Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

I bent to recover an ace. I straightened to serve and saw the man stepping off the kerb at the lip of the pothole. He traced around it in dainty steps and trotted out into the road. He stood there in the rain, as if unsure of what to do next. He scratched his head where the rain itched.

Bibhuti came to rest and became a tree. The children hung from him. He rose to meet the sky with a playful roar, and the children fell from him and scattered laughing. He pointed out the scooter and told them to clear the road.

Bibhuti’s wife revved her engine. It mewed weakly. She lurched forward and stopped again. She wheeled back, much further than she needed to. A caution against the wet conditions. Her hands slipped on the slick handlebars. She gripped tighter.

The man reached into his waistband and brought something out. I thought it was a pen. He started running, his hand tucked in against his side. His tubbiness gave him a skittering gait that made him look hapless.

Bibhuti’s wife revved her engine again and the scooter took off. She sped for Bibhuti where he stood at the edge of the road. There was room to pass him but her line towards him was true and unrepentant. Her face was blank. Bibhuti was facing away from her, taking pleasure in the rain. A twist of the throttle and she was on top of him.

Bibhuti saw the man approaching and his shoulders drooped as if the strings that held him upright had been cut. A sorrow came over him that sucked him to the ground. He raised a palm to the man in appeal. The man ran at him, his arm outstretched and poised to strike.

Bibhuti’s wife swerved, passed Bibhuti and hit the man head on. He flew backwards and scudded across the road. Bibhuti’s wife braked and let the engine idle. She watched the man squirm and flutter. She was solemn, unsurprised.

The man moaned softly. He was still holding the knife.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked. The question was an involuntary one, aimed at nobody.

‘It is Uncle Rajesh,’ Jolly Boy said, his voice shrill and astonished. ‘Why does he want to kill Baba?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

Jolly Boy rushed to his father. Bibhuti was leaning over the man, his foot pressed down on his wrist to make him let go of the knife. He studied him for breaks and for a spark of humanity worth preserving. He kicked the knife aside and stepped away.

Bibhuti’s wife became aware that the engine was still running and switched it off. A distance came over her, a separation from the physical world the rest of us were rooted to. She sat on the scooter looking only at the twitching man. Ellen hobbled over to her and rested a hand on hers where it still clung to the throttle. She was undisturbed by its touch.

The stricken man stirred like an infant in fever sleep, his legs running ahead of him on the wet road. An eye opened and sensibility flushed in. He moaned again and licked at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. I felt the acidic rush of wanting him dead. I couldn’t quite bring myself to kick him.

I asked Bibhuti if he was okay.

‘Not to worry,’ Bibhuti muttered. ‘I know this man. I should have predicted he would come.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Rajesh Battacharjee. A former friend of mine. He has been in prison. I sent him there for a good reason. Now he is free he has come to raise his dispute with me again.’

‘He was gonna stab you.’

‘Not to worry. My wife is saving the day.’

He turned to enquire of his wife’s well-being. He spoke tenderly in his language. She replied with a drowsy tilt of the head. He was satisfied.

The kids stole back in to perimeter the scene, scuffling for a look at the dying man. The neighbours stepped in to ease them back to a respectful distance. The husband slid his phone from its holster and called the police.

Bibhuti sat down on the kerb and chatted with Rajesh Battacharjee while we waited for the police to arrive. He talked calmly and without anger. He rubbed the blood away from Rajesh Battacharjee’s mouth and folded his arm gently over his chest to consolidate the bone where it had shattered on collision with the road. The two men spoke quietly, Rajesh responding to each question with a patience born of shock or maybe of a pain-induced epiphany. The thought of revenge had sustained him through six years of imprisonment and all the indignities that might involve. His failure to achieve it had left him humble and hopeless, knocked the hatred out of him. Now he was just an injured animal in need of mercy and deserving of it.

Rajesh Battacharjee sat up and looked around him, as if to convince himself by recognition of the things he saw that he was still alive. He reached for Bibhuti, who took him by his good arm and dragged him to the kerb. He sat beside Bibhuti, his legs pulled to his chest, his head lowered between his knees. He shuddered as if crying. The children fell away, streaming back to their homes to find other distractions from the summer washout.

The police came and processed the arrest with a petulance that suggested the chancing on a crime was the last thing they hoped for when they left for work each day. Bibhuti identified their prisoner and disclosed their history. His wife made orange squash while he gave his statement.

Rajesh Battacharjee sat brooding in the back of the police car, sideways with his legs dangling outside, cradling his broken arm and prodding with his tongue at the blood on his lip as it congealed under the heat of the afternoon.

Bibhuti’s wife wouldn’t look at anyone except Rajesh Battacharjee.

‘You are very lucky I arrived when I did, Bhabhi,’ he told her. ‘One second more and you would be wearing these handcuffs.’

She spilled the orange squash in pouring from the jug. The officer drew his hand away, and the glass slipped from his grasp and smashed on the road.

‘I am very sorry,’ she mumbled.

The officer lashed out with his lathi, rapping Rajesh Battacharjee’s knees. He yelped like a scalded dog.

Ellen looked at me and I knew what she was thinking. We’d both seen it, the true line Bibhuti’s wife had taken towards him before Rajesh Battacharjee had got in the way. I shook my head no. It was an accident. She didn’t have it in her to want her husband dead. She was only acting out a dark desire to burst his bubble and she would have pulled away in time.

His confession heard, the cops had only to return Rajesh Battacharjee to custody. He wished us good luck for tomorrow. He was tearful when he said it. He wanted Bibhuti to achieve everything he’d hoped for when he’d first arrived in the city of dreams. He wanted him to fly.

‘I will not see it,’ he said, ‘but I am sure the news will reach me. God will be watching over you and so will I.’

I took this to mean that Rajesh Battacharjee planned to take his own life. I thought about warning the officers so they could take his belt and shoelaces away from him as a precaution. But I decided that his life was in fate’s hands, just as everybody’s was. The two men shared a final timid embrace and Rajesh Battacharjee was driven away.

I woke up frightened in the middle of the night by the sound of wings in the room. Whatever my good bird Oscar had come to tell me I was too proud to hear it. I got up and went looking for him but I gave up when I began to feel ridiculous. I didn’t sleep again after that.

It was still dark outside when Bibhuti began his preparations, creeping past me and out the door to make his animal shapes in the quiet before the dogs woke up. His wife was up with him and she waited in the kitchen, keeping herself away from me. No rain fell and in the silence the house pinched at us, tugging at our sleeves for explanations. The time for explaining had passed.

When Bibhuti came back there was a timid conversation between them and she followed him into the bathroom and closed the door. She carried a pair of scissors with her. I thought maybe she’d heard about Samson’s weakness and would make one last attempt at sabotage Delilah-style. I wondered if I should kick the door down and save him from a travesty. But no scuffles came from behind the wood and soon Bibhuti sauntered back into the room stroking his newly trimmed moustache, serenity draped over his shoulders like a cape for a vain superhero. The grooming was some kind of concession. He believed he’d won her approval and there was no more doubt in his eyes.