Such a Long Journey Page 17

  Gustad had to concede the point. ‘But from now on, I want to hear the stick, rain or no rain. Bang harder, bang under my window, but bang, I am warning you. I must hear it every night.’ The Gurkha nodded vigorously to placate him, sensing that the matter was almost concluded. ‘And on your way out, tell the kuchrawalli to clean this at once.’

  The crows began converging again when Gustad and Dilnavaz turned to go in. He decided to stay. ‘You will be late for work,’ said Dilnavaz. ‘I’ll wait till kuchrawalli comes.’

  ‘It’s OK. There is enough time.’ By now, he was feeling bad about having made her view the bandicoot’s torn entrails.

  iv

  It rained through Saturday but stopped during the night. Gustad lay awake to hear the Gurkha’s nightstick. By and by, the reassuring knock of wood against stone started to punctuate and measure out the hours of darkness. Satisfied that the scolding had worked, he turned over and fell asleep.

  Sunday dawned with a clear sky. Gustad was wakened by a ray of light entering through a corner of ventilator glass where the blackout paper had come untacked. No rain, he thought. Prayers in the compound? It will still be soft and squelchy. Better stay inside, took too long to clean mud from slippers yesterday.

  He sat up, stretched, and rubbed his eyes. The cawing started. Just one crow at first, as though it was calling the faithful to prayer, but soon joined by others, fervent recruits who lent their eager throats. Then the sound grew frantic, the entire assembly raising its voice in a strident chorus of ecstasy, and Gustad bounded out of bed.

  The mattress lurched wildly in reaction, waking Dilnavaz. ‘What happened?’

  He pointed to the window. ‘You can’t hear?’ The cawing made her sit up; she reached for her duster-coat.

  The morning was windless, and the rain puddles were still as glass, reflecting a cloudless sky. But only a few feet away, by the vinca bush, was a different world. The competition was rough, and the crows, in their urgency, were flapping and pecking, sometimes attacking one another. A few withdrew now and then to gird their loins, then re-entered the fray. It was hard to see what was in the bush because of the frenetic, fluttering multitude of grey-black wings and feathers.

  ‘Aaaaahhh!’ roared Gustad, waving his arms wildly. ‘Caaaah! Caaaah!’ Like a black curtain lifting, the crows ascended and settled some distance away. He saw the dead cat: brown with patches of white, its eyelids not shut, and the eyes still unpecked. The mouth was slightly open, displaying a pink tongue. Wet whiskers skimmed the water surface. Were it not for the fact that the cat’s head, like the rat’s the morning before, was severed from its body, it would have seemed that the creature was thirsty, lapping water from the puddle. Gustad realized with detachment that this was how he used to imagine the sliced-off heads of dragons in his childhood kusti fantasies: intact, looking as if they were capable of continuing a separate existence.

  ‘Don’t look,’ he said to Dilnavaz, too late. She retched twice, then was in control. ‘What is going on, I’d like to know,’ he said quietly. ‘Darius!’

  Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Darius came. ‘What?’

  ‘Quick, call the Gurkha.’

  ‘I’m not going again in my pyjamas. Yesterday also you sent me,’ he protested. ‘It’s not fair.’ Besides, the map of his teenage lust, charted during the night, was printed starchily on the fabric over one thigh.

  ‘Don’t argue with me! Go right now!’

  ‘I’m not going!’ Darius yelled back, and returned to bed.

  Gustad said to his receding figure, ‘You will have an unhappy life if you take your rascal runaway brother’s example and shout at your father! Remember that!’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Dilnavaz. ‘I will go.’

  ‘It’s shameful. How quickly he learns the bad things. But wait. Tehmul! My friend! Tehmul!’ It was the first time Gustad had seen him since that Friday after Chor Bazaar. He waved and smiled, coaxing him close, making no sudden moves lest he flee.

  Tehmul approached shyly, scratching cautiously, and smiled at Dilnavaz. ‘GustadGustad.’

  ‘How are you, Tehmul? You enjoyed the rain?’ Tehmul spied the beheaded cat and burst out laughing. He edged closer and bent to pick up the head.

  ‘No, no, Tehmul, don’t touch. It’s bad, it bites.’ Tehmul drew back, grinning. ‘Will you do something for me? You know the Gurkha who sits in the building next door? Go and call him, say that Noble seth wants to see you.’

