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  ‘Aren’t you feeling sleepy?’

  ‘How on earth do you expect me to sleep in this dungeon, Amma? Look at all this waste you have hoarded on the racks. I am afraid there will be some snakes or lizards somewhere in this crap. Amma, let me make this very clear, if you are not going to make some arrangements to clean this room I will go back to Bangalore.’

  ‘I have asked Sankaran and his woman to come tomorrow; they will take care of everything.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Why do you behave like this, Kamala? Can’t you at least consider that I am your mother?’

  Kamala saw her mother crossing the threshold with difficulty. Amma was getting old; Kamala felt a teardrop at the back of her throat. It was a rather high threshold; Kamala had noticed that Amma had taken time to enter and turn the lights on. She didn’t sleep much during the nights, Kamala could see. She must have taken at least half an hour to climb the stairs, as the top of the railings was too high for her to hold on to. Kamala knew Amma depended mainly on the long rope suspended from the ceiling to the foot of the stairs, fastened to the wall at regular intervals. Kamala sat on her bed, drenched in sweat, and fixed her eyes on the loft. Amma, worried about her daughter, thought she would sleep with her in the same room, and looked at Kamala sadly, unsure of her welcome. Her eyes still fixed on the loft, Kamala asked, ‘Why do you keep all these things, Amma? What pleasure is there in hoarding dust and dying of asthma?’

  ‘Just in case, dear, who knows what’ll come handy when?’

  Kamala took a deep breath. She was waiting for her eyes and her ears to get accustomed to the loft crammed with whatnot, cardboard boxes and plastic wrappers her mother had kept ‘just in case’. She was sure there was something crawling over there, maybe a lizard, or something harmless, like a squirrel, but whatever it was, it was a pain right in the centre of her head.

  ‘It’s probably a squirrel; there are plenty of them in the mango groves. Better you keep the windows shut and sleep,’ her mother said.

  ‘So you want me to die of suffocation? I don’t understand what we need a loft for. I am going to set this on fire.’

  Sankaran and his woman came early the next day. Each and every cardboard box was burnt to cinders. But even after that, that very night, something crawled and hissed in her room. Kamala gave a shriek which her mother must have heard, for after half an hour, the poor woman arrived, breathing hard.

  ‘I asked you to keep the windows closed,’ her mother said.

  ‘And I told you that I don’t want to die of suffocation,’ retorted Kamala, harshly.

  ‘Don’t forget this is the same house in which you lived all your life before your marriage.’

  ‘No windows were closed before my marriage.’

  ‘Do you behave in the same manner with your husband?’

  ‘My husband? Do you mean Madhu? No, I am very gentle towards him. I have always been very good to him, right from my childhood. Neither you nor my uncle ever complained, right?’

  She knew any kind of fight would enrage her mother even further. Amma will never believe, Kamala thought, that there is a snake inside this room. I am sure it is a snake, could be venomous too. Whatever it was, it had been there for a long time and the loft was its abode now. It must think of her as the intruder. Venomous creature, she hissed back. No answer came from above.

  Each night, she jumped up in the middle of a dream, or a late-night thought. This had almost become a habit. Each new disappointment threw her back to her convictions: the presence of a snake in the house could not be denied. Sometimes, she looked at the ceiling and said, in a casual way, ‘Dear roommate, respect the privacy of other people—well, I mean other creatures’. But then she realized that her baby was due in a month and she could not drag this out any further.

  She believed something cold was looking at her secretly, but what she could not tell. If a squirrel or a lizard happened to come into the room, a hushed hissing was heard from above in acknowledgment. A hundred times Kamala made her bed, turned the hamper upside down, cleaned the drawers and discarded whatever she found useless. Nevertheless, the noises from the loft continued to wriggle in and out of her ears. What she needed in life were order, cleanliness, pure air, and all these in excess.

  ‘There is a smell of wet earth under the bed,’ she said. ‘Clean it properly.’

