Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

She hoped it had been him.

She was surprised at the extent of her daughter’s physical ease with him. Surprised that her child seemed to have a sub-world that excluded her entirely. A tactile world of smiles and laughter that she, her mother, had no part in. Ammu recognized vaguely that her thoughts were shot with a delicate, purple tinge of envy. She didn’t allow herself to consider who it was that she envied. The man or her own child. Or just their world of hooked fingers and sudden smiles.

The man standing in the shade of the rubber trees with coins of sunshine dancing on his body, holding her daughter in his arms, glanced up and caught Ammu’s gaze. Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. Its marks, its scars, its wounds from old wars and the walking-backwards days all fell away. In its absence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain to see as the water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel as the heat on a hot day, or the rug of a fish on a taut line. So obvious that no one noticed.

In that brief moment, Velutha looked up and saw things that he hadn’t seen before. Things that had been out of bounds so far, obscured by history’s blinkers.

Simple things.

For instance, he saw that Rahel’s mother was a woman.

That she had deep dimples when she smiled and that they stayed on long after her smile left her eyes. He saw that her brown arms were round and firm and perfect That her shoulders shone, but her eyes were somewhere else. He saw that when he gave her gifts they no longer needed to be offered flat on the palms of his hands so that she wouldn’t have to touch him. His boats and boxes. His little windmills. He saw too that he was not necessarily the only giver of gifts. That she had gifts to give him, too.

This knowing slid into him cleanly, like the sharp edge of a knife. Cold and hot at once. It only took a moment.

Ammu saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History’s fiends returned to claim them. To re-wrap them in its old, scarred pelt and drag them back to where they really lived. Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

Ammu walked up to the verandah, back into the Play. Shaking.

Velutha looked down at Ambassador S. Insect in his arms. He put her down. Shaking too.

“And look at you!” he said, looking at her ridiculous frothy frock. “So beautiful! Getting married?”

Rahel lunged at his armpits and tickled him mercilessly. Ickilee ickilee ickilee!

“I saw you yesterday,” she said.

“Where?” Velutha made his voice high and surprised.

“Liar,” Rahel said. “Liar and pretender. I did see you. You were a Communist and had a shirt and a flag. And you ignored me.”

“ Aiyyo kathtam ,” Velutha said. “Would I do that? You tell me, would Velutha ever do that? It rnust’ve been my Long-lost Twin brother.”

“Which Long-lost Twin brother?”

“Urumban, silly… The one who lives in Kochi.”

“Who Urumban?” Then she saw the twinkle. “Liar! You haven’t got a Twin brother! It wasn’t Urumban! It was you !”

Velutha laughed. He had a lovely laugh that he really meant.

“Wasn’t me,” he said. “I was sick in bed.”

“See, you’re smiling!” Rahel said. “That means it was you. Smiling means ‘It was you.’”

“That’s only in English!” Velutha said. “In Malayalam my teacher always said that `Smiling means it wasn’t me.’”

It took Rahel a moment to sort that one out. She lunged at him once again. Ickike ickilee ickike!

Still laughing, Velutha looked into the Play for Sophie. “Where’s our Sophie Mol? Let’s take a look at her. Did you remember to bring her, or did you leave her behind?”

“Don’t look there,” Rahel said urgently.

She stood up on the cement parapet that separated the rubber trees from the driveway, and clapped her hands over Velutha’s eyes.

“Why?” Velutha said.

“Because,” Rahel said, “I don’t want you to.”

“Where’s Estha Mon?” Velutha said, with an Ambassador (disguised as a Stick Insect disguised as an Airport Fairy) hanging down his back with her legs wrapped around his waist, blindfolding him with her sticky little hands. “I haven’t seen him.”

“Oh, we sold him in Cochin,” Rahel said airily. “For a bag of rice. And a torch.”

The froth of her stiff frock pressed rough lace flowers into Velutha’s back. Lace flowers and a lucky leaf bloomed on a black back.

But when Rahel searched the Play for Estha, she saw that he wasn’t there.

Back inside the Play, Kochu Maria arrived, short, behind her tall cake.

“Cake’s come,” she said, a little loudly, to Mammachi. Kochu Maria always spoke a little loudly to Mammachi because she assumed that poor eyesight automatically affected the other senses.

“Kandoo Kochu Mariye?” Mammachi said. “Can you see our Sophie Mol?”

“Kandoo, Kochamma,” Kochu Maria said extra loud. “I can see her.”

She smiled at Sophie Mol, extra wide. She was exactly Sophie Mol’s height. More short than Syrian Christian, despite her best efforts.

“She has her mother’s color,” Kochu Maria said.

“Pappachi’s nose,” Mammachi insisted.

“I don’t know about that, but she’s very beautiful,” Kochu Maria shouted. “ Sundari kutty. She’s a little angel.”

Littleangels were beach-colored and wore bell-bottoms. Littledemons were mudbrown in Airport-Fairy frocks with forehead bumps that might turn into horns. With Fountains in Love-in-Tokyos. And backwards-reading habits.

And if you cared to look, you could see Satan in their eyes. Kochu Maria took both Sophie Mol’s hands in hers, palms upward, raised them to her face and inhaled deeply.

“What’s she doing?” Sophie Mol wanted to know, tender London hands clasped in calloused Ayemenem ones. “Who’s she and why’s she smelling my hands?”

“She’s the cook,” Chacko said. “That’s her way of kissing you.”

“Kissing?” Sophie Mol was unconvinced, but interested. “How marvelous!” Margaret Kochamma said. “It’s a sort of sniffing! Do the Men and Women do it to each other too?”

She hadn’t meant it to sound quite like that, and she blushed. An embarrassed schoolteacher-shaped Hole in the Universe.

“Oh, all the time!” Ammu said, and it came out a little louder than the sarcastic mumble that she had intended. “That’s how we make babies.”

Chacko didn’t slap her.

So she didn’t slap him back.

But the Waiting Air grew Angry.

“I think you owe my wife an apology, Ammu,” Chacko said, with a protective, proprietal air (hoping that Margaret Kochamma wouldn’t say “Ex-wife Chacko!” and wag a rose at him).

“Oh no!” Margaret Kochamma said. “It was my fault! I never meant it to sound quite like that… what I meant was-I mean it is fascinating to think that-”

“It was a perfectly legitimate question,” Chacko said. “And I think Ammu ought to apologize.”

“Must we behave like some damn godforsaken tribe that’s just been discovered?” Ammu asked.

“Oh dear,” Margaret Kochamma said.

In the angry quietness of the Play (the Blue Army in the greenheat still watching), Ammu walked back to the Plymouth, took out her suitcase, slammed the door, and walked away to her room, her shoulders shining. Leaving everybody to wonder where she had learned her effrontery from.

And truth be told, it was no small wondering matter.

Because Ammu had not had the kind of education, nor read the sorts of books, nor met the sorts of people, that might have influenced her to think the way she did.