The Pale Face – A Love Story

Vishu, the Malayalam new year, was still days away. But the forest was already aflame with yellow blooms. The colour carpeted the narrow, black-topped paths and the bases of bamboo clusters, and spread under the eucalyptus groves. It seemed the forest was on fire, and gave the misty slopes a faint glow.

The fog’s icy lips placed a gentle kiss on the bars of a window. The traditional blue motifs of Wayanad’s Kattunayaka tribe covered the hut. The floor was layered with dry black cow-dung. It exuded a gentle warmth left by the sheep who had been resting there; the room was littered with their black droppings. Their animal odour filled the room. An old jute bag on the floor was filled with colocasia roots. Thread-like growth sprouted through the worn corners of the bag. Several porcupine quills also stuck out from the bag.

Dr Raghavan lay in the middle of this, his hands and legs bound. He was curled up like a leech, shivering in the intense cold. The sharp scent from the flowers of the arjun tree, intensified by the cold, rose from the forest.

He did not hear the herds of elephants trumpet, as they passed through their corridor nearby. He did not hear the ritualistic songs emanating from the tribal huts, as they invoked their ancestors.

Instead, he saw his childhood. When he was sick with severe jaundice and shat yellow for days, the medicine for the illness was a very bitter herbal concoction. He suddenly tasted that bitterness in his mouth.

At that moment, she came into the room. She was wearing shoes with heavy soles. She used the shoes to first turn his face, and then his body. When she realised that it was him, her breath stopped. She sprinkled water on his face. She fed him thin, diluted honey. When he opened his eyes, the unexpected sight of her doll-like face and the glow of love on her skin took him aback. She was wearing a yellow outfit – just like my jaundiced days, he thought and smiled.

‘Ammini, Ammini,’ he lisped. The effort of speaking, and the unbearable cold knocked him out.

She squatted and untied him. She massaged his feet and hands, warming him.

After her initial shock, she too ceased to hear the otherwise familiar sounds of the forest. She was cast back into the past – when his stethoscope was between her warm breasts, tickling her. He had taken out the earpieces from his ears and placed them in hers. She had wriggled at the sharp nail of his love piercing her being. Like her body, her eyes became wet with inexplicable desire. The blood of sorrow flowed out, wetting her cheeks.

Meanwhile, in his half-conscious mind, he dreamt of the pale face. The face pressed against the wooden bars of a window. It was not the face of a witch, ghost or alien. It was the face of a young orphan girl of about seven, held captive.

It was a secret, and he and his younger siblings Deepu, Peshdu and Meenu, had been unaware of this secret then.

*

Drenched in the incessant city rain from the morning, the passenger train chugged by as Raghavan and his siblings watched. The rails stretched away like shining snakes. As the train passed the fourth and fifth level crossings out of the city, the gates opened for road traffic with a rusty screech.

At the end of Joseph Road, near his house, was a building with a terrace on which was a large room. The window overlooked his house.

That morning, a young girl’s face was pressed against the wooden bars on the window of the room – a pale face. The strong sea breeze pressed her cotton garment to her thin, heaving torso.

‘Raghavchetta, I want to see too,’ his sister Meenu pleaded.

She had shoved Deepu aside and, pushing her spectacles to her nose, climbed up onto the slippery wall. She was next in line to look through the toy binoculars that he held.

‘Just a minute, Meenu. Let me finish.’

‘Can you see the ghost?’ Meenu was impatient.

He silenced her with an authoritative ‘Shhh.’

The view became clearer as he adjusted the binoculars. He could see her wide eyes. Her hair was dishevelled. Unsought kisses slept on her extraordinarily pale lips. He couldn’t help letting out a whoop of delight when he saw the bluish dark beauty spot above her upper lip.

.

‘Aiiyy!’ Raghavan took off his shirt and waved it like a flag. He saw her lips part. Unclean teeth showed through a half smile. She raised an open palm.