  Sankaran’s woman, by then, was tired of cleaning and washing Kamala’s room. ‘It’s my poverty, my starving children,’ she cursed, each time she entered the room with a rag and a bucket of water.

  At times, on the verge of madness, Kamala dreamed of two little snakes moving around her oversized belly, making purple blotches on her skin, filling the room with the mild smell of amniotic fluid whenever they opened their tiny mouths. Inside her veins, she thought, she sensed clotted venom. In the morning, inside the bathroom, when she rinsed her mouth, the smell of the previous night, of the open mouths of the little snakes frightened her.

  ‘Slide down at once, Amma cannot wait any longer,’ she ordered her yet-unborn babies.

  She waited for the first cry of her baby, its sweet voice, but instead, she perceived a number of other sounds: squirrels jumping through the pepper vines, rats grinding inside earthen holes, cockroaches gnawing under solid wall bins or large containers, and even the rustle of wet bamboo leaves in the wind, at a distance. Each sound seemed more animated, its bass louder. She covered her ears with both hands, as if to block out every sensory, auditory stimulus from outside, but then she realized that she heard the sounds from within. They didn’t stop, they grew out of proportion: she thought she heard trees talking, the air whipping hard against the roof tiles, and above all, crickets crying non-stop.

  ‘I think it is tinnitus. Let us consult a doctor when I come,’ Madhavan said, over the phone.

  He said it was a problem with her hearing, nothing to worry about as it was not a major issue. Later in the evening, he called again to ask if she had a whistling sound in the ears or a tinkling, or a ringing sound, as if he wanted to compare her answers to the information he had collected from the doctor. She said no, in fact, she said a vehement no, and the certainty of her voice calmed her. It was not tinkling or anything musical, it was not like the endless muzak that irritated one to the point of shouting. What she thought she had in her ears was the sort of hissing sound reptiles make. That night she dreamed that she had delivered two golden snakes; a coiled pressure lifted her breasts, purple mouths opened at her nipples, tails trailing down into her navel or down to the place from where they had emerged.

  In the morning she opened her eyes in fear and shame. When the lights are not favourable, one cannot trust one’s eyes. A strand of her own hair frightened her while she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom and her fears, now enormously increased, made her scream, ‘Amma!’

  ‘I don’t think I can live here. I want to go back, you can also come with me,’ she begged her mother.

  Four workers came that morning, including Sankaran and his woman. They pulled the huge antique rosewood chest of drawers forcefully out of Kamala’s room, its heavily decorated corners destroyed by tangled webs and termite mounds, the knobs and drawers coming off every other second; they had to stop several times to rest their muscles. They took one of the two chairs, difficult to lift or move, to the entrance hall, then removed the old curtains from the windows and likewise the knick-knacks, the old carafe and even the bookshelf loaded with books, bags, bottles and face creams. At first the room seemed almost drained, empty. While the workers opened and cleaned the windows, changed the sheets and the pillow cases, it looked bleak, a space deprived of the ghosts of antiquities.

  Soon, the loft appeared immaculately polished, breathing out pristine air. That night Kamala slept peacefully, on newly washed and starched bedclothes.

  They had cleaned the entire house that day, not just Kamala’s room. They dragged out each and every object that had turned yellow and looked old and piled it in the kitchen yard where they
set fire to the heap, time and again: things piled up, bulbs with broken filaments, dented steel glasses and copper vases, old clothes, papers, even the wrappers and the glittering cardboard packets Kamala had received on her wedding, the remnants of her broken life. Everything was in order, not just accumulated, though dusty and graced with spiderwebs, battered and filthy. But what Kamala said was true: Even her mother couldn’t believe the dust and cobwebs accumulated in the yard on top of the junk. The plastic covers they kept separately in an even bigger cover—to accumulate or to sell, who knew—burdened their hearts.

