The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [107]
The more he screamed the harder they beat him; they reduced him to a pulp, bashed his head until blood streamed down his face, knocked out his teeth, kicked him until his ribs broke—
You could hear him up and down the hillside begging and screaming. The police watched with disgust. He was claiming his innocence: “I didn’t steal guns from anybody, I didn’t go to anyone’s house, nothing, nothing, some mistake….”
His were the first screams and they heralded the end of normal life on the hillside.
“I didn’t do anything, but I am sorry.” For hours they continued, the desperate shrieks tearing up the air, “I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry….”
But the police were just practising their torture techniques, getting ready for what was coming. When the man crawled out on his knees, his eyes had been extinguished. They would heal into horizonless, flat blanks that would forever cause others to recoil in fear and disgust.
The only grace was that he wouldn’t see them recoiling and would disappear entirely inside the alcohol that had always given him solace.
Thirty-six
It was Mr. Iype the newsagent who said offhandedly, waving a copy of India Abroad: “You’re from Darjeeling side, no? Lot of trouble over there….”
“Why?”
“Nepalis making trouble… very troublesome people….”
“Strikes?”
“Much worse, bhai, not only strikes, the whole hillside is shut down.”
“It is?”
“For many months this has been going on. Haven’t you heard?”
“No. I haven’t had any letters for a long time.”
“Why do you think?”
Biju had blamed usual disruptions—bad weather, incompetance—for the break in his father’s correspondence.
“They should kick the bastards back to Nepal,” continued Mr. Iype. “Bangladeshis to Bangladesh, Afghans to Afghanistan, all Muslims to Pakistan, Tibetans, Bhutanese, why are they sitting in our country?”
“Why are we sitting here?”
“This country is different,” he said without shame. “Without us what would they do?”
Biju went back to work.
Through the day, with gradually building momentum, he became convinced his father was dead. The judge wouldn’t know how to find him if he would try to find him at all. His unease began to tighten.
______
By the next day he couldn’t stand it anymore; he slipped out of the kitchen and purchased a twenty-five-dollar number from a bum who had a talent for learning numbers by lingering outside phone booths, overhearing people spell out their calling codes and recording them in his head. He had loitered behind one unsuspecting Mr. Onopolous making a phone call and charging it to his platinum—
“But be quick,” he told Biju, “I’m not sure about this number, a couple of people have already used it….”
The receiver was still moist and warm from the last intimacy it had conducted, and it breathed back at Biju, a dense tubercular crepitation. As there was no phone at Cho Oyu, Biju rang the number for the MetalBox guesthouse on Ringkingpong Road.
“Can you get my father? I will call again in two hours.”
______
So, one evening, some weeks before the phone lines were cut, before the roads and bridges were bombed, and they descended into total madness, the MetalBox watchman came rattling the gate at Cho Oyu. The cook had a broth going with bones and green onions—
“La! Phone! La! Telephone! Telephone call from your son. La! From America. He will phone again in one hour. Come quick!”
The cook went immediately, leaving the rattling skeleton bones topped by dancing scrappy green, for Sai to watch—”Babyji!”
“Where are you going?” asked Sai, who had been pulling burrs from Mutt’s pantaloons while thinking of Gyan’s absence—
But the cook didn’t reply. He was already out of the gate and running.
______
The phone sat squat in the drawing room of the guesthouse encircled by a lock and chain so the thieving servants might only receive phone calls and not make them. When it rang again, the watchman leapt at it, saying, “Phone, la! Phone! La mail” and his whole family came