  Tehmul scattered the crows with his hobble. When he returned with the Gurkha, he imitated the salute by slapping his forehead briskly with his palm. Gustad kept a blank face and pointed silently to the bush.

  ‘O Bhagwan,’ said the Gurkha. ‘What is happening?’

  ‘Why ask Him? You should know. What time did you fall asleep? Two o’clock? Three o’clock?’

  ‘Arré, Noble seth, all night I was walking.’

  ‘Lies!’ shouted Gustad, pointing to the evidence. ‘This will not do! Enough is enough!’ Windows opened and curious faces peered out. ‘Yesterday a rat with head chopped off. Today a cat! Somebody is doing mischief, and what are you doing? Not doing your job! What comes tomorrow? Dog? Cow? Elephant?’

  ‘R-a-tratc-a-tcat,’ said Tehmul. ‘R-a-tratc-a-tcat.’

  ‘I am warning you, I will stop your pay. And all the neighbours also, I will tell them to stop, that you are a useless watchman.’

  The Gurkha panicked. ‘O seth, your feet I will touch, don’t do that. How will I put food in my children’s stomach? First-class night-watching I do, first-class. One more chance, please.’

  ‘R-a-tratc-a-tcatd-o-gdog.’

  Inspector Bamji’s Landmaster turned into the compound and halted by the foursome. ‘What’s going on, bossie?’

  Glad to see a figure of authority, Gustad appealed to him. ‘Soli. You say what you think. Somebody is throwing dead animals in my flowers. And this wonderful watchman does not know anything about it.’

  The Gurkha stood at attention while Inspector Bamji got out and took a good look at the cat. Tehmul imitated the inspector’s hands-behind-back pose. ‘R-a-tratc-a-tcat,’ he said.

  Inspector Bamji smiled a small, grim smile. It was a professional smile. ‘Somebody’s knife is very sharp. A very skilful knife. Anyone has a grudge against you, wants to harass you?’

  Gustad shook his head, and looked at Dilnavaz. She reinforced his denial with hers, adding, ‘Sometimes people kill animals to do magic. They use the blood in puja or something.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Inspector Bamji. ‘All kinds of lunatics out there. I think whoever is doing this, for whatever reason, is throwing it here because it’s a quiet, convenient place for disposal – in the bush, hidden by the black wall. If our watchman did some watching, the problem would be over.’

  ‘One more chance, seth,’ said the Gurkha. ‘Only one more.’

  Inspector Bamji winked at Gustad and nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘One more chance. But no more sleeping.’

  ‘Never on duty, seth,’ he said. ‘Swear on Bhagwan’s name.’

  ‘Useless,’ said Bamji, meaning the fellow would never admit to it, and got into his car. The Gurkha threw a salute in his direction, then presented one each to Dilnavaz and Gustad. Tehmul saluted the Gurkha. ‘C-a-tcatr-a-trat,’ he said, and began following him to the gate. Halfway there, he switched to a yellow butterfly, stumbling to keep up as it glided gracefully before him. Sometimes it paused upon a blade of grass till Tehmul all but reached it.

  Gustad watched him sadly, remembering Sohrab. With his butterfly net fashioned from a broken badminton racquet. On Sunday mornings I used to take him to Hanging Gardens.

  Dilnavaz knew what he was thinking. ‘He will come back,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell him you want him to come back?’

  He pretended not to understand. ‘Who are you talking of?’

  ‘Sohrab. Shall I tell him you want him back?’

  ‘Tell him what you like. I don’t care.’ She said nothing. It would have to
wait till they were inside, for down the compound came Mr and Mrs Rabadi with Dimple.

  The two were muttering between them, deliberately loud. ‘People think we are stupid. Fooling our little girl, saying fund-raising for refugees. God knows where the money goes.’

  Gustad said to Dilnavaz, so the Rabadis could hear, ‘I cannot bother replying to every lunatic ranting by the roadside.’ When they were gone, he added, ‘Would not be surprised if that idiot was responsible for the cat and the rat.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, clinging to common sense. ‘He does not like us, true, but I don’t think he would do this.’