‘Hold this,’ said Raghavan and dropped the binoculars in Deepu’s lap. He darted forwarded like a monitor lizard. Then, like a seasoned acrobat, he balanced on the edges of the slippery compound wall and dived to grab a nearby arecanut tree. The ripe golden fruits on it jiggled, as if chuckling at his monkey act. He climbed, then swung the trunk of the tree enough to let him grab the tree next to it, and then the next. After swinging across seven trees, he finally dropped into the large, silent, isolated compound of Chentharaparambu.

There were heaps of old, discarded things sitting around. Old bottles and tin scrap stuffed into cheap jute bags. Stacks of old newspapers and magazines that formed stumpy walls around the junk. Tall casuarina trees created a green screen behind the building, so the light in the compound was dim and smoky. The honey-coloured, empty liquor bottles, reflected the tiny beams of sunlight that fell on them. An intolerable stench rose from empty, unwashed milk pouches, and mixed with the smell of rusting metal.

It was like a haunted place that was out of bounds for children, where civets raised their furry tails and shat, a huge mongoose chewed on a snake head and spat out the bones, bandicoots with huge bellies roamed the compound freely and small sea-crabs dug burrows everywhere.

The large metal gate had a huge lock on it. Raghavan wondered how the girl with the strange face could have got into the building.

He did not have permission to enter Chentharaparambu. He had been inside every other compound on Joseph Road, their grounds filled with green carpets of leaves and saltwort plants with tiny, pointed leaves. He could enter the area between the third and the fifth level crossings, which was walled on both sides. He had entered the ice-cream factory, which smelt of nail polish; he had entered the FCI warehouse which held the goods unloaded from the trains.

He ruled all the streets on the stretch between the beach and Joseph Road and beyond, up to the memorial for the leader of the political Party that ruled the state. He was the king of all the drains, which flowed with the city’s tears. He could speed through all these places without his feet touching the ground, as if he had wings under his half-sleeved vest. His subjects, an army of children, followed him. Apart from his siblings and friends from his neighbourhood, he was often joined by children from the fishermen’s colony and boys from what was known as Bangladesh Colony. He would give out orders, sitting on the walls of Joseph Road like a king, and meting out punishments to those who erred.

But even he, the all-powerful king, was not allowed to go into Chentharaparambu.

‘Raghu, you will have to get a tetanus injection,’ his mother would say to warn him against any attempt to break the rule. He obeyed. In any case, he had never found anything in the compound interesting enough, so the compound, from whose mouldy walls, the white lime was peeling off remained a ghost-like presence on Joseph Road.

The window of the room where he had seen her was open, an eye of the building. As he swung on a tall arecanut tree that had lost its top foliage, he drew closer to the window, and saw the flash of her petticoat.

The pale face. She looked like a Chinese doll. There was a golden hue on her cheeks. When she smiled, her skin reflected the rays of the sun. She had a beautiful, shining nose. Her unkempt brownish hair was dry and spread in all directions around her face. Knotted locks fell on her shoulder.

He smiled, a beautiful smile, as if white lilies were suddenly blooming. In its reflection, her eyes closed like those of a doll’s. She smiled.

She’s smiling, he thought. Couldn’t be a ghost. She has no blood-sucking fangs. No horns on her head.

With one mighty swing, like a trapeze artist, Raghavan brought the tree trunk close to her window and touched her hand, which held the wooden bars. She was a human child. And alive. He was reassured.

‘Here, eat.’ He held out a toffee from his pocket. He was shocked to see her nails. They had grown long from her fingertips and curled inwards. They were lined with black dirt and cracked in many places. She was in a pitiable state.

‘Why don’t you cut your nails?’ he asked. She stared at him; she did not seem to understand the question.

‘Name?’

She just shook her head.

‘Really, no name?’

‘Mmm.’ She seemed to mean no.

‘Try that sweet,’ he said. She blinked. ‘My god!’ he said. ‘You don’t even know that much? Look.’ He took out a toffee from his pocket and showed her how to unwrap it.

’Nice?’ he asked, after she had popped it into her mouth. She smiled again.

‘Are you Tamil?’ he asked.

‘Mmm,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘You don’t talk?’

She repeated the sound and shook her head. Her dry hair shook with it.

‘So, no name?’

‘Mmm … Mati Vadani,’ she lisped.

‘What sort of a name is that? Did you understand what I was asking?’

