The first part of this as-yet-unnamed novel is the story of Annakutty, a woman living in Kerala, who relinquishes her four-year-old son to tourists passing through town. The story is told many decades later from her deathbed. Part two tells the story of the boy, who is now a man, living in the US Midwest. I am interested in this woman and her son and the circumstances of their lives because all of it makes for a good story. But I am more interested still in the way in which we make sense of our lives through imagining what the future holds for us and through imagining what the past held for us.

This particular chapter of the novel comes twelve chapters into ‘Part One’ of the novel. The young men at the barbershop, the man being inducted into the Communist party leadership, the story of Kallen Chothi and the rubber-tappers’ strike form the backdrop to the moment when the barber, Unnikrishnan, remembers Annakutty. As a young woman she is caught with her lover and stripped of her clothes in an attempt to confine her to the house. She reacts with defiance, walking naked through the town. Elsewhere in the chapter is the moment when the priest shaves off his beard in preparation for confronting his superior. Annakutty will almost certainly be repudiated in death as she was in life by the church and the society it represents. The priest, a friend to her in life, anticipating she will be denied burial rites, prepares to resign from the priesthood.

*

The Crowd at the Junction

An old man, sucked thin, a little bent, on a four foot wide wooden platform—a makeshift stage—faces a microphone, composes himself before beginning. He harangues an invisible enemy; his speech tears the air. An equally invisible audience is riveted by the power of his speech. The man’s one arm is thrust behind his back; the hand, hidden away, clenches and unclenches. It is his angry hand. Anger, though a useful tool in the struggle for working class liberation can make this man appear spastic. So he keeps it hidden away. With his other, more measured hand, he thrusts at the air, stabs an accusing finger at the invisible enemy.

‘Comrades, he cries, we mustn’t forget.’

The air crackles and moans. The microphone strains to do justice to this man’s fervour. On the stage, behind the speechmaker, two men in crisp white lean forward from their seats on two metal folding chairs. One of them yawns, rests his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist. He is the thinker among the three. The other man is young and exceptionally handsome. An awareness of his beauty catches him in the middle of the speech he is rehearsing under his breath, and he rights himself, angles his face so the light reflects off his smooth cheeks.

At the barbershop across the way Unnikrishnan lathers his newest customer. He curses the need of those across the street to rehearse the speeches he will be subjected to again in the evening. He curses the two still lingering in the shop though he finished barbering them an hour before. The rain is thin now and they could walk out into it, past the speechmakers haranguing the empty street, and head home. But they sit, riveted to the contents of his modest collection of magazines. The verbiage within focuses on male fitness, the illustrations for which are supplied by the female form, tightly clad and always in some aspect of repose.

‘Ridiculous.’

‘At least they should have done something about the stubble on her leg.’

‘You should see those girls in Bangalore. Such smooth legs. What is wrong with our girls in Kerala?’

‘What is wrong is they keep themselves so covered up they have no idea themselves what they look like. This one probably showed up to have her picture taken with her mother in tow, changed into the mini skirt at the studio, and never realized her legs look like that.’

‘Let the girl be. What is wrong is the magazines in Kerala using a girl like that. Black prickles on chunky legs. Look. On every page it is the same girl. Same legs. Oh God, here she has a cat on her lap. What is that supposed to be? Is that supposed to make us think what its like to sit on her chunky lap? The girls in Bangalore, their legs are white like milk.’

‘Shut up about the girls in Bangalore. What’s a newly married man doing ogling girls in Bangalore?’

‘My interest isn’t in the girls. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a student of human behaviour, which is the kind of thing your mind is too small to understand.’

‘Oh ho, that’s it then? You’re studying human behaviour?’

‘It makes no difference to me what you think. When I visit Bangalore I sit at the mall. Ideal place to study the crowd. Mainly I’m there to study the men who are ogling the girls. Such pathetic creatures.’

‘People living in glass houses shouldn’t…you know.’

‘Who’s throwing stones? Me, you’re accusing? I sympathize with them. I may not be in their situation but I understand them. What else are they to do? What are the chances of anyone getting a look at anything here in Kerala? Every last girl here wanders the whole day in that getup —what do they call it—that housecoat trailing to her toes. Then she shows up in bed at night wearing the same thing. Bloody hell. I tell you it turns the Malayalee man into a pathetic fool who will settle for anything he can get.’

