‘Of course. But I thought it was that Major who –’
‘Yes, yes, that was later. This man was the taxi-driver, who took care of me and Sohrab, brought us home. Did not even charge for it.’ He looked up at the fan. ‘For nine years I have waited to thank him. Then I see him flying through the air and smashing his head.’ The coffees arrived, and the platter of samosas. ‘Just the other night I was thinking about him. Coincidence? Or what? Today it was my turn to help him and I failed. It was like a test set by God, and I failed the test.’
‘Arré, nonsense. It was not your fault that you became sick.’ Dinshawji added three spoons of sugar to his coffee and bit into a samosa. ‘Come on, eat, you will feel better.’ He pulled Gustad’s coffee over, added two spoons of sugar, stirred, and slid it back towards him. ‘So what about the Major? You found out where he disappeared?’ The samosa was crisp; he ate it noisily. A layer of oily crust unfurled from its apex and dropped into his saucer.
‘No.’
‘Maybe he ran away to rejoin the army,’ joked Dinshawji, conveying the crusty segments to his mouth. ‘You think there will be war with Pakistan?’
Gustad shrugged.
‘Have you seen all the pictures in the newspaper? Bloody butchers, slaughtering left and right. And look at the whole world, completely relaxed, doing nothing. Where is maader chod America now? Not saying one word. Otherwise, if Russia even belches, America protests at the UN. Let Kosygin fart, and America moves a motion in the Security Council.’
Gustad laughed feebly.
‘No one cares because these are poor Bengalis. And that chootia Nixon, licking his way up into Pakistan’s arsehole.’
‘That’s true,’ said Gustad. ‘Pakistan is very important to America, because of Russia.’
‘But why?’
Gustad illustrated the geopolitical reality. ‘Look, this samosa plate is Russia. And next to it, my cup – Afghanistan. Very friendly with Russia, right? Now put your cup beside it, that’s Pakistan. But what is south of Pakistan?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dinshawji. ‘You need another cup?’
‘No, nothing south of Pakistan, only the sea. And that’s why America is so afraid. If Pakistan ever becomes Russia’s friend, then Russia’s road to the Indian Ocean is clear.’
‘Ah,’ said Dinshawji. ‘And then America’s two little golaas are in Russian hands.’ He liked the all-clarifying testicular metaphor. ‘To protect their soft golaas, they don’t care even if six million Bengalis are murdered, long as Pakistan is kept happy.’ The waiter left the bill on the table. ‘My treat, my treat,’ insisted Dinshawji, keeping the little scribbled chit in his outstretched arm to dodge Gustad’s reach as they made their way to the cashier.
Outside, the sunlight was harsh, and the two quickened their steps. The lunch-hour had almost ended when they entered the bank building; Laurie Coutino was preparing to resume work. ‘Cannot bear this agony, yaar,’ whispered Dinshawji. ‘What a body! Ahahaha! Sugar and cream! What fun it would be to give her a mutton injection.’
Mention of sweet cream made Gustad’s hungry stomach rumble, reminding him of the saucer he used to have every morning, with crusty broon bread, as a boy. Mamma would skim it off the top of the milk, after it was boiled and cooled. Nowadays, the bhaiya’s milk was of such poor quality that no amount of boiling and cooling could produce anything worthy of the name of cream.
iv
The stench was strong along the black wall as Gustad returned home from work. Ignorant people will never understand the wall is not a public latrine, he thought. He flung his hands about his head to ward off the flies and mosquitoes. And it wasn’t even the mosquito season yet.
He opened the door with his latchkey and confronted Dilnavaz’s stern look. ‘One after the other, your sons make trouble,’ she said.
‘Now what?’
‘Mr Rabadi was here. Complaining that Darius is after his daughter, that it looks very bad in the building.’
‘My son after that idiot’s ugly little fatty? Rubbish.’
The feud between Gustad and Mr Rabadi went back several years. Mr Rabadi once owned what he liked to consider a great slavering brute of a dog: Tiger, a cross between Alsatian and Labrador. Tiger was very friendly, and quite harmless, but Mr Rabadi had created a menacing aura around him. He dressed him in collars that sprouted threatening studs and spikes, took him for walks on the end of a massive chain instead of a regular leash, and armed himself with a stout stick, purportedly to discipline the brute should he get unruly. While the master brandished his daunting paraphernalia, the portly Tiger plodded placidly beside him, gentle and at peace with the world.
