Silverfish, page 12
Seven or eight or ten, twelve or fourteen, he had copies of them all. With atrocious spellings and syntax bequeathed by half-literate pavement typists that shamed him, in poor paper that would come off in flakes in days not far away, in the cavern of his Shantiniketan bag, in cheap cardboard files that once held student papers.
They would come off in flakes, vanish in the dark of their nestling nooks, just as his words of memory poured out to Rini and Dipanjan, in Rini’s rushed hand, on large sheets of paper, lay on the study table in Sudeep’s room, waiting for the letters of the press that would never come. Words and a novel-excerpt, an avant-garde play called Spindrift that would now pass into the garbage, with heaps of cigarette ash, empty bottles, junked magazines, medicine brochures. What happened to the letters he left at the clerks’ desks all these days? Sudeep’s pale ghost seemed to ask in his mind as he emptied moist reminiscences into the dump, recapitulations from the early days of an independent nation when a boy from East Pakistan had roamed the streets of Calcutta, working as an errand boy in shops, stealing passages of heart-rending beauty from moments at roadside bookshops.
Absently, he groped inside his bag for the copies of the letters. He always carried them around. Who knew who might ask for them, and when?
The feel of the hot, sweaty day was all around, cutting through the whir of the fans overhead.
His groping hand came up against a sheet of paper, and he pulled it out of the bag. They were not the copies of the letters he’d been looking for, but the form he had filled out a couple of minutes ago at the front desk. It was a form that asked for his essential information, his business at the office, whom he was here to meet.
The form lay loosely on his lap. He slipped his hand inside his bag again. He had to find the letters right now. He wished he had taken back his novel-excerpt and the text of his interview from Sudeep and Rini today.
‘You are number five thousand six hundred and sixty-five.’ The voice springing up on his right startled Milan.
It was the boy who was seated next to him.
‘My grandmother is five thousand six hundred and sixty-two. So you will have to wait till she comes out. And then those two men will go in. He will go in first.’ Even though he had lowered his voice suddenly, he had let out a glimpse of his age by pointing an awkward finger at the young man on the right, closer to the door, who had smiled nervously at the boy.
Milan’s hand had stopped moving inside the loose bowels of his bag, but he had forgotten to bring it out. Something in the quality of the child’s voice had struck him, touched an old well of despair. His accent neared that of street urchins, slum children, the ‘s’s especially, the lazy drawl too, and yet he looked more middle class than one who had tumbled out of the slums. Worse, it was too familiar. There were those children in the lower grades of his school, often from the garment factory slums near his house, the kids who played with marbles on the streets, frothed obscenities at their lips before they were old enough to understand their meanings.
‘Oh really?’ He said. Your grandmother is in there then?’
Yes. She has gone in to see the big officer.’ With the reply, the boy lifted his weight up on his arms, his palms flattened against the chair, his dusty feet planted firmly on the floor, his body swaying in the air. A small glob of snot sneaked out of his right nostril. Noisily, he drew it in with his breath.
‘So you’ve come along with your granny?’
Yes. My grandmother had her cataract operation, so she can’t see very well and I go with her wherever she goes. She holds my hand while crossing the streets.’ He corrected himself. Actually I hold her hand all the time when she is out of the house. She can’t see anything.’ ‘My grandmother was a teacher in Santharani Girls’ School. Arithmetic teacher, and she used to be very strict.’ ‘Santharani Girls’ School?’ Milan paid closer attention to the child’s half-lisping, half-literate drawl, feeling suddenly drawn into the conversation beyond a groping curiosity in the restless, almost adult-ish boy.
Yes. Santharani Girls’ School.’ He repeated, thumping his bony backside down on the chair. The two men were out of earshot. Snot had started running out of the boy’s nostrils again, and Milan saw thick lines of grime along the young folds of his skin around the neck, in his ears. His unruly hair needed cutting. Over forty years of teaching in a school, he had almost come to be observant about these things only as a woman could.
‘So what is your grandmother doing here?’
‘They are not sending her the cheques anymore. So she is speaking to the big officer and he’ll have them sent to her again.’
Your grandmother doesn’t teach any more?’
‘She used to teach, but she is too old and now cannot see very well after the operation. She was a very strict teacher and all the boys in the neighbourhood were scared of her.’ A note of pride crept into his voice. ‘They couldn’t do anything to me as they knew I live in her house.’ He snatched some newspapers and old magazines lying on the table before. Your moustache is strange!’
Milan touched the end of his slight, salt-and-pepper moustache almost unconsciously. ‘Well, you see, I’m a teacher too, and it helps to have a scary moustache so that the students listen to me.’
The boy looked at him incredulously. ‘You are a teacher, too? In which school?’
‘Girish Ghosh Memorial Boys’ School, in Baghbazar. Have you been to Baghbazar?’
‘No, my grandmother only lets me go as far as Amal’s stationery shop near the railway crossing. She says that there are kidnappers around. But I can take care of myself and screw the bastards!’
