Short fiction by Paul Zacharia: A zealous nephew vows to catch his aunt’s secret lover red-handed

It’s gala time for paramours in our Kallungal Tharavad. It’s as though these adulterers literally plough, sow, and reap in the ancient seat of our family, the Kallungal House. But, can you believe it, my uncle, long-limbed and powerful, merely sits in his easy chair on the veranda making small talk with these scoundrels! Does he not realise who they really are?

I have asked him several times when we’ve met at the church or the bazaar, “Uncle, are you satisfied with the way things are in our tharavad?”

Uncle always nods his head and looks at the birds flying in the sky, or stands staring at the line of fortune in his right palm. I have often thought that if he so much as brought down that giant arm once, it would crush ten of those rascals. But then, Uncle must raise his hand first.

I found one of those rogues right inside the tharavad one day when I was prowling around the place at noon. Uncle was away. I climbed the steps into the courtyard from the road and then silently onto the veranda and saw the Romeo being fed lunch inside. It was that handsome carpenter, that good-for-nothing wood hacker.

I heard him ask, “May I have an omelette?”

I gripped the bars of the dining room window and asked, “So you need an omelette, do you, for your food to go down nicely, you squirming worm?”

The daughter of my favourite aunt, Uncle’s first wife, who was no more, was going to fetch the eggs. She froze and looked at me with hope in her dark eyes.

The lover bastard’s face paled. Uncle’s second wife confronted me with brooding eyes. I said, “Aunt, I am not kicking him out because Jesus Christ Our Lord was a carpenter too.”

I came away.

A couple of days later, we caught him at a place beyond the Marakkaan bridge. I kneed him hard in the belly, while Joy gripped him by his collar, swung, and hit him again and again. Then I kicked him and Joy socked him with his fist.

He cried out, “Ayyo! They are murdering me!”

I said to him, “My aunt has heard you! She’s coming to save you! Of course!”

His body slackened obscenely in my grip.

I pushed him away in disgust and said, “If we see you again on this side of the bridge, there’ll be nothing left of you.”

He moaned.

“Run now, rascal,” we said.

He ran whining like a dog into the darkness.

A week later, as I was climbing into the road from the gulley beyond the bridge, he walked right into me. He wheeled and ran. I chased him. The big stone I threw landed with a little thud on his back.

“I’ll kill you,” I shouted, “if you don’t stop.”

Gasping, he stopped at the culvert and stood staring at me.

I went up to him and asked, “Why did you come to this side of the bridge?”

“I came to get my radio. I promise I won’t come again.”

I snatched the radio which was wrapped in a towel and smashed it against the low wall of the culvert. Then I kicked the bits and parts far away.

I told him, “I’ll do the same to you.”

He gaped at me and walked away on trembling legs, looking back at me fearfully a few times.

I ran into Uncle at Plamchotlil Kochettan’s funeral.

“My boy,” he lamented, “I lost a good carpenter. They’re so hard to come by these days.”

“It’s harder to find people who can be let into our homes,” I said.

Uncle asked, “Why did you hit him?”

I stood looking at him and a silent scream echoed in me: Uncle, don’t you know? He was a lover boy! Your wife’s secret lover!

He asked me, “Don’t you know that our Lord Jesus Christ was a carpenter too?”

When I went looking for the next fellow who had gained access into our tharavad, I saw Uncle sitting in his easy chair on the veranda, reading a newspaper. I entered from behind the house through the kitchen so that Uncle would not see me. I heard the clatter of dishes and the hiss of soda bottles being opened.

There were two of them!

Two clandestine lovers being entertained in our tharavad!

I stood on the threshold of the kitchen, my hands on either side of the door, and asked, “I heard that some fatherless rascals are visiting our tharavad. Who are they? Let me have a look.”

One of them shouted something and sprang up.

I said, “Come on, bastard!”

The other one was trembling.

I said, “Come on, the trembler too!”

Aunt stood between us with the dish of chicken curry. Her daughters and stepdaughters in the next room stopped talking. I walked into the dining room and knocked the bottle of brandy off the dining table. I then picked up a fork and poised it in my hand. The lovers did not move. They stood and stared at me. I took a step forward. At that moment, Uncle came in from the veranda and put his hand on my shoulder. “Vakkachan, please don’t make a scene. Please don’t make me unhappy. Go now.”

I looked at him in amazement. My giant of an uncle, ajaanubahu, whose long arms reached his knees, shining with all the marks of the uttamapurusha, the perfect man! Here he was, taking up for his wife’s lovers! Words frothed in my mouth. I longed to shout, Uncle! They’re your wife’s lovers! But I didn’t say anything. I came away.