  Finally, at five-thirty in the afternoon, after removing the ashes and cleaning the place once again, they all went off. Their regular time being five, her mother had to pay them extra money for the extra half an hour they had worked. Kamala thought her mother looked distressed, and so she said, ‘Keep a paper bag or jute bag in the kitchen shelf for shopping, not more than two.’

  The following evening, Sankaran’s woman burnt camphor and neem leaves in a big earthenware wok and kept it for a while in the rooms, particularly in Kamala’s; the air instantly seemed purified and refreshed with the pleasant smell of camphor. A second pleasant night at home, thought Kamala, but around midnight she woke up with a contracting pain in her stomach and a spasm in her joints. She felt warm liquid on her thighs, and she couldn’t get up, all of a sudden, or manage to call her mother for help. Somehow, holding fast to the edges of the bed, she got up and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. She removed her underclothes and a big lump of blood, almost jelly-like, fell on the floor, like a piece of liver.

  In her sleep, she heard Madhavan talking from the veranda outside her room: ‘Twins, baby boys.’

  Between the trippy wakefulness and sleep, Kamala dialled, and Madhavan answered.

  ‘Madhu, tomorrow I am going home with the children. I don’t think we’ll be coming back again.’ She didn’t wait for a reply and she switched off her phone.

  Kuljeet was upset over the late-night call. She turned on the lights and grabbed the phone from his hand and checked the number. In an instant Madhavan saw his phone flying in the air, crashing against the wall and landing on the floor, luckily in one piece as it was before, but with scintillating patterns running beautifully across its glass surface.

  ‘That iPhone was my gift! If you want to call that whore, call from some other phone. Don’t make her wet with my money. Why can’t that slut just sleep after midnight?’

  In fact, it was Madhavan who hadn’t been sleeping, going crazy with his thoughts, feeling the heaviness of molten lead upon his eyelids and sick of living awake. How would he ever sleep again? His children were leaving. Living in the same city, somewhere near them, with the possibility of accidentally running into them at coffee shops, libraries, the grocer’s or at the cinema was a blessing, though he felt heavy within. He felt sad thinking about Kamala. He knew it was his mistake; he was to blame.

  Madhavan had known about her mother’s demise. He thought she had already gone to the house, he wished he could join her, but he couldn’t make it—Kuljeet wouldn’t let him go and peace had to be maintained somehow. He remembered how Kuljeet had once informed him, ‘I have heard that your ex-wife is on sensual drugs these days, I met her at a rave night ticket counter. That woman was also there.’

  Perhaps, Madhavan thought, Shaly would be accompanying them.

  18

  ‘What’s happening here? What the fucking hell?’

  Shaly rushed to the bathroom the moment she saw Madhavan entering the bedroom and closed the door.

  ‘Madhu . . . Madhu . . . I . . . Madhu . . .’ Kamala’s tongue felt numb, her words faltered.

  Her face pallid with fatigue, she tried to cover herself with the bedcover, which was very heavy so she couldn’t manage it properly. Madhavan snatched a piece of clothing lying on the floor and with a scornful expression, threw it over her naked body.

  ‘Bitch!’

  Inside the bathroom, Shaly rubbed her face and washed it many times. She rummaged in the shelf for a pack of cigarettes but there was none. She knew she had nothing else to do but wait, so she put the toilet seat down and sat on it. She could hear him shouting obscenities and smashing things, she had no idea what. He had left the previous night, saying he had a flight to catch, a conference to attend at the JW Marriott in Delhi and that he would return only after three days. What the heck had happened to him? Was it really he, she asked herself, who had sneaked into their room? She had had just a glimpse of him—he looked very much like the drunk on the other side of the road, dishevelled and ruined. It was time husbands were prevented from entering bedrooms without knocking. She heard him shout again, this time it sounded like a command, or rather a threat.

  ‘No one is going to leave this bloody fucking room.’