Early in the morning and late at night, Mr Rabadi used to walk Tiger in the compound. Tiger would scratch and sniff in search of a suitable spot, usually selecting Gustad’s vinca and subjo bushes, of which he had grown quite fond. Being a large dog, his deposits were copious and rather malodorous, and sat in the bushes till the kuchravwalli came next morning to sweep the compound. Gustad repeatedly requested Mr Rabadi not to let the dog go in the bushes, but the latter countered that it was not possible to control a big, powerful animal like Tiger. And in any case, asked Mr Rabadi, how would Gustad feel if someone dragged him out of the WC when he wanted to go?
So the quarrels and retaliations continued. Once, at night, when Gustad saw the two outside in the bushes, he opened the window and emptied a bucket of cold water, drenching them both. ‘Oh! So sorry,’ he said with a straight face. ‘I was just watering my plants.’ Tiger seemed to enjoy the ducking. He barked and wagged his tail, but Mr Rabadi stormed off shouting threats into the night, while the sound of laughter floated earthwards from various windows in the building.
By the time he was seven, Tiger had grown obese and inactive. The short walk in the compound was enough to drain him, and it took much encouragement to get him huffing and puffing back up the stairs. One morning, however, something got into his head and he bolted. Despite his corpulence, he did seven tearing laps round the compound, one for each year of his short life, before Mr Rabadi was able to stop him. But the strain must have been excessive for Tiger’s unaccustomed heart. He expired that day with the setting sun, and Mr Rabadi promptly made an appointment with Dustoorji Baria, to seek an explanation for the strange death of Tiger the dog.
Dustoorji Baria prayed all day at the fire-temple except for the two hours spent each morning dispensing advice to people like Mr Rabadi. Unburdened of his normal priestly duties because he was getting on in years, he used the spare time to cement his relationship with his contact Up There who, he claimed, was the source of his divinations.
Dustoorji Baria gave advice freely and unstintingly; no situation was out of his realm. In a matter of moments he revealed why Tiger’s death had to come the way it did. But more importantly, he gave precise instructions to Mr Rabadi regarding his next dog: it must be white in colour, he said, and female, weighing no more than thirty pounds, standing no taller than two feet; and Mr Rabadi could give it any name so long as it began with the fourth letter of the alphabet. He also prescribed a tandarosti prayer for the dog’s health, to be recited on certain days of the month.
Armed with Dustoorji Baria’s specifications, Mr Rabadi went shopping. It was a great relief for everyone in Khodadad Building when Tiger’s successor turned out to be a little white Pomeranian called Dimple. Gustad’s bushes held no special charm for Dimple because, by this time, all of Darius’s departed fishes and birds had thoroughly decomposed. But the resentment between the two men did not decrease or disappear.
‘The dogwalla idiot will say anything,’ said Gustad. ‘Where is Darius now?’
‘Still playing outside, I think.’ Dilnavaz swatted with a newspaper. ‘What a nuisance, so many flies.’
‘That disgusting wall,’ said Gustad. ‘And after it’s dark the mosquitoes will come. I saw flocks of them today.’
When Darius arrived at dinner-time, Gustad demanded to know exactly what had happened. ‘Nothing!’
said Darius indignantly. ‘Sometimes I talk to Jasmine if she is there with my friends. I talk to everyone.’
‘Listen. Her father is a crackpot. So just stay away. If she is with your friends, you don’t join them.’
‘That’s not fair,’ protested Darius. But the truth was, Jasmine was the only reason he saw his friends so often of late. The melting effect that her soft brown eyes had on him was delicious, a feeling he had never known.
‘Fair or not fair, I don’t care. I don’t want the dogwalla idiot complaining again. Discussion over. Let’s have dinner.’
