The Faith of Ashish (29 page)

Boban Joseph was well acquainted with his father's foul moods, so he took particular care to steer the horse straight and not allow the cart to jostle any more than necessary. Mammen Samuel said little, which pleased Boban Joseph just fine. Even though he had been eagerly guessing as to the purpose of the trip all morning, he thought it best not to ask.

"When we get to the English clinic, stay in the cart unless I call for you," Mammen Samuel instructed.

They arrived before noon. Without getting up from the cart bench, Mammen Samuel bellowed, "I have come to get the boy Ashish!"

When no one answered his call, he bellowed still louder: "Give me what is mine! I have come for Ashish!"

Dr. Moore opened the door, Darshina beside him and Abigail watching from behind. "You are standing upon British property, Sir, and we Englishmen do not communicate by bellowing commands through walls," the doctor said. He waited for Darshina to translate before he continued: "Should you wish to communicate in a civilized manner, you may enter and sit with me. If that is not acceptable to you, please leave the premises immediately."

Mammen Samuel listened impatiently to Darshina's translation. Shaking with rage, he roared, "I am an important man in the village!"

In response to Darshina's translation, Dr. Moore said, "You well may be exactly that, but this is not your village. I am an important man on this compound, and I say you will behave in a civilized manner or you will leave."

Darshina stared at the doctor. "I cannot be telling such a thing to him!" she protested.

"Tell him!" Dr. Moore ordered. He never took his eyes off Mammen Samuel.

Bowing low, Darshina repeated the doctor's words.

"I will hire men to beat you until you are dead! I will tell them to burn your clinic to the ground! I will—"

The landlord got no further with his threats, for Dr. Moore turned, stepped inside, and closed the door. Mammen Samuel stood outside, raging and shouting his threats. The door remained shut. Mammen Samuel got down from the cart and pounded on the clinic door. No one answered. He bellowed threats and even called down curses on the clinic and on the doctor and on everyone who ever had stepped or ever would step over the threshold. Nothing changed, except that the hour grew later.

Finally exhausted, Mammen Samuel said, "I wish to communicate with you in a civilized manner."

Immediately, Dr. Moore opened the door. "Do come in," he said. "Would you care for a cup of tea?"

"You have the boy Ashish," Mammen Samuel stated.

With Darshina translating for both, Dr. Moore answered, "Yes, that is true. Ashish is here with us."

"I have come to get him. He belongs to me."

"We do not approve of owning other people's children," Dr. Moore said.

"That boy is my property, and I will have him!"

Dr. Moore resettled the spectacles on his nose, and uncrossed and recrossed his long legs. "You said that you, too, are a Christian man, did you not?"

"Yes," Mammen Samuel said warily. "I am a Christian from a long line of Christians, a descendant of a family that can trace its ancestry all the way back to the first Indian king to follow Saint Thomas, disciple of Jesus the Christ." After Darshina finished translating, Mammen Samuel added, "The same Saint Thomas who died a martyr's death in this country, you understand."

"In that case, Sir, why do you continue to cling to the Hindu belief of the inferiority of people due to caste?" Dr. Moore asked. "If you have rejected the pagan belief of repeated death and endless rebirth, how can you condemn a man—or a little boy, in the case of Ashish—for suffering from the Hindu condition of untouchability?"

Mammen Samuel stood up abruptly, his eyes flashing. "Do not dare to scold me as though I were a naughty school child! I am a Christian, but I am still Indian." He wagged his finger at the doctor and ordered, "You give me my boy! Now!"

"No, Sir," Dr. Moore said. "I shall not."

34

W
here does all this food come from?" Ashish asked as he swirled his hand around the earthenware plate on the ground before him. He scooped up a handful of rice and vegetables and stuffed it into his mouth.

"The vegetables grow on our plants," Krishna said. He put only small bites into his mouth because his lips were too scarred to open wide. Even then, much of the food ended up on his face.

"I know that, but I mean where does the rice come from? I don't see any paddies or fields here."

"From the doctor. He buys the rice. All English people are rich."