When she mumbled again, he said, ‘Then, you listen. Your name is Amminikutty.’ It was the name of his darling pet lamb, which had patches of yellowish brown fur.

She opened her mouth and laughed. It sounded like a set of bells ringing together. He smiled his bright, white smile.

‘Like it?’

‘Mmm.’ His conversation was one-sided interspersed with the sounds she made.

‘Hmm,’ he thought for a while. Then he continued. ‘Mati means enough. Enough is enough.’ He giggled at his own joke. Her eyes opened like yellow flowers on a small tree.

‘Nice?’ he asked.

‘You just keep saying “Mmm”. Let me call you Mati now. Ok?’ He laughed aloud.

Suddenly, a man wearing a black sari entered the room, wiping red betel juice from his lips. His clean-shaven face twisted with anger when he saw Raghavan. He slapped the girl hard and she fell face-down on the floor.

.

‘So bold, little one?’ he screamed, in a rough, scratchy voice.

Like a possessed sorcerer, he kicked the girl lying on the ground. ‘You bitch!’ he shouted, and kicked her again, vengefully.

Raghavan was shocked and lost his grip on the arecanut tree. He slipped down rapidly. His thin vest ripped. His dhoti fell off. The skin on his chest peeled off in several places. He fell on his backside in the sand. He could not move for a minute.

‘YOU!’ roared the man, glaring at him from the window. Raghavan shook himself out of the shock and ran without any sense of direction.

*

When the knots that had tied his voice in his throat eventually loosened, he would tell his siblings, ‘It was a girl.’ This happened only after he recovered from a severe jaundice that covered his cheeks and lips with a yellow sheen, as if they had been smeared with turmeric paste.

Meenu and Peshdu put their heads through the window to confirm if they had heard him correctly. ‘Really?’ they said.

‘Yes,’ he said

They were curious. ‘How did you get this chest injury? And how did you end up in the drain?’

‘My chest scraped against the trunk while I slid down,’ Raghavan said.

‘What about the jaundice?’

He had no answer. The green herbal concoction that he was given made his lips bitter, like the seeds of the snakewood tree. The fine powder with a metallic taste he took early in the morning had numbed his tongue. The juice of the butterfly-pea-flower administered to his eyes had left them feeling cool and heavy.

‘The medicines are strong, like your disease.’ Peshdu gave his opinion and stretched his hand through the window. ‘Your jaundice is not of any normal variety,’ he continued. ‘It is poisonous.’

He picked up the vessel outside the window in which Raghavan’s urine was collected, and showed it to him. ‘See, I am pouring your urine into the drain, and the whole drain becomes yellow. The fish come to feed on it and all of them die. The vaidya said this is an extraordinary variety of jaundice.’

The drain was full of urine-drinking catfish. Raghavan and his siblings emptied their bladders, every morning, into the drain. The moment the fish sensed their presence, they would jump up from the surface of the water in anticipation.

Every morning they said, ‘One, two, three,’ and three rainbows of urine would arc into the water.

‘Do you know how many of those fish died? Poor things,’ Meenu said sadly.

‘Your jaundice is more poisonous than a snakebite,’ Deepu said. ‘No medicine for it anywhere.’

‘We thought that the ghost had caught you and dropped you in the drain,’ Meenu said. ‘What happened really?’

There was a bitter taste in his mouth and on his lips. He remembered Chentaraparambu and he heard the Tamil abuses hurled at him.

His chest and the entire front of his body had been on fire. As he ran, he had stumbled on an old bicycle and fallen face down into a heap of bottles, and glass pieces. He managed to run and climb over the compound wall and fall on the other side, into a drain.

The water in the drain flowed over his head. Schools of fish surrounded him and bit his bruised body. The intense pain woke him up and he jumped out of the water and got his breath back.

It took weeks for him to recover fully. Every evening, he dragged his shivering body to his window to look at the other window far away.

There, sometimes the girl climbed onto the window as if to fly towards him, and giggled. At other times, the saree-clad figure came to the widow and glared out fiercely and Raghavan would pull the curtain and hid behind it.

