Tikkipala (29 page)

‘What will you do when you get there?' pressed Devi.

‘Create the largest statue in the world and cover it with the marbles, minerals and malechites of India. I want to take these little pieces of lovely stone and meld them into an enormous woman.' His eyes were shining. He began to fill in the air, with his hands, the many shaped statue of his dreams. ‘It will be the soul of India, made from her ancient bones, the minerals taken from her earth. It will have eyes of scolecite and a mouth of rose red rhodonite, a pure piece without spots of veins.' He sighed. ‘When I get back to Bidwar I will make her walk,' he added.

Devi stayed two days in the club in the end, because Khan kept finding excuses to stay on. The car needed an oil change. One tyre seemed rather bald. He was still tired and needed more rest. And Devi, instead of saying, ‘But you had the oil changed two
weeks ago,' or ‘Just put on the spare then, and let's go.' To her own contempt, just went along with it, and made no protest.

Khan felt increasingly hopeful when Madam did not order him to return her to the hill palace. Perhaps at last she had come to her senses, had remembered what it was like to sleep in a comfy bed, be waited on by well trained servants, eat well cooked food, so they could soon return Bidwar.

As the hours passed, and he saw Madam and Mr Rao swim races round the swimming pool, or heard her laughing as they drank iced drinks at the water's edge, Khan became increasingly optimistic. He had always had great respect for the Raja, but his respect now was increased still further. Setting Mr Rao in the daughter's way was luring her from her foolishness.

But his hopes were dashed when Devi announced that they would return to the hill palace. Khan, who was already planning, in his head, arrangements for his young and newly pregnant wife to be transported back to Bidwar, felt very disappointed.

On the way back, Devi sat very silent as though deeply thinking.

‘Is Madam feeling angry with my way of driving?' Khan interrupted her thoughts suddenly. He had felt so depressed at the prospect of the return to the palace that he had, in fact, driven a little carelessly.

‘No, not at all, Khan,' she said. She had been so deep in thought that she had not noticed he had nearly run over a goat. She added, ‘I've been staying here long enough. I think I will pack up my minerals and go back to Bidwar. I suppose you will be pleased, Khan.'

Devi felt disappointed with herself. Until two days ago she had not only hoped to discover rare minerals but was also curious to find out what had happened to her great uncle Anwar, and now suddenly she could not care less. She did not even care, now, if
she never discovered the Ama. Every moment, since leaving the club, she had tried to stifle such resolutions but something had happened there that had lessened her delight in her isolated life in the mineral mountains.

She was not going back to Bidwar because Nirmal would be there. Of course not. She was only going so that she could tell her father how furious she was with him. And if by chance she should encounter Nirmal in Bidwar that would be just something that happened.

The Raja was filled with joy when he got the letter from Devi saying she was returning to Bidwar. He had missed her terribly and she had been the only reason he had not succumbed to utter loneliness after his wife died.

‘You were so young when she died. What do you remember of your mother?' he had asked Devi when she was ten.

‘I will write down everything I can remember,' she had told him, and later handed him a paper on which she had written: ‘My mother is holding me and I know everything there is to know about love. I can look and see the side of her chin. And a blurry moment of the darkness of her hair. Her laughter that tingled inside my chest. Those are the things I remember about my mother. I look up and see the tightness of
her jaw bone. There are little veins there. Blue. Very fine like spider webs. Her hair is somewhere near though I cannot quite see where though I know it is dark. And perhaps it is curly too. She is holding me against herself and I feel absolutely safe.'

Devi's father had hugged her tightly after he read it, as though he was drowning and she was saving him and he had to fight hard not to let tears flow.

After his wife died, Mala and Srila kept urging him to get married again. ‘You must produce an heir. It is your duty, Anoo. We know of a very suitable girl. She is from an excellent family, is good looking and well educated, and will do you very well. Also her family have expressed themselves delighted at the idea of being united with the rich and handsome Raja of Bidwar.'

