Endless the way home is, there’s moonlight on the ground, splashed all over, making familiar ways strange, it’s glittering in the gutters, washing over small unlovely things, transforming them into precious objects. At the corner of the Chicken Claw where the gulli goes to the main road a piece of shiny foil from a tobacco sachet has been lying for at least five days, on the main road itself, as you cross to Kali Parade, that heap of bottles is diamonds, on the wall the letters HELL WILL REIGN look black in the light of the moon, close by is a blown-apart rubber ring, a dead truck tyre in which weeds have rooted. How well I know this city’s zameen, its ground, from an altitude of two feet, this is my home earth, discarded things are my city’s treasures, this wall is its history plus also where its history finished without warning when no one was expecting it, on a night of moon alchemy just like this. Past the rusty gates I go, past KILLER KAMPANI and skull, the moon is shining on my arms and hands as they pace forward before my face, I am a silvery beast casting a four-footed shadow on the factory wall.
I’m heading home and normally I would go across the railway into the nearer end of the Nutcracker and thus to Paradise Alley but there is a shorter way. On this night perhaps because I am thinking of Elli I turn north by the tracks and make my way along the wall to the hole where I took her into the factory. Looking through I see leaves caught by the moon. In, then, the smell of chemicals rises to meet me, softly I move through the long dry grasses, thumping my fist on the ground every few paces to warn the snakes that I am about. Of snakes there’s no sign, but after ploughing a hundred yards through thick grass I come to one of the dead zones. Suddenly there’s rough growling, one of the guardians it’s, maddened by the moon and glaring, but I know how to deal with dogs, I take a step towards it and say “Brother dog or bitch sister I can’t make out which, quit your tamaasha I am in shit just like you are, so fuck off and find someone else to annoy.” The creature turns and disappears into the bushes. Nearby is the poison-khana with its pile of poison rocks and its stairs to nowhere. Seized by an impulse, I don’t know why, I find a ladder and start climbing. Instantly the whole structure vanishes, it takes a second to realise that a cloud has blotted out the moon.
Up on the highest platform, where the death pipe starts its solo climb into the sky, I’m sitting with my arm round its blackened stack, the city is mapped out below in a million pricks of light. Join the brightest dots, you get the lines of the main roads. High above the lake is a cluster of lights, it’s Jehannum, a little way below some lesser lights where a few hours ago the demo was held. Around me the factory is a region of darkness, a black shape outlined by the low glimmer of slums. Now a strange thing happens. In one instant all the lights of the city go out, between them appear pale shining shapes, triangles, squares, oblongs, in Chowk the minars and dome of the mosque are shining, it’s like my eyes are playing tricks, then I realise that the moon is out again.
There’s a battle going on between earth and sky, war is being waged between the light of human beings and the light of the moon, I am thinking of Somraj, because his name means lord of soma and soma is the moon and also the golden sun. Somraj, what will become of you? This animal, with his inner eye, sees you crushed beneath heavy blows. My news will wreck you. I think you will die, Somraj, because death has been in your mind a long time. That dream of yours, the one which keeps coming back, which won’t leave you, Nisha told me, it’s your memories of that night, but in the dream all the things of then are happening over and over again. You are in a street where lights are reduced to pinpricks by a thick cloud of gas. In this dim kerosene light dying figures are stumbling past. Nafisubi Ali’s child is standing at the corner, crying for his mother. The boy’s crying grows louder until in your mind it becomes a raga, one so awful that no instrument except the human throat can sing it. This raga fills you with fear and despair. Your mouth opens and emits no sound. The dead in their hundreds are sprawled in the roads, they are leaning half upright in doorways, their mouths are open and they are singing, out of their throats the death raga pours in green gusts, it swirls round them and flies in your face, in that green burning fog your world is lost.
My arms are round the pipe, now cold, up which the poisons flew to kill a city. The pipe is moaning. A hundred feet above my head wind is blowing across its mouth, the death pipe’s wailing like a giant flute. I put my ear to its rough surface and listen. Inside are voices and it’s like they are screaming. It’s the dead of night, in my head is this howling that makes the hairs of my neck stand on end. I have the power to understand these things, I know right away what this is, it’s the dead beneath the earth, it’s their bones and ashes crying out in rage against their murderers. The dead are shrieking at me that the good earth has been defiled with blood. In thick clots the blood lies, won’t be washed away by rain. The blood cries out for justice. Once the earth has tasted blood it craves more, now the killers must be killed. This is the old and the real law, it’s the price that must be paid for murder, the price demanded by the furious spirits beneath the earth. Give us justice, screams the blood. It promises years of disaster, years of illness, if I do not take revenge. It warns me that ulcers will eat my flesh with white and weeping sores. Things will come to haunt me, nightmares from hell, sent by my murdered parents, hideous night demons, unnameable horrors of the night. If I do not take revenge they will come for me. Whips, like scorpion-stings, will flay my body and drive me out of human society. Never again will I share food or drink with human beings. I’ll be an outcast. For me there’ll be no sanctuary, no relief, no end to suffering. No one will shelter me. I will end up friendless, despised by all, and then, worn away by endless pain, I’ll die. This is the song of the blood. The dead are rising up in the factory grounds, they are coming, looking as they did on that night, with eyes dripping blood they are coming, they’re coming for me.
There are times to be afraid and there are times when you can be pushed just so far. This day’s had too much of everything, of mayhem and excitement and betrayal and emotion and confusion, I too have fucking had enough. I say to the dead, who the fuck do you think you are, to threaten me with your reedy fucking complaints? If you had power you would have long ago taken your revenge, you are as powerless as us living, all you can do is wail in empty pipes, nothing can you do to the people who took your lives, they will grow fat and we will die and they will build factories above our graves and use our ashes for cement. Another thing, I yell, descending. You can hurl what curses you like, but I’ve already lost my place in the human world, plenty of people already despise me, but you are dead and I am alive.
“Here’s a filament of fluff, spun on a farting breeze. So it crows, so it crows.” Long before I reach home I hear Ma’s thin voice scraping at the sky. It’s past midnight. I’m afraid, the shouting in my head’s getting louder. I slide in under the plastic sheet to find Ma sitting on the floor crooning to herself. “Hear it all-hallowing out of the sea, one, three, look there’s four, how many more, how many more? Hello, Animal.”
“Ma,” I say, “I am in a mess.”
“Off its scales see the sea pouring, hear it roaring, just like snoring, shut the door shut the door, ha ha there’s no door.”
It’s not a good time to be hearing this strange crap. “Ma, come back from wherever you are. It’s important.”