Neither the boys of fishermen’s colony, nor any of the local gossips, like tailor Nanu and barber Kesu, could unravel the mystery of the menacing figure. Only Akku said that he remembered having seen ‘it’ there for some time. He was sure that the figure was the caretaker, and had been living there for years.

‘Several people come there from many distant places,’ said Velandi, from the neighbouring shop. ‘They perform black magic and conjure up spirits and cast spells. A businessman, and an Arab astrologer go there.’

‘There is a ritual in which red hibiscus flowers are used and a rooster is slaughtered,’ said Unninagan from the next compound, as he added manure to his coconut trees. ‘Some tantric from far way comes there to do it.’

‘It is not only that. The figure has the other business also,’ Vapputty said and winked. ‘The bush behind the railway track is the secret place. Ten rupees. So many boys go there. Its main job is gratifying that fat policeman who takes rounds on the beach. Then no need to fear anyone, right? Che!’ He spat in disgust.

Raghavan recovered and quietly began to return to Chentharaparambu. Away from all the stories, he clung to the arecanut tree, and offered a childhood to the girl who closed and opened her eyes like a doll. He gave her rose-flavoured honey toffees, and sweets made of jaggery that stuck to the teeth. He offered her fresh green mangoes, salted gooseberries, and sour pickles. He talked to her about his lamb, which had a mark on its forehead. He talked to her about his friend in the ice factory who gave him broken ice fruits. He talked to her about their old Ambassador car. He talked to her about butterflies and vast paddy fields.

She seemed to somehow understand most of it. She became familiar with birds and feathers, and the vast sky. Rats, bandicoots and mongoose appeared in her dreams and tickled her with their teeth. But she never understood what he said about the fish.

‘Meen?’ she said with a heavy ‘n’.

‘Oh, no. Meeen. Fish. Catfish. Black and slippery. It swims in water.’ She blinked, showing no sign of understanding.

‘The drain near our house is full of them.’

‘Drain?’

‘A drain is a channel for dirty water to flow.’

Swinging on the arecanut trunk, Raghavan told her stories of his drain, which connected the city to the ocean. Sometimes, the insides of the drain would be decorated with orange fungi. Young catfish and mudfish, hatched after the first rains, would appear regularly to taste his urine. He would remove his short dhoti to trap and catch them. His Horlicks bottle aquarium, filled with these juveniles, was the pride of Joseph Road.

But after schools of fish in the drain died from drinking his jaundiced urine, it seemed that fish gave up on the canal forever. Even after heavy rains, they saw no fish. Deepu even lit a torch, and they waded into the tunnel, but found only snails sticking to the crevices where catfish eggs should have been. Through the dark stream that ran under the slabs of the drains on Joseph Road, Raghavan sometimes swam short distances, hoping against hope that he would find at least an ordinary danio fish.

At last, he found an angelfish at a point where four drains met, near the beach. So dazzling, that one would not expect to find one outside an aquarium. It had shining golden spots, like tattoos, on the edges of its wide paddle wings, and on its underbelly. It had grown large from feeding in the drain. Raghavan used a soft towel to catch it. But as he did, a centipede bit him. And as he tried to shake it off, a water snake wrapped itself around his knee. As he tried to wriggle free, from these creatures, he cut his knee and chin against a concrete slab.

‘This is ‘fish’, understood?’ He raised the Horlicks bottle to the light and showed her.

Sunrays filtering through the trees reflected off the bright scales of the fish. Its paddling movements were mesmerising. Watching it, the girl’s eyes widened.

‘Do you like it?’

She formed a cone with her lips, produced her characteristic sound and nodded affectionately. Giant-winged butterflies flew between them.

‘Shall I bring it there?’ he asked.

She nodded.

He slithered slowly down the tree. Then, he squeezed himself through a gap in the kitchen window. As he walked up the old wooden steps to the upper floor, they squeaked, announcing their age. Bats and large spiders hung from the wooden ceiling, as if clinging for their lives.

It was difficult to find her room. It was the sixth room in the centre. It stank of urine and excreta.

‘Ugh … I feel like vomiting,’ he said. There was a door to the south. He opened it and found what looked like a secret corridor, which had heaps of things covered with cloth. It was cold inside. The smell of raw iron hung in the air.