"Richer than the landlord?"

"Richer than anyone in all of India," Krishna said. "The English people are the bosses of the world."

After Ashish put the last bite in his mouth he set to work plucking up the rice grains that stuck on the edges of his plate.

"I like those marks on your face," Ashish said. "My
amma
has marks like that on her eye."

"They aren't marks, they're scars, and I hate them." Krishna took another careful bite. "Did your
amma's
auntie throw boiling water in her face too?"

"I don't know. It's just the way she is."

The doctor, Abigail, and Darshina were all closed in the surgery, which the boys were forbidden to enter unless they were specifically invited in. The only person they could see was the squat cook.

"Stay away from her," Krishna had warned Ashish on his first day at the clinic. "She doesn't like little boys."

That was not an entirely true statement as it turned out. She just didn't like Krishna.

"Wash yourselves!" the cook ordered the boys. "You are a mess." She glanced at Krishna and muttered, "It would take the entire river to set that one to right."

"Who is in the surgery?" Ashish asked Krishna.

"Another woman sick with the fever."

"I want to see her," Ashish said.

"You cannot. If you try, the English doctor will be very angry with you and you will have to spend all day lying on your cot."

"I had a fever once," Ashish said. "The pox goddess gave it to me and she kissed my face."

"Pox is a different kind of fever," Krishna said. "This is malaria fever. It doesn't make holes all in your face like pox does."

Krishna looked down at the drawing Ashish had scratched in the dirt. "What is it?" he asked.

"A tiger," Ashish said. "That's me in its mouth."

"What a silly picture! If a tiger got you in its mouth, it would tear you into little pieces and—"

Abigail, who had come up behind the boys, put her hand on Krishna's shoulder and said, "Come with me. It's time for your lessons." Krishna nodded his understanding. Abigail took Ashish's hand and brought him along, too, though the boy had no idea where they were going or what they would do.

Abigail found a shady spot under a tree and sat down with her back against the trunk. Krishna flopped down in front of her and sat cross-legged, so Ashish did the same. From her bag, Abigail pulled a stack of cards with brightly colored letters printed on them and spread them on the ground. One by one, as she pointed to the cards, Krishna called out the letter names: F . . . B . . . M . . . S . . . C . . . K . . . A . . . L . . .

They went over the cards again and again. After awhile Abigail smiled at Ashish and said, "Now you try." She pointed to the first card.

Ashish hesitated. He looked at Krishna.

"What is the name of this first letter?" Abigail urged.

Ashish whispered, "A."

"Very good!" Abigail cheered. "Very, very good!"

Ashish also knew B and C. And K and S.

"Extraordinarily good!" Abigail exclaimed.

Abigail put the cards away and took out a book with a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. As she pointed out the words under the picture, Krishna haltingly read, "For God . . . so loved . . . the world . . ."

From then on, Ashish did lessons with Krishna and Miss Abigail every morning and again each afternoon. He enjoyed the lessons, but they also left him distraught.

"Is it a sin for us to learn to read letters?" he asked Krishna. "Will we be punished by the gods?"

Krishna shrugged. "I have already been punished by the gods. Now I can do anything I want."

Dr. Moore shook his head. "This man's fingers are completely severed." The young man on the cot had walked into the clinic alone, his hand wrapped in a blood-soaked
chaddar.
"He will have to learn to get along without them," Dr. Moore said. "Wash and dress his hand, Miss Davidson."

Abigail's touch was tender, her words soft and kind. It certainly helped that she had learned to speak words of comfort and assurance in the local tongue. Darshina urged the man to stay on the cot in the surgery, to rest for a while longer, but he would not. He wrapped his stained
chaddar
around his head, folded his wounded hand together with his good one and bowed so as to properly show his gratitude, and left the clinic. Staggering slightly, he made his way down the road alone.

"These natives lack even the vestiges of good sense!" Dr.Moore groused. "That young man will be back soon. Or perhaps he will be dead."

Darshina's eyes flashed, but she held her peace.

