He left no ripples in the water.

No footprints on the shore.

He held his mundu spread above his head to dry. The wind lifted it like a sail. He was suddenly happy. Things will get worse, he thought to himself. Then better. He was walking swiftly now towards the Heart of Darkness. As lonely as a wolf.

The God of Loss.

The God of Small Things.

Naked but for his nail varnish.

Chapter 16.

Three children on the riverbank. A pair of twins and another, whose mauve corduroy pinafore said Holiday! in a tilting, happy font.

Wet leaves in the trees shimmered like beaten metal. Dense clumps of yellow bamboo drooped into the river as though grieving in advance for what they knew was going to happen. The river itself was dark and quiet. An absence rather than a presence, betraying no sign of how high and strong it really was.

Estha and Rahel dragged the boat out of the bushes where they usually hid it. The paddles that Velutha had made were hidden in a hollow tree. They set it down in the water and held it steady for Sophie Mol to climb in. They seemed to trust the darkness and moved up and down the glistening stone steps as surefooted as young goats.

Sophie Mol was more tentative. A little frightened of what lurked in the shadows around her. She had a cloth bag with food purloined from the fridge slung across her chest Bread, cake, biscuits. The twins, weighed down by their mother’s words-If it weren’t for you I would be free. I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born. You’re the millstones round my neck! -carried nothing. Thanks to what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha, their Home away from Home was already equipped. In the two weeks since Estha rowed scarlet jam and Thought Two Thoughts, they had squirreled away Essential Provisions: matches, potatoes, a battered saucepan, an inflatable goose, socks with multicolored toes, ballpoint pens with London buses and the Qantas koala with loosened button eyes.

“What if Ammu finds us and begs us to come back?”

“Then we will. But only if she begs.”

Estha-the-Compassionate.

Sophie Mol had convinced the twins that it was essential that she go along too. That the absence of children, all children, would heighten the adults’ remorse. It would make them truly sorry; like the grown-ups in Hamelin after the Pied Piper took away all their children. They would search everywhere and just when they were sure that all three of them were dead, they would return home in triumph. Valued, loved, and needed more than ever. Her clinching argument was that if she were left behind she might be tortured and forced to reveal their hiding place.

Estha waited until Rahel got in, then took his place, sitting astride the little boat as though it were a seesaw. He used his legs to push the boat away from the shore. As they lurched into the deeper water they began to row diagonally upstream, against the current, the way Velutha had taught them to. (If you want to end up there, you must aim there.)

In the dark they couldn’t see that they were in the wrong lane on a silent highway full of muffled traffic. That branches, logs, parts of trees, were motoring towards them at some speed.

They were past the Really Deep, only yards from the Other Side, when they collided with a floating log and the little boat tipped over. It had happened to them often enough on previous expeditions across the river and they would swim after the boat and, using it as a float, dog-paddle to the shore. This time, they couldn’t see their boat in the dark. It was swept away in the current. They headed for the shore, surprised at how much effort it took them to cover that short distance.

Estha managed to grab a low branch that arched down into the water. He peered downriver through the darkness to see if he could see the boat at all.-

“I can’t see anything. It’s gone.”

Rahel, covered in slush, clambered ashore and held a hand out to help Estha pull himself out of the water. It took them a few minutes to catch their breath and register the loss of the boat. To mourn its passing.

“And all our food is spoiled,” Rahel said to Sophie Mol and was met with silence. A rushing, rolling, fishswimming silence.

“Sophie Mol?” she whispered to the rushing river. “We’re here! Here! Near the illimba tree!”

Nothing.

On Rahel’s heart Pappachi’s moth snapped open its somber wings.

Out.

In.

And lifted its legs.

Up.

Down.

They ran along the bank calling out to her. But she was gone. Carried away on the muffled highway. Graygreen. With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night the broken yellow moon in it,

There was no storm-music. No whirlpool spun up from the inky depths of the Meenachal. No shark supervised the tragedy.

Just a quiet handing-over ceremony. A boat spilling its cargo. A river accepting the offering. One small life. A brief sunbeam. With a silver thimble clenched for luck in its little fist

It was four in the morning, still dark, when the twins, exhausted, distraught and covered in mud, made their way through the swamp and approached the History House. Hansel and Gretel in a ghastly fairy tale in which their dreams would be captured and re-dreamed. They lay down in the back verandah on a grass mat with an inflatable goose and a Qantas koala bear. A pair of damp dwarfs, numb with fear, waiting for the world to end.

“D’you think she’s dead by now?”

Estha didn’t answer.

“What’s going to happen?”

“We’ll go to jail.”

He Jolly Well knew. Little Man. He lived in a Cara-van. Dum dum.

They didn’t see someone else lying asleep in the shadows. As lonely as a wolf. A brown leaf on his black back. That made the monsoons come on time.

Chapter 17.

In his clean room in the dirty Ayemenem House, Estha (not old, not young) sat on his bed in the dark. He sat very straight. Shoulders squared. Hands in his lap. As though he was next in line for some sort of inspection. Or waiting to be arrested.

The ironing was done. It sat in a neat pile on the ironing board. He had done Rahel’s clothes as well.

It was raining steadily. Night rain. That lonely drummer practicing his roll long after the rest of the band has gone to bed.

In the side mittam, by the separate “Men’s Needs” entrance, the chrome tailfins of the old Plymouth gleamed momentarily in the lightning. For years after Chacko left for Canada, Baby Kochamma had had it washed regularly. Twice a week for a small fee, Kochu Maria’s brother-in-law who drove the yellow municipal garbage truck in Kottayam would drive into Ayemenem (heralded by the stench of Kottayam’s refuse, which lingered long after he had gone) to divest his sister-in-law of her salary and drive the Plymouth around to keep its battery charged. When she took up television, Baby Kochamma dropped the car and the garden simultaneously. Tutti-frutti.

With every monsoon, the old car settled more firmly into the ground. Like an angular, arthritic hen settling stiffly on her clutch of eggs. With no intention of ever getting up. Grass grew around its flat tires. The PARADISE PICKLES & PRESERVES signboard rotted and fell inward like a collapsed crown.

A creeper stole a look at itself in the remaining mottled half of the cracked driver’s mirror.

A sparrow lay dead on the backseat. She had found her way in through a hole in the windscreen, tempted by some seat-sponge for her nest. She never found her way out. No one noticed her panicked car-window appeals. She died on the backseat, with her legs in the air. Like a joke.