Tikkipala (49 page)

‘If we only had a single jungle flower for thankfulness,' a woman said.

‘Or some of the fruits that rained purple juices in the summer,' said another.

Around Maw the mothers pressed, carrying their children and even in the darkness you could feel everybody smiling. The older children, who had fat red cheeks from eating Coarseones' chocolate, made no sound at all, but with their eyes fixed on the shapes of their elders in the dark and remembered the Tikki with a shiver.

Devi thought, at first, of trying to snatch the child from the giant's arms but soon realised that it was impossible. Even seated, the Tikki was so huge that Devi could not reach high enough. And also she was afraid that if she made a sudden grab, the Tikki might crush her boy.

There was only one thing for it. To beg. She cautiously moved out into the middle of the cave where the Tikki could see her. The only light was the glow from the giant's skin.

The great glowing silhouette seemed to only slowly become aware of Devi. Then her mouth opened, a dark and glistening cavern and the Tikki let out a shrill high scream. Tikkipala jerked awake, stared around him for a moment, then started screaming.

The placed echoed and re-echoed with the mixed sounds of fear and fury.

‘Give him to me,' whispered Devi holding out her arms. Her mouth had gone too dry for sound. ‘Please give him to me because I love him. Because I am his mother.'

The Tikki stopped shrieking when Devi spoke and leant forwards, peering, as though this talking human was surprising her. Tikkipala had seen Devi, and was now struggling and screaming, ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.'

The Tikki went blinking in Devi's direction as though her sight was not good. Her eyes were glazed and she kept shaking her head as though it hurt. Her face, which was tufted with white hairs, even in the semi darkness Devi could make out the sagging flesh and eyelids that hung like soft sacks over bulging blood-shot eyes. The huge face was so soft that it seemed to be almost gushing, like flesh turning liquid.

‘Please,' she said again, her voice more under control. Then realising that her words meant nothing to this creature, she began, with sign and body language to indicate that the child was hers and that she wanted it back.

Tikkipala kept on struggling, and screaming, ‘Mummy, Mummy.'

As the Tikki reached out her hands to grab Devi, Devi screamed, ‘Jump, Tikkipala, jump. Quick.'

But the child hesitated, stunned with fear and shock and in that moment the Tikki slapped her hands back down on him.

Devi became seized with a sudden anger. ‘You give him back. He is mine. Give him back to me this minute.'

The Tikki gazed at Devi vaguely and started fiddling with the child, pinching at his skin so that he shrieked, picking him up in one hand and giving him a little shake as though testing him.

‘Don't you dare, stop that,' screamed Devi.

As Devi felt her fists echoing round the stinking cave like a mockery the Ama stone, that hung in its bark package round Devi's neck, started to let out a loud whistling sound.

The monster's eyes instantly widened. Loosening her grip on Tikkipala, she made a grab with her mighty fingers, for the Ama stone.

Devi, clinging to the Tikki's knee, grabbed Tikkipala.

The Tikki raised her fist and snatched for the stone again, missed again and started screaming.

Devi leapt to the ground and, by the time Tikki realised the child was gone, Devi was racing away.

The Tikki rose slowly and came after her. In three great strides she had caught up and got Devi by the ankle. Devi could feel her bones start to scrunch and bend in the dreadful grasp. The pain was so terrible that she felt her grasp of Tikkipala loosening when she had a moment of frantic clarity. Maw had said the Ama destroyed gods.

Devi grabbed the Ama, that she now thought of as Devibidwartis, in her fist, suppressing a shriek of pain because it was so hot.

Ripping the precious thing that was going one day to make her famous from her neck, snapping the golden chain, Devi hurled it into the open stenching mouth of the Tikki.

There came a brief silence and then a sizzling roar like water hurled into a furnace. A belch of scarlet smoke gushed from Tikki's mouth. She reeled. Let go of Devi's leg.

Devi, with Tikkipala hugged tight, sprang free.

Tikki began gagging as though she was going to vomit as Devi rushed round the cavern, looking for a way out.

