It was five o’clock in the morning and Eddie was still fast asleep. A right index finger jabbed him hard between his ribs and stayed jabbed. He turned over. The finger was now boring into his back and would soon penetrate his heart and come out on the other side. He was familiar with the phrase heart attack but he had not imagined that he would be the recipient of one at so early an age. It took a colossal effort to open his eyes. It was worse than a heart attack. It was the silent one, the one who had severed all diplomatic and hostile relations with him. Mother. Violet was standing like a statue of justice that he had seen in some film. Her left hand was raised and in it instead of the scales of justice, she held an empty bottle of milk. On the previous morning he had skipped this chore altogether and made straight for the terrace at five-thirty. Granna, Violet and Pieta, not to mention Eddie himself, had gone without tea and milk the whole day. Life without tea was inconceivable for Granna. She said it leaked into her joints, warmed, and then thawed them out. After the third cup, she came to life and was mobile, though a little arthritically, for the whole day. As for Mother, Ma, Mamma, nowadays just an insistently intrusive blank, tea was not an addiction. It was fuel. Without it, the sewing machine could not work. On the 14th of January, the day Hindus called Sankrant, the sewing machine lay idle all day long. Without hourly tea and tannin, Violet’s body rebelled and went into withdrawal symptoms. It occurred to her during the course of the day that she should climb one flight of stairs, go up to the terrace, get hold of her son and heave the boy over the parapet. But she was a woman of self-control and discipline. Besides she was not talking to her son.
The much scratched and colourless half-litre bottle glinted dully over Eddie’s head. Would she drop it or smash his head in with it. He grabbed the bottle and got up. It took him a while to locate the rupee coin his mother had left on the dining-table. He was at the staircase. Mother of God, he had forgotten to put on his shirt. He went back, fought his way into an old shirt and slammed the door behind him. There was always a shortage of milk at the Aarey Dairy milk booth. If he didn’t hurry, there would be none left and even Granna would stop talking to him. He was leaping, flying down the stairs, colliding into Ravan in his tae kwon do uniform, each making space for the other and yet continuing to race down fast fast fast. They stopped. The bottle fell from Eddie’s hand and he screamed and screamed and clung to Ravan. And Ravan swayed but didn’t let go of Eddie.
They butted and burrowed blindly into each other; buried their heads into the cavities they had scooped out from one another’s breasts. They had closed their eyes. They could not and would not look without. The world was shut out once and forever. They were sufficient unto one another. Great and uncontrollable tremors shot through and ravaged them, and tried to break them asunder. But they had become the double helix that entwines the very essence of our lives. The bonding of fear is greater than the throb and embrace of sex, illicit passion or love. They were a circle, a completeness that would not brook intrusion or interruption. Only mortal enemies could trust each other so wholly, without suspicion and without thought of consequence. They had witnessed the betrayal of life in the early morning light and earned their wings as adults. Perhaps this is what it means to be born again or twice-born. You are now initiated and may consciously and deliberately, of your own free-will, break a promise to yourself or others, stab someone in the back, let others down, inflict pain or suffering, be the initiator and perpetrator of hurt and guilt.
Somebody was hanging from an old iron hook in one of the beams of the second-floor ceiling. The sun was rising behind her. The youngest son of the Deshmukhs, one-year-old Susheel, was leaning on the fallen stool, holding on to her feet and trying to stand up. He couldn’t manage it and flopped down. The body rocked back and forth gently. This time the sari did not hide the black pouch with the crude white cross-stitching on it.
There were people gathering on the stairs now. Eddie’s mother looked in disbelief at her son hugging Ravan.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Ravan told her. ‘I swear I didn’t.’ But there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. It was a long time before Violet moved. She bent down and collected the broken pieces of glass and put them in a corner. She picked up Susheel Deshmukh who had begun to cry and returned him to his mother. Then she took Eddie firmly by the hand and whisked him away. She was not about to let her son get close to the murderer of her husband.