There was fear on her face. But when he gave her the Horlicks bottle with the fish, she laughed. The beautiful white angelfish spread its fins, its pink gills opening and closing frequently as it circled around in the water.

‘What is all this?’ he asked as he touched one pile covered with cloth. He felt the coldness of metal. And when he ran his nails over it, there was a low sound of metal tubes being scratched. He removed the cloth and found guns of different sizes and shapes. He grew frightened.

‘What is this?’ he repeated.

She shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know. Fear grew in her blinking eyes. She gestured, as if to say that they should go.

The Chentharaparambu house seemed to him like a mysterious den of dacoits. A secret armoury, a pale-faced girl with dry, bushy hair and curled up nails. It was like a movie. He remembered a yellow mask from a Sherlock Holmes story. The room smelled of rusted iron. He picked up a gun. It was heavy. He imitated the films he had seen, placed his finger on the trigger and, imagining that he was Holmes, turned, touched the end of the barrel to her forehead and said, ‘Hands up.’

She didn’t understand. She continued watching the fish.

Raghavan heard a shriek. He shuddered. The figure in the black sari was at the door, grinding his teeth in rage. He lunged forward.

The bottle fell from the girl’s hand and shattered. Instinctively, Raghavan’s fingers squeezed the trigger. The thin odour of heated metal filled the air. Raghavan stood, shocked. The figure screamed again, pressing his neck with his hand. Blood splashed from his neck through his fingers. He began coughing, each cough splattering more blood through the hole in his neck. Bats awoke and began flying around.

‘What did you do? I will kill you!’ he said, gasping and staggering forward.

He took two steps towards them, spread his bloodied hands and let out a wild growl. Raghavan’s finger squeezed the trigger again, involuntarily. A bullet pierced the man’s chest and left a hole in his shoulder. Before he could take another step, he fell face down on the broken pieces of the bottle. Raghavan heard the sound of glass cracking.

The man tried to raise his head and, with a threatening gesture, said, ‘No no. Nothing is over here.’ He let out another deep growl.

The girl began to howl. Cobwebs and droppings from the ceiling had fallen on them. Their heads and faces were covered with dust. The angelfish flopped around on the floor, unable to breathe, its white body covered with blood.

Raghavan recovered from the hum in his ears and the darkness in his eyes. His heart began to pump rapidly. He ran.

*

This time, Raghavan was found in the dirtiest drain near the hospital not far from the beach. He lay in the water and fluids flowing out of the maternity ward of the hospital. The gun had slipped from his hand and moved forward with the water. The drain was red with the blood of women delivering babies. Tiny pieces of foetus floated around him like ghosts. In that semiconscious world, beyond the logic of the senses, a figure bleeding from a gunshot, spread his bloody hands and moved towards him. He lost consciousness again and sank into the blackness.

*

‘Anandam, please don’t cry. Nothing has happened to him. God delivered him to that drain. Just think, if the police had caught him with the gun in hand. I can’t even imagine it.’

Raghavan heard his father whispering, and then fell into sleep. He dreamt that the figure in the saree came to him and pressed his foot against his throat. Raghavan lost his breath, and woke up crying.

‘Will the police catch me, Achan? I didn’t do it on purpose. Are there ghosts, Achan? Will the dead kill us? I am so scared, Achan.’ Raghavan was blabbering. His father gently touched his forehead.

‘But you have not done anything, son,’ his father said.

‘I didn’t mean to fire the gun,’ Raghavan continued.

‘Gun? This one?’ His father picked up a black toy gun from the table and showed it to him. ‘Isn’t this your gun? What will happen if you fire it? Try, my son.’

‘Not this one. The one I got from Chentharaparambu.’

‘How can you get anything there? Is there a gun shop there?’ his father said, mocking him gently.

Had it been a dream? Remnants of his jaundiced dreams?

‘Achan. That girl with a pale face,’ he said, scratching through his memory.

‘Anandam, don’t buy any Sherlock Homes books for him anymore. He has lost his head reading them.’ his father said to his mother and then jokingly to him, ‘Hey dreamer, you sleep well. Then we have to go to Wayanad.’