She had hoped there would be a bigger entrance than the one by which she came, for how could such a huge creature have entered by the tiny tunnel. But after a few moments, she realised that there was no other and that she would have to return the same tight and terrible way that she had come and this time with a child in her arms. She didn't care about anything now. She had her child back. She would save him, no matter how difficult.

Shoving her cringing child ahead of her she thrust herself back into the awful dark tight place.

Before she had gone ten yards the tunnel became filled with stench and behind her she saw the glow of Tikki. She was coming down the tunnel after Devi as though she was a snake. It seemed impossible, for the creature that Devi had seen out there had been perhaps a hundred times too wide to fit. The tunnel reverberated with Tikki's screams. Devi thought her ear drums would burst. Tikkipala kept crying, ‘Mama, Mama, Mama.'

The first faint gleam of dawn came glowing behind the mountains and still the people of the tribe stood listening to the Tikki screaming. Then they then saw, illuminated by the rosy sky of dawn and silhouetted among the skimpy trees, the daughter of the Raja coming. She was running wildly, her mouth was open, her breath came in grunting gasps. Her clothes were torn and her hands and feet were bleeding. And grabbed against her chest was the sacrifice, the thing that was going to save the tribe, the only thing the Tikki wanted. Devi was carrying the son of King Maw whose name was Tikkipala which means ‘Avenger's Sacrifice.'

Then the earth began to shake and the trees to tremble. The sound of Tikki's howls began to fill the jungle. The Tikki appeared, staggering on mighty deadened toes. Again and again she reached out and tried to grab Devi. Her great feet crushed rocks and her face cracked till glowing scarlet fluids ran from it. And still she came on. The child in Devi's arms had become silent with fear. And as the Tikki reached for one last snatch, there came a sizzling roar as though a volcano was erupting and a great burst of smoke came gushing from her throat. She fell, crashing down onto the jungle floor where once the trees had been, and lay there.

The people of the tribe watched, their hearts aching. Through the clouds of gathering vapour they could see her twitching like a dying creature. Then she started melting. She began to fall apart, becoming parts of birds and wolf and oil and stone. She slowly slithered into pieces till all that was left of her were little quaking parts of wings and minerals. The paws of bears and the claws of eagles twitched and clattered against the fallen bits of tree. The ears and lips of children began to mingle with the beards of men. Human voices called out of the heaps of bones and stones and chemicals and mingled with the slap and slop of the Tikki breaking up, and the frightened sobbing of Tikkipala. Womens' smiles lay curling in the dust. Fingertips
scuttled. And at last all that was left of the Tikki was her belly which started swelling as though she was with child. And when it became as high as a tree it burst with the roaring sound. In the middle of the subsiding explosion, red hot and throbbing, lay the Ama stone. Devibidwartis, but now ten times its former size.

It seemed as though an age passed during which the huge jewel throbbed in its bed of billowing dust. Then it too exploded in a billow of blue and scarlet, which hung on the air briefly, then mingled with the Tikki's orange mouth smoke.

It was so dark, then so silent, Devi, so desperate, that it was only at that moment she saw the crowd of tribal people. She flinched wildly and held Tikkipala tightly, fearing they would try to wrench him from her.

‘You murdering bastards, you filthy saalas,' she screamed.

The people of the tribe raised their hands to their faces, as though trying to ward the curses off. They backed away from her. Devi looked among them, and her eyes found Maw.

She had no words for him, her fury was so great. Her eyes burnt with so much hatred, he closed his own. Her gaze burnt him. He turned his head away. He could not look at her, holding his weeping son against her breast.

‘You bastard,' said Devi ‘You murdering sick bastard.' Pursing up her mouth she spat at him. Then she swung round and continued down the mountain side.

The people did not stir, even when the sound of the child's sobbing had died away completely.

‘She has destroyed the Tikki,' the people whispered. ‘Tikki was our God and how can God be weaker than a woman of the Coarseones?' Then they looked to the king.

‘Tikki means revenge,' said Maw. ‘And we have never had a god.' And then, taking wide leaves from the remaining tree Maw began to fold into them the curdling, stirring parts of Tikki, taking up a powder here, a fluid there, a piece of this, a bit of that.

The children asked, whispering, ‘Where has the Tikki gone?'

