Maneck laughed. “I could ask ‘Madam, may I examine your compressors?’ Or ‘Madam, you need a new thermostat in your thermostat cavity.’“
“Madam, your temperature control knobs require adjustment.”
“Madam, your meat drawer is not opening properly.”
The customer left as they were getting uproarious, and Ishvar said, “Gome on, you two, time to go. What are you laughing so much about, hahn?”
“As if we don’t know,” grinned Jeevan, bidding them good luck and farewell. “Hope you soon find a room.”
During reading week, prior to Manek’s exams, the rent-collector paid an unscheduled afternoon call. The tailors silenced the sewing-machines at the sound of the doorbell.
“How are you, sister?” said Ibrahim, his hand rising fezwards.
“What is it now?” said Dina, barring his way. “Rent is already paid this month.”
“Rent is not the problem, sister.” Shrinking as he spoke, he blurted in one sentence that the office had sent him to deliver a final notice to vacate in thirty days because they had proof that she was using the flat for commercial purposes despite the warning months ago.
“Nonsense! What proof do they have?”
“Why get upset with me, sister,” he pleaded, tapping the notebook in his pocket. “It’s all here — dates, times, coming-going, taxi, dresses. And more proof is sitting in the back room.”
“Back room? You want to show me?” She stood aside and gestured him in.
The outright challenge startled him. He had no choice but to accept. Entering with his head bowed, he made for the sewing room. The tailors, frozen at the Singers, waited nervously, while Maneck watched from his room.
“This is the problem, sister. You cannot hire tailors and run a business here.” He moved his anguished hands to include the other bedroom. “And a paying guest, on top of that. Such insanity, sister. The office will throw you out for sure.”
“You are talking rubbish!” She started the counterattack. “This man,” she said, pointing to Ishvar, “he is my husband. The two boys are our sons. And the dresses are all mine. Part of my new 1975 wardrobe. Go, tell your landlord he has no case.”
It was difficult to say who she shocked more with the apocryphal revelation: Ishvar, blushing and playing with his scissors, or Ibrahim, wringing his hands and sighing.
Pressing home her advantage, she demanded, “You have anything else to say?”
Ibrahim hunched his shoulders till they looked sufficiently supplicatory. “Marriage licence, please? Birth certificates? Can I see, please?”
“My slipper across your mouth is what you will see! How dare you insult me! Tell your landlord, if he does not stop harassing my family, I’ll take him straight to court!”
He retreated, muttering that he would have to make a full report to the office, why abuse him for doing his job, he did not enjoy it any more than the tenants did.
“If you don’t enjoy it, leave it. At your age you shouldn’t have to work anyway. Your children can look after you.”
“I have to work, I am all alone,” he said as the door shut.
The sweetness of her victory faded. She waited, hearing him panting outside, catching his breath before he could set off. In the moment of his brief words, her own life’s lonely, troubled years came rushing back, reminding her how recent and unreliable was the happiness discovered in these last few months.
In the back room Ishvar had recovered from the matrimonial surprise. The boys were chortling away, teasing him about the look on his face. “You keep talking about a wife for me,” said Om. “Instead you got one for yourself.”
“That was an amazing idea, Aunty. Did you plan it in advance?”
“Never mind that, you better plan for your exams.”
College closed for the three-week Divali vacation, and Dina encouraged Maneck to be a tourist. “All this time it’s been home to class and class to home. But there is so much sightseeing in this city. The museum and aquarium and the sculpted caves will fascinate you. Victoria Garden and the Hanging Gardens are also worth visiting, believe me.”
“But I’ve seen them before.”
“When? Years ago, with your mummy? You were just a little baba then, you cannot remember anything. You must go again. And you must also visit your Sodawalla relatives — they are your mummy’s family.”
“Okay,” he said indifferently, and did not stir from the flat.
That week, the first fireworks of Divali were heard. “Hai Ram,” said Ishvar. “What a bombardment.”
“This is nothing,” said Dina. “Wait till the actual date gets closer.”
The noise delayed bedtime by roughly two hours each night, making Maneck’s empty vacation days longer and emptier. To compensate he tried rising late, but the clamorous dawn, filled with clanging milkmen and argumentative crows, was always victorious.
Dina wrote down bus numbers and directions for him. “It’s very easy to find these tourist attractions, you won’t get lost,” she said, thinking that perhaps that was what scared him. But Maneck did not budge.
Fed up with his moping about the house, she began scolding him. “All the time indoors, like a glum grandpa. It’s not natural for a young man. And you’re driving us crazy with your pacing up and down the whole day.”
His idle presence now began to distract Om, who was once again taking extended tea breaks with him at the Vishram, or playing cards on the verandah, showing a general disinclination to work. Ishvar reproached his nephew, and Dina reprimanded him as well, to no avail.
At the end of the week they took a different approach; they decided it would be best to let Om have a vacation too. Expecting him to slog at the Singer while his friend waited around was unrealistic. After all, it was bad enough having to earn his living at an age when he should have been going to college like Maneck.
So Om was told he could reduce his hours and sew from eight to eleven in the morning. “You have worked very hard these last few months,” said Dina. “You deserve a holiday.”
Now there was no keeping them at home. The minute Om finished his short shift, the two were not seen again till dinnertime. Then it was nonstop talk through the meal and until bedtime, for they were full of the things they had done.
“The sea was so rough, the launch was jumping like a wild horse,” said Om. “It was scary, yaar.”
“I’m telling you, Aunty, your paying guest and half your tailoring factory almost drowned at the jetty.”
“Dont say inauspicious things,” said Ishvar.
“After that launch ride, even the aquarium made me dizzy — all that water around us.”
“But the fish were beautiful, yaar. And such stylish ways they have of swimming. As if they were out for a walk, or shopping in the bazaar, squeezing the tomatoes, or like police running after a thief.”
“Some of them were so colourful, like the cloth from Au Revoir,” said Maneck. “And the nose of the sawfish looked exactly like a real saw, I swear.”
“Tomorrow, I want to get a massage at the beach,” said Om. “We saw them today, with their oils and lotions and towels.”
“Be very careful,” warned Dina. “Those massagewallas are crooks. They give you beautiful chumpee till you are so relaxed, you fall asleep. Then they pick your pocket.”
The next three days, however, were spent at the museum. Om came home and said that the builders must have modelled the domed roof after his uncle’s stomach. “If only I could honestly claim such prosperity,” said Ishvar. For three evenings he and Dina heard all about the Chinese gallery, Tibetan gallery, Nepalese gallery, samovars, tea urns, ivory carvings, jade snuff boxes, tapestries.
Particularly transfixing had been the armour collection — the suits of mail, jade-handled daggers, scimitars, swords with serrated edges (“like the coconut grater on the kitchen shelf,” said Om), bejewelled ceremonial swords, bows and arrows, cudgels, pikes, lances, and spiked maces.