The Raja had been annoyed. ‘You mean to say that you have been making these arrangements already, and behind my back?'

‘It is also for Devi's sake,' the sisters said. ‘It is not fair to expect her to be brought up without the care of a mother.'

He had been persuaded and when all the arrangements were completed, took Devi on his knee and told her, ‘I am going to give you a new mother.'

Devi burst into tears. ‘I don't want another mother,' she sobbed. ‘I don't want anyone but you now.'

‘But darling,' he tried to console, ‘All children have mothers and how will you, who are a little girl, grow up without one?'

But Devi had gone on weeping inconsolably. ‘I had a mother once and even if I can't properly remember her, I've still got her inside my heart.'

‘She is only a child and knows nothing,' the aunts said sternly. ‘She will soon come to love and respect the step mother. You should not have even discussed the matter with Devi. How can a child of four know anything about the matter?'

But though the Raja had respected Devi's opinion and later decided that probably she had been right, for another wife would never have loved her like a true mother after she had children of her own, the sisters had gone on trying to marry him off for years after. At frequent intervals they would describe some lovely, or well connected, or rich, or wonderfully talented girl they had met or heard of, and then wait hopefully for Anoo to ask to know more about her. But on this, and this alone he had stood firm.

And now Devi was coming back to him and it seemed that she was not even cross with him about the Nirmal episode and it was also clear, thankfully, that she had not fallen for the fellow either, since there was no mention of Nirmal in her letter, which was lucky since the fellow had turned out to be perfectly worthless and had made a complete mess of his work at Bidwar. A ton of fertiliser had been sold for a tenth of its proper price because, it seemed, Nirmal had put too few noughts on his bill. The Raja still felt furious when he thought of it.

He felt quite triumphant over his sisters-in-law, who had professed to know so much about women and thought that he knew nothing.

The Raja felt that he had done everything possible, had offered to make a great sacrifice and now he could have her for himself with a clear conscience. After all, he had lived all these years in an unmarried state and there was no reason why Devi should not do the same. She was coming home to live with him and he could not wait to see her.

He called his servants and ordered flowers to be put everywhere, told his cooks to make all her favourite dishes, sent out for her favourite sweets and called for the jeweller to come to the palace so that he could place an order for a whole set of gold and diamond bangles to be prepared as a welcome home present. ‘She is coming in only three days so I want these things to be ready by then.'

The jeweller ran all the way back and set to work instantly, for with such a complex and intricate design there was not a moment to be lost. He would have to work almost night and day to have these things ready by the time the Ranee arrived.

That day, as the lumberjacks were preparing to come down from the high forest with a timber load, a naked man, painted all over like a wall of pre-election graffiti, appeared and began to climb onto one of the lorries.

The lumberjacks laughed, tried to push him off.

‘I go to Madam Devi,' said Maw.

The lumberjacks looked from one to another. The Ranee was so angry with them already, it would not do to make matters worse. Perhaps they should let the fellow on.

Maw sat stiff and grim in the back of the lorry, all the way down to the lower jungle, and round and round in his mind went the picture of Animal lying dead and broken. He remembered again and again how the great white hands had taken up the shrieking Animal and twisted it in one cracking movement, then thrown the shattered creature down again.

‘She has scorned the gift,' said the people of the tribe when they came and found Maw next morning.

For the whole night he had sat there, perfectly still and deep in thought, for he had seen the Tikki now and had understood what was wrong with her. Once she had been great. She had watched over the tribe and driven away the tribe's enemies. She had listened for their cries and come to rescue them. She had taken vengeance on their enemies so that none had dared attack them. She had filled the people of the other tribes with fear. She had kept the Coarseones away for all this time. But now she had
become muddled and weak. She could not hear the messages from her people. She had allowed Pala to die in a terrible way and had done nothing to help him. Maw knew what she needed to restore her to her former greatness. But it was useless to seek that thing from his people. They had become sick and feeble. Tikki needed essence that was pure, young and clever. Even the Animal might not be enough.