Meanwhile, Chentharaparambu was filled with policemen, and some nuns wearing saffron. The girl was with them, wearing a green cotton dress. The dress had dark blue butterflies on it. A body covered in white bloodstained cloth was carried into an ambulance.

Raghavan had been found by constable Koya, a friend of his father’s. Koya had found the gun in the drain and had informed Raghavan’s father that two rounds were missing.

‘The boy is saved, Vasu. Lucky that you thought of calling me. The police can be bad. And that gang is terrible. They almost killed the boy. Don’t keep him here anymore. Shift him to Wayanad. This is a complicated case. It would be best to take him to your place of work.’

 *

And so, he left. He spent the summer vacation in a secret house in Wayanad. Then, he was taken to Ernakulam to get a visa to go to Malaysia. His parents took long routes to avoid their old city – Raghavan never even saw a signboard with its name on it. He never used a toy gun again, even during Vishu celebrations. He was never allowed to read Sherlock Holmes stories again.

The figure with a hole in his neck remained a memory, a fearsome recurring dream. The images of the white angel fish turning red and struggling for its life also reappeared, again and again. It beat its fins about, scattering drops of blood as if in a slow-motion film. In Malaysia, people’s faces reminded him of the pale, doll-like face of the young girl, and he felt a sweet pain in his chest.

He only went back to the city thirteen years later, to study medicine. When he did, his memory returned clearly, as if it was a dirty rag that was cleaned of all its stains and shone white again.

He understood the lies his father had told him. During an autopsy class, he saw the body of a man who had hanged himself. His jugular vein was cut. He heard the sound of the bullet that pierced the neck of the saree-clad figure and then ricocheted off the wall. The pale-faced girl had cried loudly and gestured to him, ‘Go, go!’

He remembered the sounds of feet on the stairs. He had rushed out though the kitchen window, climbed down the arecanut tree, run over the dilapidated compound wall and jumped down. He ran into the casuarina forest. The sun was hot and the sand burned. His legs were failing him. His head was reeling. Sunlight became green. Darkness entered his eyes.

He felt his feet turning cold and numb. The putrefied odour of blood filled in his nostrils. He saw the water turning red. He recalled becoming unconscious.

‘Madhava,’ Raghavan told his friend one day, when they had gone to watch a film, ‘I am sure it was I who killed that figure. But my parents made it seem like a dream. They changed my fear and erased my memory.’

‘I went to the library and looked up the newspapers of that year,’ Madhavan said, stroking his chin. ‘The news was more about that girl. There was nothing about a heap of guns, or the murder of a transgender person. Just one newspaper reported that the police chased a man who was dressed as a woman. He was shot in the neck when he tried to escape, and was in the hospital for some time.

‘Most papers reported that this person was looking for hidden treasure. He had been conducting black magic rituals in an underground chamber in Chentharaparambu. They retrieved the bones of three girls, all beheaded. There was also a businessman whom the police took into custody. The police said that the girl was to be offered in a sacrifice. She had never interacted with humans. She did not know any language, did not even know how to smile. But when she was asked her name, she seems to have first said, ‘Ammini’, and then, ‘Mati Vadani’. The house remained a mystery. The people who ran the place were said to have connections elsewhere in India. But there was no evidence.’

*

Herds of elephants trumpeted outside. The people of the paniya tribe beat bamboo drums from their watch stations to drive them away. At midnight, other tribes played rhythmic beats on deerskin drums in their settlements and sang songs passed down through generations. The magical sounds echoed in the hills. As the songs progressed, the spirits of their ancestors descended into the bodies of the singers. They howled and screamed. Raghavan saw a bullet-riddled figure get up, and collapse.

The base of the tree of the dead in the forest, covered with the yellow of raw turmeric and red powder, erupted, throwing white ants up into the air.

Raghavan pressed his hand to his forehead and looked at the girl.

She was watching him. There was no one like him. The fire in his eyes could burn green leaves in a forest in a hot summer. His pupils wriggled like angelfish. His lips shone damp and red like a fruit. His hands were soft, like lilies.

