Teranesia Read Online Free PDF Page B

– the whole question of exactly whose honour was at stake was somewhat blurred
     in Prabir’s mind by now – he sent her a picture of Rajendra in an IRA parade, dragging a truck through the centre of Calcutta
     with a rope attached to his body by two metal hooks through the skin of his back. Not quite single-handed; a friend marched
     beside him, sharing the load. The visible tension in the ropes and the pyramids of skin raised by the hooks made it look as
     if both men were on the verge of being flayed alive, but they were smiling. (Smiling over grittedteeth, but anyone pushing a truck through the heat of Calcutta would have clenched their jaws as much from sheer exertion.)
    A similar feat was performed as part of certain religious festivals, in which devotees would whip themselves into a frenzy
     of body piercing, hot-coal walking, and other supposedly miraculous acts of potential self-harm – protected by purification
     rituals, the blessing of a holy man, and the intensity of their faith. But Rajendra and his fellow human bullock had received
     no blessing from anyone, and loudly professed their complete lack of faith in everything but the toughness and elasticity
     of ordinary human skin. Positioned correctly, the hooks drew little blood, and a thick fold of skin could take the load easily,
     even if the tugging sensation was disturbing to the uninitiated. There was no need for ‘trance states’ or ‘self-hypnosis’
     – let alone supernatural intervention – to block out the pain or stop the bleeding, and the greatest risk of actual harm could
     be eliminated by carefully sterilising the hooks. It still required considerable courage to participate in such a gruesome-looking
     act, but knowing the relevant anatomical facts was as good an antidote to fear as any amount of religious hysteria.
    Prabir spared Eleanor the picture of his mother with cheeks and tongue skewered, though like the hooks it was safe and painless
     enough if you knew how to avoid the larger nerves and blood vessels. The sight of his mother performing this exacting feat
     made Prabir intensely proud, but it also induced more complicated feelings. You couldn’t tell from the picture, and she hadn’t
     known it at the time, but on the day of the parade she was already carrying him. It added a certain something to his cosy
     images of amniotic bliss to see steel spikes embedded in the same sheltering flesh.
    Rajendra had learnt of the butterfly as he was completing his doctorate in entomology. A Swedish collector, in the country
     on a buying expedition, had come to the university seeking help in identifying a mounted specimen he’d bought inthe markets; he’d been handed down the academic ranks until he’d reached Rajendra. The butterfly – a female, twenty centimetres
     across, with black and iridescent-green wings – clearly belonged to some species of swallowtail: the two hind wings were tipped
     with long, narrow ‘tails’ or ‘streamers’. But there were puzzling quirks in certain anatomical features, less obvious to the
     casual observer but of great taxonomic significance: the pattern of veins in the wings, and the position of the genital openings
     for insemination and oviposition. After a morning spent searching the handbooks, Rajendra had been unable to make a positive
     identification. He told the collector that the specimen was probably a mildly deformed individual, rather than a member of
     an unknown species. He could think of no better explanation, and he had no time to pursue the matter further.
    A few weeks later – having successfully defended his doctoral thesis – Rajendra sought out the dealer who’d sold the specimen
     to the Swedish collector. After chatting for a while, the dealer produced another, identical butterfly. No fewer than six
     had arrived the month before, from a regular supplier in Indonesia. ‘Where, exactly, in Indonesia?’ Ambon, provincial capital
     of the Moluccas. Rajendra negotiated