‘Into our next world,' said the subtle ones. ‘Into the place where our trees still stand and where our walkways are unbroken.'

‘Where our subtle tools wait for us, in their perfection. Where our instruments for splitting the smallest parts of matter and extracting the essences of life are still as small as the wings of flying ants.'

‘Where bodies fly, hearts are happy and youth remains forever.'

‘In a world without the Coarseones, where we live our dreams again.'

‘Where the light is gentle and the sound harmonious.'

The children, even that morning, had had ambitions of becoming lorry drivers, company cooks and prostitutes. But that had been before the Tikki died.

Silently and with their heads hanging, the people thought how nearly they had been saved. In another moment, if the Coarseone had not interfered, their Tikki would have risen again, clever, strong and maternal.

‘Instruct us, Lord, what shall we do?' the people asked.

And Maw told them.

Devi struggled down, exhausted now, shaking, Tikkipala so heavy in her arms that she could hardly walk. It seemed a hundred miles to the place where the road began,
although in the days when she had come up here to find minerals, it had only taken her an hour. She got there at last, and then did not know what to do.

As she stood, trying to calm the child and still her own shivering, Devi saw a car headlight chiselling through the dark and Nirmal leapt from an army jeep. He was gasping. ‘I stole it and they are after me,' he said.

‘Papa, Papa, Papa,' screamed Tikkipala. ‘The giant caught me but then she got broken.'

‘He called me Papa, said Nirmal. ‘For the first time, he called me Papa.'

All the way down from the high jungle, sitting in the timber lorry, Maw, wearing a lungi thrust upon him by the driver, held his precious handful of folded leaves carefully against his chest as though there was something alive and valuable in them. Even when the driver stopped to eat and pee, Maw did not put them down, till the wood cutters in the lorry starting laughing at him, saying, ‘What have you got in there, Maw? A bag of diamonds?'

‘Better,' said Maw, but would not let them see or touch.

‘What made you come?' Devi asked Nirmal, as they began to drive back down.

‘I suddenly realised what was happening,' Nirmal said. ‘I suppose it is because I know about statues. I suddenly knew what the Tikki was and what they had taken Tikkipala for.'

All night the people of the tribe climbed through the thinned out jungles, stripping, picking, carrying and at the first light they all met again at the church of Father Gomez.

The priest, standing at his window, saw them coming. ‘They feel remorse for having abandoned me to the monster,' he told himself. He felt gratified as he shaved and dressed. When he was ready he would go down to the church and say his first Mass. It was a good thing he had not done that last night, because they would have been interrupted by that horrifying yeti or whatever it was. The memory of that revolting jungle creature still sent shudders down his spine. He would never go out after dark again, he vowed.

Outside the church the people of the tribe prepared the things they'd brought, pounding, wetting, squeezing, till the creamy stuff was ready.

‘It smells so funny,' the children said, as they bent to sniff. ‘What is it for?'

‘It is our way of saying ‘thank you' to the world,' the elders said. ‘Because we have no fruit or flowers, we must make do with juice of bark and all of you must drink it.'

‘Will it make us sleepy?' asked the children, ‘Because we've got school tomorrow and it's our first exams.' They remembered the times, before the Coarseones came, when they had drunk the ceremonial soma and slept for two days after.

‘It will make you sleep well tonight,' the elders said. ‘It will be the deepest sleep that you have ever had.'

‘It tastes disgusting,' cried the children, wrinkling up their faces. ‘We don't like this. Give us Coca Cola.'

But eldest became strict and forced the children, saying ‘If you don't drink we'll lock you in tomorrow and then you'll miss the exams altogether.'

Some of the mother started crying when the elders told them, ‘Your babies must drink too. Give to the babies first then drink it after, yourselves.'

‘Not our babies, please,' they cried. ‘We will drink it all, the babies' share as well.'

But the elders were insistent.

It was ten o'clock by the time Father Gomez was ready. To tell the truth, he prepared himself rather slowly, for he was apprehensive.

When the lorry carrying Maw reached the hut in which the thags now entertained the woodcutters with arrak and women, Maw said, ‘Stop here a minute. I need a shit.'