Over the rasp of his breath came the voice of Viraf’s mother. “ … to exchange with someone on the ground floor, but that also is no. Says I won’t give up my third-floor paradise for all the smell and noise of a ground-floor flat. Which is true, up here even B.E.S.T. bus rattle and rumble does not come. But what use of paradise if you are not alive in good health to enjoy it? Now doctor says intensive care but Parsi General Hospital has no place. Better to stay here than other hospitals, only…”
My eyes fixed on the stone-grey face of Viraf’s father, I backed out of the sickroom, unseen. The hallway was empty. Viraf was waiting for me in the back room with the boards for Ludo and Snakes-and-Ladders. But I sneaked through the veranda and down the stairs without a word.
The compound was flooded in sunshine as I returned to the other end. On the way I passed the three white stumps we had once chalked on the compound wall’s black stone. The lines were very faint, and could barely be seen, lost amongst more recent scribbles and abandoned games of noughts and crosses.
Mummy was in the kitchen, I could hear the roaring of the Primus stove. Mamaiji, sinister in her dark glasses, sat by the veranda window, sunlight reflecting off the thick, black lenses with leather blinders at the sides; after her cataract operation the doctor had told her to wear these for a few months.
Daddy was still reading the Times at the dining-table. Through the gloom of the light bulb I saw the Murphy Baby’s innocent and joyous smile. I wondered what he looked like now. When I was two years old, there was a Murphy Baby Contest, and according to Mummy and Daddy my photograph, which had been entered, should have won. They said that in those days my smile had been just as, if not more, innocent and joyous.
The tweezers were lying on the table. I picked them up. They glinted pitilessly, like that long needle in Viraf’s father. I dropped them with a shudder, and they clattered against the table.
Daddy looked up questioningly. His hair was dishevelled as I had left it, and I waited, hoping he would ask me to continue. To offer to do it was beyond me, but I wanted desperately that he should ask me now. I glanced at his face discreetly, from the corner of my eye. The lines on his forehead stood out all too clearly, and the stubble flecked with white, which by this hour should have disappeared down the drain with the shaving water. I swore to myself that never again would I begrudge him my help; I would get all the white hairs, one by one, if he would only ask me; I would concentrate on the tweezers as never before, I would do it as if all our lives were riding on the efficacy of the tweezers, yes, I would continue to do it Sunday after Sunday, no matter how long it took.
Daddy put down the newspaper and removed his glasses. He rubbed his eyes, then went to the bathroom. How tired he looked, and how his shoulders drooped; his gait lacked confidence, and I’d never noticed that before. He did not speak to me even though I was praying hard that he would. Something inside me grew very heavy, and I tried to swallow, to dissolve that heaviness in saliva, but swallowing wasn’t easy either, the heaviness was blocking my throat.
I heard the sound of running water. Daddy was preparing to shave. I wanted to go and watch him, talk to him, laugh with him at the funny faces he made to get at all the tricky places with the razor, especially the cleft in his chin.
Instead, I threw myself on the bed. I felt like crying, and buried my face in the pillow. I wanted to cry for the way I had treated Viraf, and for his sick father with the long, cold needle in his arm and his rasping breath; for Mamaiji and her tired, darkened eyes spinning thread for our kustis, and for Mummy growing old in the dingy kitchen smelling of kerosene, where the Primus roared and her dreams were extinguished; I wanted to weep for myself, for not being able to hug Daddy when I wanted to, and for not ever saying thank you for cricket in the morning, and pigeons and bicycles and dreams; and for all the white hairs that I was powerless to stop.
The Paying Guests
Khorshedbai emerged from her room with a loosely newspapered package cradled in her arms. Then, as she had been doing every morning at eleven o’clock for the past four weeks, she began strewing its smelly contents over the veranda.
The veranda sat in the L of the flat’s two rooms. She was careful to let nothing fall by the door to her room. That she was on the ground floor of B Block, exposed to curious eyes passing in the compound, had not discouraged her for four weeks and did not discourage her now. None of the neighbours would interfere. Why, she did not know for certain. Perhaps out of respect for her grey hair. She also had the vague notion that praying every day at the agyaari had something to do with it.
