Part 3 of 4 · 5 planned · 7 minNine Minutes Left

The seventh day's call came at two in the afternoon, and it was short, and it was the one she would have given a week to take back.

"You were not there yesterday."

"I went to the market, andi. Ten minutes. There was no rice."

"I stood in the line two hours."

"I know. I saw the light. I am sorry."

A hiss. Rafeeq, somewhere, saying something to someone else. Then Pramod again, and he had not slept, she could hear it. "What did you tell your mother, Lasya? Properly. Tell me properly."

"That you were in charge. That there would be a promotion. Andi, it was only"

"In charge of what?" He said it quietly. "I carry files. The officer in charge has a cabin and a fan that works. Sajith sir rang the office yesterday. He said congratulations, when is it. My senior, Lasya. The man who drove me to the bus. What do I say to him? That my wife said it?"

She had nothing. The nothing cost three of the nine minutes. She could hear him breathing in it, and the fan in the shed, and the sea, maybe, or the hiss.

"I will tell them it was a mistake," she said finally.

"Which them? Your mother? Mine? The pump? Sajith sir? It is in the village, Lasya. My father was told by your father. Do you know what my father is like when he is told a thing? He does not say anything. He goes to the field and he is proud in the field. And now someone will tell him."

"Andi, I will"

The line went dead. Not at ten minutes. Rafeeq had not said nine. It went dead the way a line goes dead when the man holding it puts it down, or when the sea gets in the way, and she would never know which, and that was the thing she sat with.

Now understand the size of what Lasya had done, because she sat with it all afternoon. One sentence to her mother on a bad day. But she had said it into a wire that went to Hyderabad, and from Hyderabad to Nellore, and from Nellore to a pump, and from the pump to a shed on an island, and at the end of the wire was a man who had told her in the Andamans exactly what he was and had never once made himself bigger. She had made him bigger for him, and he had heard it from his mother.

She rang her mother at six from the window. "Amma. The officer thing. I made it up. He is not in charge of anything. He carries files. Please tell nanna to tell everyone it was a mistake."

There was a silence on the Hyderabad end that she had not heard before.

"Why would you say such a thing then?" her mother said. Not angry. Puzzled, the way you are puzzled by a child.

Lasya did not have an answer that fit in a phone.

Now I will tell you one thing from the island, because without it you will not understand the next four days.

The camp office was a shed. The phone was on a table at one end, with Rafeeq beside it on a plastic chair with a watch and a register, and the line formed along the wall from six in the morning. Pramod stood in it with the files under his arm because there was nowhere to put them down. He carried the files to the boat and from the boat. He was good at it; the man from Ernakulam had said "good" once. He had been, until the fifth day, a man who was happy to carry files well.

And now the man behind him in the line, a clerk from Kochi, had said, "You are the one with the promotion, no? Your senior rang. Congratulations, sir," and had meant it, and Pramod had stood there feeling like a man who had stolen something. He did not know what to say to Sajith, or to his father, who would be proud in the field. The one thing he had been sure of between them was that she knew exactly what he was and had married him anyway.

So he did what he did. He went quiet, and he carried more files than he had to.

On the eighth day the call came at nine at night. "Did you eat?" "Yes." "Nine minutes left." "The weather?" "Rain." "Here also." Silence. "The files?" "The same." Silence. Drop.

On the ninth day it came at four in the afternoon. "Ate?" "Yes." "Nine minutes left." "Andi, I told amma." "Hm." "She will tell nanna." "Hm." Silence. Seven minutes of silence with the sea in it, and Rafeeq saying "two", and neither of them finding the sentence.

On the tenth day it came at noon. "Lasya." "Andi." "Nine minutes left." Nothing. They held two receivers across the sea and listened to each other not say it. She thought he was angry and punishing her with silence. He thought she was proud and would not say sorry properly, because "I only said" was not sorry. Both were waiting for the other to go first. The line dropped on both of them waiting.

On the tenth night the landline rang at eleven and Lasya got to it on the second ring, and it was not him.

"Lasya." A flat voice, a village voice, that had never once used a telephone for anything but to say "he is fine" and put it down. "It is me. Atta."

Lakshmamma did not ring anyone. If she wanted to say a thing she waited until you came to Manubolu and said it at the stove. Lasya sat down on the floor with the receiver.

"Atta."

"I rang to say congratulations. For the promotion. The whole street has said it to me, so I am saying it to you. He did not tell me himself, he only said what promotion, so I thought I will ask the one who knows."

And Lasya, on the kitchen floor in Anthoor with ten days of silence in her and her mother-in-law's blunt voice in her ear, told Lakshmamma the truth before she had told anyone else properly. Not "something like". Not "not exactly". "I made it up, atta. Amma asked me what the work was, in her voice, and I was alone here and I wanted him to be something, and I said he was in charge. He is not in charge of anything. He carries files. I made him an officer and now he will not speak to me on the phone and he has nine minutes a day and we spend them saying nothing."

She was crying by the end of it. She hated that.

Lakshmamma was quiet for a long time. Lasya could hear the Manubolu night behind her, a dog, the pump, somebody's radio.

"Hm," Lakshmamma said. Then: "Then unmake it. Tell your mother the truth, the way you told me. Let her tell your father. Let your father tell mine. The same way it came, send it back. A woman who can light my stove can do that much."

"Atta, I told amma. She said why would you say such a thing. I could not answer."

"Then answer. Say you were alone and you wanted him to be big. That is not a sin, amma. That is a wife. The sin is leaving it there."

Lasya rang her mother that night from the window and said all of it, properly, the loneliness and the voice and the wanting, and her mother listened to the whole thing and said, at the end, only, "Oh, Lasya." Two words. It was worse than any shouting her mother had ever done. Then her mother said, "I will tell your father. Go and sleep."

She sat by the landline on the eleventh day from seven in the morning, with a plate of rice she had actually eaten, with the proper sentence ready, the one that began "andi, I was alone and" and went to the end without "only".

The phone did not ring on the eleventh day.

Not at noon. Not at four. Not at nine. She did not go to the market. She sat on the chair with the cloth cover folded back and the receiver on its hook, and the rain came and went, and at one in the morning she was still sitting there, and the red light had not blinked once.