The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

“Should we wake her up?‟ Estha said.
Chinks of late afternoon light stole into the room through the
curtains and fell on Ammu‟s tangerine-shaped transistor radio that
she always took with her to the rivet (Tangerine-shaped too, was
the Thing that Estha carried into The Sound of Music in his sticky
Other Hand.)
Bright bars of sunlight brightened Ammu‟s tangled hair. She
waited, under the skin of her dream, not wanting to let her children
in.
“She says you should never wake dreaming people
suddenly,” Rahel said. “She says they could easily have a Heart
Attack.”
Between them they decided that it would be best to disturb
her discreetly rather than wake her suddenly. So they opened
drawers, they cleared their throats, they whispered loudly, they
hummed a little tune. They moved shoes. And found a cupboard
door that creaked.
Ammu, resting under the skin of her dream, observed them
and ached with her love for them.
The one-armed man blew out his lamp and walked across the
jagged beach, away into the shadows that only he could see.
He left no footprints on the shore.
The folding chairs were folded. The black sea smoothed. The
creased waves ironed. The spume re-bottled. The bottle corked.
The night postponed till further notice.
Ammu opened her eyes.
It was a long journey that she made, from the embrace of the
one-armed man to her unidentical two-egg twins.
“You were having an afternoon-mare,” her daughter
informed her.
“It wasn‟t a mare,” Ammu said. “It was a dream.”
“Estha thought you were dying.”
“You looked so sad,” Estha said.