She felt like crying. She tried to bend down and lift him to a sitting position. He continued to look at her with kind eyes, as he always did.

*

A few years after he returned to the city, when he saw her again, she was on a stretcher, screaming in pain. Her left side was drenched in blood. The boil on her thigh, a deep-rooted one, had matured and burst. He bandaged it with medicines.

She recognised him and, from that moment, forgot to cry, forgot her pain. His gloved hands reminded her of an angelfish. She laughed as she had in her younger days. When he touched her, she burned like a flowering tree on fire. When he was stitching up the cut, she felt delighted, as if she were being tickled.

‘Raghav.’ He was turning to go when she called him and held his hand. The drain, with hundreds of catfish wriggling around in the water, flowed into his mind. He remembered his house on Joseph Road. He remembered the binoculars he had lost. He felt the old marks on his chest, tightening. He felt a mild pain.

They needed no proof. They needed no words, nor any touch. He looked at her eyes, her face, her helplessness. He felt like weeping. He had never loved anyone so much. He forgot to ask her, ‘Ammini, are you ok?’ He forgot to ask her if her boil was hurting. He watched in wonder as the eighteen years between them melted away. He wanted to pick her up like a fish, dive into a Horlicks bottle aquarium and swim around her, adoring her.

After that, she began to visit his clinic every week to collect her prescriptions .

‘Which doctor do you wish to see?’ the nurse at the counter would ask as she entered the hospital.

‘Dr Raghavan,’ she would say. ‘Headache. Severe migraine.’ Neither the nurse, nor the nun who accompanied her had asked her what her complaint was. ‘My head is pulsating, bursting to pieces,’ she would say, even to the other waiting patients.

But inside the consulting room, she was silent. Raghavan never asked her about her complaint, nor did she ever say anything. They would sit looking into each other’s eyes surrounded by the golden rays of the evening sun. Her face glittered like melting gold in a goldsmith’s furnace. Her cheeks were tinged red. Sometimes, a chirping sparrow would fly in. Sometimes, there would be a slight drizzle.

She would stay in the patient’s chair. At first, he would examine her to see if the cut he made on her thigh had healed. One day, after it healed, she gave him the patient’s slip without a word. He placed the diaphragm of his stethoscope on her chest and heard her heart beating like a loud drum. They looked at each other. He placed the diaphragm on her left breast. He could not feel her nipples at first. As her heart beat faster, her nipples hardened and touched his fingers like the nails of an angry cat.

He tucked her copper-coloured hair, brightened by the evening sun, gently behind her ears. He considered the paleness of her face, which would not respond to medicines, and he prescribed vitamin tablets for her.

Once, a senior sister from the nunnery accompanied her. She told Raghavan that the girl would accept the habit in three months, would work in the tribal belts in Telangana or Basthar. ‘Anita is unable to go out anywhere because of this migraine,’ the sister told Raghavan. ‘If it increases, will she need surgery?’ she asked.

‘No, no. Let her take her medicines regularly. Regular check-ups should continue. She will recover slowly,’ Raghavan assured the sister.

He would place the stethoscope on her chest without looking at her face. He discovered that her heartbeat quickened and grew irregular out of panic, when a sister or a helper from the nunnery accompanied her.

On other days, her heartbeat was regular, and she breathed deeply. When his fingers touched her and when he looked her in the eye, he sensed an explosion in her chest and a shiver running through her.

.

It was helpless love. Very helpless. Something that had grown without language or touch, into a giant tree, a vast ocean. They did not exchange any words of love. They did not even utter the word ‘love.’ But sometimes, he received a call at night, his phone lighting up like a glow-worm in the darkness. They were silent calls. He would say ‘Hello,’ and remain silent like her. Exchanging deep breaths, love erupted like a flowering laburnum between them,

One day, in his clinic, he spoke. ‘Let’s leave this place. We will go to Wayanad.’

‘Mmm,’ she said. Then, she said, ‘No,’ shook her head and continued. ‘I have made no decisions in my life. The course of my life was decided even before my birth. I cannot become your bride. I cannot even become the bride of Christ, as the nuns imagine I will. Those people will never leave me.’ She held his hand.

