandit has signed the petition.”
“I know he has signed the damn petition.” Her voice has gone high. “Can you believe it? The petition is aimed against him, and he has signed it himself.”
“Madam, Pandit Somraj has a reputation for fairness, maybe he feels he is being unfair.”
“But if he feels he is being unfair, why doesn’t he just be fair? I give up with this town, I don’t think I will ever understand it.”
Next she’s ghurr-ghurred me. “Animal, will you sign?”
“Not I.”
“Why not? If even Pandit Somraj can sign it, why can’t you? Come on, sign your name.”
“It’s not a proper name,” says I. Somraj can do whatever he likes, never will Zafar say anything to the man he calls “abba.” But me?
“Sign!”
“When all’s said, what kind of a name is Animal?”
“Have some guts.” It’s like she’s read my thoughts. “You’re a free human.”
“I am not a human.”
“You’re always saying that. You don’t really believe it.”
“Of course I believe it, because it’s true.”
“So then, what else is true?”
I’ve thought about this for a moment, then said, “Give me the pen.” Under all the signatures and crosses, I write:
Je ne suis pas un homme, mais un animal
dans cet hôpital je ne trouve rien de mal
“There, Elli, I’ve made you a poem.”
Growls the blood-tuskery voice before I can stop it:
Mere muñh se nikli insaan ki zubaan,
qurbaani ke jaanvar ki aakhri qurbaan
My lips have uttered human speech, the last sacrifice of the slaughtered beast.
“I am so sorry,” she says later, when we are inside her clinic. “I should never have said that about frogs. It was stupid.”
To this I’ve replied nothing. I may be pissed off with Elli, but I’ll never criticise in case she gets angry and stops my treatment. If your mission in life is to look after number one, sometimes it means biting your tongue, but there’s usually another way to get at a person.
“Elli, how do you expect people round here to trust you, if you go visiting people like Zahreel Khan?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Namispond Jamispond.”
“Well, I got nowhere with the gentleman across the road. He’s got quite a nerve, hasn’t he? Listen to this.”
She sits at her piano, opens the lid and thumps her hands down. There’s a sound like rumbling thunder. Jara lifts her head and yips. Elli makes more great crashing sounds.
“What are you doing?”
“Ever since that day I had the row with him, whenever I play the piano a loud music starts up from inside that house.”
“I know nothing about it,” says I, with perfect truth.
“Wait and see.” She begins to play her favourite, that piece that sounds like bells. Sure enough, after hardly a minute, comes the full throat of someone singing a raga.
“How long has this been going on?”
“A couple of weeks. I don’t mind, I just play even louder. The piano can easily drown him out.”
So, both sides of the road it’s the same complaint.
“Animal, your friends.” Her fingers are still jumping around the keys. “They are not much liked in high places.”
“Really?”
“The minister said they were ‘professional activists.’”
“Ha ha, is that all?” “Agitator,” “trouble-maker,” “ring-leader” etc., these are the words the politicians usually use to describe Zafar.
“Worse.” So then she stops playing and tells me what happened.
Eyes, I don’t have difficulty recalling her words. Even after all this time, I’ve only to think of Elli, imagine her standing in front of me with her slightly too-close-together eyes plus too-tight blue jeans, it gives a throb to my zabri plus I can hear her voice speaking in my head.
Elli goes to the government building where Zahreel Khan and the other Khaufpur politicians have their offices. It’s in the posh part of town, by the shore of the lake. It looks clean from outside, but inside it’s filthy. She says, “At first I thought the reddish criss-cross streaks up and down the stairs were some sort of decoration, but then I realised that they were made by clerks letting fly betel-spit.” They send her to an office filled with steel cupboards, on top of them are toppling stacks of brown paper folders. Hundreds more folders are stuffed in sacks on the floor. Everything wears a thick shawl of dust.