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Voice.
Rahel ignored her and blew an inadvertent spit bubble.
Ammu hated them blowing spit bubbles. She said it
reminded her of Baba. Their father. She said that he used to blow
spit bubbles and shiver his leg. According to Ammu, only clerks
behaved like that, not aristocrats.
Aristocrats were people who didn‟t blow spit bubbles or
shiver their legs. Or gobble.
Though Baba wasn‟t a clerk, Ammu said he often behaved
like one.
When they were alone, Estha and Rahel sometimes
pretended that they were clerks. They would blow spit bubbles and
shiver their legs and gobble like turkeys. They remembered their
father whom they had known between wars. He once gave them
puffs from his cigarette and got annoyed because they had sucked
it and wet the filter with spit.
“It‟s not a ruddy sweet!” he said, genuinely angry.
They remembered his anger. And Ammu‟s. They
remembered being pushed around a room once, from Ammu to
Baba to Ammu to Baba like billiard balls. Ammu pushing Estha
away. Here, you keep one of them. I can‟t look after them both.
Later, when Estha asked Ammu about that, she hugged him and
said he mustn‟t imagine things.
In the only photograph they had seen of him (which Ammu
allowed them to look at once), he was wearing a white shirt and
glasses. He looked like a handsome, studious cricketer. With one
arm he held Estha on his shoulders. Estha was smiling, with his
chin resting on his father‟s head. Rahel was held against his body
with his other arm. She looked grumpy and bad-tempered, with her
babylegs dangling. Someone had painted rosy blobs onto their
cheeks.
Ammu said that he had only carried them for the photograph
and even then had been so drunk that she was scared he‟d drop
them. Ammu said she‟d been standing just outside the photograph,
ready to catch them if he did. Still, except for their cheeks, Estha