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moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts unfurled its predatory
wings.
Slow out.
Slow in.
“Why?” Rahel said.
“Because Anything can Happen to Anyone,” Estha-said. “It‟s
Best to be Prepared.‟
You couldn‟t argue with that.
Nobody went to Kari Saipu‟s house anymore. Vellya Paapen
claimed to be the last human being to have set eyes on it. He said
that it was haunted. He had told the twins the story of his encounter
with Kari Saipu‟s ghost. It happened two years ago, he said. He
had gone across the river, hunting for a nutmeg tree to make a
paste of nutmeg and fresh garlic for Chella, his wife, as she lay
dying of tuberculosis. Suddenly he smelled cigar smoke (which he
recognized at once, because Pappachi used to smoke the same
brand). Vellya Paapen whirled around and hurled his sickle at the
smell. He pinned the ghost to the trunk of a rubber tree, where,
according to Vellya Paapen, it still remained. A sickled smell that
bled clear, amber blood, and begged for cigars.
Vellya Paapen never found the nutmeg tree, and had to buy
himself a new sickle. But he had the satisfaction of knowing that
his lightning-quick reflexes (despite his mortgaged eye) and his
presence of mind had put an end to the bloodthirsty wanderings of
a pedophile ghost.
As long as no one succumbed to its artifice and unsickled it
with a cigar.
What Vellya Paapen (who knew most things) didn‟t know
was that Kari Saipu‟s house was the History House (whose doors
were locked and windows open). And that inside, map-breath‟d
ancestors with tough toe-nails whispered to the lizards on the wall.
That History used the back verandah to negotiate its terms and
collect its dues. That default led to dire consequences. That on the
day History picked to square its books, Estha would keep the