  And she was right. What Gustad found next morning put everyone in the building beyond suspicion.

  Up bright and early, he was determined to say his prayers in the compound. A good way to start the new week. The Gurkha was by the vinca bush. ‘Salaam, seth. No dead animals in the flowers, not even an insect.’ His relief was great.

  Gustad inspected for himself. He circled round, and noticed a piece of paper, curiously positioned. It was folded and inserted snugly between two adjacent branches, as though in a letter-holder. Not something done by a random breeze. He pulled it out. There were two innocuous lines written in pencil, a child’s rhyme that made the colour drain from his face:

  Bilimoria chaaval chorya

  Daando lai nay marva dorya.

  The Gurkha looked over Gustad’s shoulder. ‘What language is that, seth?’ Since he had been forgiven, it would not hurt to solidify things with a little friendliness, he felt.

  ‘Gujarati,’ said Gustad shortly, wishing he would leave.

  ‘You can read Gujarati?’

  ‘Yes, it’s my mother tongue.’

  ‘What does it say, these funny-shaped letters?’

  ‘It says: “Stole the rice of Bilimoria, we’ll take a stick and then we’ll beat ya.’ ”

  ‘Means what?’

  ‘It’s something that children sing when playing. One child runs, the others try to catch him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Gurkha. ‘Very nice. Salaam seth, time to sleep now.’

  Gustad went inside with the rhyming couplet. There was no doubt now. No doubt at all about the meaning of the two decapitated carcasses. The message was clear.

  TEN

  i

  Gustad sat with the scrap of paper before him, seeing not words or calligraphy, but an incomprehensible betrayal, feeling that some vital part of him had been crushed to nothingness. Years of friendship swam before his eyes and filled the piece of paper; it taunted him, mocked him, turned into a gigantic canvas of lies and deceit. What kind of world is this, and what kind of men, who can behave in such fashion?

  He knew he must arise and go now to the coal-storage alcove. Jimmy Bilimoria had trapped him, robbed him of volition. If I could let the rotten world go by, spend the rest of life in this chair. Grandpa’s chair, that used to sit with the black desk in the furniture workshop. What a wonderful world, amid the din of hammering and sawing, the scent of sawdust and sweat and polish. And in Pappa’s bookstore, with its own special sounds and smells, the seductive rustle of turning pages, the timeless fragrance of fine paper, the ancient leather-bound volumes in those six enormous book-filled rooms, where even the air had a special quality, as in a temple or mausoleum. Time and the world stretched endlessly then, before the bad days came and everything shrank. And this is how my father must have felt, in this very chair, after the profligate brother had destroyed all, after the bankruptcy, when there was nothing left. He, too, must have wanted not to move from this chair, just let what remained of time and the shrunken world go by.

  ‘You finished praying already?’ Dilnavaz emerged from the kitchen, her water chores done. The front and sleeves of her nightgown were soaked as usual. ‘Is the vinca all right today?’

  ‘The vinca is all right,’ he said. But the habit of twenty-one years, to share all with her, was too powerful. He could not block out of his voice or keep from his face the brokenness he felt.

  ‘What has happened?’ He handed her the scrap of paper. ‘O my God,’ she said feebly. ‘Jimmy …?’ Gustad nodded.

  ‘But to us …?’ He nodded again.

  ‘Maybe the taxi-driver …?’

  ‘That makes no difference.’

  She squeezed her wet nightgown desperately, as though wringing out the water would rid them of this painful treachery. ‘I think we should take the money and go to the police, tell them the whole story,’ she said. ‘How you got it, what you were told to do with it, the rat and the cat, everything.’ Proposing righteous action lent her strength as she tried to fill the empty space inside with spurious baggage. ‘Give them Major Bilimoria’s address also – the post office box number. He can burn in jhaanum! He and his national security!’ The ruthless edge creeping into her voice surprised her. ‘Or tell Inspector Bamji. Then he can look after everything.’

  Gustad shook his head. He resisted the temptation to join in her way of filling the emptiness. ‘You don’t understand. Inspector Bamji, the police, have no power over RAW.’ He shook his head again. ‘We are dealing with heartless people – poisonous snakes. It could have been Roshan and Darius instead of the bandicoot and cat.’ He crumpled the note vehemently, tossing it from him with loathing. ‘I suppose we should be grateful to Jimmy for that.’

