Part 2 of 4 · 5 planned · 7 minThe Officer in Charge

On the second day Lasya's mother rang the landline, and that was the beginning of all of it.

It was eleven in the morning. Lasya had been sitting near the phone since nine, because he had said it could ring any time, and when it rang she snatched it up with "Andi?" and her mother said, "Who is andi? It is me," and Lasya sat down on the chair she had knocked over the night before, which she had put back, and said, "Amma."

Her mother had an hour. Her mother always had an hour. How is the rain there. Are you eating. What are you eating. Is the neighbour a good woman. Lasya answered all of it and wished her mother would go so the line would be free, and felt bad for wishing it, and answered more.

Then her mother said, "And why have they sent him? Three weeks is a lot for a new man. What exactly is the work?"

Now understand what Lasya was that morning. A girl who had not slept, in a house that was too big, who had eaten half a plate of rice two days running. And her mother, in a house full of people, was asking what exactly her husband was, in the voice she used when she wanted to tell the neighbours.

"They sent him as the officer in charge, amma," Lasya said. "Of the audit camp. There is a promotion after this, they said."

She said it lightly. She heard herself say it the way you hear a glass go off the edge of a table. It was already gone down the wire before her ears went hot.

"Officer in charge! Lasya! Why did you not tell me? Your father will be so happy. In charge of the whole thing?"

"Something like that, amma."

"Something like that, she says. Wait till I tell your father."

Her mother told her father that afternoon. Ramachandra Rao, a bank man for thirty-one years who had never once been sent anywhere in charge of anything, was so pleased that he rang Subbaiah in Manubolu, because since Sankranti the two fathers rang each other on Sundays about rain and borewells. Subbaiah said "hm" and told Lakshmamma at the stove. Lakshmamma said "hm" too, and at the pump at five she said her son had been sent to the islands in charge of the government's work, and the woman at the pump told the street.

By Tuesday night the whole of Manubolu knew that Subbaiah's boy was an officer. None of it reached Anthoor. Lasya knew only that her mother had been happy for ten minutes, and that it had cost nothing.

On the third day Neethu came with Ammu after school and a steel box of banana halwa. Ammu went straight to the shelf and counted the shells. Neethu sat on the kitchen floor and asked, in her slow English, what the work was.

"Audit," Lasya said. "He is, something like, in charge of it."

She said it smaller this time. She said "something like" and looked at the halwa. Neethu's face lit up the way Neethu's face did. "In charge! Sajith will be so happy. Pramod is his junior and already in charge, he will say see, I trained him."

Lasya opened her mouth to say "not exactly", and shut it, because "not exactly" would need "then what exactly", and that would need "I made it up", and she could not say that to a woman who had brought halwa. So she said, "Have tea," and the thing went out of the house with Neethu and walked ten minutes down the road to Sajith's.

The fourth day's call came at six in the evening, and it was a good call. He had been out on a boat to another island with the files. The clerk with the watch was called Rafeeq and had started to nod at him. "I have sent you something by post," he said. "Do not ask what. It will take ten days, Rafeeq says."

"What is it?"

"I said do not ask."

"Nine minutes left," said Rafeeq, behind him, and she heard Pramod say, in English, "Thank you, Rafeeq," and Rafeeq say "nine" again, and she laughed.

She did not tell him about the officer thing. It did not come into her head; it was a thing said to her mother, nothing to do with his island and his ten minutes. She told him about Ammu counting the shells, and he told her he had found the shell, the one, and was keeping it in his shirt, and the line dropped at ten on "eat properly", and she said "yes andi" to the dial tone.

The fifth day's call came at two in the afternoon, and it was not a good call.

She knew it from "Lasya" instead of "Lasya, listen". He had spoken to his mother first, he said; Sravani had told the hostel warden to tell the camp to tell him to ring home, because amma had something to say, and so he had given two minutes of his ten to Manubolu. His mother had said one thing and one thing only, in the voice she used at the pump.

"'The whole village knows about the promotion, my son. What promotion.'"

Lasya's stomach went down to the floor.

"Lasya, what promotion? She said the village knows. What village? What have you told them?"

"Andi, I only, amma asked what the work was and I said."

"Said what?"

"That you were, something like, in charge. Of the camp. Andi, it was only to amma, she asked in that voice, you know her voice, I did not think."

"In charge." His voice was not loud. It was never loud. It was the quiet kind, the kind that went busy. "Lasya, I carry files. I sit in a shed and I tick numbers and I carry the files to the boat. The officer in charge is a man from Ernakulam who does not know my name. Your mother told your father?"

"I do not know. Yes. Probably."

"And your father told mine. And my mother told the pump."

"Andi, I will tell amma it was a mistake, I will ring her today, I only said it because"

"Nine minutes left," said Rafeeq, and then, because the two minutes to Manubolu had come out of the same ten, "one minute."

"Andi, listen, I only said"

The line went dead on "I only said".

She sat with the receiver. She had not even got to the end of the sentence. He had gone back to a shed with a tin roof with half a sentence of hers in his ear and a village in his mother's voice, and the next time the phone rang would be whenever the line let it ring, and until then there was nothing she could do with the thing she had done except hold it.

She rang her mother that evening from the window and said, "Amma, the officer thing, it is not exactly like that, do not tell people," and her mother said, "What do you mean not exactly? Your father has told everyone at the temple," and Lasya said "I will explain later" and cut the call, which she had never done to her mother in her life.

On the sixth day she sat by the landline from seven in the morning. At eleven there was no rice in the house and no milk and she thought, ten minutes, the market is ten minutes, he has never rung before noon except that first night, and she took the bag and went.

She was back in twenty-two minutes. She knew it was twenty-two because she had looked at her phone at the door going out and looked at it again coming in. The house was quiet. The landline sat on its table under its cloth cover.

The little red light on it was blinking.

One missed call. No number, because the island's phone did not send one. No way to ring back, because you could not ring the island, the island rang you. Only the red light, going on and off, on and off, and Lasya standing in the door with the bag of rice in her hand, watching it.