But dinner was quite a challenge, with flies buzzing and hovering over the food, and mosquitoes dive-bombing everywhere. Roshan shrieked each time one landed in her plate, while Darius tested his reflexes by trying to catch them on the wing. ‘Shut all the windows tight,’ said Gustad, ‘and we’ll kill the ones inside.’ Everyone was sweating in the heat before long, however, and the windows had to be opened.
Somehow they got through dinner. ‘People keep pissing on the wall as if it was their father’s lavatory,’ said Gustad, slapping his neck and prying off a dead mosquito. In the medicine section of the sideboard he found a small half-used tube of Odomos. ‘Have to buy another one tomorrow. The mosquitoes will make the Odomos manufacturers fat, that’s all.’ They shared what was left in the tube in order to get through the night.
SIX
i
Gustad inquired hopefully, every day, when he came home from work, if Jimmy had written. But a fortnight later, there was still no word from the Major about the favour he wanted. One evening, Roshan rushed to the door as she heard his key rattle. ‘Daddy, can I have a rupee for school? Mother Claudiana said during assembly that tomorrow is the last day to join the raffle and the prize is a beautiful imported doll from Italy which is as tall as me with a long white wedding dress and she also has blue eyes.’ She stopped to inhale.
He drew her to his side and hugged her. ‘My sweet little bakulyoo! So much excitement? You will become like Tehmul-Lungraa, talking fastfastfast.’
‘But can I have one rupee?’
‘This is the problem with convent schools. Money, all the time, money for Mother Superior with her big wide posterior.’
‘Tch-tch,’ said Dilnavaz, ‘not in front of her,’ as Roshan giggled.
‘Tell me, did Mother Claudiana say what she would do with the raffle money?’
‘Yes,’ said Roshan. ‘She said half will go for the new school building. And half will help the refugees.’
‘And do you know what “refugee” means?’
‘Mother Claudiana told us. They are people who ran away from East Pakistan and came to India because the people from West Pakistan are killing them and burning all their homes.’
‘OK. One rupee for you.’ He opened his wallet. ‘But remember, it does not mean you get the doll. It’s a raffle.’
‘Yes, yes, Daddy, Mother Claudiana explained. We will all have a number, and the girl whose number is picked will get the doll.’ She folded the rupee, took the pencil-box from her school-bag, and tucked the rupee under the ruler. ‘Daddy, why is West Pakistan killing the people in East Pakistan?’
Gustad undid his tie and smoothed it where the knot had been. ‘Because it is wicked and selfish. East Pakistan is poor, they said to West, we are always hungry, please give us a fair share. But West said no. Then East said, in that case we don’t want to work with you. So, as punishment, West Pakistan is killing and burning East Pakistan.’
‘That is so mean,’ said Roshan, ‘and so sad for East.’
‘Lot of meanness and sadness in this world.’ He hung up his tie and unbuttoned his cuffs, then asked Dilnavaz for the mail. Nothing from Jimmy, but there was an envelope from an education trust fund. He added the application form to the ones that had collected over the last few weeks. ‘Look at that,’ he said bitterly, hitting them with the back of his hand. ‘All the places I went to for the ungrateful boy.’ He held up the forms one by one. ‘Parsi Punchayet Education Fund. R. D. Sethna Trust. Tata Scholarships. Wadia Charities For Higher Studies. All of them I went to, touched my forehead, joined my hands, and said sir and madam and please and thank you a hundred times to make them promise scholarships. Now your Lord Lavender says he is not interested in IIT.’
Dilnavaz put the forms neatly together. ‘Don’t get upset, it will be all right. God is great.’
Every day after sunset she had described the seven clockwise circles over Sohrab’s head. And still nothing. I must have been crazy to think there was even a chance. On the other hand, Sohrab and Gustad did not shout or argue like they used to, touch wood. Could that not be because –?
‘What he will do if he does not go to IIT, God knows.’
She shuffled the forms. ‘He told you he wants to continue at his college.’
‘And that is called doing something? A useless BA?’
So the days went by with Gustad sad and angered by his son’s betrayal, anxious about Jimmy Bilimoria’s letter that would not come, and maddened by the clouds of mosquitoes that came, without fail, after sunset. ‘Ignorant swine pissing on the road should be shot on the spot!’ he would say. Or, ‘Blow up the bloody wall with dynamite, then where will they shit?’ This last showed the extent of his frustration, for the wall was dear to him.