The tone of fuming, helpless bitterness was as shocking as were the obscenities on the young mouth, the soft, grimy lines around the lips that had begun to show a hardening beyond his age. Milan thought of the boys in the lower grades of his school who seemed to have strayed in the classrooms by mistake, from their slums and working class homes, scattering cracked marbles and spitballs and coarse words on the last benches, vanishing just the way they’d come. But had he ever sat so close to one, seen the unruly glob of snot breathed in and out so near his strange moustache.
‘And which school do you go to?’ He asked the boy, pretending he hadn’t heard the last words.
‘I used to go to a school near the bus stop.’ He said, with the careless abandon of a child who knows the world in terms of his familiar markers. ‘But I stopped going after my father lost his job.’
One of the young men had left the room. Perhaps he had gone out for a smoke. A couple had walked in and sat on a couple of chairs around the seat the young man had emptied. The woman was whispering something urgently to the man who stared ahead indifferently.
‘But why did you stop going to school?’
‘Oh my dad lost his job at the biscuit factory after the bastards sold it off. Now the bum just sits and mopes around, drinks our money away. Useless piece of shit, bloody Bhaskar!’ He arched back on the bony chair, stretched his arms and cracked his fingers in the way street-side workers did on tea-stalls early in the morning. ‘Do you have the money in that bag? Granny said that the hundred rupee notes had to be tied in a bundle in brown paper or they might be stolen in a bus.’ He bit his lips, looked worried. ‘Don’t tell her that I told you about the money, she’ll be mad, the old witch!’
Milan wondered if the boy wasn’t a little touched in the head. The adult ring in his voice, the carelessness with which the vile words were flung out sounded nothing like a child’s, and yet what did they all mean? Hundred rupee notes? Money in his bag? The sound of traffic was a muffled roar here, from the street outside that was one of the busiest in the city, and the boy’s restless voice seemed to recede into the background, merge into the roar outside. But the boy stretched out his hand, touched the form on Milan’s lap.
‘That’s your name, isn’t it? M-I…M, I, I’d learnt the whole alphabet in school, but I forgot. Granny is always after my ass to sit down and study.’ He ran his fingers on the sheet of paper and Milan noticed that they were rough and callused, stained with nicotine and grime. ‘But it’s such a drag and I’m too tired in the evening. She’s a schoolteacher and knows nothing else.’
‘So what do you do in the morning? Play with your friends all day?’ Milan tried to bring cheer into his voice, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the strange, callused child-hands, fingers running over the form lying on his lap. ‘What’s your favourite sport, cricket or soccer?’
‘I have no time for playing, mister.’ He looked up from the papers, and the look of disdain was clear on his dirt-smeared face. ‘I work in a factory. I used to work in a cigarette factory before, but the bastards threw me out.’ He paused, drew in his breath menacingly, spat out the words like a serpent’s hiss. ‘Suckers! Now I work in a firecracker factory. One of these days I’ll bring home a firebomb and blow it up under bloody Bhaskar’s ass.’ His fingers curled up, blood drained from his small, dirty knuckles, the fist formed was a fatal knot of flesh and bones. ‘It’ll blow his brains out, spill his guts on the road!’
‘Can you do this?’ In a moment he had loosened his fist of fury, flattened both his palms against his mouth with his elbows sticking out in either directions, and blew out air to make the most perfect farting noise. Long, gasping and diseased. The woman stopped whispering and stared scandalized at the boy, but the man would not be roused out of his indifference.
‘That’s diarrhoea.’ The boy removed his palms from his mouth. His face had reddened from the exertions, and he was a little breathless. ‘And then there’s the one out of a full stomach, say after you’ve come home from a wedding dinner…’
This time the angle between the two palms crushing his mouth was different, and so was perhaps the force of the air blown out. The fart was pining and mournful, but also shorter.
‘Those are stinkbombs. Here, can you do this one?’
The woman had now moved her scandalized stare from the boy to Milan, she thought that the boy was with him. That was some elder indeed – what other than a careless distant uncle, a pampering grandpa maybe? What if the peons and security boys threw them all out for making a ruckus in a government office?
Not on many occasions had Milan felt so thankful for his forty years at a school with its irregular stream of slum children, street urchins, staged fights in the manner of Bollywood film heroes. He’d been in a class with fifty of them, and more. One had to be gentle with them, always, and get them distracted, which was never difficult. They had the attention span of two-year olds.
‘That’s not a nice thing to do here, you see, this in an important government office and there are big officers inside. Why don’t you tell me about the firecrackers you made? You must be a very brave boy, making firecrackers and rockets and bombs?’
‘Officers, my ass.’ The boy farted through his mouth again, kicked the table hard so that the newspaper slid down on the floor, the front page awkwardly staring at the ceiling, ‘COMMUNIST PARTIES ORGANIZE RALLY TO PROTEST IMF POLICIES…MOVIE STAR EVADES TAXES’…and to the right, ‘EAST BENGAL LOSES LAST HOPES OF LEAGUE’.
