The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [83]
Thirty
Worried about growing problems in the market and the disruption of supplies due to strikes, the cook was putting some buffalo meat that was growing harder and harder to buy into Mutt’s stew. He unwrapped the flank from its newspaper wrapping soaked in blood, and suddenly he had the overwhelming thought that he held two kilos of his son’s body there, dead like that.
Years ago when the cook’s wife had been killed falling from a tree while gathering leaves for their goat, everyone in his village had said her ghost was threatening to take Biju with her, since she had died violently. The priests claimed that a spirit passing on in such a way remained angry. His wife had been a mild person—in fact he had little memory of her speaking at all—but they had insisted it was true, that Biju had seen his mother, a transparent apparition in the night, trying to claw at him. The extended family walked all the way to the post office in the nearest town to send a barrage of telegrams to the judge’s address. The telegrams in those days had arrived via postal runner who ran shaking a spear from village to village. “In the name of Queen Victoria let me pass,” he sang in a high voice, although he neither knew nor cared that she was long gone.
“The priest has said the balli must be done at amavas, darkest no-moon night of the month. You must sacrifice a chicken.”
The judge refused to let the cook go. “Superstition. You fool! Why aren’t there ghosts here? Wouldn’t they be here as well as in your village?”
“Because there is electricity here,” said the cook. “They get a scare from electricity and in our village there is no electricity, that’s why….”
“What has your life been for?” said the judge, “You live with me, go to a proper doctor, you have even learned to read and write a little, sometimes you read the newspaper, and all to no purpose! Still the priests make a fool of you, rob you of your money.”
All the other servants set up a chorus advising the cook to disregard their employer’s opinions and save his son instead, for there certainly were ghosts: “Hota hai hota hai, you have to do it.”
The cook went to the judge with a made-up story of the roof of his village hut having blown off again in the latest storm. The judge gave up and the cook traveled to the village.
He became worried now, all these years later, that the sacrifice hadn’t really worked, that its effect had been undone by the lie he told the judge, that his wife’s spirit hadn’t actually been appeased, that the offering hadn’t been properly recorded, or wasn’t big enough. He had sacrificed a goat and a chicken, but what if the spirit still had a hunger for Biju?
______
The cook had first made the effort to send his son abroad four years ago when a recruiting agent for a cruise ship line appeared in Kalimpong to solicit applications for waiters, vegetable choppers, toilet cleaners—basic drudge staff, all of whom would appear at the final gala dinner in suits and bow ties, skating on ice, standing on one another’s shoulders, with pineapples on their heads, and flambéing crepes.
“Will procure legal employment in the USA!!!!” said the advertisements that appeared in the local paper and were pasted on the walls in various locations around town.
The man set up a temporary office in his room at Sinclair’s Hotel.
The line that formed outside circled the hotel and came all the way back around, at which point the head of the line got mixed up with the tail and there was some foul play.
Pleased to get in sooner than he had expected was Biju, who had been summoned from their home to Kalimpong for this interview, despite the judge’s objection. Why couldn’t Biju plan to work for him when the cook retired?
Biju took some of the cook’s fake recommendations with