Shadow of the giant

stay with me. But not so close that you can't see everything I do with
the child."
    "You cannot touch a dead body," said one of her
men.
    "The dead of India are my children," she said.
"They cannot make me unclean. Only the ones who murdered them are made
filthy. I will explain this to the people who see the vid."
    The vidman started, but then Virlomi noticed the shadows of
the watching soldiers in the frame and made him start over. "It must be a
continuous take," she said. "No one will believe it if it is not
smooth and continuous."
    The vidman started again. Slowly he panned. When he had
focused on the children for a solid twenty seconds, Virlomi stepped into the
frame and knelt before the body of the oldest child. She reached up and touched
the lips with her fingers.
    The men could not help it. They gasped.
    Well, let them, thought Virlomi. So would the people of
India. So would the people of the whole world.
    She stood and took the child in her arms, raising him up.
With no tension on the shirt, it came away easily from the nail. She carried
him across the room and laid him in the arms of the young father.
    "O Father of India," she said, loudly enough for
the camera, "I lay your child, the hope of your heart, in your arms."
    She got up and walked slowly back to the children. She knew
better than to look to see if the camera was with her. She had to act as if she
didn't know the camera was there. Not that anyone would be fooled. But looking
toward the camera reminded people that there were other observers. As long as
she seemed oblivious of the camera, the viewers would forget that there must be
a vidman and would feel as if only they and she and the dead were in this
place.
    She knelt before each child in turn, then rose and freed
them from the cruel nails on which they once hung shawls or school bags. When
she laid the second child, a girl, beside the young mother, she said, "O
Mother of the Indian house, here is the daughter who cooked and cleaned beside
you. Now your home is permanently washed in the pure blood of the
innocent."
    When she laid the third child, a little girl, across the
bodies of the middle-aged couple, she said, "O history of India, have you
room for one more small body in your memory? Or are you full of our grief at
last? Is this one body at last too many to bear?"
    When she took the two-year-old boy from his hook, she could
not walk with him. She stumbled and fell to her knees and wept and kissed his
distorted, blackened face. When she could speak again, she said, "Oh, my
child, my child, why did my womb labor to bring you forth, only to hear your
silence instead of your laughter?"
    She did not stand again. It would have been too clumsy and
mechanical. Instead, she moved forward on her knees across the rough floor, a
slow, stately procession, so that each dip and lurch became part of a dance.
She propped the little body on the corpse of the old woman.
    "Great grandmother!" cried Virlomi. "Great
grandmother, can't you save me? Can't you help me? Great grandmother, you are
looking at me but you do nothing! I can't breathe, Great grandmother! You are
the old one! It is your place to die before me, Great grandmother! It is my
place to walk around your body and anoint you with ghi and water of the holy
Ganges. In my little hands there should have been a fistful of straw to do
pranam for you, for my grandparents, for my mother, for my father!"
    Thus she gave voice to the child.
    Then she put her arm around the shoulder of the old woman
and partly raised her body, so the camera could see her face.
    "O little one, now you are in the arms of God, as I am.
Now the sun will stream upon your face to warm it. Now the Ganges will wash
your body. Now fire will purify, and the ashes will flow out into the sea. Just
as your soul goes home to await another turn of the wheel."
    Virlomi turned to face the camera, then gestured at all the
dead. "Here is how I purify myself. In the blood of the martyrs I wash
myself. In the stink of death do I find my perfume. I love them beyond the
grave, and they love me, and make me whole."
    Then she reached out toward the camera.
    "Caliph Alai, we knew you out among the stars and
planets. You were one of the noble ones then. You were one of the great heroes,
who acted for the good of all humankind. They must have killed you, Alai! You
must be dead, before you would let such things happen in your name!"
    She beckoned, and the vidman zoomed in. She knew from
experience with