Summary
Papoo and Lenny are helping Hari bathe the buffalo when Adi comes up and asks Lenny to follow him. He is very excited to show her something. They go to the Shankars’ empty rooms where they find the black box again. Opening it, Lenny discovers a large double-barreled gun. They take turns holding it near the street as they hear mobs shouting in the distance. Lenny feels strong and invincible holding it. Then Father comes up while Adi is holding the gun and slaps Adi.
After a long time being absent, Ice-candy-man finally returns. He no longer seems to be grieving the way he was when the train full of dead Muslims was found. He has an “unpleasant swagger” and is “full of bravado.” He tells all sorts of stories, including one about the Hindu moneylender Kirpa Ram whom he owed money. Kirpa Ram escaped for Delhi. The butcher found bags of coins hidden in the walls, which Ice-candy-man explains with great triumph. He tries to give Ayah a coin but she refuses it. She asks what happened to Sher Singh and Ice-candy-man responds that he has left for Lahore. He calls this “natural justice.” He brings up the story of how the Sikh got rid of his Muslim tenants. After exposing himself to the women tenants, the Muslim family sexually harassed Sher Singh’s sister, and her husband was then killed in a fight. Ice-candy-man says it is good that he left because Muslim refugees want revenge against the Sikhs for killing people. The Government House gardener reminds Ice-candy-man that he was one of the people who helped Sher Singh with his Muslim tenants by exposing himself to them. Ice-candy-man responds that he goes crazy when he thinks about what happened to the Muslims on the train from Gurdaspur, and that he has attacked Hindus and Sikhs. The gardener agrees that seeing evil things like that makes a person go mad. He says he has sent his family to Delhi and plans to join them. Hari says he has will not leave because he has nowhere to go. Masseur asks Moti and Papoo the same and they say that their solution is to convert to Christianity, like many other Hindu untouchables.
Late one night Ayah is talking with Masseur. She cries and tells him she wants to leave, perhaps for Amritsar which is in India now. He offers to marry her again and she avoids the topic. Lenny gets upset at the thought of Ayah leaving. She says Lenny can get a new ayah, but this only makes Lenny cry harder.
Analysis
In this chapter, the mystery of Ice-candy-man’s disappearance is solved. After the train full of Muslims were slaughtered, he began seeking revenge. He tells Lenny, Ayah, and company: “That night I went mad, I tell you! I lobbed grenades through the windows of Hindus and Sikhs I’d known all my life! I hated their guts… I want to kill someone for each of the breasts they cut off the Muslim women… The penises!” Though Ice-candy-man is experiencing intense grief, his new attitude is one of “swagger” and “bravado.” The things he says here contradict his previously expressed beliefs. For example, when helping Sher Singh get rid of his tenants, he told the Sikh that it was more important that they were friends than that the tenants were fellow Muslims. Now he says: “After what one hears of Sikh atrocities it’s better they left sooner! The refugees are clamoring for revenge.” Similarly, though he was always friendly with Ayah and other Hindus, now he looks strangely at Hari and Moti. Lenny notices this change, as do the others. The gardener tells Hari that leaving might be best: “When our friends confess they want to kill us, we have to go…” Through the change in Ice-candy-man, this chapter shows how it was that former neighbors and friends reached their point where they could kill each other in cold blood. As India and Pakistan were split and refugees were targeted, it created a cycle of revenge where each group targeted the others and justified it with examples of earlier atrocities.