Years ago, when Major Bilimoria had first moved to Khodadad Building, when the water supply was generous and the milk from Parsi Dairy Farm was both creamy and affordable, there had been a surge of construction activity everywhere in the city. The neighbourhood of Khodadad Building was not spared either, and tall structures began going up around it. The first to be blotted out was the setting sun – an office building was erected on the west side. Although it was only six stories, that was enough, for Khodadad Building was but three, being short and wide: ten flats in a row, stacked three high, with five entrances and stairways for each adjacent set of flats.
Shortly afterwards, construction started to the east as well. It was clear to all thirty tenants that an era had ended. Fortunately, the work dragged on for over ten years because of cement shortages, labour problems, lack of equipment and, once, the collapse of an entire wing due to adulterated cement, resulting in the deaths of seven workers. Youngsters from Khodadad Building went to the construction site to gaze in awe at some dark blotch on the ground, and wondered if that was the spot where the seven had perished, where their lifeblood had oozed out. The delays provided respite for Khodadad Building, and in time there grew a gradual acceptance of the altered landscape.
With the increase in traffic and population, the black stone wall became more important than ever. It was the sole provider of privacy, especially for Jimmy and Gustad when they did their kustis at dawn. Over six feet high, the wall ran the length of the compound, sheltering them from non-Parsi eyes while they prayed with the glow spreading in the east.
But to hell with privacy, to hell with the wall, to hell with the stink, said Gustad. Tubes of Odomos were purchased, and the ointment rubbed on all exposed parts, though the mosquitoes continued to buzz and sting and madden. For some reason, the ointment worked least efficaciously for him. Half the night he spent scratching and swatting and cursing.
To take his mind off it, Dilnavaz told him about a childhood neighbour who was immune to mosquitoes. ‘It’s a true story,’ she said. ‘When he was a little boy, this man ate lots of mosquitoes. Purposely or by mistake, it is not sure. You know how children put everything in their mouths.’ But from then on, mosquitoes stopped biting this boy. He grew up into a mosquito-proof man. The insects would sit on his skin, walk in his hair, crawl down his back, but never sting. Perhaps the ones he ate changed his blood and his odour, making him one of their own. Their buzzing and hovering no longer annoyed him either; he said it was like a serenade sung lovingly in his ears.
‘So what are you suggesting?’ said Gustad, slapping his face, shoulder and chest in quick succession. ‘That we should stop using Odomos and start munching mosquitoes?’ r />
Then the price of Odomos went up, along with the price of every necessity and luxury, from matchsticks to sanitary napkins. ‘This refugee relief tax,’ he said, ‘is going to make all of us into refugees.’
As if these problems were not enough, Roshan and Darius began demanding old newspapers. They were needed at school, on account of the refugees. Teachers arranged fund-raising contests, and the newspapers were weighed every morning. The results were announced during assembly. The English-language papers were kept separate because they used a newsprint quality superior to the regional ones, and fetched more by the kilo.
Dilnavaz tried to explain the household budget to Roshan and Darius: the only way they could pay the paper bill every month was by selling the old papers to the jaripuranawalla. When they pleaded their teachers would be angry if they went empty-handed, Gustad agreed to let them have five Jam-E-Jamshed’s each.
Darius said he would prefer five Times of India’s because his friends would make fun of the Parsi bawaji newspapers. Gustad would have none of that. ‘You should be proud of your heritage. Take the Jam-E-Jamshed or nothing at all.’
So Darius decided to go to the neighbours for newspaper donations. His father scoffed, ‘No one will give you a scrap.’ Since Darius insisted on trying, he set two conditions: ‘Stay away from Miss Kutpitia and the dogwalla idiot. And if you get any papers, you must share them with your sister.’
ii
A week later, when Gustad came home and sat to remove his shoes, Dilnavaz beamingly held out a letter. He was tired after standing all the way on the bus, but his fatigue vanished. At last! One shoe off and the other shoe on, he took the envelope. It was blank on the outside. Strange, he thought, opening it:
Dear Mr and Mrs Noble,