Her work was methodical and thorough. She commenced with the window and its parapet, tossing onion skin, coconut husk, egg shells trailing gluey white, potato peelings, one strip of a banana skin, cauliflower leaves, and orange rind, all along the inside ledge. An eggshell rolled off. She picked it up and cracked it – there, that would keep it from falling – and replaced it on the parapet, between the coconut husk and potato peelings.
Pleased with her arrangement, Khorshedbai stepped to the door leading to the other room. Locked from the inside, as usual. The cowards. She draped the balance of the banana skin over the door handle, hung an elongated shred of fatty gristle from the knob, and scattered the remaining assorted peels and skins over the doorstep. The several bangles on her bony wrists tinkled softly: a delicate accompaniment while she worked over the veranda. Gentle though the sound was, it always annoyed her, announcing her presence like a cowbell. She pushed the bangles higher. Tight, around the forearms. To get rid of them without offending Ardesar would be such a comfort. The gold wedding bangle, encircling her wrist for forty years now, was the only one she cared for.
Khorshedbai reversed three paces and regarded her handiwork with satisfaction. Especially the length of gristle, which was pendulating gently with the weight of the bone at its extremity. Only one thing remained now. Collected from the pavement as an afterthought while returning from the agyaari, she hurled it against the locked door.
Dog faeces spattered the lower panel with a smack. Bits of it clung, the rest fell on the step. Behind the locked door Kashmira puzzled over the soft thud. She was alone with little Adil. The sound was quite different from the rustle and tinkle of the past four weeks, but she stayed where she was, behind the safety of the locked door. She could wait to find out what it was till Boman came home from work. Four weeks of calm and restrained littering had still not alleviated her fear that Khorshedbai would one day explode into an uncontrollable, shrieking madwoman. Or she could collapse into a whimpering mass of helplessness. If it did happen, Kashmira hoped it would be the latter.
Outside, Khorshedbai was delighted with the results. Had it dried up completely, it would not have stuck. But this was perfect. She crumpled up the newspaper and turned to leave, then stopped. Another afterthought – she raised her eyes heavenward in thanks and shredded the pages of The Indian Express into tiny pieces. She scattered them, tossed them, hither and thither, little paper medallions gently falling, to decorate the floor and window ledge and door. Traces of prance and glee crept into her step; she became a little girl indulging in forbidden fun. Strewing to the left and to the right, and up to the ceiling to watch it all float downward. The sari slipped off her head (she always kept her head covered) and the left shoulder (she deftly restored the fabric), and her bangles, having escaped the forearms to the freedom of the wrists, sounded louder, the fragile tinkles now a solid row of jingle-jangles.
From behind the locked door it sounded as though Khorshedbai had finally entered that long-feared state of frenzy, and Kashmira was worried. Khorshedbai could usually be controlled by Ardesar with his gentle voice of reason. She had heard him before, speaking so calmly and tenderly to his wife; it always brought a lump to Kashmira’s throat.
Ardesar had tried to dissuade Khorshedbai every day since she conceived of this scheme four weeks ago. That first morning, after tasting victory in the court case in which they had faced eviction, she woke up and said tha
t Pestonji had given her a gift in the night. Whistling with his little red beak and fluttering his bright green wings in her dream, she said, he had revealed how to teach next door a lesson they would never forget. Ardesar had pleaded with her, but forty years of marriage should have taught him better. When Khorshed was resolved for fight and revenge nothing could stop her.
Now Ardesar could watch no more, after that nasty thing she hurled. Away, away from the door, away from this, this insane and filthy behaviour, he turned. Wringing his hands, he formed four words with his lips, over and over, in urgent supplication: Dada Ormuzd, forgive her. He paced the room in distress, stopping now and then to straighten and re-straighten the photoframes on the shelf. What was he to do? He could not question Pestonji’s dream-dictums without hurting his beloved Khotty. No, he could never do that. Besides, who was to say what dreams were all about, even scientists still knew so very little about the universe and its mysterious forces. He pulled out a chair as if to sit, then continued to pace. He repeatedly touched the bald spot on his head, fingered its peripheral strands, and tried to push the glasses (which had not strayed) up on his nose.
