Family Matters

  “Of course.”

  “So I’ll jack up both the posts, till the beam is tight against the ceiling.”

  Jal smiled foolishly, but Edul did not rub it in. “Your mistake is understandable,” he said. “Why should you know about this equipment, you’re not a handyman.”

  He began raising the two posts, alternating between them, a few strokes each to keep them even. The movement, in millimetres, was almost imperceptible.

  Jal was bored after a while. Watching Edul scurry between two jacks had limited appeal. He went to take a nap.

  Edul spent almost an hour before the girder was flush with the ceiling. Near the end he had to go up the ladder several times between strokes to ensure the rise was not excessive, or it would start to bow the ceiling.

  Satisfied, he locked the jacks in place and admired his work. He felt like calling Manizeh upstairs so she could admire it too.

  Then he noticed that on one side, the steel girder seemed to veer slightly away from the original wooden beam, meeting the wall at an angle. It should have been square.

  He climbed the ladder to measure, and discovered it was off by three-quarters of an inch. Hardly noticeable. He put away the set square.

  But the minor misalignment kept bothering him. Up he went once more, re-examined the anomaly, and changed his mind: he’d rectify it.

  First, he had to lower the jacks a little, for the girder was too snug against the ceiling. When there was approximately an inch of clearance, he locked the jacks and climbed the ladder. Grasping the beam on the underside, he tugged.

  It wouldn’t budge. He tried again, without making a difference. Damn the swine, he thought. Only one thing for it – remove the bolts, make the correction, and refasten them.

  His wrench dealt quickly with the four nuts, which he dropped in his pocket for safekeeping. Now to make the small adjustment. Then this job would be flawless.

  Clutching the steel with his sweaty fingers, he exerted his strength, thought he felt it moving, and stopped to measure. No, still the same. He tried once more, going from silent abuse of the beam to cursing aloud.

  “Shift, you bloody bastard!” he muttered softly. His hands were slippery, and he wiped them on his pants. “Son of a bitch, three-quarters is all I need from you!”

  While he struggled with the girder, Coomy came and stood in the doorway. It was almost four o’clock. She had brought him tea and a slice of fruitcake.

  “Oh sorry, Coomy!” he panted when he noticed her there. “Please excuse my language. The bugger is stuck.”

  “Maybe you should call the ghatis to help.”

  “No, I can manage. Just a small adjustment. See that gap?”

  She entered the room to look, pausing below the ladder with her tray.

  “I need to shift it a bit to my side. Is that Christmas cake? Great, give me a sec, I’ll be down soon.”

  Grabbing the beam with intense hostility, he bellowed like a weightlifter and tugged it towards him.

  “Careful!” said Coomy. “The post is moving!”

  Her warning was too late. The beam had already lost its moorings. As it came crashing down, it swept Edul off the ladder. Coomy tried to dodge, but the glancing blow on the head was enough to break her skull. The girder came to rest across Edul’s chest where he lay upon the floor.

  Awakened from his nap a few minutes earlier by Coomy for tea, Jal was still putting in his hearing aid when the post collapsed. It was not the noise but the tremor that signalled the accident. He felt his bed shake, and knew something terrible had happened. He ran to Nariman’s room.

  In the flat directly below, the crash was deafening. And the tremor, like a slight quake, was felt by Manizeh too. She tore up the stairs and began pounding her fist on the door.

  He opened it, his face white as chalk. One look at him and she knew the truth but asked anyway, “Where is he? Is he okay?”

  Jal was unable to answer. He lifted a hand to plead for something, not sure what – patience, courage, forgiveness?

  She pushed past him into the passageway.

  “Wait, Manizeh, please let me …”

  She was already in the room, kneeling beside her husband, sobbing and holding his face. Her eyes riveted to his crushed chest, she screamed at Jal, “Call somebody! Doctor! Ambulance!”

  He watched as she looked around and took in Coomy’s fate, who had fallen not far from Edul, the blood in a small circle around her head. The two still bodies, the angle at which they lay, and the manner in which death had arranged their limbs, made them seem more intimate now than they had ever been in life, thought Jal.

