Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

Silence. Had he gone too far?

"But no need to worry, we will catch the criminals. They are using the problems of Bhutan, Assam as an excuse to make trouble here. This country of ours is always being torn apart and it’s sad for people like us, brought up with national feeling, and worst for you, sir, who struggled for our freedom… These antinationals have no respect for anything or anyone, not even for themselves… The whole economy is under threat."

"Do you know," he turned to Sai, "what are the three 7s of the Dar-jeeling district? Can you tell me?" She shook her head. Disappointed in her, triumphant in himself, he intoned:

" Tea!

" Timber! " lounsm!

As he left, he stopped at a flowering creeper. "Beautiful blossom, Justice Sahib. If you see such a sight, you will know there is a God." The passionflower was a glorious bizarre thing, each bloom lasting just a day, purple and white striped tentacles, half sea anemone, half flower – all by itself, it proffered enough reason for faith.

"I have become a keen gardener," said the SDO, "since I arrived in Kalimpong. I look after my plants exactly as if they were babies. Well, let me know if you have any more trouble. I think you won’t, but no doubt this is a very touchy situation." He did up his shawl like a nationalist – Flap! Wrap! Things to do! No time to waste! Nation calls! And he got back into his jeep. The driver backed out of the gate, roared away.

"Let’s see what he does," said the cook.

"They never find anyone," said the judge.

Sai didn’t speak because she couldn’t stop returning to the thought of Gyan avoiding her.

Some days later the police picked up a miserable drunk for the crime. The drunk was a customary sight lying oblivious to the world in a ditch by the side of the market road. Some passerby or the other would haul him up, smack his cheeks, and send him lurching home, crisscrossed with patterns of grasses, stars in his eyes.

Now, instead, the drunk was transported to the police station, where he sat on the floor, his hands and feet trussed. The policemen stood about looking bored. All of a sudden, though, triggered by something unappar-ent, they recovered from their malaise, jumped up, and began beating the man.

The more he screamed the harder they beat him; they reduced him to a pulp, bashed his head until blood streamed down his face, knocked out his teeth, kicked him until his ribs broke -

You could hear him up and down the hillside begging and screaming. The police watched with disgust. He was claiming his innocence: "I didn’t steal guns from anybody, I didn’t go to anyone’s house, nothing, nothing, some mistake…"

His were the first screams and they heralded the end of normal life on the hillside.

"I didn’t do anything, but I am sorry." For hours they continued, the desperate shrieks tearing up the air, "I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry…"

But the police were just practising their torture techniques, getting ready for what was coming. When the man crawled out on his knees, his eyes had been extinguished. They would heal into horizonless, flat blanks that would forever cause others to recoil in fear and disgust.

The only grace was that he wouldn’t see them recoiling and would disappear entirely inside the alcohol that had always given him solace.

It was Mr. Iype the newsagent who said offhandedly, waving a copy of India Abroad : "You’re from Darjeeling side, no? Lot of trouble over there…"

"Why?"

"Nepalis making trouble… very troublesome people…"

"Strikes?"

"Much worse, bhai, not only strikes, the whole hillside is shut down." "It is?"

"For many months this has been going on. Haven’t you heard?"

"No. I haven’t had any letters for a long time."

"Why do you think?"

Biju had blamed usual disruptions – bad weather, incompetance – for the break in his father’s correspondence.

"They should kick the bastards back to Nepal," continued Mr. Iype. "Bangladeshis to Bangladesh, Afghans to Afghanistan, all Muslims to Pakistan, Tibetans, Bhutanese, why are they sitting in our country?"

"Why are we sitting here?"

"This country is different," he said without shame. "Without us what would they do?"

Biju went back to work.

Through the day, with gradually building momentum, he became convinced his father was dead. The judge wouldn’t know how to find him if he would try to find him at all. His unease began to tighten.

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…