Chapter 6: The Household Sealed

The front doors had barely clicked shut when Yogini walked into the center of the white-columned foyer. Behind her, three paces back, crawled the body.

The man inside looked out through the body's eyes and saw the foyer. He had walked this foyer ten thousand times. He had signed contracts here. He had entertained the Governor's man here. He had struck servants here. The marble was his marble. The columns were his columns. And the body was crawling across the marble on its hands and knees, three paces behind a woman, and the man inside could not make the body stand.

*Stand. Stand up. The servants can see. Stand — *

The body did not stand. The body crawled. The body was hers.

She stopped beneath the crystal chandelier.

"Vasu. From this hour forward, the title of Maalik is retired. You will address me. The creature kneeling at my side is the slave of this house."

The body pressed its forehead against the cold onyx. "Yes, Madam. I am nothing. I am only your slave."

*I am not nothing. I am — I had eight inches. I HAD EIGHT. Thirty seconds of eight. And the fine print — the fine print I skimmed — the — *

"Tell me what to destroy, Madam. Command me, and I will erase it all."

"Every artifact of your former life. Your clothes, your ledgers, your bottles of rum. Take them all and burn them."

The body did not hesitate. It ripped the garments from the wardrobe. It smashed the locks on the glass cabinets. It poured the brandy across the logs. It ignited the wood. The fire exploded into blue and gold.

The man inside felt the brandy burn. The brandy that had been the only solace. The brandy that had silenced the shame. The brandy burned blue and gold, and the man inside watched it burn, and the man inside thought about the eight inches. The eight inches had been better than the brandy. The eight inches had been the cure. The eight inches had been the fantasy. And the eight inches were gone, and the brandy was gone, and the man inside had nothing left but the three inches and the plan.

When the final ledger had been reduced to smoke, the body scrubbed the chamber. Then it crawled to her feet. And without command, it bent forward and pressed its lips to the bridge of her foot.

The kiss deepened. The body's tongue traced her arch. And the body's erection returned — the three inches, rigid, straining, the smallness that was the fine print's promise kept.

Yogini looked down at it. The small, rigid thing. Three inches. She felt a cold, practical revulsion. This was what had driven him to the brandy. This was what had made him strike her. This — this inadequate little spike of flesh, stiff and pointless and utterly beyond his control.

*She is looking at it. She is looking at the three. She does not know about the eight. She does not know I had eight. She thinks three is all there is. She thinks three is all there ever was. She — if she knew. If she knew I had eight. For thirty seconds. If she knew the fine print — *

And it would happen every time. Every time the body's mouth touched her foot, the same three inches would surge. She understood this. It was a law. The body would answer at her foot — small, insistent, and utterly beyond the man inside's control.

She could not allow the sight of it. If the servants saw it — a slave with a visible erection, small, pathetic, insistent — the humiliation would be hers. She was the mistress. The honour of the house was her honour.

She thought of steel. A cage. A narrow steel tube that would encase the flesh and hold it down. The cage would solve the spectacle. The cage would transform the spectacle. The small erection was shameful. The steel cage was dignified.

*The cage. She is going to cage the three inches. The three inches that were eight. The three inches that the fine print left me. She is going to put them in steel. She is going to — the eight inches never got to be free. The eight inches were in the open for thirty seconds and then the fine print took them and now the three inches are going in steel and I — I never got to use the eight. I never got to — *

But not yet. First the legal formalities. She wrapped the body in a heavier cloth. The body followed her down the staircase.

At the foot of the staircase, she addressed the staff.

"You have served a difficult house. That house is gone. The slave will eat what the household eats, in his cell, alone. He will sleep in the small bare room adjacent to the stables. You will not address him by any former name. You will call him slave, or nothing at all."

Mrs. Desai spoke. "Madam. I poured that man's brandy myself, every night, for ten months. I always thought he was drowning something. I never knew it was his own funeral. The cellar will be quieter now."

The chef: "Madam. If the cellar is reopened — for cooking only — the Christmas pudding has been wanting. I have been using water for ten months because he would not spare a bottle."

Radha, the bold scullery maid: "Madam. He smiled."

The hall went quiet.

"I have not seen him smile in ten months. The smile becomes him."

*The smile. The body is smiling. The body is happy to be a slave. The body is happy with three inches. I am not happy. I had eight. I — *

The body lifted its face. "The chef is correct, Madam. The pudding has been wanting. May I recommend the dark Jamaican, for the batter. The French brandy is too dry for sweets."

The hall broke. The laughter came, and it was real.

The man inside heard the laughter. The man inside heard the body recommend the brandy. The man inside — who had drunk that brandy, who had needed that brandy, who had poured that brandy onto the fire — the man inside felt the body speak about the brandy as though the brandy were a flavour and not a solace. The body had moved on. The body did not need the brandy. The body was at peace. The man inside was not at peace. The man inside was screaming about the eight inches.

"You are dismissed to your quarters," Yogini said to the body.

"Thank you, Madam." The body dropped its head to touch the floor near her feet. "And, Madam — the dark Jamaican. For the pudding."

She looked down at the body. The small, private curve of her lips deepened — the smile of a woman who has discovered that the thing which caused her suffering has been transformed into something that makes her household laugh, that recommends the correct brandy for the pudding, that polishes her floors and kneels at her feet. The love was fading. Not gone — not yet — but fading, being replaced by the clean, efficient architecture of ownership.

"Go," she said.

The body went. The body crawled to its cell. The man inside went with it. The man inside lay on the thin cotton cloth on the bare stone and stared at the ceiling and held the plan. Cure, endure, escape, conquer. And beneath the plan, a new line: get the eight inches back.

The body slept. The man inside did not sleep.

The man inside lay in the dark and listened to the body breathe and felt the three inches — still hard, still rigid, still straining against the cloth — and the man inside thought about the eight inches. The eight inches that had been his. The eight inches that were the fine print's first victim. The eight inches that were the joke.

The joke was on him. The joke would be on him for forty-seven years.

The household ran.