  At that moment the initial helplessness that had gripped him slowly released its hold. He felt calm, felt he knew exactly the things that would have to happen now, one after the other, all the inevitable tasks he would be required to perform. He would have to reflect, make decisions, act.

  He looked at Manizeh’s face. It was stupefied with shock. And something else, he felt, as her eyes kept returning to Coomy. Her torment was the most distressing thing in the room at that moment. She deserved better; to reassure her was his first duty.

  “Tea, she came with tea,” he urged her to believe. “And a slice of cake.”

  He found the shattered cup and saucer, and picked up the pieces. “See? This is what Coomy brought the tea in. And look, Manizeh, here is the wet place on the floor, look, where it splashed. Oh, and the fruitcake, over there.”

  By now, others had been drawn upstairs by the crash that had rung through the building like an explosion. They wandered in through the open door and were aghast, a few turning away in horror. Someone could be heard retching outside. Someone else telephoned for an ambulance.

  It took a while to arrive, and when the attendants ran into the room, one of the neighbours began berating them that given the amount of time, any sign of life would have been extinguished by now. “Lucky for you they both died on the spot,” he said.

  “Why did you call us, in that case? Just call the police.”

  And, in what was seen as a callous addition of insult to injury, the ambulancemen insisted on notifying the nearest police station. It was the law, they said.

  The neighbours gathered in the flat went into a huddle. If the police were informed, there could be all kinds of complications and formalities, maybe even a postmortem, delaying the funeral beyond twenty-four hours from the time of death, which was undesirable within Zoroastrian rites.

  “If you ask me, these fellows are hoping for an incentive,” said someone.

  “Well, let’s give it to them and finish it. Tell them to forget they came here.”

  “Good idea. Hundred rupees will easily adjust their memories.”

  “But we still need proper papers, otherwise Doongerwadi is not going to accept the bodies.”

  Then Jal offered a suggestion that they found eminently sensible: appealing to Inspector Masalavala, who lived just across the road from Chateau Felicity.

  Years ago, it was the inspector’s father, the late Superintendent Masalavala, who had come to the family’s rescue when Yasmin Vakeel and Lucy Braganza had fallen from the rooftop terrace. “No sense washing Parsi linen in public,” had been his verdict, and he’d kept the matter as quiet as possible.

  Despite the lower rank, the son proved to be equally resourceful. Inspector Masalavala listened sympathetically to the delegation that came to his residence, for he shared his father’s philosophy. He even persuaded his neighbour, the retired Dr. Fitter, to help out, as he had done all those years ago in the Vakeel case.

  They crossed the road and visited the scene of the accident together. Their entrance effected a miraculous change in the ambulancemen, whose officiousness vanished, replaced instantly by a new-found humility. They even attempted something like a salute for the police inspector.

  Dr. Fitter examined the bodies, checked their pulses, and said he would issue death certificates for both; there was no need for postmortems.

  All routine now, thoug
ht Jal, as he watched numbly.

  WITH AN ARM AROUND his brother-in-law Yezad said in a whisper, “I’m so sorry,” then stepped aside for Roxana. She hugged Jal and began to cry.

  Tears appeared in Jal’s eyes too for the first time, as he found himself alone with them. The neighbours that had gathered earlier in the flat had departed, and all his grief, suppressed while he had been attending to practical matters, now found release. He was crying, he told them, as much at losing Coomy as at the thought that Coomy had lost out on life.

  “That’s what Pappa said,” she sobbed. “When we gave him the news, he said how sad, that she died full of anger.”

  Jal nodded. He held her head against his chest and wept silently.

  Then Roxana, deciding it was best to stay busy, suggested he should pack a small bag for the overnight vigil at the Tower of Silence. She went inside to get it started.