She continued, ‘They will find us in any corner of the world. They’ve pinned the death of that figure, called ‘Meena the Beauty’, to your name. They came to Malaysia thrice, but could not find you. They did not know you had returned.’

Outside, in the distance, the sound of tribal drums and songs. The spirits of tribal ancestors climbed the tree of the dead, shaking its golden flowers, and let out growls. The sound filled the air. Honeycombs cracked and began to leak. The souls of the recently dead flew around like honey-bee angels.

She continued, ’Recently they have spotted you. I was tasked with catching you. They will come tomorrow.’

Raghavan looked at her. Her doll’s eyes full of love, but very restless. The eyes he always fantasised about, when he made love to his wife. Wide eyes. Like his daughter’s.

‘They will punish you. I know. I went to Germany to escape all this. When I returned and was working in Seemandhra, I was kidnapped. You may have heard the story of the kidnap of a Malayali nun, though I was not ordained and still am not.’

Raghavan nodded; he had heard about it.

She knelt in front of him. ‘They will torture you and then kill you. If you escape, they will kill your wife and your daughter.’ She stopped and then said, ‘But I will not give you to anyone.’

Glow-worms flew in through the window. The honey-bee angels flew after them, searching for ancient souls. The song of the tribal jester, as he wore flowers, could be heard in the distance during the traditional dance. The sound of the tall bamboo trunks rubbing against each other in the wind filled the air. The souls started dancing their way to the new world.

‘Come,’ Raghavan said and affectionately stretched his hand. He touched his chest as if to say, ‘there is your world; yours only.’

‘Come and lie down here,’ he said, inviting her to his shoulder. His pale-faced girl. His doll. His pet. His chest was lean and covered with a carpet of black hair. Sorrow welled up in her.

‘Never mind, never mind,’ he said and took her face in his hands. Her face was like a sunflower wet in the rain. Tears glistened on it. He placed his lips on her eyes and on the bluish mark on her upper lip. Her tears tasted like the thin, bitter honey. His facial hair bristled against her cheeks, which were pale and had the fragrance of raw turmeric. At his kiss, her lips reddened like a blooming red hibiscus. She placed her ear to the left side of his chest. Her heartbeats went up, like the rapid beats of the buruda tribal drums. His chest became wet from her tears.

Then, she sat up. He lay in her lap, looking into the sparkle in her eyes. He lifted his fingers and touched her nipples. They sprang up. She quietly picked up the gun she had brought with her. The night breeze brought the yellow petals of the golden flowers into the room. Her eyes filled up with tears. She lifted his head with her left arm. She breast-fed him like a baby. Then, slowly, she released her nipple and instead placed the barrel of the gun in his mouth. He smiled innocently. The white flowers of spring bloomed across his teeth.

A tear drop fell on his cheek. It burned him.

The dance of the ancient souls ended. The tree of the dead stayed with its arms thrown into the secrets of the sky. The beehives on the branches filled up and secreted honey, like mothers. The souls sat on the branches, sucked the honey and moved in gentle rhythms.

From an upper branch from which several beehives hung, an ancient soul floated down and landed under the tree of the dead. He looked sad. The forest plunged into darkness. The rhythmic sounds of the drums rose.

Raghavan transformed into a soul, a honey-bee angel. Behind him, the sound from a woman’s necklace made of coins reverberated on earth.

This story, titled ‘Manja Mukhi’ in the original Malayalam was originally published in Mathrubhumi Weekly (date unknown).

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Indu Menon is a well-known and controversial award winning, author. She has written two novels and several short stories. Lesbian Cow, Eka, 2021, is an anthology of sixteen of her stories translated by Nandakumar K.

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Unnikrishnan Edathatta is an ‘accidental translator’ at 75. He is an engineer who retired from an multinational company, 17 years back. He discovered his interest in translation after he translated Indu Menon’s very long novel – The Strange Book About a Ship (Kapplinekurichoru Vichitra Pusthakam, DC Books, 2015). It is yet to be published. He gratefully acknowledges the guidance and encouragement from Arshia Sattar, but for whom he might not have discovered what is now a passion. Better late than never, he says.