Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

It was here that Zubin led me when I first tried my hand at bribery. I needed underpants and a razor and a clean place to make my ablutions while the siege rumbled on. I caught Zubin in passing and confided my needs. I jiggled my money bag at him as a sweetener. He took me to his hideaway and made a log of everything I could think of asking for. The things appeared an hour later as if conjured from the cracks in the walls. The razor had four blades for glide and closeness. The channa tastes good shovelled down behind closed doors and my trips to the basement give me regular breaks from the monotony of the bedside watch.

My attempts at corruption were clownish. Zubin never asked for money and my ungainly offers horrified him. He’s immune to flattery and subterfuge. He just wants to help me out of respect for his elders.

‘I’ve come for the key,’ I tell him.

‘Of course, sir,’ Zubin says, and he frees the key to the staff bathroom from the chain at his hip and hands it over.

Me and Jolly Boy take turns in the bathroom, one guarding the door while the other labours under the anaemic shower and makes the most of the sliver of mirror to rub the soot from woe-tired eyes. I hear sobs coming from inside. I hold my breath and listen for him spending himself and when he taps on the door I let him out. He hasn’t washed. He’s bone-dry. He smells ripe and war-torn, his eyes mad with the terrible things they’ve seen men do. His oath to his father is to stay mired in grief for as long as his sleeping requires it. I don’t mention the smell.

When it’s time to sleep I lead Ellen to the room next to Bibhuti’s, leased with a signature on a form and a show of big-number rupees. I catch snatches of rest with Ellen still beside me, keeping one ear on the crowd outside and dreading what might come through the window until darkness and the rain subdues them. Their placards become umbrellas and their brimstone hymns grow faint, rising like smoke to lull me into sleep.

The old man is back. Without his gods he stands stranded in the car park, his orange beard glowing. He holds his watering can at his side. The rain has stopped and the sun burns the world white. The old man’s posture, poised and exhausted, suggests he’s reached the end of a long and gruelling journey. He’s walked in solitude with only his disappointments for company, having failed to turn into rain as he’d expected. He holds his head up straight in defiance of fate’s deception. The protesters bow to him in deference and form a circle around him.

He raises his arm and empties the watering can over his head. He douses himself, shaking out every last drop, and then he lays the can down on the ground. A query to the crowd and a monk in saffron robes steps forward to consult with the old man. An agreement is reached and the monk scurries away to the fringes of the camp where a fire’s burning. He lights a torch. He comes back and hands it to the old man. He holds it up in front of himself like a ceremonial relic. The monk joins the circle again and the circle widens, leaving the old man an island again.

A chant goes up, urgent and lascivious. The old man makes a brief concluding statement to the god who abandoned him and then he lifts the torch to his head and sets himself on fire. He blazes instantly and the crowd leaps back, their song caught in their throats. I leap back too. I want to cry out but I can’t find my voice. The old man staggers around like a matinée mummy wrapped in consuming flame. Skin and memory fly from him in filmy shards. The window is open and his sparks fill the air with the sweet smell of barbecued meat. No one tries to put him out. He falls to the ground and rolls. The demonstrators clear a path for him.

I become aware of Jolly Boy beside me and I ease him away from the window. It’s too late, he’s seen everything. Shock has aged him and stolen his tears.

The old man rolls and rolls and then he’s still. His dance with the elemental is over. He’s found his peace at last. They let his body burn. They take up the chant again, sing their hearts out for the sacrifice he made. Children frolic in the old man’s spillage. His flesh sticks to the soles of their feet. I see my beggar kids, all run out of things to sell. They chase each other laughing through the slick of the old man and disappear out of sight.

The demonstrators lift their voices higher when they see the orderlies emerge with a blanket and bundle the charred corpse up, skipping around the flakes that rub off him like black feathers. They run the remains inside. The police guard clamps shut again behind them and I’m spotted. It’s the children who see me. They point to my window and the crowd follows their fingers. I duck, pulling Jolly Boy down with me. I hear the surge as the crowd lets its rage spill over. I saw a machete being shaken and it has my name on it. It looked blunt and terror shoots through me.

‘You’ve got to do something,’ Ellen says.

I rush from the window, past where Bibhuti sleeps. I push the door open. The TV reporter’s slumped in her chair fingering her iPhone and Vijay Five’s pacing lethargically, each step his attempt to set off a gentle earthquake that might stir his friend awake. I ask them to come with me.

‘They will kill you,’ Vijay Five says. ‘A man has just immolated himself for you.’

‘I knew the man,’ I tell him, the horror of his death still smouldering before my eyes. ‘I saw it happen. I don’t know he did that for me, he had his own stuff going on. This isn’t what I wanted.’

The cops give me a chair to stand on so I can be seen above the wall they’ve made for my protection. The radicals in the crowd make their lunges for me and are beaten back. I look for the machete and see it being wrestled from its owner’s grip. A cop runs away with it and is chased down. He falls, and the crowd sweeps over him. He bobs up still holding the machete and his colleagues swarm in to shield him back to the holding line.

The TV reporter introduces me to camera. There are jeers. Signs are punched skyward that call for my hanging. Every face in the crowd is twisted in hatred. I talk into the microphone. I tell the reporter and her viewers that I’m an honest man.

‘Bibhuti’s alive. I’m his friend and I didn’t mean to hurt him. I’ve given a statement to the police and they’ve let me go. I’ve done nothing wrong. There’s no need for all this. You should go home, get back to your lives. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.’

I can’t hear myself above the heckling. The police pull in tighter around me, lash out at the bravest to keep them honest. Children snake between the clashes, playing in a world at war. The torches are all lit. The spot where the old man went up has been filled in by the living sea. Men churn in a common swell, sticks and tempers all raised against me while the women on the outskirts cluck their tongues and weep. All this for me. I’m a god of chaos.

I feel like I should apologise for everything a white man has ever done in the name of ambition.

I tell them again that I’m Bibhuti’s friend. I love him and I’d never wish him any harm. I only did what he asked me to do. I made him happy. I look out over the crowd. I don’t know what to do with my face to show them that I’m sincere. I just hope that they can see it in me.

‘If he dies I’ll give myself up. You can do what you want with me then, I promise. I love your country. Please just leave us for now. Thank you.’

The reporter ties up and hands back to the studio. A policeman helps me down from the chair. A bottle thrown from the crowd screams through the air above my head. I don’t hear it smash. I turn to see a nurse has been hit. Blood trickles from a gash above her eye. She’s wailing and she doesn’t care who sees it.