  In their mother’s room, which he and Coomy had been sharing, the one whose ceiling had been spared the hammer, she looked for Jal’s things in his half of the space. Her eyes strayed to the other side. From a hook behind the door hung Coomy’s floral-patterned nightgown. Her sensible shoes were under the bed. On the dressing table was a list of figures – household expenses she had been working on. Next to it, a sharpened pencil. The page had been kept in place by the weight of her prayer book. Roxana went closer to look; the Khordeh Avesta was open at the Aiwisruthrem Geh. So Coomy would have been reciting it yesterday, some time between sunset and midnight.

  She began to cry uncontrollably. They heard it in the drawing-room and hurried to her. They saw her standing with Coomy’s prayer book, and understood.

  Not long afterwards the hearse arrived. They rode together to the Tower of Silence. The initial formalities, the ritual ablutions were completed for the funeral next afternoon, and the body, clad in white, was laid out on the marble slab in the prayer hall. For the moment, there was nothing more to do.

  They sat on chairs that were lined along the wall in the dimly lit room. Now and again from the rear of the bungalow would be heard voices, and the clatter of utensils being washed and prepared for use in the funeral ceremonies. Then the noises faded; silence enveloped the bungalow.

  Roxana left her chair to stand in the doorway, gazing out beyond the veranda. How lush was the foliage of the trees and the shrubbery, she thought, such a different world, up here, on top of the hill. And such tranquility, high above the dust and stink of the city.

  The sound of insects began to punctuate the stillness as it got dark. Made the place even more serene, she felt. Her eyes tried to follow the path that led past the veranda and farther up the hill, where it disappeared in the twilight. The path along which Coomy’s body will be carried tomorrow, she thought, up, to the Tower, and then the vultures will alight …

  She went inside and glanced at Yezad. He nodded; it was time to leave. He bowed once more before the body, and stepped back. She lingered a moment longer to look upon the face. It was still uncovered; tomorrow, after the prayers, the sheet would be drawn over it.

  Coomy’s expression was so much softer now, she thought. She saw returned in it her childhood sister, the one who used to lavish affection upon her, who carried her around like a beloved doll. And tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Yezad touched her elbow gently. He put his arm around her as she wiped her face and walked slowly to the door. Jal went out to the veranda with them.

  They started down the path, then turned and waved to him. They walked down the hill shrouded in dusk and birdsong, the dense foliage looming above them like a huge dark umbrella.

  In the taxi, Roxana waited till Yezad gave the driver directions for the quickest route home, then said, “I feel terrible. At a time like this, suddenly the ceiling came into my mind.”

  “Don’t feel bad, I had the same thought. It’s only natural.”

  “And even if it was fixed, and Pappa could go back, how would Jal ever manage all alone?”

  “Perhaps it’s our destiny to look after the chief.”

  He was silent the rest of the way, weary of his burdens. He couldn’t carry them any longer. Now he would leave it in God’s hands – whatever He willed would happen, as it did with everything anyway.

  He asked the taxi driver to let them off outside the lane to Pleasant Villa. They walked the rest to save on the fare. While she went upstairs, he stopped at the chemist’s to use the telephone, to let Mr. Kapur know he would not come to work the next day because of the funeral. But the telephone at the Kapur residence kept ringing.

  He went home, and saw Roxana sitting on the bed with the boys, her arms around them. Murad had questions about the accident, about how Coomy Aunty had died, and Yezad and Roxana answered them as directly as they could.

  “Will I go to the funeral?” asked Jehangir.

  “Would you like to?”

  He nodded.

  “And Murad?”

  He nodded too.

  After dinner, Yezad went out to try Mr. Kapur’s telephone again. Still no answer. He made three more attempts at suitable intervals till eleven o’clock, then gave up. He would have to go to Bombay Sporting in the morning and tell him in person.

  Stuck to the door was a handwritten sign: Due to Death in Family, Shop Will Be Closed Till Further Notice. Apologies For Inconvenience to Our Valued Customers.

  For a moment, the information disoriented Yezad – how did Mr. Kapur hear about Coomy’s death? … and so good of him to consider me family …

  His muddled thoughts grew more coherent. No, couldn’t be for Coomy. But whose death, then? Another coincidence? Death in my family, death in Mr. Kapur’s …

  He reached for his keys, observing as he did that it wasn’t the boss’s handwriting on the notice. He decided to let himself in, telephone, find out who had passed away. He would give Mr. Kapur his condolences, and the news about the bereavement in his own family. He unlocked the deadbolt and put in the latchkey.

