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By Root 7673 0

became useless, and without wings they were without defence. They kept on dropping. Their enemies had already discovered them. On one wall, in the shadow of the reflector of the oil lamp, Anand saw a column of black ants. They were not the crazy ants, thin frivolous creatures who scattered at the slightest disturbance; they were the biting ants, smaller, thicker, neater, purple-black with a dull shine, moving slowly and in strict formation, as solemn and stately as undertakers. Lightning lit up the room again and Anand saw the column of biting ants stretched diagonally across two walls: a roundabout route, but they had their reasons.

‘Hear them!’

Anand, watching the ants, his mouth pressed on his goose-fleshed arm, didn’t reply. ‘Boy!’

The anguish, the loudness of the voice rising above rain and wind made Anand jump. He stood up.

‘You hear them?’

Anand listened, trying to pick up the component parts of the din: the rain, the wind, the running of water, the trees, the rain on walls and roof. Talk, indistinct, a bumble, rising and falling.

‘You hear them?’

Anything could sound like talk: the gurgle of water, boughs rubbing against one another. Anand opened the door a little way and looked down through the spars of the drawingroom. The ground ran with shining black water. Below the unfloored front bedroom, where the ground was higher and not so wet, two men were squatting before a smoking fire of twigs. Two large heart-shaped leaves of the wild tannia were near the men. They must have used the leaves as umbrellas when they had been caught by the heavier shower. The men stared at the fire. One man was smoking a cigarette. In the weak firelight, in the stillness of the scene in the midst of turmoil, this act of smoking, so intense and unruffled, might have been part of an ancient ritual.

‘You see them?’

Anand closed the door.

On the floor the winged ants had a new life. They were possessed of scores of black limbs. They were being carted away by the biting ants. They wriggled and squirmed, but did not disturb the even solemnity of their bearers. Bodiless wings were also being carried away.

Lightning obliterated shadows and colour.

The hair on Anand’s arms and legs stood straight. His skin tingled.

‘You see them?’

Anand thought they might be the men from the day before. But he couldn’t be sure.

‘Bring the cutlass.’

Anand put the cutlass against the wall near the head of the bed. The wall was running with water.

‘And you take the walking-stick.’

Anand would have liked to go to sleep. But he didn’t want to get into bed with his father. And with the floor full of ants where it was not wet, he couldn’t make up a bed for himself.

‘Rama Rama Sita Rama, Rama Rama Sita Rama.’

‘Rama Rama Sita Rama,’ Anand repeated.

Then Mr Biswas forgot Anand and began to curse. He cursed Ajodha, Pundit Jairam, Mrs Tulsi, Shama, Seth.

‘Say Rama Rama, boy.’

‘Rama Rama Sita Rama.’

The rain abated.

When Anand looked outside, the men under the house had gone with their tannia leaves, leaving a dead, hardly-smoking fire.

‘You see them?’

The rain came again. Lightning flashed and flashed, thunder exploded and rolled.

The procession of the ants continued. Anand began killing them with the walking-stick. Whenever he crushed a group carrying a living winged ant, the ants broke up, without confusion or haste, re-formed, took away what they could of the crushed body and carried away their dead. Anand struck and struck with his stick. A sharp pain ran up his arm. On his hand he saw an ant, its body raised, its pincers buried in his skin. When he looked at the walking-stick he saw that it was alive with biting ants crawling upwards. He was suddenly terrified of them, their anger, their vindictiveness, their number. He threw the stick away from him. It fell into a puddle.

The roof rose and dropped, grinding and flapping. The house shook.

‘Rama Rama Sita Rama,’ Anand said.

‘O God! They coming!’

‘They gone!’ Anand shouted angrily.

Mr Biswas muttered hymns in Hindi and English, left them unfinished, cursed, rolled on the bed, his face still