Shatup goddam fool-fuckers, waking Master, shut your traps and all this hungama-business, stinky-smelly goondas and chhokra-boys.
But razor blades and sticks and cycle chains appeared magically in Bolai-da’s followers’ hands, too. So, in a barrage of shouts and insults, the two groups held off for a moment and each managed to push their leaders in front, while somehow conveying the impression that they were actually trying to hold them back.
Bolai-da stepped into the breach. He twisted his face haughtily sideways and out of the corner of his mouth he whistled: We want nothing to do with the likes of you. We want to meet Bhudeb-babu.
Bhudeb Roy heard him, for the commotion had drawn him out into the garden. Let them come in, he roared. I’ll hear them.
The twenty young men drew back, with extreme misgiving. They couldn’t help doling out a few pinches to the stragglers and pulling a bit of hair. Bhudeb Roy rolled his little eyes when he saw the crowd and growled: What is it now, Bolai? Bolai-da smiled his most ingratiating smile and said: Bhudeb-babu, these young fellows want some work, too. They’re as good as the others. Why not hire them, too?
Bhudeb Roy rolled his eyes over the ragged young men and smiled. He put his arm across Bolai-da’s shoulders and led him aside. You see, Bolai, he whispered in a whisper which resounded around the garden, what this village needs is a kick in the arse, something to get it moving. I’ve tried kindness and persuasion but it doesn’t work. There’s something wrong with the basic character of the people. They’re illiterate like you, not educated like me. They need a kick in the arse. But, then, someone has to do the kicking and someone has to provide the arse. If everyone was kicking, do you see what I mean, what would become of the arse? You understand me?
Bolai-da nodded, thinking hard. But then he said: Bhudeb-babu, can’t you give them something to do? How will they live? They need work, too.
Bhudeb Roy thought for a moment and rubbed his huge flat forehead. His fingers touched on a bump and suddenly a smile of dawning revelation spread itself across his jaw. Why, he said, let them make straight lines. Straight lines are the best way of moving ahead, the shortest distance between two points. You tell them that: the need of the hour is straight lines.
The twenty young men, smiling with sly satisfaction, ushered Bolai-da and the others out of the garden.
It was sometime that week that Balaram first noticed the organ of Order sprouting obscenely on Bhudeb Roy’s eyebrows.
About ten days later two jeeps full of uniformed men were spotted turning into the dust track which led off the main road to the village. The village had emptied long before they reached the banyan tree. The blue-uniforms didn’t seem to notice. The jeeps drove straight to the school and the uniformed men fanned out over the yard, inspecting the pit the crash had made and picking up stray nuts and bolts and shavings of metal. Then the jeeps roared and wheeled, and drove straight to Bhudeb Roy’s house.
Nobody ever really learnt what happened there, but over the next two days the blue-uniforms went unerringly to the shops with sheet-metal roofs, the canals bridged by reinforced steel, the rickshaws decorated with shiny bolts, and recovered every last bit of scrap the plane had deposited in the village. All that anyone knew was that when the jeeps drove out ranks of blue-uniformed arms appeared in the windows waving cordially to Bhudeb Roy, and he waved back, smiling happily.
Naturally Bolai-da was chosen to lead the delegation of villagers who marched to Bhudeb Roy’s house to ask for their money back. They were stopped at the gates by the twenty young men and Bolai-da was singled out and led into the house. Bhudeb Roy met him in a dark empty room. His little eyes in their bulging sockets were suddenly very menacing. What do you want? he spat at Bolai-da.
Well, that is to say, Bhudeb-babu, Bolai-da managed to stutter, we were just wondering, since we paid you all that money for those bits of the plane, and since they’ve been taken back now, shouldn’t we — er — perhaps, get our money back? No one richer, no one poorer, all quits.
Bhudeb Roy’s eyebrows shot forward. His jaws opened as though they would have liked to fasten on Bolai-da’s scrawny neck. Be grateful, he roared, that you’re not in gaol for being found in possession of government property. Do you know who you owe it to? Me. Me. Me. Should I charge you lawyer’s fees? You’ll end up even poorer. If you know what’s good for you, you and all your bad-element friends will start working on straight lines instead of hanging around the banyan tree, doing nothing but rearing your heads and thinking anti-social thoughts.
Bolai-da was led out in a hurry by one of the young men. The other young men began to rattle their sticks and shine their knuckledusters, and the whole delegation was soon hurrying down the lane jaldi-toot-sweet.
Nobody ever talked of getting their money back again. After that, people said, not a bird chirruped in Lalpukur but with Bhudeb Roy’s permission, and under the supervision of his twenty young men.
And then, a couple of months later, someone spotted Parboti-debi, who had disappeared for a while, on the veranda of their house. She was unmistakably pregnant.
Calendars of every sort and variety, sweetshop and government-issue, Bikrami, Hegiraic and Gregorian, rustled under the banyan tree that night. The conclusions of the Bikrami were supported by the Hegiraic and were not contradicted by the Gregorian. But still people couldn’t believe it. They woke the oldest midwife in the village and put the problem to her. She had no doubts, either.
The plane had conceived the child. There could be no other conclusion. Nobody could believe Bhudeb Roy capable of fathering another child (though gossip had it that hardly a night passed without his trying). It had to be the plane. Or at any rate it had happened on the night of the crash, which was the same thing. The heavens had intervened. The plane was a gigantic chrome-plated penis thrown down by the skies to Bhudeb Roy’s wife; a sort of metallic, heavenly starch, sent to stiffen Bhudeb Roy’s ageing member.
Bolai-da led another awestruck delegation to Bhudeb Roy. Be generous, Bhudeb-babu, he pleaded. Allow her to come out of her seclusion. After all, if she has the gift, shouldn’t she share it with the rest of the village? The barren women of the village would worship her, and you, if she would only agree just to touch them. Perhaps you could even charge a fee.
Bhudeb Roy was so gratified by the speech that he actually giggled. Nothing would have pleased him more than the buttressing of his mundane powers with an element of the supernatural. Bolai-da swore later that Bhudeb Roy went into the house right then, and for a full half-hour argued with Parboti-debi and scolded her, urging her to go into the village with the delegation. But for once Parboti-debi, usually so compliant, was adamant. She would not go. The delegation returned, disappointed, and nobody saw Parboti-debi again during her confinement.
When the child was born, the whole village was invited to the house to see the baby and feast on sweetmeats, and nobody had any doubts about its divine instigation left.
The child was a girl, and it was well known that Bhudeb Roy had long wished for a daughter. And she was beautiful, far more beautiful than any child Bhudeb Roy could have fathered unaided. She was obviously sickly, but still the most beautiful child anybody had ever seen — eyes like liquid jet, skin like honeyed milk, hair like curled ebony.
Like everybody else, Bhudeb Roy interpreted the birth of the child as a sign. It was probably at that time that he first began to think of closing the school down. He had kept it going somehow, in the two or three rooms that were left standing. But it had long been clear that the school was only a diversion which took away time from politics, from his children, from money, from the village.