‘They’re all thieves, granny says, from the prime minister to the clerk.’ The farting continued in intervals, between the words that were thrust out, carelessly, with venom. ‘The fat officer said granny would have to pay him six thousand rupees to get her pension cheques cleared. That’s the going rate in this office. No files cleared without grease in the wheel, six thousand in ready cash.’ He let out a spurt of wind after the diarrheoa fashion, as that seemed to be his favourite. ‘She had all the money I got from the firecracker factory in envelopes. But the hundred rupee notes had to be wrapped in brown paper, tied in strings.’
The paper floated down on the floor as Milan’s body seemed to lose all sensation. The form he had filled up a few minutes ago lay around his feet, surrounded by grimy slippers, the page stating his name and information and business, and need to meet the officer inside.
‘Grandpa, you dropped your form.’ The paper had caught the boy’s attention and he had stopped mouthing farts. ‘You are number five thousand six hundred and sixty-five.’
‘My grandmother is five thousand six hundred and sixty-two. You will have to wait till she comes out. And then those two men will go in. And then you, and then it’ll be those two.’ He pointed at the couple; the woman frowned and the man grinned listlessly.
‘Grandpa, are you all right?’ He jabbed his bony elbow into Milan’s ribs. It was hurtful, and brought tears to his eyes. The boy had become worried at his silence, seemingly with a familiar kind of worry that he had grown up with, spent much of his life in the midst of. ‘You’ll need the form when you go inside. And the cash, and then they’ll clear your file.’
‘Yes of course, my dear.’ Milan said. He still didn’t have the strength to pick up the form. It seemed to mock him, his own name and information, the words with which he had filled out the blanks carefully, beyond the grasp of the little boy next to him who knew things he didn’t.
‘You know a lot about things here.’ His voice was weak, almost a whisper. ‘Have you been here many times before?’
‘Oh yes, many, many times. I’ve lost count. But then granny said it’s no use coming till we could save the money, so we came again after a few months.’ He paused, pointed a finger at the door. ‘They have put new doors, the old ones were half eaten by rats, I think. And a man downstairs, near the door, used to sell pink ice-cream bars. He’s not there anymore, probably kicked the bucket. And back then they used to stamp the forms after you signed them, with a blue box inside.’ He pointed at the form, still lying at Milan’s feet. ‘It’s getting dusty. They’ll make you write a new one if this one is spoiled.’
Milan was only half listening, and he made no effort to pick up the form. The boy stooped and picked it up, placed it back on Milan’s lap. ‘You are number five thousand six hundred and sixty-five. It’ll be over an hour before you can go in. First, these two men…’
Slowly, Milan took the boy’s bony hand into his own. He spread open the fingers, looked at the lines of dirt and grime on the palm, the stains of chemicals and nicotine under the nails, in the creases of the skin. The boy stared a little vacantly, but did not pull his hand away.
‘You should go to a doctor and get these stains checked.’ His voice was a listless whisper. ‘You’re too young to be working at these factories, and these could be chemical burns. And you should go back to school. Not to the one close to the bus stop, a better school.’ He sensed tears muffling his words, and he stopped.
The boy now pulled his hand away roughly.
‘Oh I’m fine. One day I’ll bring home a firebomb and blow it up under bloody Bhaskar’s ass. I can let off a firecracker on my bare hands and they give me a rupee every time I do it, the overseers and the older workers. I can also say all of Amitabh Bachchan’s movie dialogues and they give me coins when I do. Back in the cigarette factory one guy had taught me how to eat smoke, put the burning end of the cigarette in your mouth.’ He jerked hard at the hand Milan had held, as if he wished to severe the insulted limb, get rid of it, establish his prowess once and for all. ‘You oldies are all the same, sticks-in-the-mud!’ He didn’t mean it. It came more out of the momentum of touched self-esteem, of the bitterness at being treated with affection, told what to do, lack of faith in a hand that could toss exploding firecrackers. He probably didn’t dislike Milan, had even taken pity on him at his evident lack of knowledge in official matters, such as the importance of forms.
He was about to say something. But just then, the peon came in through the door.
‘Is Amlan Nandy here?’ He asked, looking around the room.
‘I’m Amlan Nandy.’ The boy raised his hand, his small frame tautened in a formal posture, a long way from what he had been less than minutes ago.
Your grandmother is asking for you. Inside.’
As soon as the peon left, Amlan Nandy relaxed, turned to Milan. ‘I have to help my granny out.’ He stood up. ‘She’s blind as a bat, the old witch!’ He winked at Milan, and walked off.
He paused at the door, turned back. ‘You better clean up your form. They’ll want to see it.’
After he vanished, Milan sat for a few seconds, clamping his palms around his temples, his elbows on his thighs. Was his blood pressure close to a red flag? Would Dr Biswas have panicked at the sight of his little pressure pump wrapped around his arm now, at this moment? The questions coursed through his mind, but he saw them as if from behind a glass door, beyond touch, beyond feel, consciousness.
