Tikkipala (47 page)

‘But there is nowhere else,' sobbed Devi. ‘Khan, come. You must drive me up there at once.'

‘It is useless,' said Maw.

‘I am going,' said Devi.

‘Steady, think clearly,' advised the Raja.

But it was too late for Devi to be steady. ‘I shall go this minute.' Already she was pulling on her shoes.

‘Alright,' said the Raja. ‘Let Devi and Maw go up with Khan then. Who knows, we might even find him on the way. The rest of us should stay here in case he's found.'

‘Lend me the car and I will drive it,' Maw said. ‘Now that the thags are all gone you will need Khan down here.'

Devi, her fists clenched tight, leant forwards, staring through the windscreen, peering and peering into every bush, behind every rock, round every corner as Maw drove her up to the high jungle.

‘I am certain that that woman has got my child. Probably someone whose child has died,' she said to Maw. ‘I saw a Hindi movie once in which a child died, and the mother became obsessed with stealing one from someone else. At least she will look after Tikkipala. At least she won't hurt him. Probably at this very moment she is kissing him and hugging him.'

Maw was silent.

The Raja got Khan to drive him to the village to phone influential people in Bidwar, Bombay and Delhi. He rang the chief of police first. ‘My grandson is missing. I want several lorry loads of constables accompanied by experienced officers to be dispatched up here at once, for a major crime must be averted.' He rang the General, ‘Please send several squads of soldier and also weaponry and tanks, for we will very likely require a military operation to find my grandson.'

‘I am told to inform you that the Raja of Bidwar has sent messages to police chief and also head of army,' the bearer told Queenie, Mala and Srila in the Bidwar Club. ‘He is saying it is world war three.'

The ladies leapt from their seats, spilling mah-jong pieces in all directions.

Queenie rushed to the phone and made an international call. ‘Is that the President of the United States? Well, kindly inform him that something must be instantly done, because my grandson, who is a person of high standing, has been kidnapped…yes, of course this is an international matter you fool…how dare you put the phone down on me? How dare you!'

The news came to Sangita. ‘Your great grandson had vanished from the hill palace of Parwal, in just the same way as your own son, Anwar, disappeared.'

‘This cannot be,' said Sangita. ‘It was my husband's son that Ganesh stole then gave back again. How can my granddaughter's child have any part in this two generations later?'

The people who told her did not understand what she said, and went away saying to each other, ‘The Ranee's mind is almost totally unhinged by now, and all those boilings of crystals is the cause of it.'

But after they had gone, Sangita could not stop thinking about Tikkiapala, and worrying in case he did not become born again in Devi's body.

Everyone felt a need to be doing something and no one could work out what would be the best thing to do.

‘Let us go to the temple and make an offering,' suggested Mala

‘That is a good idea,' agreed Srila. ‘We will buy some good garlands and expensive sweets to present to Durga who, after all, is a mother and might have it in her heart to have mercy on us and return our nephew.'

Pala's sister carried Tikkipala up the tunnel on the ligament. She had been chosen because it was her brother who was going to be avenged. It was heavy work for the tribe to pull an adult up the tunnel and terribly hard work for the person being brought up too, especially if they carried something heavy. But Pala's sister was light as well as strong and, because she was a woman, was more likely to be able to pacify a sorrowful child.

‘Hush hush, don't cry,' she soothed Tikkipala, as she held him against her breast, and with the ligament round her waist, pressed her feet step by step against the dark sides. The journey up the tunnel was a terrible one and there was no one still alive who had succeeded in doing it. The last time it had been used was to bring up the Coarsechild. But bringing up the child of their Maw must be different. This time it must not be done roughly. There was just enough room for a person inside the tunnel to press against the walls with their hands on one side and with their feet on the other. At intervals, previous generations had cut little niches in the sides for no one, not even the strongest, could make their way from bottom to top without a rest. There, every now and again, Pala's sister would stop for a while. She had to hold Tikkipala tightly all the time, for if she dropped him, he would fall to his death.

