Integers, Parabolas, and Jivika

RADNYA, Part 2: Ear

A recognizable entrance led below ground level. Clocks ticked—thirty-one ticks . . . thirty-two, thirty-three . . . From the ceiling dangled a jhoola made from Sri Lankan wood, and here the girl sat, the swing groaning beneath her ninety-pound form.

Prithviraj stood featureless, an outline by the light switches in the basement's darkness. He looked so big, so indestructible, standing there. She could not decipher his expression until he flipped one of the switches and he was older than when she had seen him moments ago. The lamps are always dim at his place, never bright. Durga stares from the mantle with her ten arms and she is made of brass. The lion underneath her is made of brass also. What is the goddess of war pondering as she stares with a smirk hers for eternity? Would she scream if she could?

Prithviraj unlatched his briefcase and removed a clipboard he then began to skim with shrinking, busy pupils. He has a busy face in general, well worn, worn in, used to itself. "You need more food." His cigarette moved up and down in his lips.

"I'll eat your rats if you cook them." Radnya restrained laughter.

"Watch it, kid." He puffed, shrouding himself in smoke. "You thirsty or just hungry?"

"Yes."

"Which?"

"Yes."

"Fair enough."

He went into another room then to talk with his wife. Madam, her goondas call her. Bloated yet energetic, she could be anywhere from forty to sixty. Radnya half-listened to the couple's chatter so she might discern each mention of her own name. On her right ear, a minty coolness, as though someone had been blowing on this part of her with ice breath.

Radnya's mother had used to say that in stressful situations it's best to count away jitters, to count breaths, memories, even seconds. Eventually the heart will sync up to the counting, one two three, four five six, seven eight nine, time passes, nothing lasts forever, events, however unpleasant, lead to future events.

Radnya adores counting, for numbers, she has concluded, are among the few things that keep their promises and never change. The number one promises the number two, and two, as promised, comes after one. Everything chaotic, everything that swindles—everything that leaves a vehement wound and then a resentful scab—will eventually succumb to the one, the two, the three, of days, decades, centuries, until everyone who hates you is dead in addition to everyone who loves you, succumbed to some indifferent mathematical equilibrium.

Prithviraj owns a rug that mesmerizes, and Radnya, whenever bored, finds herself looking at the material, dreaming things into the patterns. She can internalize the artwork, its roses, its ellipses, its abstractions that in areas bear vague resemblances to faces.

Madam came in without Prithviraj behind her, but the gemlike bindi in the center of her eyes might be his other form, the girl theorized.

Madam is an inflexible woman who leans into her movements. Her sari drapes from but one of her shoulders and the corners of her mouth are fuzzy. She sniffed the right side of Radnya's head and started to cough violently. "Horrible! Horrible!"

She took Radnya into the bathroom and undressed her, inspected her. Criticisms about insufficiency abounded, about shapelessness, about puny breasts, about flat buttocks. Madam swept Radnya's hair back and the girl screamed in pain.

"What hurts?" Prithviraj's wife whispered calmly and gripped Radnya's chin. Water tapped in the sink, the faucet dripping, Radnya aghast, her heartbeat aligning with the tapping, her breathing slowing with every plip, plip, plip, every one, two, three.

Morning came white. Prithviraj drove the girl to the hospital. He did not walk her in but parked over a kilometer away. There he waited. Cue her treacherous nerves, not suddenly but little by little with each step she took away from his coupe.

Each time she had been relocated from one house to another she was inspected. Never before, however, had something of concern been found. Presently her entrails wriggled and she wondered if she would faint before she reached emergency care.

It was hours before she was treated because the queue extended outside the facility. A nurse explained that the upper part of Radnya's right ear was split open and had begun to decompose, the wound drawing maggots, two of which were visible.

Pink and squirmy macaronis, Radnya thought.

The ear was anesthetized, the necrotic tissue carefully removed with a scalpel, the skin sewn back together. After a period of waiting, she had expected the nurse to return, but instead the senior with the "liberate" brooch walked through the door of the operating room.

Radnya glares now at Mrs. Brooch.

If you believe you're going to get in my head, deliberates the girl, I am excited to drive you insane.

Over a kilometer away, Prithviraj contacts Madam via payphone. She tells him he must return to the train station in an hour to retrieve another "employee." A policewoman on the street corner scrutinizes Prithviraj, her jaw clenched. He checks his watch every five minutes and every other time he checks he curses to himself.

Back in the operating room, the senior says she is head of Old Delhi's Anti-Trafficking Unit. She suspects Radnya is victim of forced labor. Radnya cringes as she hears the woman repeat "honest" in different ways: "Honesty is important . . . A girl must be honest or how can anyone know what is happening to her? . . . Today is a different day, unlike any other, during which you may, no matter what anybody else might have told you, be completely and totally honest."

Honest honest honest.