The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [50]
Eighteen
“Oh, bat, bat,” said Lola, panicking, as one swooped by her ear with its high-pitched choo choo.
“What does it matter, just a bit of shoe leather flying about,” said Noni, looking, in her pale summer sari, as if she were a blob of melting vanilla ice cream….
“Oh shut up,” said Lola.
“It’s too hot and stuffy,” Lola said then, by way of apology to her sister. The monsoon must be on its way.
It was just two months after Gyan had arrived to teach Sai, and Sai had at first confused the tension in the air with his presence.
But now everyone was complaining. Uncle Potty sat limply. “It’s building. Early this year. Better get me rum in, dolly, before the old boy is maroooooned.”
Lola sipped a Disprin that fizzed and hopped in the water.
When the papers, too, reported the approach of storm clouds, she became quite merry: “I told you. I can always tell. I’ve always been very sensitive. You know how I am—the princess and the pea—my dear, what can I say—the princess and the pea.”
______
At Cho Oyu, the judge and Sai sat out on the lawn. Mutt, catching sight of the shadow of her own tail, leapt and caught it, began to whizz around and around, confused as to whose tail it was. She would not let go, but her eyes expressed confusion and beseeching—how could she stop? what should she do?—she had caught a strange beast and didn’t know it was herself. She went skittering helplessly about the garden.
“Silly girl,” said Sai.
“Little pearl,” said the judge when Sai left, in case Mutt’s feelings had been bruised.
______
Then, in a flash, it was upon them. An anxious sound came from the banana trees as they began to flap their great ears for they were always the first to sound the alarm. The masts of bamboo were flung together and rang with the sound of an ancient martial art.
In the kitchen, the cook’s calendar of gods began to kick on the wall as if it were alive, a plethora of arms, legs, demonic heads, blazing eyes.
The cook clamped everything shut, doors and windows, but then Sai opened the door just as he was sifting the flour to get rid of the weevils, and up the flour gusted and covered them both.
“Ooof ho. Look what you’ve done.” Little burrowing insects ran free and overexcitedly on the floor and walls. Looking at each other covered with white, they began to laugh.
“Angrez ke tarah. Like the English.”
“Angrez ke tarah. Angrez jaise.”
Sai put her head out. “Look,” she said, feeling jolly, “just like English people.”
The judge began to cough as an acrid mix of smoke and chili spread into the drawing room. “Stupid fool,” he said to his granddaughter. “Shut the door!”
But the door shut itself along with all the doors in the house. Bang bang bang. The sky gaped, lit by flame; blue fire ensnared the pine tree that sizzled to an instant death leaving a charcoal stump, a singed smell, a Crosshatch of branches over the lawn. An unending rain broke on them and Mutt turned into a primitive life form, an amoebic creature, slithering about the floor.
A lightning conductor atop Cho Oyu ran a wire into an underground pit of salt, which would save them, but Mutt couldn’t understand. With renewed thunder and a blast upon the tin roof, she sought refuge behind the curtains, under the beds. But either her behind was left vulnerable, or her nose, and she was frightened by the wind making ghost sounds in the empty soda bottles: whoo hoooo hooo.
“Don’t be scared, puppy dog, little frog, little duck, duckie dog. It’s just rain.”
She tried to smile, but her tail kept folding under and her eyes were those of a soldier in war, finished with caring for silly myths of courage. Her ears strained beyond the horizon, anticipating what didn’t fail to arrive, yet another wave of bombardment, the sound of civilization crumbling—she had never known it was so big—cities and monuments fell—and she fled again.
______
This aqueous season would last three months, four, maybe five. In Cho Oyu, a leak dripping into the toilet played a honky-tonk, until it was interrupted by Sai, who held an umbrella over herself when she went inside