A movement outside as the man at the microphone walks back to seat himself. He nods amiably at the youngster for whose benefit they’ve connected the microphones in the rain, running the wires clear from the other end of the junction, off the electric mains located at Party HQ, location also of the area fish shop. The handsome one rises and returns the nod. His frightened smile stretches his skin tight, thins his lips so his skull peers from his face, replacing the pretty there. He soldiers on to stage front, nodding to the left and right at what he both wants to imagine is a real crowd and which, once imagined, he wants nothing more than to make disappear. On reaching the microphone he grasps it, nearly bending it. The crowd roars its approval and he croaks back. Promptly the crowd gives up on him and he is left staring through the inattentive rain at the empty road and, a hop of the eye away, the barbershop and bus stop. His training is in the power to summon or banish a crowd at will. But what of the recalcitrant crowd?

He begins his speech in earnest.

His two superiors settle to the extent they can on their hard chairs. He’ll do fine at the actual event later in the evening. Meanwhile, he is repeating the same speech as his predecessor.

‘Comrades, we mustn’t forget.’

The microphone swells with emotion, releases his speech, sobbing into the rain. One end of his mundu’s hem is held up rather daintily in a two finger pinch. He brings the other hand into play in a similar pinch. Now the first hand slides all along the hem and around back. Now the other hand picks up from where the first cannot round further. Now he’s done tracing the hem. He drops it, and he is once again a monopod, suctioned to the stage. His feet know what to do. They need simply to hold on. But he has not anticipated the problem of what to do with his hands. Now he rests one hand on the small of his back, then with a shift of his weight, he replaces it with the other. He has almost found his stride; his hands in a sudden fit of inspiration remember to do what his mentors’ had done. He stabs at the air with one, then the other. Ah, that’s the way it’s done. But no, it is a mistake. He is immediately buffeted by his twin imaginings. He twitches and starts to the continual antics of the appearing and disappearing crowd. His speech stops and starts accordingly and it is hard for the two old ones behind him to preserve their confidence in his future, much less to keep nodding off to such a staccato tempo as he is affecting. Midway through the speech his sense of himself as beautiful and deserving of stage and audience, flickers on then off. And this too is part of his training: to summon and banish himself at will.

‘What a hero he is. What is it that our hero does not want us to forget?’

‘Didn’t you see the Kallen Chothi memorial was covered in red on your way here? Red streamers strung on all the nearby tree branches. That glorified mess of cement isn’t memorial enough for these guys. So they cover it in red. It’s that time of year again. I was running to get out of the rain, not interested in sightseeing. A shave, I thought, would be a good excuse to get away from all those women. Anakutty—remember that Thambi with the one leg? his wife—met her end last night. All morning it’s been nothing but fuss with women running this way and that and the praying and clapping and singing is nonstop. She was kind of an important figure to the poor women around her. A bit of a hero.’

‘You mean a heroine. Can you imagine what Ms. Chunky here will look like in another fifty years, eh? Listen to our hero there going on about not forgetting. He and his kind must have done up Kallen’s gravestone last night or maybe early this morning. Don’t know why they bother. God knows we’ve all forgotten.’

‘What have we forgotten?’

‘The Kallen incident. It’s been fifty years maybe.’

‘I know what you’re talking about. More like a hundred years. My uncle is a sympathizer himself, so he keeps all these stories going. This is the one about the rubber tapper. The strike, isn’t it?’

‘This Kallen wasn’t even a big leader.’

‘But when the strike was broken he was one of the few who held out.’

‘Low-caste types! Actually all of them are potential hoodlums. Big ones. Little ones. Makes no difference. They’re all ready to attack at moment’s notice.’

‘A group of them did attack one of the landowners. Who was it they were after?’

‘The Olayathil family, my father’s cousins actually.’

‘My uncle didn’t tell me that.’

‘It’s been fifty, hundred years. We remember in our family because our people were involved.’

‘My uncle said the owners got together and went after the remaining strikers.’

‘They hid out in the forest.’

‘The owners or the strikers?’

‘The strikers of course. They were hidden, but the owners knew where. Probably one of their own betrayed them. That’s the low-caste type for you. As you said, it was a case of most of the strikers already done with the agitation. No doubt, they wanted to be done with the so-called leaders who got them into the mess in the first place.’

‘So then?’

