The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [52]
In Delhi the government had unveiled its new financial plan after much secrecy and debate. It had seen fit to reduce taxes on condensed milk and ladies’ undergarments, and raise them on wheat, rice, and kerosene.
“Our darling Piu,” an obituary outlined in black had a photo of a smiling child—”Seven years have passed since you left for your heavenly abode, and the pain has not gone. Why were you so cruelly snatched away before your time? Mummy keeps crying to think of your sweet smile. We cannot make sense of our lives. Anxiously awaiting your reincarnation.”
______
“Good afternoon,” said Gyan.
She looked up and he felt a deep pang.
Back at the dining table, the mathematics books between them, tortured by graphs, by decimal points of perfect measurement, Gyan was conscious of the fact that a being so splendid should not be seated before a shabby textbook; it was wrong of him to have forced this ordinariness upon her—the bisection and rebisection of the bisection of an angle. Then, as if to reiterate the fact that he should have remained at home, it began to pour again and he was forced to shout over the sound of rain on the tin roof, which imparted an epic quality to geometry that was clearly ridiculous.
An hour later, it was still hammering down. “I had better go,” he said desperately.
“Don’t,” she squeaked, “you might get killed by lightning.”
It began to hail.
“I really must,” he said.
“Don’t,” warned the cook, “In my village a man stuck his head out of the door in a hailstorm, a big goli fell on him and he died right away.”
The storm’s grip intensified, then weakened as night fell, but it was far too dark by this time for Gyan to pick his way home through a hillside of ice eggs.
______
The judge looked irritably across the chops at Gyan. His presence, he felt, was an insolence, a liberty driven if not by intent then certainly by foolishness. “What made you come out in such weather, Charlie?” he said. “You might be adept at mathematics, but common sense appears to have eluded you.”
No answer. Gyan seemed ensnared by his own thoughts.
The judge studied him.
He detected an obvious lack of familiarity, a hesitance with the cutlery and the food, yet he sensed Gyan was someone with plans. He carried an unmistakable whiff of journey, of ambition—and an old emotion came back to the judge, a recognition of weakness that was not merely a feeling, but also a taste, like fever. He could tell Gyan had never eaten such food in such a manner. Bitterness flooded the judge’s mouth.
“So,” he said, slicing the meat expertly off the bone, “so, what poets are you reading these days, young man?” He felt a sinister urge to catch the boy off guard.
“He is a science student,” said Sai.
“So what of that? Scientists are not barred from poetry, or are they?
“Whatever happened to the well-rounded education?” he said into the continuing silence.
Gyan racked his brains. He never read any poets. “Tagore?” he answered uncertainly, sure that was safe and respectable.
“Tagore!” The judge speared a bit of meat with his fork, dunked it in the gravy, piled on a bit of potato and mashed on a few peas, put the whole thing into his mouth with the fork held in his left hand.
“Overrated,” he said after he had chewed well and swallowed, but despite this dismissal, he gestured an order with his knife: “Recite us something, won’t you?”
“Where the head is held high, Where knowledge is free, Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls…. Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let me and my country awake.” Every schoolchild in India knew at least this.
The judge began to laugh in a cheerless and horrible manner.
How he hated this dingy season. It angered him for reasons beyond Mutt’s unhappiness; it made a mockery of him, his ideals. When he looked about he saw he was not in charge: mold in his toothbrush, snakes slithering unafraid right over the patio, furniture gaining weight, and Cho Oyu also soaking up water, crumbling like a mealy loaf. With each