A small poster (Baby Kochamma’s, given away because of a damp patch) hung next to Jesus. It was a picture of a blond child writing a letter, with tears falling down her cheeks. Underneath it said: Pm writing to say I Miss You. She looked as though she’d had a haircut, and it was her cropped curls that were blowing around Velutha’s backyard.

A transparent plastic tube led from under the worn cotton sheet that covered Kuttappen to a bottle of yellow liquid that caught the shaft of light that came in through the door, and quelled a question that had been rising inside Rahel. She fetched him water in a steel tumbler from the clay koojah. She seemed to know her way around. Kuttappen lifted his head and drank. Some water dribbled down his chin.

The twins squatted on their haunches, like professional adult gossips in the Ayemenem market.

They sat in silence for a while. Kuttappen mortified, the twins preoccupied with boat thoughts.

“Has Chacko Saar’s Mol come?” Kuttappen asked.

“Must have,” Rahel said laconically.

“Where’s she?”

“Who knows? Must be around somewhere. We don’t know.”

“Will you bring her here for me to see?”

“Can’t,” Rahel said.

“Why not?”

`She has to stay indoors. She’s very delicate. If she gets dirty she’ll die.”

“I see.”

“We’re not allowed to bring her here… and anyway, there’s nothing to see,’ Rahel assured Kuttappen. “She has hair, legs, teeth-you know-the usual, only she’s a little tall.” And that was the only concession she would make.

“Is that all?” Kuttappen said, getting the point very quickly. “Then where’s the point in seeing her?”

“No point,” Rahel said.

“Kuttappa, if a vallom leaks, is it very hard to mend?” Estha asked.

“Shouldn’t be,” Kuttappen said. “Depends. Why, whose vallom is leaking?”

“Ours-that we found. D’you want to see it?”

They went out and returned with the grizzled boat for the paralyzed man to examine. They held it over him like a roof. Water dripped on him.

“First we’ll have to find the leaks,” Kuttappen said. “Then we’ll have to plug them.”

“Then sandpaper,” Estha said. “Then polish.”

“Then oars,” Rahel said.

‘Then oars,” Estha agreed.

“Then offity off,” Rahel said.

“Where to?” Kuttappen asked.

“Just here and there, ‘ Estha said airily.

‘You must be careful,” Kuttappen said. “This river of ours-she isn’t always what she pretends to be.”

“What does she pretend to be?” Rahel asked.

“Oh… a little old churchgoing ammooma, quiet and clean… idi appams for breakfast, kanji and meen for lunch. Minding her own business. Not looking right or left.”

“And she’s really a…?”

“Really a wild thing… I can hear her at night-rushing past in the moonlight, always in a hurry. You must be careful of her.”

“And what does she really eat?”

“Really eat? Oh… Stoo… and… “ He cast about for something English for the evil river to eat.

“Pineapple slices…” Rahel suggested.

“That’s right! Pineapple slices and Stoo. And she drinks. Whiskey.”

“And brandy.”

“And brandy. True.”

“And looks right and left?

“True.”

“And minds other people’s business…”

Esthappen steadied the little boat on the uneven earth floor with a few blocks of wood that he found in Velutha’s workstation in the backyard. He gave Rahel a cooking ladle made of a wooden handle stuck through the polished half of a coconut shell.

The twins climbed into the vallom and rowed across vast, choppy waters. With a Thaiy thaij thaka thaiy thai thome. And a jeweled Jesus watching.

He walked on water. Perhaps. But could He have swum on land? In matching knickers and dark glasses? With His Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? In pointy shoes and a puff? Would He have had the imagination?

Velutha returned to see if Kuttappen needed anything. From a distance he heard the raucous singing. Young voices, underlining with delight the scatology

Hey Mr Monkey Man

Why’s your BUM so RED?

I went for a SHIT to Madras

And scraped it till it BLED!

Temporarily, for a few happy moments, the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man shut his yellow smile and went away. Fear sank and settled at the bottom of the deep water. Sleeping a dog’s sleep. Ready to rise and murk things at a moment’s notice.

Velutha smiled when he saw the Marxist flag blooming like a tree outside his doorway. He had to bend low in order to enter his home. A tropical Eskimo. When he saw the children, something clenched inside him. And he couldn’t understand it. He saw them every day. He loved them without knowing it. But it was different suddenly. Now. After History had slipped up so badly. No fist had clenched inside him before.

Her children, an insane whisper whispered to him.

Her eyes, her mouth. Her teeth.

Her soft, lambent skin.

He drove the thought away angrily. It returned and sat outside his skull. Like a dog.

“Ha!” he said to his young guests, “and who may I ask are these Fisher People?”

“Esthapappychachen Kuttappen Peter Mon. Mr. and Mrs. Pleasetomeetyou.” Rahel held out her ladle to be shaken in greeting.

It was shaken in greeting. Hers, then Estha’s.

“And where, may I ask, are they off to by boat?”

“Off to Africa!” Rahel shouted.

“Stop shouting,” Estha said.

Velutha walked around the boat. They told him where they had found it.

“So it doesn’t belong to anybody,” Rahel said a little doubtfully, because it suddenly occurred to her that it might. “Ought we to report it to the police?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Estha said.

Velutha knocked on the wood and then scraped a little patch clean with his nail.

“Good wood,” he said.

“It sinks,” Estha said. “It leaks.”

“Can you mend it for us, Veluthapappychachen Peter Mon?” Rahel asked.

“We’ll see about that,” Velutha said. “I don’t want you playing any silly games on this river.”

“We won’t. We promise. We’ll use it only when you’re with us.”

“First we’ll have to find the leaks,” Velutha said.

“Then we’ll have to plug them!” the twins shouted, as though it was the second line of a well-known poem.

“How long will it take?” Estha asked.

“A day,” Velutha said.

“A day! I thought you’d say a month!”

Estha, delirious with joy, jumped on Velutha, wrapped his legs around his waist and kissed him.

The sandpaper was divided into exactly equal halves, and the twins fell to work with an eerie concentration that excluded everything else.

Boat-dust flew around the room and settled on hair and eyebrows. On Kuttappen like a cloud, on Jesus like an offering. Velutha had to prise the sandpaper out of their fingers.

“Not here,” he said firmly. “Outside.”

He picked the boat up and carried it out. The twins followed, eyes fixed on their boat with unwavering concentration, starving puppies expecting to be fed.

Velutha set the boat up for them. The boat that Estha sat on, and Rahel found. He showed them how to follow the grain of the wood. He started them off on the sandpapering. When he returned indoors, the black hen followed him, determined to be wherever the boat wasn’t

Velutha dipped a thin cotton towel in an earthen pot of water. He squeezed the water out of it (savagely, as though it was an unwanted thought) and handed it to Kuttappen to wipe the grit off his face and neck.

“Did they say anything?” Kuttappen asked. “About seeing you in the March?”

“No,” Velutha said. “Not yet. They will though. They know.”

“For sure?”

Velutha shrugged and took the towel away to wash. And rinse. And beat. And wring. As though it was his ridiculous, disobedient brain.

He tried to hate her.