  The latch turned, but the door wouldn’t open. He tried again before noticing a padlock in the hasp at the foot of the door. He had been shut out. Why? Perhaps the person who wrote the sign put on the padlock, worried about security.

  He returned his keys to his pocket and saw Husain approaching. The news would have to be explained to him.

  “Salaam, sahab.”

  “Sorry, Husain, we cannot get in this morning.”

  The peon nodded, raising his hands in a mournful gesture towards the door and letting them fall lifeless. “My heart is breaking, sahab,” he said, his voice a sob.

  Yezad wondered why a death in Mr. Kapur’s family would cause Husain such grief – the peon was in one of his overwrought moods, kindness was needed. “Why waste your time here, Husain miyan? Go home, take rest. You’ll still get paid. And we’ll see Mr. Kapur when the shop reopens.”

  Husain looked at him, horrified. “What are you saying? We will never see Kapur sahab again!”

  Yezad leaned against the door to fight the pavement as it spun and yawed around him. He lowered himself to the entrance step, almost tumbling with the effort. Husain steadied him, then sat beside him, crying.

  “Tell me what happened,” he urged the peon.

  “What to tell? They killed him … two men.” He shrugged, as though that were the full story.

  Struggling to contain his own emotions, Yezad spoke gently to Husain, asking him specific questions about the men, what they said, was there a fight. He used Hindi now, as Mr. Kapur would have done, to encourage the peon to express himself more freely.

  Husain started again with an effort. “I was outside on the footpath. I could hear sahab tell them shop was closed for business, only open for children. They laughed, that their business could be done better in a closed shop.”

  His face contorted with the strain of remembering. “They called him Punjoo – we will teach you a lesson, you Punjoo, they said, pushing him to the back of the shop. They hit him with blows in the stomach, and kicks. I tried to shout, but my vo
ice wouldn’t work. Suddenly, sahab picked up a cricket bat and threatened them – ‘I’ll knock your heads for a sixer,’ he said.”

  The memory of his sahab having the upper hand made him brighten for an instant. But the description of Mr. Kapur, irrepressible, defiant to the last, played havoc with Yezad, and for a moment he forgot Husain’s fragility. Then he composed himself again. “Phir kya hua, Husain?”

  “The men got scared and ran behind the counter. But they took out knives. They circled around, one got behind him. Sahab cried out. Now I also screamed, suddenly my voice came back, and they ran away like dogs.

  “Sahab fell to the floor, I rushed inside. At first I couldn’t see the blood because of his red clothes. Then it began soaking the white border. ‘Help me, Husain,’ he said. ‘Phone my wife.’ So I did that, I heard Kapur bibi’s voice, and I repeated what he said: Kapur sahab had accident, call ambulance, come quick.”

  Yezad nodded supportively, and Husain continued, “They took him to hospital, I also went, Kapur sahab told them he wanted me. I was holding his hand all the time till Kapur bibi came. They connected a tube to fill blood into his body from a bottle, because so much of his own blood had spilled. I told them if they needed more, they could take it out of my body. But they checked and said no, they needed same type.”

  He paused, and asked tearfully, “Why did hospital say no to my blood? Is it because mine is Muslim type and Kapur sahab’s is Hindu?”

  “No, no, Husain – absolutely not. When they talk of blood type, it’s a medical thing, not religious. Your blood type can also be different from your own brother’s. Kapur sahab’s can be different from Kapur bibi’s. Nothing to do with religion.”

  “Hanh, achha,” he nodded, comforted by the explanation. Then he remembered where he had stopped. “In the evening, sahab’s breath was gone, so they removed the blood tube.”

  He beat his hand upon his chest. “Such a good man! Why do they kill good people?”

  Yezad wished he had the luxury, the simplicity to grieve like Husain. But he would have time to examine his own feelings later; right now, the peon needed him.