We decided to lay a trap for the lovers. One evening, after sunset, we began our vigil by the side of the road they usually took, behind the Thannickal family’s smokehouse for rubber. We were armed with cycle chains, crowbars, sticks, and hatchets.

People whispered to each other, “The Kallungal boys are out to get someone.”

People skirted us and made their way through shrubs and quickly put distance between themselves and us. Raman’s provision shop and Paily’s tea shop shut their doors ahead of closing time. The road lay wide open for the arrival of the Romeos.

We sat in the darkness watching the fireflies flit over the high road. Soon we ran out of beedis. I went up to Raman’s shop and knocked.

“Raman, I need beedis.”

Raman said in a strangled voice from behind the closed door, “Vakkachan, I know nothing of what’s happening. Leave me out of it please!”

Raman knew that I was aware that he and his friends had been gossiping and laughing over the goings-on in my tharavad all morning.

I said, “I just want beedis. Open the door.”

Raman said, “Vakkachan, listen to me please! I had nothing to do with it.”

Finally, Raman opened the door and gave me the beedis. I took a look at the knife he held in his hand and smiled.

It was around midnight when we heard the sound of an approaching scooter. We stood up and moved to the middle of the road and blocked it. The scooter came to a wavering stop in front of us. From behind its headlight, two men stared at us. I jumped, spinning the cycle chain above my head.

Then, pulling back the chain, I shouted, “Don’t hit! It’s Uncle!”

It was my aunt’s brother who was driving the scooter. He was trembling violently. Uncle got off the pillion and stood in the midnight darkness. His brother-in-law’s trembling hand accidentally pressed the horn and it suddenly blared, giving me a terrible start.

Uncle said to him, “You carry on. Now my journey is with them.”

The scooter tore away, its light and noise agitating the rubber trees frozen along the path. Its horn sounded again from a distance.

My uncle, tall, powerful ajaanubahu, stood in the middle of the empty road.

He said to us, “Come, let’s go. You can give me company, for the night is far advanced.”

We walked with him. After a while, he asked, “Who are you hunting tonight?”

We did not answer. The cycle chain in my hand uncoiled and made a scraping sound on the ground.

“Don’t you know, Vakkachan, that all hunting is forbidden these days?” he asked, and chuckled in the dark, with a little sound that was lost somewhere in his throat.

“In any case,” he said, “Christians should be non-violent, you know.”

Our footfalls moved steadily up the road. Uncle put one arm around Joy, another around me and said, “So you think you can save me?”

I didn’t understand. We walked silently.

As we climbed the steps to the courtyard of the house, Uncle said, “Vakkachan, don’t you know, death doesn’t come like a thief, it comes like a clandestine lover.”

I was shocked. He said, a clandestine lover!

Standing still on the steps, Uncle laughed again. “God too comes like a paramour, you know.”

Paramour!

We were in the courtyard now. I told myself, not even a dog here to bark at intruders! Suddenly, a mangy dog slunk across the courtyard with a sickly moan, its tail between its legs. Uncle snapped his fingers at it. It didn’t stop. There was light inside. Dishes clinked and soda bottles hissed. Someone was singing.

Uncle stood in the courtyard and laughed with that little lost sound in his throat. He stood in the dark, the signs of the uttamapurusha shining upon him, and said, “Boys, do you think that clandestine lovers know only one way?”

He continued, “All paths in the world are theirs, every alley and shortcut that exists.”

Clandestine lovers, he said! He knows!

I plucked up courage and asked, “Uncle, shall we get them? Now?”

Uncle laughed again, standing enveloped by the night that was slowly ending. The wind must have blown away a cloud, for a faint moonlight fell upon the courtyard. We saw Uncle’s face. Were there tears glistening there?

A great sadness came over me. “Uncle!” I called, and lunged forward to embrace him. But he was gone.

We went away in the waning moonlight. We hurried, armed and ready, along the high road now abandoned by paramours. Our footsteps wavered as we hearkened to the footsteps of secret lovers speeding on both sides of us, through the alleys, shortcuts, and other paths. We clutched our cycle chains, crowbars, sticks, and hatchets and thought of Uncle.

And then, parting company, we fled, each on his own, through the alleys, shortcuts, and never-before-seen lanes, clutching our weapons and looking behind us every now and then.

Excerpted with permission from ‘The Canto of Clandestine Lovers’ in 50 Stories, Paul Zacharia, Aleph Book Company.