  Madhavan was roaring with rage. He destroyed everything destroyable. He threw the framed wedding photograph on the floor and set fire to it with his lighter. When the fire started to blaze, resembling the painting of an English autumn on the wall, he spat on it and tried to extinguish it by stomping on it.

  ‘Come out, you slut!’ He knocked violently on the door. ‘Come out or I will come in. When the children come back from school, let them see their mother dead on her bed and a dirty hyena dead in the bathroom.’

  ‘Madhavan, please leave!’ Shaly said harshly.

  ‘Aha, that’s something at last. Whom do you think this house belongs to? Whom do you think that woman on the bed, drunk and unconscious, belongs to? You want me to leave, right? I am afraid, young lady, you have to answer me.’

  ‘Enough, leave! I don’t care a straw about ownership. I want to go.’

  ‘Is that an insult, you slut?’

  ‘Whatever. I told you I don’t care, I want to leave and I want you to go first.’

  ‘Don’t try to act too smart, Shaly. I want you to be destroyed in the same destruction you’ve caused. Do you understand? Come out, plague on you, slut.’

  The door opened and she came out, stark naked. He found himself speechless, he shuddered. She looked at him with fiery eyes.

  ‘Plague . . . plague . . .’ she muttered as if she had gone mad.

  The nudity of an extremely beautiful woman frightened Madhavan. This unexpected manifestation of such a vision weakened his senses; he felt how imbecilic men were. This was an apparition; he had heard stories about gorgeous vampires who could suck the blood out of men like him. They chewed men like betel leaves, crushed and tasted their fluids—and finally spat their pallid flesh out, totally drained of body fluids, on the pavements. This woman, he thought, is a female vampire. And like a zombie already out of blood, he stood motionless, like a stillborn child. In front of his lifeless eyes, Shaly bent over the floor and picked up her clothes. She dressed and went outside, slamming the door on his face.

  If doors remain closed in front of you, if someone asks you not to open them, don’t try to open them with force; at the very least, ask what is happening inside the room that you should not know. Usually, people don’t care, they don’t bother to ask, and they don’t wait for answers. Why did Madhavan lie about his Delhi conference? Why did he come back without informing Kamala? Why didn’t he ring the calling bell? He deserved it. He had asked for this shock.

  19

  ‘Oh God, Rita Mama!’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Rita yelled. She was busy in the kitchen, uneasy as always, dragging her left foot—she had developed signs of rheumatism recently—and cursing everything that got on her nerves. She turned the flame down; the last thing she wanted on a Sunday morning was for the milk to boil over, spilling everywhere to make a dirty white puddle in the kitchen.

  She walked to Shaly’s room, followed by Andrews who had also woken up on hearing Shaly cry. When they entered her room they saw Shaly jumping on the bed, the bed sheets rolled up in her hand.

  ‘Get down, you will break the bed,’ said Rita.

  ‘No, Mama, I felt something crawling on my knees while I was sleeping.’ />
  Rita, who had quarrelled with Andrews the night before, looked at him with flaring anger. He understood the meaning of her look instantly. He was about to leave the room, when Shaly said, ‘I woke up and I saw a black rat on the headrest. It was staring at me. I am afraid it has already bitten me.’

  ‘There is nothing in this room; even if there was a rat it wouldn’t be sitting on the headrest to watch the princess sleep. Do you understand?’ Rita walked out of the room dragging her foot. ‘I don’t see what there is to get so excited about a cockroach or a rat? These girls!’

  ‘I will get you a cat, don’t you worry!’ Andrews laughed and bent over to inspect under the bed. He also checked for cracks in the walls and the floor. Shaly sat on her bed, her legs stretching out; she rolled up her skirt and examined herself. There was a dark purple blotch just above her right knee.

  ‘Look, look here, now you know I’m telling the truth!’ Shaly said.

  ‘I know, I know there might be rats, so let us be more careful,’ Andrews said.

  Andrews turned the lights off when he went out. Shaly was not sure if she could sleep again, but it was Sunday and there was nothing else to do.