‘They flushed them out and went after this Kallen. He was part of, or maybe even led, the attack on the Olayathils. They made him pay.’

‘My uncle told me this part.’

‘They cut him.’

‘With a machete. Split his stomach open.’

‘Like chopping wood.’

‘He tried to get up and run. His guts oozing out.’

‘He was holding onto his guts, pushing them back into his belly, when he got up to run. That’s when the eldest Olayathil looked him in the face and kicked him back down. Held him down there with his foot in the man’s insides.’

‘He died right there on the ground with his guts hanging out. Writhing. Everyone watching. Imagine that.’

‘No need. Matters from the past are best left in the past. If our hero had his way these days would become those days.’

Across the street the handsome one finishes his speech.

‘Comrades,’ he exhorts the entrenched hordes, ‘we must not forget.’

He’s done well. He waits the appropriate amount of time for the applause that he alone hears to die out. This is a crucial point in his training: A well delivered speech will be applauded loud and long and it is a mistake to walk away without turning this appreciation toward agitation. But he is at the end of his speech and can think only to repeat it. He begins again.

‘Comrades, we must not forget.’

Chairs scrape behind him. From both sides he is seized. He smiles and nods at the rain hurrying along the street. He is dragged backward to his seat. He consoles himself: the crowd will be there this evening. He will figure it out between now and then. This is just a rehearsal.

Unnikrishnan turns the face in his hands this way and that way. A jab with the towel clears away a last fleck of foam caught in the rather handsome cleft that his razor’s just revealed. Then he twists the neck, cracking it once, twice, and shoots two puffs of powder that drift and settle ever so gently on skin bumpy and pink. He declares the job well done and steps from in front of the mirror. The face pulls forward and peers into the mirror, watches the throat in the mirror swallow hard. After a long moment the face smiles at what it sees. The beard is gone. He looks less priest-like already. The face studies the reflection of the two seated behind him on the waiting-bench, notes they are men, full grown, but seated like youngsters, shoulder to shoulder, turning the pages of the magazine spread from across the half of one lap and onto the half of the other.

‘Kids,’ he says mockingly, ‘we must not forget.’

They look up and frown at the man who pays Unnikrishnan and leaves.

‘I am closing the shop.’ Unnikrishnan shoos the young men out into the rain. A motorcycle speeds away; two men sprint for the cover of trees.

Unnikrishnan leans his forehead against the inside of the door he has shut. He is remembering a young woman walking in just such a rain. A rain that swallowed her, but not before every piece of her had been examined. He remembers she walked with her hands hanging down at her sides and her open palms flashed white. Her eyes looked up from her face hanging down and they flashed white. And almost and almost, he and they in the crowd saw only how naked those eyes were. How naked those hands. And almost and almost, he did not, those many years ago, lift his eyes to the naked breast and the naked thighs, to everything her that curved and hollowed and twisted in the long ago rain to the crowd’s whispered chant: mad girl mad girl.

They have been ashamed, him and the crowd, all these years. His shame has remained with him as silence. Silence on the night he removed the clothes from his wife’s body for the first time, eyes shut against the white palms of those hands and the white defiance of those eyes. His shame was with him each time Thambichettan entered his shop, filled it with sound then more sound, lifted his chin for Unnikrishnan’s razor and had to be told to be silent or get cut. And Unnikrishnan’s shame was with him when he went to ask at Thambichettan’s house, if he a Hindu would be permitted to shave his old friend one last time. Shame filled him as he moved in silence lifting the chin to expose the silent throat as she stood by, she who he was never able to see without seeing her walking toward him, then away from him, hands hanging at the side, palms and eyes flashing reply to the whispers of mad girl mad girl. And shame it is that urges his daughters in his voice full of silence, to cover up cover up. What is the meaning of this kind of skirt?

Is there a way to deal with shame other than in silence? He was young then and old now. He remembers her; he does not remember any of those who gathered with him to line the roadside three and four deep as she walked by that day. Her hands hanging, and when they stepped toward her, two or three in the crowd with lengths of cloth held open to cover her, her hands found stones on the ground. He remembers her bending, squatting, the way her knees pointed and her thighs flattened so she became a blade. Did the others see this as well? How did they go on to love their wives and their daughters? In silence or in anger? Is there another way for him, and they, who stood that day and watched her scrabble in the mud for stones to fill her lap? She stood up and the stones rolled off her. She walked to where someone stood with outstretched cloth, tore at it and bent again to her stones. She gathered them into the cloth.

