Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

“I didn’t know you did pineapple slices!” she said. “Sophie loves pineapple, don’t you Soph?”

“Sometimes,” Soph said. “And sometimes not.”

Margaret Kochamma climbed into the advertisement with her brown back-freckles and her arm-freckles and her flowered dress with legs underneath.

Sophie Mol sat in front between Chacko and Margaret Kochamma, just her hat peeping over the car seat. Because she was their daughter.

Rahel and Estha sat at the back. The luggage was in the boot.

Boot was a lovely word. Sturdy was a terrible word. Near Ettumanoor they passed a dead temple elephant, electrocuted by a high tension wire that had fallen on the road. An engineer from the Ettumanoor municipality was supervising the disposal of the carcass. They had to be careful because the decision would serve as precedent for all future Government Pachyderm Carcass Disposals. Not a matter to be treated lightly. There was a fire engine and some confused firemen. The municipal officer had a file and was shouting a lot. There was a Joy Ice Cream cart and a man selling peanuts in narrow cones of paper cleverly designed to hold not more than eight or nine nuts.

Sophie Mol said, “Look, a dead elephant.”

Chacko stopped to ask whether it was by any chance Kochu Thomban (Little Tusker), the Ayemenem temple elephant who came to the Ayemenem House once a month for a coconut. They said it wasn’t

Relieved that it was a stranger, and not an elephant they knew, they drove on.

“Thang God,” Estha said.

“Thank God, Estha,” Baby Kochamma corrected him.

On the way, Sophie Mol learned to recognize the first whiff of the approaching stench of unprocessed rubber and to clamp her nostrils shut until long after the truck carrying it had driven past.

Baby Kochamma suggested a car song.

Estha and Rahel had to sing in English in obedient voices. Breezily. As though they hadn’t been made to rehearse it all week long. Ambassador E. Pelvis and Ambassador S. Insect.

RejOice in the- Lo-Ord Or-ways

And again I say re-jOice.

Their Prer NUN sea ayshun was perfect.

The Plymouth rushed through the green midday heat, promoting pickles on its roof, and the skyblue sky in its tailfins.

Just outside Ayemenem they drove into a cabbage-green butterfly (Or perhaps it drove into them).

In Pappachi’s study, mounted butterflies and moths had disintegrated into small heaps of iridescent dust that powdered the bottom of their glass display cases, leaving the pins that had impaled them naked. Cruel. The room was rank with fungus and disuse. An old neon-green hula hoop hung from a wooden peg on the wall, a huge saint’s discarded halo. A column of shining black ants walked across a windowsill, their bottoms tilted upwards, like a line of mincing chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley musical silhouetted against the sun. Butted and beautiful.

Rahel (on a stool, on top of a table) rummaged in a book cupboard with dull, dirty glass panes. Her bare footprints were clear in the dust on the floor. They led from the door to the table (dragged to the bookshelf) to the stool (dragged to the table and lifted onto it). She was looking for something. Her life had a-size and a shape now. She had half-moons under her eyes and a team of trolls on her horizon.

On the top shelf, the leather binding on Pappachi’s set of The Insect Wealth of India had lifted off each book and buckled like corrugated asbestos. Silverfish tunneled through the pages, burrowing arbitrarily from species to species, turning organized information into yellow lace.

Rahel groped behind the row of books and brought out hidden things.

A smooth seashell and a spiky one.

A plastic case for contact lenses. An orange pipette.

A silver crucifix on a string of beads. Baby Kochamma’s rosary.

She held it up against the light. Each greedy bead grabbed its share of sun.

A shadow fell across the sunlit rectangle on the study floor. Rahel turned towards the door with her string of light.

“Imagine. It’s still here. I stole it. After you were Returned.” That word slipped out easily. Returned. As though that was what twins were meant lot To be borrowed and returned. Like library books.

Estha wouldn’t look up. His mind was full of trains. He blocked the light from the door An Estha-shaped Hole in the Universe.

Behind the books, Rahel’s puzzled fingers encountered something else. Another magpie had had the same idea. She brought it out and wiped the dust off with the sleeve of her shirt. It was a fiat packet wrapped in clear plastic and stuck with Sellotape. A scrap of white paper inside it said Esthappen and Rahel . In Ammu’s writing.

There were four tattered notebooks in it. On their covers they said Wisdom Exercise Notebooks with a place for Name, School, College, Class, Subject. Two had her name on them, and two Estha’s.

Inside the back cover of one, something had been written in a child’s handwriting. The labored form of each letter and the irregular space between words was full of the struggle for control over the errant, self-willed pencil. The sentiment, in contrast, was lucid:

I Hate Miss Mitten and I Think Her gnickers are TORN

On the front of the book, Estha had rubbed out his surname with spit, and taken half the paper with it. Over the whole mess, he had written in pencil Un-known. Esthappen Unknown. (His surname postponed for the Time Being, while Ammu chose between her husband’s name and her father’s.) Next to Class it said: 6 years. Next to Subject it said: Story-writing.

Rahel sat cross-legged (on the stool on the table).

“Esthappen Un-known,” she said. She opened the book and read aloud. -

When Ulycsses came home his son came and said father I thought you would not come back, many princes came and each wanted to marry Pen Lope. but Pen Lope said that the man who can stoot through the twelve rings can mary me. and everyone failed. and ulysses came to the palace dressed liked a beggar and asked if be could try. the men laughed at him and said if we cant do it you cant. ulysses son stopped them and said let him try and be took the bow and shot right through the twelve rings.”

Below this there were corrections from a previous lesson.

Ferus Learned Neither Carriages Bridge Bearer Fastened

Ferus Learned Niether Carriages Bridge Bearer Fastened

Ferus Learned niether

Ferus Learned Nieter

Laughter curled around the edges of Rahel’s voice.

`”Safety First,’ “she announced. Ammu had drawn a wavy line down the length of the page with a red pen and written Margin? And joint handwriting in future, please!

When we walk on the road in the town, cautious Estha’s story went, we should always walk on the pavemnet. If you go on the pavement there is no traffic to cause accidnts, but on the main road there is so much dangerouse traffic that they can easily knock you down and make you senseless or a ~~ If you break your bead or back-bone you will be very unfortunate. policemen can direct the traffic so that there won’t be too many inwalids to go to hospital. When we get out of the bus we should do so only after asking the conductor or we will be injured and make the doctors have a busy time. The job of a driver is very fq~L~ His famly should be very angshios because the driver could easily be dead.

“Morbid kid,” Rahel said to Estha. As she turned the page something reached into her throat, plucked her voice out, shook it down, and returned it without its laughing edges. Estha’s next story was called Little Ammu.

In joint handwriting. The tails of the V’s and G’s were curled and looped. The shadow in the doorway stood very still.