  ‘Owaaryoo,’ she said, frantically snapping her fingers towards the door, outwards, away from her home and family.

  ‘There is only one thing to do.’ He removed his prayer cap. She followed him to the kitchen where he got on his knees by the choolavati and pulled out the package. He opened a corner of it, enough to insert a hand, and withdrew one bundle. She watched anxiously, hoping he would not notice the limes or Sohrab’s application forms. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I will be careful. After twenty-four years I know the place and procedures inside out. One bundle for deposit every day. Ten thousand rupees. More than that will be suspicious.’

  ‘But it means to finish the whole parcel will take …’

  ‘One hundred days. I will write and tell him that’s the best I can do.’ He put the money in his briefcase. ‘I don’t understand this world any more. First, your son destroys our hopes. Now this rascal. Like a brother I looked upon him. What a world of wickedness it has become.’

  ii

  The air-raid siren started its keening lament as Gustad got off the bus at Flora Fountain. Like some gigantic bird of mourning in the skies above the city, circling, diving and wheeling, it drowned the traffic noises. Ten o’clock already, he thought. Should have been at my desk by now.

  For several weeks the threnodic siren had been wailing every morning at exactly ten o’clock: a full three-minute warning, followed by the monotonic all-clear. There had never been any official announcement, so the public assumed that in preparation for war with Pakistan, the government was checking to see if the air-raid sirens were in working order. Others believed it was to familiarize people with the dirge-like sound – they would not panic when an air raid was signalled in the middle of the night if they became acquainted with the wail during their daylight hours. Cynics said it seemed more like a conspiracy, because if the Pakistanis ever wanted to carry out a successful bombing raid, all they had to do was make sure they reached the skies overhead at exactly ten o’clock. But perhaps the most wishful explanation was that the siren sounded to let people check their watches and synchronize them at ten, as part of the pre-war effort to improve punctuality and productivity in government offices.

  With ten thousand rupees in his briefcase, Gustad was tense as he walked with the crowds flowing from bus stops to office buildings. Some scuffling suddenly broke out at the corner, and he tightened his grip on the briefcase. That was the corner where the pavement artist worked with his crayons. Gustad had often stopped to admire his portraits of gods and saints.

  The pavement artist did not restrict himself to any single religion – one day it was elephant-headed Ganesh, giver of wisdom and success; next day, it cou
ld be Christ hanging on the cross; and the office crowds blissfully tossed coins upon the pictures. The artist had chosen his spot well. He sat cross-legged and gathered the wealth descending from on high. Pedestrians were careful with this square of pavement, this hallowed ground, as long as it displayed the deity of the day. They flowed around the image like a stream of ants, diverging and converging automatically around it.

  Sometimes, accidents happened, like the one this morning. Someone stumbled and left his shoe-print on the drawing. Justice was dispensed summarily. The crowd refused to let the hapless fellow depart till he had made reparation by leaving a generous gift for the god. Then the artist took his crayon and touched up the god’s shoe-printed face. And watching the artist, Gustad suddenly perceived a mutually beneficial proposal in the holy drawings. But he was late for office; he would speak to him one evening when it was not so crowded.

  The all-clear faded as he climbed the steps into the bank. He stopped by Dinshawji’s desk and whispered, ‘Meet me outside in the lunch break. Very urgent.’ Dinshawji nodded, pleased. He loved secret compacts, privileged information, clandestine conversations, though they came his way far less often than he would have wished.

  Three months had gone by since Dinshawji’s return to work after his illness, and it troubled Gustad that he still looked as pale and washed out as on the night of Roshan’s birthday. But how jolly his conduct had been, singing and laughing and joking as if he hadn’t a worry in the world. Who would have thought he had recently come out of hospital then? Gustad wondered if he was taking proper treatment. Anyway, hats off to Dinshu, for going on so cheerfully, without ever complaining.

  At one o’clock they met as arranged. Dinshawji had cauliflower sandwiches, and noticing Gustad’s briefcase, asked, ‘You also got dry lunch today?’

  ‘No, no, something more important than food. I will have to miss my lunch.’ Whereupon Dinshawji insisted that he have a cauliflower sandwich. He accepted.