Tikkipala screamed for the first hour. The pitch dark tunnel, into which not even the smallest ray of light could penetrate was filled with his cries, which were so loud that Pala's sister feared that he might be heard outside in the world even though the rock was a hundred feet thick. There was very little air and what there was smelled gassy and dangerous. She was afraid he would run out of oxygen before they reached the top if he screamed so much. After an hour he fell silent and became limp in her arms so that she started fearing he was dead, but when she put her ear against his chest, she
found that he was still breathing and had probably only lost consciousness. She had no children of her own and all these hours with this hot, heavy child in her arms was awaking longing feelings in her that made her stroke his cheek and run her fingers in his hair. She found his lips in the dark and kissed them with her own. His breath tasted sweet like honey.

‘Oh, little prince. Oh, baby Maw who is come to save us,' she whispered. ‘You are like the Jesus that Father Gomez talks about. He died to save his people too.'

Down at the palace, Nirmal sat, thinking.

The Raja, passing by with soldiers at his heels, gave a look of scorn at the lethargic son-in-law, who sat head in hands while everyone else was dashing.

A terrible understanding came into Nirmal's mind. He sprang up just as the Raja and his soldiers came rushing back, having found nothing.

‘We have to go up to the high jungle,' he shouted to the Raja. ‘We must go at once because that is where Tikkipala is and if we do not hurry they will have killed him.'

‘Devi and Maw have gone. They will find him if he is there,' the Raja said. He resisted saying, ‘Maw is more likely to find the Tikkipala than you.'

‘It's urgent,' cried Nirmal, grabbing at the Raja's kurta. ‘Maw has arranged to have Tikkipala killed.'

The wood cutters had destroyed the tribe's pure place of sacrifice and, for a long time, they had wondered what they would do when Maw brought them the perfect sacrifice for they now had no place at which to offer it. Often the elders and the subtle ones would meet and talk about the problem. For a while they considered going onto the
mountain peak, for the tree cutters had not yet reached there. But it would take weeks and even when they got there they did not know of any pure and holy place.

So when the people of the tribe realised that Father Gomez's church was a place for meeting God, they felt filled with joy and realised that their problem had been solved.

Devi and Maw reached the high jungle at last. Devi felt so certain that the moment she got there she would find Tikkipala, so felt shocked to only see only a group of tribal people waiting.

‘Ask them, Maw. Have they seen my son?'

When the people of the tribe saw Devi, they turned away from her and could not meet her eyes. ‘It is all ready, Lord,' they told Maw in his own language. ‘The place is prepared.'

‘Why do they look away like that?' asked Devi. ‘Do they know something?'

When Father Gomez saw Maw talking to his parishioners again, he felt anger rise, for he thought he had chased the fellow away once and for all.

But now this fellow had reappeared and would undoubtedly be searching for any fault he could find in Father Gomez's ministry so that he could seize it for himself.

‘I have given thought to your Hindu teaching,' Father Gomez cried to Maw. ‘And this is what I have to say to you. Christianity is a religion of peace and love, whereas your Hindu gods require bloody sacrifice.'

Respectfully the priest touched the cross round his neck on which was nailed an agonised bleeding Jesus with nails hammered through his hands and feet.

‘Maw is not a Hindu, Father Gomez,' said Devi. ‘But have you seen my child? Is he here?' When Father Gomez look blank and shook his head, she thought he must
have misunderstood her. ‘We think one of the tribal women has kidnapped him. You must persuade her to give him up.'

The priest looked at Maw and Maw gave a little shrug.

All that afternoon, with despair growing in her by the minute, Devi ran through the stump-strewn jungle, calling, ‘Tikkipala, Tikkipala, where are you? Your mother is here. Oh, my darling, come to me.'

By the time darkness fell, she was so tired and bruised that her legs would hardly function, but there was not the smallest sign of her little boy. She had not seen Maw since they arrived, but supposed he must be searching somewhere else for the child.

