By the next day he couldn’t stand it anymore; he slipped out of the kitchen and purchased a twenty-five-dollar number from a bum who had a talent for learning numbers by lingering outside phone booths, overhearing people spell out their calling codes and recording them in his head. He had loitered behind one unsuspecting Mr. Onopolous making a phone call and charging it to his platinum -
"But be quick," he told Biju, "I’m not sure about this number, a couple of people have already used it…"
The receiver was still moist and warm from the last intimacy it had conducted, and it breathed back at Biju, a dense tubercular crepitation. As there was no phone at Cho Oyu, Biju rang the number for the MetalBox guesthouse on Ringkingpong Road.
"Can you get my father? I will call again in two hours."
So, one evening, some weeks before the phone lines were cut, before the roads and bridges were bombed, and they descended into total madness, the MetalBox watchman came rattling the gate at Cho Oyu. The cook had a broth going with bones and green onions -
"La! Phone! La! Telephone! Telephone call from your son. La! From America. He will phone again in one hour. Come quick!"
The cook went immediately, leaving the rattling skeleton bones topped by dancing scrappy green, for Sai to watch – "Babyji!"
"Where are you going?" asked Sai, who had been pulling burrs from Mutt’s pantaloons while thinking of Gyan’s absence -
But the cook didn’t reply. He was already out of the gate and running.
The phone sat squat in the drawing room of the guesthouse encircled by a lock and chain so the thieving servants might only receive phone calls and not make them. When it rang again, the watchman leapt at it, saying, "Phone, la! Phone! La mai!" and his whole family came running from their hut outside. Every time the phone rang, they ran with committed loyalty. Upkeepers of modern novelties, they would not, would not, let it fall to ordinariness.
"HELLO?"
"HELLO? HELLO?"
They gathered about the cook, giggling in delicious anticipation.
"HELLO?"
"HELLO? PITAJI??"
"BIJU?" By natural logic he raised his voice to cover the distance between them, sending his voice all the way to America.
"Biju, Biju," the watchman’s family chorused, "it’s Biju," they said to one another. "Oh, it’s your son," they told the cook. "It’s his son," they told one another. They watched for his expressions to change, for hints as to what was being said at the other end, wishing to insinuate themselves deeply into the conversation, to become it, in fact.
"HELLO HELLO????"
"???? HAH? I CAN’T HEAR. YOUR VOICE IS VERY FAR."
"I CAN’T HEAR. CAN YOU HEAR?"
"He can’t hear."
"WHAT?"
"Still can’t hear?" they asked the cook.
The atmosphere of Kalimpong reached Biju all the way in New York; it swelled densely on the line and he could feel the pulse of the forest, smell the humid air, the green-black lushness; he could imagine all its different textures, the plumage of banana, the stark spear of the cactus, the delicate gestures of ferns; he could hear the croak trrrr whonk, wee wee butt ock butt ock of frogs in the spinach, the rising note welding imperceptibly with the evening…
"HELLO? HELLO?"
"Noise, noise, "said the watchman’s family, "Can’t hear?"
The cook waved them away angrily, "Shshshshsh" immediately terrified, then, at the loss of a precious second with his son. He turned back to the phone, still shooing them away from behind, almost sending his hand off with the vehemence of his gestures.
They retreated for a moment and then, growing accustomed to the dismissive motion, were no longer intimidated, and returned.
"HELLO?"
"KYA?"
"KYA?"
The shadow of their words was bigger than the substance. The echo of their own voices gulped the reply from across the world.
"THERE IS TOO MUCH NOISE."
The watchman’s wife went outside and studied the precarious wire, the fragile connection trembling over ravines and over mountains, over Kanchenjunga smoking like a volcano or a cigar – a bird might have alighted upon it, a nightjar might have swooped through the shaky signal, the satellite in the firmament could have blipped -
"Too much wind, the wind is blowing," said the watchman’s wife, "the line is swaying like this, like this" – her hand undulating.
The children climbed up the tree and tried to hold the line steady.
A gale of static inflicted itself on the space between father and son.
"WHAT HAPPENED?" – shrieking even louder – "EVERY-THING ALL RIGHT?!"
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"
"Let it go," the wife said, plucking the children from the tree, "you’re making it worse."
"WHAT IS HAPPENING? ARE THERE RIOTS? STRIKES?"
"NO TROUBLE NOW." (Better not worry him.) "NOT NOW!!"
"Is he going to come?" said the watchman.
"ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" Biju shrieked on the New York street.
"DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING HERE. ARE THERE PROPER ARRANGEMENTS FOR EATING AT THE HOTEL? IS THE RESTAURANT GIVING YOU ACCOMMODATION? ARE THERE ANY OTHER PEOPLE FROM UTTAR PRADESH THERE?"
"Give accommodation. Free food. EVERYTHING FINE. BUT ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" Biju asked again.
"EVERYTHING QUIET NOW."
"YOUR HEALTH IS ALL RIGHT?"
"YES. EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT."
"Ahh, everything all right," everyone said, nodding. "Everything all right? Everything all right."
Suddenly, after this there was nothing more to say, for while the emotion was there, the conversation was not; one had bloomed, not the other, and they fell abruptly into emptiness.
"When is he coming?" the watchman prompted.
"WHEN ARE YOU COMING?"
"I DON’T KNOW. I WILL TRY…"
Biju wanted to weep.
"CAN’T YOU GET LEAVE?"
He hadn’t even attained the decency of being granted a holiday now and then. He could not go home to see his father.
"WHEN WILL YOU GET LEAVE?"
"I DON’T KNOW…"
"HELLO?"
"La ma ma ma ma ma ma, he can’t get leave. Why not? Don’t know, must be difficult there, make a lot of money, but one thing is certain, they have to work very hard for it… Don’t get something for nothing… nowhere in the world…"
"HELLO? HELLO?"
"PITAJI, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
They retreated from each other again -
Beep beep honk honk trr butt ock, the phone went dead and they were stranded in the distance that lay between them.
"HELLO? HELLO?" – into the rictus of the receiver.
"Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?" they echoed back to themselves.
The cook put down the phone, trembling.
"He’ll ring again," said the watchman.
But the phone remained mute.
Outside, the frogs said tttt tttt, as if they had swallowed the dial tone.
He tried to shake the gadget back into life, wishing for at least the customary words of good-bye. After all, even on clichéd phrases, you could hoist true emotion.