Bananajam (in his old best writing)

Crush ripe banana. Add water to cover and cook on a ~ hot fire till fruit is soft.

Sqweeze out juice by straining through course muslin.

Weigh equal quantity of sugar and keep b~.

Cook fruit juice till it turns scarlet and about half the quantity evapoarates.

Prepare the gelatin (pectin) thus

Proportion 1:5

ie: 4 teaspoons Pectin. 20 teaspoons sugar.

Estha always thought of Pectin as the youngest of three brothers with hammers, Pectin, Hectin and Abednego. He imagined them building a wooden ship in failing light and a drizzle. Like Noah’s sons. He could see them clearly in his mind. Racing against time. The sound of their hammering echoing dully under the brooding, storm-coming sky.

And nearby in the jungle, in the eerie, storm-coming light, animals queued up in pairs:

Girl boy.

Girl boy.

Girl boy. Girl boy.

Twins were not allowed.

The rest of the recipe was in Estha’s new best handwriting. Angular, spiky. It leaned backwards as though the letters were reluctant to form words, and the words reluctant to be in sentences:

Add the Pectin to concentrated juice. Cook for a few (5) minutes.

Use a strong fire, burning heavily all around.

Add the sugar. Cook until sheeting consistency is obtained.

Cool slowly.

Hope you will enjoy this recipe.

Apart from the spelling mistakes, the last line-Hope you will enjoy this recipe-was Estha’s only augmentation of the original text.

Gradually, as Estha stirred, the banana jam thickened and cooled, and Thought Number Three rose unbidden from his beige and pointy shoes.

Thought Number Three was:

(c) A boat.

A boat to row across the river Akkara. The Other Side. A boat to carry Provisions. Matches. Clothes. Pots and Pans. Things they would need and couldn’t swim with.

Estha’s arm hairs stood on end. The jam-stirring became a boatrowing. The round and round became a back and forth. Across a sticky scarlet river. A song from the Onam boat race filled the factory. Thaiy thay thaka rbazy thaiy thome!”

Enda da korangacha, chandi ithra thenjada?

(Hey, Mr. Monkey man, why’s your bum so red?)

Pandyill thooran poyappol nerakkamathiri nerangi njan.

(I went for a shit to Madras, and scraped it till it bled.)

Over the somewhat discourteous questions and answers of the boat song, Rahel’s voice floated into the factory

“Estha! Estha! Estha!”

Estha didn’t answer. The chorus of the boat song was whispered into the thick jam.

Theeyome

Thithome

Tharako

Thithome

Theem

A gauze door creaked, and an Airport Fairy with hornbumps and yellow-rimmed red plastic sunglasses looked in with the sun behind her. The factory was angry-colored. The salted limes were red. The tender mangoes were red. The label cupboard was red. The dusty sunbeam (that Ousa never used) was red.

The gauze door closed.

Rahel stood in the empty factory with her Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo. She heard a nun’s voice singing the boat song. A clear soprano wafting over vinegar fumes and pickle vats.

She turned to Estha bent over the scarlet broth in the black cauldron.

“What d’you want?” Estha asked without looking up.

“Nothing,” Rahel said.

“Then why have you come here?”

Rahel didn’t reply. There was a brief, hostile silence.

“Why’re you rowing the jam?” Rahel asked.

“India’s a Free Country,” Estha said.

No one could argue with that.

India was a Free Country

You could make salt. Row jam, if you wanted to.

The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man could just walk in through the gauze doors,

If he wanted to.

And Ammu would offer him pineapple juice. With ice.

Rahel sat on the edge of a cement vat (frothy ends of buckram and lace, delicately dipped in tender mango pickle) and tried on the

rubber finger guards. Three bluebottles fiercely fought the gauze doors, wanting to be let in. And Ousa the Bar Nowl watched the pickle-smelling silence that lay between the twins like a bruise.

Rahel’s fingers were Yellow Green Blue Red Yellow. Estha’s jam was stirred.

Rahel got up to go. For her Afternoon Gnap.

“Where’re you going?”

“Somewhere.”

Rahel took off her new fingers, and had her old finger-colored fingers back. Not yellow, not green, not blue, not red. Not yellow

“I’m going to Akkara,” Estha said. Not looking up. “To the History House.”

Rahel stopped and turned around, and on her heart a drab moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts unfurled its predatory wings.

Slow out.

Slow in.

“Why?” Rahel said.

“Because Anything can Happen to Anyone,” Estha-said. “It’s Best to be Prepared.’

You couldn’t argue with that.

Nobody went to Kari Saipu’s house anymore. Vellya Paapen claimed to be the last human being to have set eyes on it. He said that it was haunted. He had told the twins the story of his encounter with Kari Saipu’s ghost. It happened two years ago, he said. He had gone across the river, hunting for a nutmeg tree to make a paste of nutmeg and fresh garlic for Chella, his wife, as she lay dying of tuberculosis. Suddenly he smelled cigar smoke (which he recognized at once, because Pappachi used to smoke the same brand). Vellya Paapen whirled around and hurled his sickle at the smell. He pinned the ghost to the trunk of a rubber tree, where, according to Vellya Paapen, it still remained. A sickled smell that bled clear, amber blood, and begged for cigars.

Vellya Paapen never found the nutmeg tree, and had to buy himself a new sickle. But he had the satisfaction of knowing that his lightning-quick reflexes (despite his mortgaged eye) and his presence of mind had put an end to the bloodthirsty wanderings of a pedophile ghost.

As long as no one succumbed to its artifice and unsickled it with a cigar.

What Vellya Paapen (who knew most things) didn’t know was that Kari Saipu’s house was the History House (whose doors were locked and windows open). And that inside, map-breath’d ancestors with tough toe-nails whispered to the lizards on the wall. That History used the back verandah to negotiate its terms and collect its dues. That default led to dire consequences. That on the day History picked to square its books, Estha would keep the receipt for the dues that Velutha paid.

Vellya Paapen had no idea that Kari Saipu it was who captured dreams and re-dreamed them. That he plucked them from the minds of passersby the way children pick currants from a cake. That the ones he craved most of all, the dreams he loved re-dreaming, were the tender dreams of two-egg, twins.

Poor old Vellya Paapen, had he known then that History would choose him for its deputy, that it would be his tears that set the Terror rolling, perhaps he would not have strutted like a young cockerel in the. Ayemenem bazaar, bragging of how he swam the river with his sickle in his mouth (sour, the taste of iron on his tongue). How he put it down for just one moment while he kneeled to wash the river-grit out of his mortgaged eye (there was grit in the river sometimes, particularly in the rainy months) when he caught the first whiff of cigar smoke. How he picked up his sickle, whirled around and sickled the smell that fixed the ghost forever. All in a single fluid, athletic motion.

By the time he understood his part in History’s Plans, it was too late to retrace his steps. He had swept his footprints away himself. Crawling backwards with a broom.