Tania James - The Tusk That Did the Damage

We could not question the Kuruva woman. She had been hauling firewood on her back, skirting the forest, when the Gravedigger found her. Dozens of women had likely done the same to keep their cook fires burning, each convinced that she would not be the one to cross the murderer’s path. A whole morning passed before a lorry slowed and noticed a little cushion of a foot jutting from beneath piled wood. As in the case of my cousin, the Gravedigger had conducted its own private burial.

And so, the Forest Department cautioned us with the obvious: to keep to our homes at dusk. It promoted the Gravedigger to rogue status but stopped short of issuing the order for its killing. Not until it would kill more of our own.

In the meantime I kept to Synthetic Achan’s fields. I woke at 6:00 a.m., several hours before the laborers came fresh off the jeep. This was a tough half-lazy lot of men who demanded a thimble or two of Old Cask for breakfast. When they cut, I cut, and when they heaved bundles on their heads, so did I.

In the evenings I lingered in my uncle’s fields. From the rear of his house I watched the rose-orange sky and the goats among the balsa blooms and the mountains beyond, hiding the Gravedigger in their deeps.

Before long the parakeets interrupted my idyll, sailing triumphantly over my slack piece of plastic. Down they swooped in a green flittering cloud and clipped the beaded strands before lifting away. My sole defense was to hoot and bang a spoon against a tin pan, but the pretty thieves had already fled for the trees, where they would pick at the rice just as crows pick at a dead man’s eyes.

The parakeets were unusually quiet when Synthetic Achan came up beside me. “Your little ribbon didn’t work.”

“There’s not enough wind.”

“I don’t care about the birds,” he said. “I have a bigger problem.”

I snuck a glance across his face and wondered when the hair at his temples had gone gray.

“Guess who came to pay respects,” he said. “Forest Department.”

“When?”

“Some days ago. They said they would give me ten thousand rupees for damages, so long as I filled out some form. ‘An Application for Compensation,’ they called it. The pigs. I said, What should I do with it? Buy another son? But then I had an idea.” He turned to me. “I could give it to you and Jayan.”

“You don’t owe us anything.”

“I know that. It’s you who owes me.”

How smooth and cold the claim. How heavy the hand on my shoulder.

“You want us to kill the Gravedigger?”

“Louder, boy, the greenbacks didn’t hear you.”

I shook my head. “Jayan will say no. He will not go to jail again.”

“Just listen. Your brother made the mistake of working with some no-name ruffian. This time we are all on Jayan’s side, all us farmers. No one would fault him or name him to the police.” I had trouble picturing this second family of farmers — where had they been for the past four years? “All our people want some safety for our fields, our harvest, our children …”

Am I not your child? I wanted to ask. But the mere mention of children had stolen his voice. He turned away and repeatedly rubbed his nose with his finger as if to give his face something to do.

“If they accuse your brother or you or anyone else, I will confess to it. I will stand trial; I will take it all on my head, I swear it. No difference between living out here and living in a cage.” He paused and added softly, “Not to me.”

He had never looked so old, and yet in his ruined face I saw an echo of my cousin.

“He listens to you, Manu.”

I stood in silence, yet what choice did I have? I look back at the young man I was and see a boy, powerless before the only person he had yearned all his life to call Father.

I tried to approach my brother, but it was impossible to find him alone what with his wife around every corner. Leela put no trust in Jayan and kept one ear always tilted in his direction lest he should slip into his old ways. A pretty warden she made, but a warden all the same.

At last I found him in the courtyard. He was raking a fat pile of harvest, forking and fluffing the stalks, sweating as he went. In two more days the stalks would dry and he would steer the cattle-drawn plow around the pile, threshing the rice to loosen the hulls.

All I desired was a pause to precede our discussion, but Jayan kept talking as if to avoid it. That day his chosen subject was the tractor-tiller. “Kunjappen said the tractor-tiller can do in thirty minutes what the plow takes hours to do.”

“We used his contraption last year. More bugs in that rice than lice on a stray.”

“What is that to do with the tractor-tiller?”

Back and forth we bickered on the merits and follies of the tractor-tiller until I blurted, “I talked to Synthetic Achan.”

“Talking now, is he?”

I relayed Synthetic Achan’s request. Jayan listened in silence, doing more stabbing than fluffing.

“How much is he offering?” Jayan said finally.

“Ten thousand at the least.”

“And he wants me to do it.”

“Not you,” I said quickly. “We thought you would know someone else for the job.”

“Someone eager to go to jail? There’s a rare species.”

“No one would go to jail. Uncle swore it.”

“Who made him chief minister?”

“He watched over us while you were gone.”

“And for that I give him my thanks. But not the rest of my life.”

A fair answer, I admit. Jayan simply wanted to make an honest living, upright and in the open. I wanted a cure for my guilt.

As if guessing my thoughts, Jayan said, “Raghu is dead. And if you had been with him that night, you would be too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that. You run like an old woman.”

He gave a demonstration, amusing only himself.

“What do I tell Synthetic Achan?”

“Tell him you have other duties now.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “Tell him you will soon be an uncle yourself.”

Hard to believe I had not realized Leela was five months pregnant. Indeed I had noticed she was plumping in places, but I had assumed she was gaining weight the way many young wives pack their middles and behinds, trading their slim-waisted skirts for house gowns.

After Jayan disclosed her secret, I could notice nothing else. Though Leela had barely a bump beneath her house gown, suddenly it seemed to me that her attributes were growing by the minute. Twice she caught my ungallant eye and began a habit of tossing a towel over her bosom whenever I approached with a glass of warm milk or a boiled egg or whatever my mother had me bring her.

Intent on building a life of substance for his child, Jayan worked long days, drank much less, and even took Leela to temple for some baby-blessing ceremony. He enlisted my help in digging a trench around the shed where we kept our rice bureau locked. Other farmers had reported elephant raids to their sheds, where a single beast could sniff out and swallow a year’s worth of food. We hired a few more hands to help with the digging and bolstered the side walls with timber. Over it we laid down a plank for crossing.

My mother filed many a complaint against the plank, but my brother thought it the only solution. What would she have him do — plant a bitter hedge around the shed like Kunjappen had done? One bull had braved the taste, then suffered loose motions all over the walls and bushes.

Speaking of smells, I suppose the outhouse is not a topic of dignified discourse, but let me indulge because as you will see the toilet and its placement would alter the course of our lives.

When Jayan was in jail, Synthetic Achan undertook renovations on his house and offered a few to ours, partly out of generosity and also out of shame that his own brother’s family should still be living under a paddy-grass roof. My mother installed a gas stove, which she never used unless guests were in the house; she much preferred the smoky infusions of a wood-burning stove. She had the paddy-grass roof switched to tile. I missed the look of the grass when it was fresh and sun dazzled, but I did not miss the way it grizzled and grayed over the months until we had to haul fresh grass onto the frame.