Outside, the hordes remain, are held in the rain by the force of imagination of the three who have fled the stage. The speechmaker’s words from earlier swim the street. Rain soaked and bilged, the words tip over and disintegrate before they sink.

‘The mutual animosity of caste, religion and sectarianism and the related bad rituals… leftist activities lifted up Kerala from such a condition to present day state… reminding us… the ebbs and flows of the progress of Kerala… to learn and teach it… a heavy blow on landlords and retrogressive forces… the landless not become landlords… strong public agitation…At the international level it is a process spanning over almost two centuries…Self-respect and confidence transmitted to the vast majority of laymen and the backward classes… Inferiority complex banished…So we remember and learn from…Kallen.’

Somewhere beyond the ripples spreading from of the drowned speech, trees brush one another as they bend to the whispering of two men.

‘Yes, but how can you even say that?’

‘Why not? It’s the truth. I can say it.’

‘Women do not.’

‘Yes they do. I tell you they do.’

‘You have a wife. How can you say that?’

‘Yes, that’s what my wife said. Till I took her hand in mine and showed her the truth.’

‘Your wife? When? How?’

‘On our honeymoon.’

‘In Bangalore?’

‘We were in line at the museum. She had this crazy idea that we had to visit all the cultural centres, see art, study history. I tell you—Malayalee girls.’

‘Yes. Yes. But what happened at the museum?’

‘Long line, see. We’re both waiting. It’s just about forever. No one’s pushing or anything. Mind you it’s a museum, not a bus stop. We were definitely experiencing some kind of higher thinking, I tell you.’

‘Yes. Yes. But what happened?’

‘So it’s not so crowded and no pushing, but long wait. So I have trouble grasping it see, when it happens.’

‘What? What happens?’

‘This girl. In front of me, eh? So I can’t see her. That’s my bad luck because she’s really something to see from the back. If her breasts, I was thinking, are anything like her shake-shake bottom. I’m thinking this. Wouldn’t dream of doing a thing, when you know, so casually, you wouldn’t believe how casually, she just leans back and sticks that shake-shake right onto me.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Mad? No, not me. It’s what I’m telling you. Girls do enjoy it. There are girls like that. Leans right back against me. Sits it on top of me. Well, I get my pole out in a hurry. The whole weight of her. I sort of had to, you know, brace myself.’

‘Then?’

‘So then I take my hand, and just with the two fingers, mind you, I nudge her. A little nibble. Like this. I can just about hear her moan at this point. She wiggles that bottom of hers then. Looking for my hand to do it again.’

‘On your honeymoon? You bastard.’

‘No-no-no. You still don’t get it, do you? The thrill for me is in finding out how people think, not in feeling up some woman. You don’t believe me?’

‘No.’

‘Well, listen to this. Just the day before the museum thing I was arguing with Elsie about just this. She wouldn’t believe me that there are these women—no, let me rephrase that—plenty of women who want it like that. So you know what I do? I just lean back in line a bit and whisper into Elsie’s ear.’

‘What?’

‘What do you mean ‘what’? The proof. That’s what I told Elsie. I’ve got me the proof. Then I took Elsie’s hand and guided it over to that beauteous bottom and Elsie’s two fingers just did the rest.’

‘Nudge?’

‘Yes, a little nudge and the bottom’s wiggling all over again.’

‘You’re a bastard.’

‘No, my friend, I’m a student of human behaviour. And now you see it.’

‘Now I see a bastard.’

And though the trees bend hard to the task there are no more words to hear, just scuffling till suddenly, as when a gunshot flushes from cover dumb beast, the two explode into the open, roll around in the clearing then chase each other past what they must not forget. They are laughing as they run.

‘He’ll get you. The ghost of Kallen is coming to get you. Look out now.’

The one whose uncle is a sympathizer bends and fills his hand with something from the ground. He rises to throw it. But a similar something is already winging toward him, he turns and it catches him with a squelch on the back of his head. His companion has had the same idea. His own something, lobbed as he turned, lands short of its mark, leaves a stain at the base of a tree trunk. His lips turn down.

‘Get lost,’ he yells to his companion.

Red bleeds from paper pennants rained to the ground, lying in sodden clumps on a slab of cement.