Of all the attractions that the house contained, the garage was the best place to hang out in. The only place in the house that had an ambience! It wasn’t overly clean like the rest of the house under the able vigilance of his paranoid aunt, nor was it odourless and synthetic, which was perhaps the most undesirable side effect of excessive neatness – the kind that was the arch-nemesis of any personalization (it was his private opinion that his yellow tennis ball, his red baseball cap, and his favourite Asterix edition (Asterix and the great crossing) should always be strewn across the bed or the floor with anybody picking any one of them up only when they really needed it and then tossing it aimlessly with eyes closed when they’re done with it). Plus, it was bursting its corsets with treasure - the kind of treasure that requires no hiding as it is automatically hid from you once you cross a threshold age barrier. There were cobwebs of the most sinister forms, cartons containing all these really old stuff each of which you could go through for about an hour or so, getting catapulted back into an era so long gone that even your mother wouldn’t remember. There was this one scrap of some newspaper (a favorite of his) from the fifties wrapped around this antique pair of galoshes that belonged to nobody he knew that had one large advertisement of a guy in a hat with the creepiest of smiles eating a piece of toast with some margarine on it of a brand that was no longer to be seen. Perhaps the man was no longer to be seen either, so that meant that even though the advertisement focused on all sorts of health benefits from the margarine (vitamins, et al), it wasn’t probably all that effective either. The moral of the story, he inferred, was you gotta buy a product solely based on what it tasted like, and not by reading the nutritional information on the side.
This aunt, whose house and whose garage it was, wasn’t really an aunt in the true sense of the word, meaning that she wasn’t a sister of his mother or anything. In fact, she wasn’t probably even related, and consequently a fondness so profound had sprung up between her and his mother as can only be found between women who had never fought each other for bathroom rights or the affection of the same adult. Thus, by not being related, she had become a greater sister to his mother than her real sister and a greater aunt to him than any other aunt he knew of. And it was the unwritten code in the family that the first fortnight of every summer vacation must be spent in the aunt’s house (who, by the way lived eight hours away and it wasn’t possible to visit her daily), a prospect wholly agreeable to him. In fact the only unpleasant bit was Sir Rider Haggard. For disambiguation’s sake, the Sir Rider Haggard referred to here was his batty old aunt’s hideous lhasa apso – a vicious, senile ass of a dog that she loved to distraction. Every time they’d park their car in his aunt’s driveway all ready to get out after the long and tedious journey, Sir Rider Haggard would come running out of nowhere to greet them yapping like a kid with the whooping cough by taking a leak right on the front tire in full public view! And whenever he’d be sitting in any of the rooms all alone or talking to his aunt or anything, it’d be watching out of the corner of one eye like a vulture waiting for the death rattle to sound from his soon-to-be-meal, pretending to be asleep all the while. It was his biggest fantasy to give it a bone with a concealed stick of dynamite on the inside and watch as it blew up, its fragments spewed all the way to Mars. And yet, she not only would have it live with her in her own house, but also love it and care for it as if it were her own baby! It nauseated him to watch as she’d bathe it, cuddle it, lavish it with praise, and refrain from clothing it in diapers perhaps only because she couldn’t figure out what to do with the tail bit. Therefore, to avoid causing injury to her feelings, he had to force himself to be civil to the cretin.
On this particular occasion, as he stepped out of the car, he was so relieved that he was actually a little sad that there was no yapping and no stream of yellow to welcome them. Instead it was merely his aunt smiling one of her milk-and-cookie smiles from the doorway. Oh well, he thought. Perhaps the old rascal was busy eyeing the neighbourhood poodle. What did he care, anyway? After the initial formalities were over, he immediately betook himself to the garage. Somehow, this part of the house was almost never touched by her aunt’s hand. It seemed as if the past year had conveniently passed this place by without altering it a bit. As he was rummaging through the trinkets in a huge carton in the corner, a high pitched yapping startled him. Turning round, he came face to face with the inevitable.
“Oh, it’s you again, huh? There’s no getting away from you, is there, you ugly little mongrel?” Two yaps, followed by some panting and vigorous wagging of the tail was all the response little Sir Rider could muster. “Oh well, I guess I will have to put up with a flea bitten donkey like you, after all. It’s not as if I could get rid of you if I wanted to.” Saying this, he turned once more to carton, with Sir Rider at his heels, sniffing, scratching, and for no apparent reason, very much contented.