"Ashish is a smart child," Abigail said as she piled the dirty cloths into a basin. "Already I can communicate with him rather well."

"Is that because he has picked up a bit of English, or because you are willing to learn Malayalam?" It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

Abigail, refusing to take it as anything but an honest question, answered, "His English is coming along well, mostly because of Krishna. But Ashish is also learning the alphabet, and he can even recognize a few English words in my book."

Dr. Moore busied himself cleaning up his physician's instruments.

"I think he should accompany Krishna to the mission school in Madras," Abigail ventured. Then, more to herself than to the doctor, "Though I would be most sorry to bid him farewell."

"That school is for orphans, Miss Davidson. Ashish is not an orphan."

"Well, he may as well be! His parents are always leaving him somewhere. And as for that evil landlord—the farther the child can be from him, the better!"

"We are here to treat the people's ills, not the ills of the people's society."

"I don't see that one goes without the other," Abigail insisted. She had much more to say, but Darshina shot her a warning look.

Abigail opened the book with the picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. "Here, Ashish," she said. "Can you read the words?"

Ashish wrinkled his forehead and scrunched up his eyes. "F . . . f . . . for . . . God . . . so . . ."

"Loved," Abigail prompted.

"Loved . . . the . . ."

"World!" Krishna said. "Loved the world!"

"Yes," Abigail said. She closed the book and called for Darshina to come and translate. "Krishna, you have learned so much. I am extremely proud of you. You are also learning well, Ashish."

Ashish hung his head. "No, Miss. I cannot learn."

"Why, whatever do you mean? Darshina, ask him why he would say such a thing!"

"The fortune-teller told my
amma
that I am a stupid boy. I heard her tell it to my
appa."

"No!" Abigail protested. "That is not true! You are a very smart boy. That's why I want you to go to the school in Madras with Krishna. You will learn to read and to write. And you'll learn many other wonderful things too."

"Is the school close to where the workers live?" Ashish asked. "Would I be near
Amma
and
Appa?"

Abigail got down on her knees and gripped the boy's arms."You must forget about them, Ashish. All that is behind you. It's past. You have a new life now, you and Krishna together.What do you think about that?"

Ashish had no idea what he thought about it. Never before had anyone asked him his opinion on anything. He stood still and stared at the pale English lady.

"Perhaps one day you might even be my own little boy, Ashish," Abigail said. "Maybe you could be my blessing."

Ashish stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"I would take care of you. You would be with me whenever you aren't in school," Abigail said.

School. Ashish did think about that. All day and all night he thought about it. As he filled his stomach with rice and vegetables, he thought about it. As he lay on his cot under a slowly spinning fan and listened to the chirrup of crickets, he thought about it. As he read the names of the brightly colored letters on Miss Abigail's cards and picked out words in her book, he thought about the school.

Maybe the hunters caught his
amma
and
appa.
It might be that his parents were already dead. They were very good people, and very brave, so they might already have been reborn into a higher caste. Maybe
Appa
was a king somewhere and
Amma
a princess. Maybe they lived in a house with a veranda and a cow and had plenty of food to eat. Maybe they had forgotten all about him. Maybe they no longer remembered their Ashish—their blessing. It could be so.

Tears filled Ashish's eyes and ran down the sides of his face.

Or might his parents still miss him? Would it be possible for them to ever be happy if he was no longer beside them?

Softly Ashish sang:

"Jesus loves me! This I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong; They are weak, but He is strong.

  Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so."

"What ever is the matter?" Abigail asked Ashish. "Yesterday you read your letters and words so well, but today you won't even try. Do you feel all right? Are you sick?"

The boy raised his head high and said, "I am Ashish. I am a blessing. Always and forever, I must remember who I am."

Darshina translated his words.

"Yes, yes," Abigail said. "That is really quite lovely. But why will you not read?"

"I cannot go to school with Krishna."

"Why not?"

"Because I am my
appa
and
amma's
blessing. I cannot be their blessing if I am not with them. Please, Miss Abigail, I want to go home."