A House Called Askival Read Free Page A

their backs, legs scrabbling in the air.
    â€˜Get the tins, Gheesa!’ he hissed. Verghese tugged them out of the rucksack and prised off the lids, revealing beds of limp leaves and moss.
    â€˜Lots of rhinos,’ said James, carefully taking hold of a flailing beetle just behind its head and dropping it into his tin. ‘Mean looking critters, hah ?’
    â€˜Yeah, but useless in a fight, man. Hey look! I got a dumpy!’ Verghese whooped, holding up a black beast with its curved pincers sprung wide and threatening.
    â€˜ Arè yaar , no fair! Any more, man?’ Legend had it that once clamped to your finger, the dumpy stag would never let go, and that a surgeon would have to cut it off – beetle and finger. Naturally, they were the desire of every boy’s heart.
    Once the boys had gathered as many beetles as they could reasonably fit in their tins, they banged the lids back on – with holes made by a geometry compass earlier that day – and tucked them in the pack. The road home was the same, but it had been transformed, graveyards and ghoulish tales forgotten as they clattered along, hitting their bamboo sticks on railings and laughing at their loot.
    The next day after the dosa lunch, the boys opened their tins on Askival’s south veranda, lifting the lids carefully to knock down any clinging beetles, then dropping in their slimy mango stones. There was nothing the tiny beasts loved more. They would crawl across the stones, feeding on the stringy flesh for days till it finally went off, releasing a sweet-rotten smell every time the tin was opened. Sometimes the fermented flesh seemed to make them drunk and mad and when James stroked their backs, the beetles rose up in fury and waved their legs.He gave them matchsticks, which they broke in half, and some beetles, provoked enough, could even snap a pencil.
    As well as keeping his beetles as tortured pets, James had joined the fierce competition to build the largest collection. The technique was simple. He put a wad of cotton in the bottom of a jar, added a few drops of carbon tetrachloride and covered it with a piece of cardboard. He then popped the beetle on top and watched it die. When it hadn’t moved for a while, he took it out and stuck it to a board with a pin through its abdomen, taking care to spread the legs and antennae into an impression of the lively vigour it had just lost. Once stiff, he transferred it to his handsome glass-topped wooden case with a neat label giving its common name, such as ‘Swear’ and its far more impressive Latin name, xylotropes giddeon , and the date and location of discovery: 6 th August 1939, Fairy Glen. James took tremendous trouble and pleasure in the task and by age ten had accumulated no less than sixty-three varieties of beetle. His science teacher and natural history guru assured him there were over 150,000 worldwide and 1600 in the Himalayas alone. James was aiming for the Oaklands record of 100.
    Even more thrilling than keeping beetles for play or display, however, was forcing them to fight. For the younger boys it was these contests that really fuelled the craze. They gathered at recess like a Roman circus around an empty desk, braying and stamping as two winged gladiators duelled to the death. For a long time, the prize fighter was Raymond Clutterbuck’s Chinese stag, a menacing black beast, five inches long, with pincers as curved and cruel as a kirpan . Having made short work of Elijah Peterson’s cherry rhino and ripped Nobby Singh’s dung roller to shreds, Raymond was casting about for fresh prey. James had with him that day a female stone carrier with speckled wing-cases and long feelers that arched down her back. He hadn’t marked her out for fighting. This was a rare variety and once he’d checked the Latin name with his science teacher, he was putting her in his case.
    But Raymond challenged him, setting his stag into the desk and summoning the