Khorshedbai curbed her frolic. She came in as the last little pieces of The Indian Express floated to the floor behind her. Ardesar took her arm, murmuring: “O Khotty my life, what have you done, that thing you threw. We will have to answer one day to The One Up There. This must stop before …”
She pulled away her arm and went to the empty parrot cage. With hands clasped before her chest and eyes closed she stood before it for a few moments, then turned to Ardesar. “They started it, why should we stop? Six months of court-and-lawyer nonsense. Eviction notices! Ha! He gives me eviction notices! With his ties and jackets, trying to be a sahib, and his good-mornings and good-evenings, thinks he is better than me.” Her hardness disappeared for a moment as she appealed to him pleadingly: “I was never this way before, was I?”
“But Khotty my life, that, that thing you threw! And you know it is their flat, they have a right to …”
“A right to what? Put us on the street? Don’t we have rights? At last to have a roof, eat a little daar-roteli, and finish our days in peace? No one will peck me to pieces, they better learn.”
“But we leave soon as the other place is vacant. Tell them, they are good people.”
“For you the whole world is good people.” Her gesture to encompass humanity tinkled the bangles again. She pushed them towards the elbows. “The other place is not ready. Might never be. Nothing is certain in life. Only birth, marriage, and death, my poor mother used to say. At our age you want to go begging again for rooms in dharmsaalas?”
“But that dirty, that thing …”
“That thing, that thing, that thing! Trembling in your pyjamas every day instead of helping. And if He did not want me to throw it, then why was it on the pavement outside the agyaari?. And why did He give me the idea? It is not easy to …”
Ardesar stopped listening. He did not mind Khorshedbai’s scolding. The uncertainty of things was worrying her. That was all. Besides, he was far away from this room now as he fed the pigeons flocking the wide pavements along Chaupatty beach, cooing to them as they played and nibbled in his hand, while the sound of the tide coming in offered a continuo to the occasional whirr of their gentle wings. Locked inside her room with little Adil, Kashmira heard the drone of Khorshedbai’s determined voice and Ardesar’s soft one for a long time. Sometimes she wished she could eavesdrop with greater clarity. After Boman came home she would unlock her door, they would clean up the mess as usual, then relax outside.
Kashmira needed at least one hour every evening on the veranda before going to bed. She said it felt like someone was choking her, after being cooped all day inside the one room where they had to cook and eat and sleep. But that was their own choice, made two years ago. They had given up the kitchen and decided to keep this room with its attached bathroom – the kitchen went with the other to the paying guests, in a natural division of the flat. She and Boman had agreed the bathroom was more important, what with little Adil’s soosoo problem at nights, and the second baby they had been planning. A kitchen they could do without, by partitioning and using one side of their room for cooking and dining. The veranda was common because the only entrance to the flat was through it.
The arrangement was awkward. But Boman said that no wife of his would go out to work while there was breath in his lungs. The paying guests would be temporary, two years at best, till he got his raises and they could again afford the full rent. That was Boman’s plan.
He laid it before Mr. Karani one evening in the compound when they were both returning from work. Boman admired the chartered accountant on the third floor immensely. He always took his advice in all manner of things. Not that he lacked confidence in himself, he just enjoyed discussions with a man who was a CA; there was something about those two letters, especially since Boman’s own studies had come to a halt after B.Com., when his father’s fortunes had failed.
Mr. Karani was full of dire forebodings. He warned that it was easier to get rid of a poisonous kaankhajuro which had crawled through your ear and nibbled its way to your brain than to evict a paying guest who had been allowed into your flat.
Boman was in a quandary. He had been looking for confirmation and support. Instead, he had run full tilt into contradiction and discouragement, and wished he had never spoken to Mr. Karani. This was the problem in taking the CA’S advice. If you disagreed with it, it sat inside you like a lump of incongenial food, noisily belligerent and causing indigestion.