Now, in another corner of the garage was this huge bureau that he had never seen before. Perhaps it had been shifted from one of the upstairs rooms since his last visit. It, like the house was prehistoric. It had escaped his view from being kept in a corner in the dark just beside the door, and he saw it quite accidentally turning around to brush off a tiny spider crawling on his back. As he approached it, he saw that it was really unstable with one of its wooden legs broken, as if it were a signal for him to back off. But it looked very promising, and such a trifle wasn’t going to deter him from exploring it. He gave the handle on the middle drawer a tug, but it didn’t budge. Looking more closely, he saw that the wood around the edge had become swollen from the damp and long disuse thereby jamming it. So he gripped the handle and pulled with all his might, egged on by a highly excited Sir Rider, close at his heels, making short growls of impatience. A thunderous crash and a high pitched bestial squeal was all he could hear as he scampered out of the way of the falling bureau with tremendous agility.
As he got up brushing the dirt off his knees, through the cloud of dust he could see the bureau lying face down on the ground, slightly raised at one point with a now motionless Sir Rider below it. In a few second the pool of scarlet that oozed out confirmed his worst fears. For a minute or so he stood there paralyzed, his jaw hanging and his throat making weird gurgling noises. His aunt – his favourite aunt, living all alone shunned by one and all in her old age save for that queer, old dog upon which she had conferred a mother’s love. But merely by its presence, it had repaid all the favour and the couple had lead a fulfilling life. And in one single blow he had ended all that. How could she ever forgive him for this? As soon as the initial shock wore off, he ran out of the garage.
As he ran out in the open with tears streaming down his cheeks, he realized that there was no one he could tell this to. His father wasn’t at home and may be gone for a couple of days, and his mother – once, in her presence he’d been irritated to the point of insanity by its constant yapping and had proceeded to kick it, but one look from her had frozen his foot in mid air. Malevolent was the only word he could use to describe that look! If she got to know of this, she’d probably think he’d done it on purpose. So, he must bear his plight all alone. He had to run away.
Slowing down, he quietly made his way towards the house. He’d made up his mind. He had to get out of there – go to the station, then catch a train and go to some place far away where he’d have to work in some factory under an assumed name and live in the ghetto, just like they do in the movies. Despite his grief, he felt a little pleasurably excited at the thought of the adventure. To make a success story of it he knew he had to calm down and use his head. So he did calm down, and used about as much of the head that was the fair share of every seven year old as he possibly could. His aunt was out at that moment as she had to get stuff from the supermarket. His mother, after having lunch was probably upstairs with her head buried in some historical novel. So, with any luck, he’d have the entire ground floor to himself. Just the privacy he needed to kick in on the supplies. He made his way up the steps to the front door treading as lightly and noiselessly on his feet as a cat. With extreme caution, he pried it open just an inch, and peeped in to make sure there was no one around. Then, he widened the gap and slipped himself in. Among his bags, he found what he was looking for – a small, suede rucksack. Hauling it up his shoulder, he made his way up to the kitchen and, on reaching there, he cut himself around five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. These, he neatly packed in a brown paper bag and placed it in his rucksack. In another ten minutes or so, he was all geared up. His supplies consisted of the aforementioned sandwiches, a carton of milk, a bottle of water, a bag of cheetos, a notebook, a black, ball-point pen, and two pairs of clean underwear.
As he made his way through the gate, he couldn’t help but turn and look at the window of the room in which his mother was supposedly reading. This might be the cause of some grief for her, and she might perhaps cry a little. But his father would be there to take care of her, and maybe a year later they’d have another baby. Babies were like that – they sprouted of their own accord where married couples lived. And anyway, he was already feeling a little proud of himself for the sacrifice he’d made.
He knew the way to the station, it being only half a mile away. But as he turned around the corner, the house all of a sudden disappeared from view behind the high wall and he felt a wave of fear creeping over him. What if he’d never make it past the train? What if, once he got off the train, he couldn’t get a job? Would that mean he’d have to starve to death? And he’d heard from his mother the awful things that happened to children who stray too far out from their homes unaccompanied. All of a sudden he felt tired and lonely, and above all, dreadfully afraid.
It happened just as he was crossing the post office. A hand on his shoulder and a female voice inquiring, “Hey, where are you off to, all alone?” The suddenness of it startled him so much that he’d almost performed a somersault right there on the street. He turned round to see his aunt looking down at him kindly, somewhat amused. And then he told all, with the tears falling fast. “Its Sir Rider – it – he died. It wasn’t my fault – the cabinet – I tried to get rid of it but it wouldn’t quit following me around, you see – and it fell -”
His aunt, meanwhile had let go of his shoulder and was staring at him fixedly and open mouthed. “But my dear,” she explained almost pleadingly – “what is this you are saying? Sir Richard died last year. Didn’t our mother tell you? His poor heart the vets said – it just stopped.”
Yours sincerely
Jude
No comments:
Post a Comment