Aravind Adiga - Between the Assassinations

As if to distract attention from his son, the firecracker merchant asked Ratna, in a rasping voice, “Do you have a spare beedi, my good man?”

Searching in the kitchen for his packet of beedis, Ratna saw, through the grille in the window, the bridegroom-to-be, urinating copiously against the trunk of an Ashoka tree in the backyard.

Nervous fellow, he thought, grinning. But that’s only natural, he thought, feeling already a touch of affection for this fel low, who was going to join his family soon. All men are nervous before their weddings. The boy appeared to be done; he shook his penis and stepped away from the tree. But then he stood as if frozen. After a moment he craned his head back and seemed to gasp for air, like a drowning man.

The matchmaker returned that evening to report that the firecracker merchant seemed satisfied with Rukmini’s singing.

“Fix the date soon,” he told Ratna. “In a month, the rental rates for wedding halls will start to…” He gestured upward with his palms.

Ratna nodded, but he seemed distracted.

The next morning, he took the bus to Umbrella Street, walking past furniture and fan shops until he found the firecracker merchant’s place. The fat man with the hairy ears sat on a high stool, in front of a wall of paper bombs and rockets, like an emissary of the God of Fire and War. The groom-to-be was also in the shop, sitting on the floor, licking his fingers as he turned the pages of a ledger.

The fat man kicked his son gently.

“This man is going to be your father-in-law, aren’t you going to say hello?” He smiled at Ratna. “The boy is a shy one.”

Ratna sipped tea, chatted with the fat man, and kept an eye on the boy all the time.

“Come with me, son,” he said, “I have something to show you.”

The two men walked down the road, neither of them saying a word, till they got to the banyan tree that grew beside the Hanuman temple on Umbrella Street; Ratna indicated that they should sit down in the shade of the tree. He wanted the boy to turn his back to the traffic so that they faced the temple.

For a while Ratna let the young man talk, only observing his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and neck.

Suddenly he seized the fellow’s wrist.

“Where did you find this prostitute that you sat with?”

The boy wanted to get up, but Ratna increased the pressure on his wrist to make it clear that there would be no escape. The boy turned his face to the road, as if pleading for help.

Ratna increased the pressure on the boy’s wrist.

“Where did you sit with her? At the side of a road, in a hotel, or behind a building?”

He twisted harder.

“By the side of a road,” the boy blurted out, then looked at Ratna with his face close to tears. “How do you know?”

Ratna closed his eyes, breathed out, and let go of the boy’s wrist. “A truckers’ whore.” He slapped the boy.

The boy began to cry. “I only sat with her once,” he said, fighting back his sobs.

“Once is enough. Do you burn when you pass urine?”

“Yes, I burn.”

“Nausea?”

The boy asked what the English word meant, and said yes once he understood.

“What else?”

“It feels like there is something large and hard-like a rubber ball-between my legs all the time. And then I feel dizzy sometimes.”

“Can you get hard?”

“Yes. No.”

“Tell me what your penis looks like. Is it black? Is it red? Are the lips of your penis swollen?”

Half an hour later, the two men were still sitting at the foot of the banyan tree, facing the temple.

“I beg you…” The boy folded his palms. “I beg you.”

Ratna shook his head. “I have to cancel the wedding, what else can I do? How can I let my daughter get this disease too?”

The boy stared at the ground, as if he had simply run out of ways to beg. The drop of moisture at the tip of his nose gleamed like silver.

“I’ll ruin you,” he said quietly.

Ratna wiped his hands on his sarong. “How?”

“I’ll say that the girl has slept with someone. I’ll say that she’s not a virgin. That’s why you had to cancel the wedding.”

In one swift motion, Ratna seized the boy’s hair, yanked back his head, held it for a moment, and then slammed it against the banyan tree. He stood up and spat at the boy.

“I swear by the god who sits in this temple before us, I will kill you with my own hands if you say that.”

He was in fiery form that day at the Dargah, thundering, as the young men gathered around him, about sin, and disease, and about how germs rise from the genitalia, through the nipples, into the mouth, and eyes, and ears, until they reach the nostrils. Then he showed them his photos: images of rotten and reddened genitalia, some of which were black, or distended, or even appeared charred, as if acid-burned. Above each photo was one of the face of the victim, his eyes covered by a black rectangle, as if he were a victim of torture or rape. Such were the consequences of sin, Ratna explained; and expiation and redemption could come only in the form of magic white pills.

Three months or so went by. One morning, he was at his spot behind the white dome, bellowing at the Stonehenge of worried young men, when he saw a face that made his heart stop.

Afterward, when he was done with his lecture, he saw the face again, right in front of him.

“What do you want?” he hissed. “It’s too late. My daughter’s married now. Why have you come here now?”

Ratna folded the stool under his arm, dropped his medicines into his red bag, and walked fast. A flurry of footsteps followed him. The boy-the firecracker merchant’s son-panted as he spoke.

“Things are becoming worse by the day. I can’t piss without my penis burning. You must do something for me. You must give me your pills.”

Ratna gnashed his teeth. “You sinned, you bastard. You sat with a prostitute. Now pay for it!”

He walked faster, and faster, and then the footsteps behind him were gone and he was alone.

But the following evening, he saw the face again and the quick steps followed him all the way to the bus stand, and the voice said, again and again, “Let me buy the pills from you,” but Ratna did not turn around.

He boarded the bus, and counted to ten; producing his brochures, he spoke to the passengers of the rat race. As the dark outline of the fort appeared in the distance, the bus slowed down and then stopped. He got down. Someone else got down with him. He walked away. Someone walked behind him.

Ratna spun around and seized his stalker by the collar. “Didn’t I tell you, leave me alone? What has gotten into you?”

The boy pushed Ratna’s hands away, straightened his collar, and whispered, “I think I’m dying. You have to give me your white pills.”

“Look here, none of those young men is going to be cured by anything I sell. Don’t you get it?”

There was a moment of silence, and then the boy said, “But you were at the Sexology Conference…the sign in English says so…”

Ratna raised his hands to the sky. “I found that sign lying on the platform of the station.”

“But the Hakim Bhagwandas of Delhi -”

“Hakim Bhagwandas, my arse! They’re white sugar pills that I buy wholesale from a pharmacist on Umbrella Street -right next to where your father has his shop; my daughters bottle them and stick labels on them at my house!”

To prove his point, he opened his leather case, unscrewed the top from a bottle, and scattered the pills across the ground, as if broadcasting seed on the earth. “They can do nothing! I have nothing for you, son!”

The boy sat on the ground, took a white pill from the earth, and swallowed it. He got down on all fours and scooped up the white pills, which he began swallowing in a frenzy, along with any dirt attached to them.