The priest offered Devi a bed for the night.

‘I can't sleep,' she said. ‘How can you expect me to? I must find my child.'

He tried to soothe her, ‘There is nothing you can do in the night. You must wait till the morning. Even if he is here, nothing can happen to him on such a dark night.'

Devi lay on the priest's hard bed, eyes open, staring into the blackness and could not wait for morning. At last she could not bear to lie there any longer and, getting up, went over to the window, from which she could see the Sita Timbers lumbermen's hut. It stood in darkness and she knew there was no one there this evening. According to the thag servants at the Parwal palace, a hut had been built some way down the mountain for the lumber men's recreation. ‘They are able to be enjoying drinking and females and such things,' they had told Devi. How the thags knew, she could not imagine.

There came a sudden shriek like the voice of a child and Devi almost screamed. She rushed to the window and leant her elbows on the sill but now there was only oppressive darkness and gigantic quiet. There was not even the sound of wind
blowing through leaves, because the trees were gone. No sound came from the huts of the tribal people. No light either.

The sound of the scream woke Father Gomez too. Going over to the window he saw the shadows of the tribal people slipping away through the trees. They walked furtively as though they were planning mischief, he thought. They were moving in the direction of his church. Suddenly he became seized with a worry that they were planning to do something blasphemous there. He had never trusted them. He never really felt he had got them to understand about Jesus and his mother, Mary. They had been too interested in the church, had asked him about sacrifices. And when he had tried to show them how to light the candles, they had said that light was a bad thing. They were going to offer an animal sacrifice to their pagan god in Father Gomez's newly consecrated church. Suddenly he was sure of it. Taking his torch and shivering with apprehension, he slipped out into the black night and followed the people of the tribe.

Devi decided to wake the priest. After all it was his duty to comfort the afflicted.

But when she knocked on his bedroom door, there was no answer. She knocked again, louder, not feeling guilty at waking him because her need was so great.

‘Father Gomez, Father Gomez,' she called through the door.

In the end, feeling her way with her hands she went into Father Gomez's kitchen and felt for the candle and the match she had seen him put away last night. It took her a long time, groping in the dark, but her fingers encountered it at last. She went out and stood on the porch, not lighting the candle yet, in case it was blown out by the
wind. She would go to the huts of the tribal people, wake them, find out where Maw was.

Pala's sister, carrying Tikkipala, appeared at last out of the hidden place among the rocks and the people of the tribe were waiting silently. The child was asleep in the woman's arms, having exhausted himself with later bouts of sobbing. The people gathered round him, talking in breaths, letting their fingers hover near his cheeks but never touching him in case he woke.

‘He is beautiful,' said one woman and she felt sad because she had never prepared a human child before.

No one answered Devi's knockings on the tribal hut either. The door was not closed and she pushed it open and went inside. You can tell when there is someone in a house. No matter how quiet they are you can always tell. Devi knew, even before she lit her candle, that there was no one there. After that she moved from hut to hut, finding each one empty. There were not even babies in the cradles.

It was as though all the tribal people had gone away and Father Gomez too.

The church was very dark. There was no light apart from one candle and the red gleam of the altar light. Father Gomez had to flash his torch around for quite some time before he could see. When he did, he gasped with dismay. Bleeding fleshy pieces were nailed to the signs of the cross.

He ran his light over the pews. The people of the tribe were all sitting, absolutely still, absolutely silent. They did not stir when Father Gomez's light fell on their faces. The babies lay as still as dolls in their parent's arms. Everybody was naked.

Father Gomez resisted the desire to explain that nudity is not acceptable in a church.

When he climbed up onto the pulpit he felt invisible. The tribal people seemed not to notice him.

‘I will say my first Mass now,' he said. The words came out a little shrill and shaky. He felt unnerved by the silent congregation. His voice sounded very loud and harsh.

There came footsteps at the door and a woman entered, a child in her arms. She was naked too. Father Gomez looked away quickly.