When the Tikki had thrown the twisted, wounded Animal back on the ground, Maw had risen. Trying not to flinch, he had stood before the Tikki while at his feet the Animal whimpered with pain. Choking at the stench of the Tikki's breath, his heart thumping because she was so huge and terrible, Maw had cried, ‘Take me, Oh Tikki. Here am I, the Maw of the tribal people. I offer my body to you. Do as you like with it, and then avenge my beloved Pala and the destruction of my people.'

She had towered over him, her great breasts dangling like treetops in heavy rain. Her face was so large that it blotted out the sky and so white that it seemed to glow like leprous skin. She opened her mouth and the power of her breath made Maw stagger. She reached for him with panther-clawed fingers that were as twisted, gnarled and thick as tree branches. Bristles of white hair sprang from her knuckles and when he dared to look up into her face he saw that there too, white hair clusters sprouted from swellings on her cheeks and chin. Her upper lip was cleft, and pointed dark teeth protruded through the opening. The canines were so long that they lay on either side of her chin like small tusks. She is almost entirely animal, thought Maw.

Then she turned and went shuffling away, grunting and mumbling. Her body, that filled up the horizon and blocked out the mountain, staggered and quivered as though she was shaking with a fever.

‘I will bring the thing you need,' shouted Maw after the Tikki. ‘I understand what it is now. Wait for me, Oh Tikki, and I will make the purest thing in the world for you.'

She turned and seemed to look at him for one last long moment. Her small eyes that were bulging and bloodshot stared at him dully. Her heavy breathing gurgled.

‘Oh, Tikki, whose name really means Revenge,' cried Maw, ‘I know that our people are finished and that even you can never save us now, but if you are satisfied with my sacrifice when I bring it to you, please kill and torture the Coarseones because of what they have done to Pala.'

She made a snuffing sound and then was gone, vanished into the trees. For a long time after, the ground continued to vibrate with the weight of her footsteps.

The Animal lay whimpering in pain for long a while before it died.

When his people came for him, Maw told them, ‘I am going to live among the Coarseones till I get what Tikki needs.'

‘How can God have needs?' the elders scoffed. ‘God can only have desires and all of these are instantly fulfilled.'

Maw was silent for he saw he could never explain to them.

‘Also, what sort of thing could you find among the coarse people that we do not have?' scoffed the elders.

‘Already you have seen,' Maw told them. ‘They have tools to cut through our hardest trees.'

‘We also have such things but when we cut we can send our tools between the particles so that there is no destruction.'

‘They have the machines that come to fetch the logs.'

The elders scoffed again. ‘We could have sent them down in a tenth of the time if the tunnel way through the mountain had been wide enough, and our ligament sufficiently strong.'

‘Their machines can also fly in the air and they can communicate by voice and send pictures over a distance of a thousand miles.'

‘This is better,' agreed the elders, ‘But in all our history the Tikki has been only offered things that are alive and you are talking of artefacts.'

Maw nodded and only said, ‘I only hope that I will be back with the thing she needs before something happens to her.'

‘Happens?' cried the elders, preparing to spit in case the king should again blaspheme. ‘How can something happen to God?'

‘I will come back to you when the sacrifice is ready,' said Maw, and thought to himself, ‘There is only one thing that matters now. The avenging of Pala, for everything else is already lost.

The luggage was already stowed away in the boot. The boxes of minerals all carefully wrapped and packed and put on the back seat. Khan's wife, who had got over the nausea stage, had smiled her first smile for three months when she understood that they were going back to the city. Devi was getting into the car. Then the madman appeared, looking madder than ever.

Khan would have gladly killed the fellow and, as it was, tried to shy Madam away so that she did not see him arriving in the timber lorry.

Devi listened to the wood cutter's story, then turned to Maw.