For a few days, Mr. Karani’s warnings rumbled and growled and gnawed away at his plan, threatening it with disintegration, while Boman vacillated and went from extremes of confidence to extremes of uncertainty. Eventually, however, it turned out to be one of those rare instances when Boman ignored the CA’S advice. He went ahead with his plan and told Kashmira he had inserted an ad in the Jam-E-Jamshed.
It was soon answered. An appointment was made, the flat was shown, and both parties were agreeable.
Then followed one and a half years of cordial coexistence with the paying guests. Boman began to feel that, for once, Mr. Karani had been exaggerating. He was tempted to pull out the pedestal from under Mr. Karani.
But the year and a half of cordial coexistence sped by and concluded abruptly when Ardesar and Khorshedbai received the notice to vacate. This notice to vacate would have far-reaching effects. It would bring new experiences into all their lives: courts and courtrooms, sleepless nights filled with paeans to the rising sun, a sadistic nose-digging lawyer for Boman, veranda-sweeping for Kashmira, signs and portents in dreams for Khorshedbai, pigeons (real and imagined) for Ardesar, thick and suffocating incense clouds for Boman and Kashmira, and finally, a taxi for Ardesar and an ambulance for Khorshedbai.
Its immediate result, however, was to make Khorshedbai emphatically declare to Ardesar that no one would peck her to pieces. For most of her life, Khorshedbai had carried at the back of her mind an image. It was a flock of crows pecking and tearing to shreds some dead creature lying in a gutter. At times the corpse was a kitten, at other times a puppy; sometimes it was even another crow. Whether she ever witnessed something of this sort or whether the image just grew out of various life experiences into a guiding metaphor, during times of adversity she would clench her teeth and repeat to herself that no one was going to peck her to pieces, she would fight back.
It was a year and a half ago that the paying guests had moved in with their meagre possessions: two trunks, one holdall, a hefty parrot cage (empty and still bearing the former occupant’s name: Pestonji Poputt), a wind-up gramophone, and one record: Sukhi Sooraj, a song of praise for the morning sun, its brittle 78-rpm shellac protected between soft sari layers in one of the trunks.
In those days, the two rooms did not stay locked. Khorshedbai would peek inside, wave to little Adil, and inquire how he was getting along. Sometimes Kashmira looked in on the elderly couple to ask if they ne
eded anything. She noticed that two second-hand chairs and a small folding table had been added. On the table stood the cage of the deceased or disappeared Pestonji. Once, she saw Khorshedbai before the empty cage, gazing at the little swing inside. She felt a pang of compassion for the dear grey-haired lady, and imagined the burden of memories weighing heavily upon Khorshedbai’s old shoulders as she stood and remembered her beloved pet. Khorshedbai beckoned her in, viced her arm in bony fingers, and said; “So sweet, Pestonji’s whistle was, and so true.” He still appeared in her dreams when there was trouble, she said, and communicated the future in whistles she alone could interpret.
That night when Kashmira told Boman all about it, he said the old lady definitely had at least one loose screw somewhere in the upper storey.
Minor irritants between the two parties were easily taken care of. Khorshedbai requested sole use of the veranda for her morning prayers. And she did not want Kashmira to emerge during her monthly. Boman and Kashmira agreed amusedly. Khorshedbai rose at five A.M. each day and, after brushing her teeth, unmuzzled her gramophone for Sukhi Sooraj, the fervent tribute to sunrise. As part of the mutual consideration pact, Boman and Kashmira requested that it not be played till after seven o’clock.
Khorshedbai soon became a familiar sight in the building. To and from her way to the agyaari or the bazaar, and sometimes, hand in hand with Ardesar, off to feed the pigeons at Chaupatty beach. Gradually, stories reached Kashmira’s ears about the elderly couple, and how they came to be homeless at their age. Najamai from C Block stopped by whenever she uncovered something new from her numerous sources. She was concerned that Boman and Kashmira had taken strangers into their flat. So what if they too were Parsis, these days you could trust no one. It was one lesson she had learned, she said, after the murder in the fire-temple, when the dustoorji had been stabbed to death by a chasniwalla employed there. Thus Najamai made it her bounden responsibility to make known the truth, but was not really successful.