Now he had brought it all back, through his own doing. He switched off the light beside the sofa and dragged himself to his room.
Morning could not alleviate Maneck’s shame from last night. To help keep it burning, Dina slammed the plate of two fried eggs before him at breakfast. When it was time to leave for college and he called out “Bye, Aunty,” she would not come to wave. Woefully, he shut the door upon the empty, accusing verandah.
The first hint of forgiveness quivered in the air after dinner. Like the night before, she retreated to the back room instead of bringing the quilt to the sofa; however, she kept her door ajar.
Waiting hopefully in the front room, he passed the time listening to the neighbours. Someone screamed retributive warnings — at a daughter, he presumed. “Mui bitch!” came a man’s voice. “Behaving like a slut, staying out so late at night! You think eighteen years is too old to get a thrashing? I’ll show you! When we say back by ten o’clock, we mean ten o’clock!”
Maneck glanced at his watch: ten-twenty. Still Dina Aunty did not emerge. Neither did the light go off. At their usual bedtime of ten-thirty, he decided to peek in and say good night.
She was in her nightgown, her back to the door. He changed his mind and tried to retreat, but she saw him through the crack. Oh God, he thought, panicking — now she would assume he was spying.
“Yes?” she said sharply.
“Excuse me, Aunty, I was just coming to say good night.”
“Yes. Good night.” Her stiffness persisted.
He re-echoed the words and began edging away, then stopped. He cleared his throat. “Also…”
“Also what?”
“Also, I wanted to say sorry… for yesterday…”
“Don’t mumble from outside the room. Come in and say what you have to say.”
He entered shyly. Her bare arms in the nightgown looked so lovely, and through the light cotton, the shape of… but he dared not let his eyes linger. Mummy’s friend was the unsummoned thought that terrified him as he finished his apology.
“I want you to understand,” she said. “I was not angry with your shameful act because of any harm to me. I was ashamed for you, to see you behaving like a loafer. Like a roadside mavali. From Omprakash I cannot expect better. But you, from a good Parsi family. And I left you to watch after them, I trusted you.”
“I’m sorry,” he hung his head. She raised her hands to her hair, reinserting a clip that had become ineffective. He found the fuzz in her armpits extremely erotic.
“Go to bed now,” she said. “Next time, use better judgement.”
As he fell asleep, thinking of Dina Aunty in the nightgown, she began to merge with the woman on the train, in the upper berth.
VII. On the Move
AFTER THE INCIDENT WITH THE SANITARY pads, Dina was certain that neither Ishvar nor Om would dare follow through with a dinner for Maneck at their house. And even if they did, he would refuse, for fear of offending her.
In a few days, however, the invitation was indeed renewed, and acceptance seemed to linger close at hand. “I don’t believe it,” she whispered angrily to Maneck. “After what you did that day, isn’t it enough? Haven’t you upset me enough?”
“But I apologized for that, Aunty. And Om was also very sorry. What’s the connection between the two things?”
“You think sorry makes it all right. You don’t understand the problem. I have nothing against them, but they are tailors — my employees. A distance has to be maintained. You are the son of Farokh and Aban Kohlah. There is a difference, and you cannot pretend there isn’t — their community, their background.”
“But Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t mind,” he said, trying to explain he hadn’t been brought up to think this way, that his parents encouraged him to mix with everyone.
“So you are saying I am narrow-minded, and your parents are broad-minded, modern people?”
He grew tired of arguing. Sometimes she seemed to him on the verge of being reasonable, only to make another absurd statement: “If you are so fond of them, why don’t you pack your things and move in with them? I can easily write to your mummy, tell her where to send the rent next month.”
“I just want to visit once. It feels rude to keep refusing. They think I’m too big to go to their house.”
“And have you thought of the consequences of one visit? Good manners is all very well, but what about health and hygiene? How do they prepare their food? Can they afford proper cooking oil? Or do they buy cheap adulterated vanaspati, like most poor people?”
“I don’t know. They haven’t fallen sick and died as yet.”
“Because their stomachs are accustomed to it, you foolish boy, and yours is not.”
Maneck pictured the hideous canteen food his own stomach had endured, and the roadside snacks devoured for weeks on end. He wondered if mentioning that would make her modify her culinary theories.
“And what about water?” she continued “Is there a clean supply in their neighbourhood, or is it contaminated?”
“I’ll be careful, I won’t drink any water.” His mind was made up, he was going. She was getting too bossy. Even Mummy never controlled his life the way Dina Aunty was trying to.
“Fine, do as you please. But if you catch something, don’t think I’ll be your nurse for one moment. You’ll be sent back by express delivery to your parents.”
“That’s all right with me.”
The next time Ishvar and Om asked him, he said yes. She flushed, and ground her teeth. Maneck smiled innocently.
“Tomorrow then, okay?” said Ishvar with delight. “We’ll leave together at six o’clock.” He inquired what he would like to eat. “Rice or chapati? And which is your favourite vegetable, hahn?”
“Anything,” answered Maneck to all questions. The tailors spent the rest of the afternoon discussing the menu, planning their humble feast.
Ishvar was first to notice that the smoke from cooking fires did not linger over the hutment colony. He tripped on the crumbling pavement, his eyes searching the horizon. At this hour the haze should have been clouding thick. “Everyone fasting or what?”
“Forget worrying about everyone — I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving. Do you have worms?”
Om did not laugh; the joke was growing stale. The absence of smoke bothered Ishvar. In its place a dull roar, as of heavy machinery, hung in the distance. “Repairing the roads at night?” he wondered, as the noise rose with their approach. Then, thinking about Maneck’s dinner, he said, “Tomorrow we will shop in the morning, keep everything ready. We shouldn’t waste time after work. Now if you were married, your wife would have the food cooked and waiting for our guest.”
“Why don’t you get married?”
“I’m too old.” But, he thought, teasing aside, it really was high time for Om — not wise to delay these things.
“But I’ve even selected a wife for you,” said Om.
“Who?”
“Dinabai. I know you like her, you’re always taking her side. You should give her a poke.”
“Shameless boy,” said Ishvar, thumping him lightly as they turned the corner into the slum lane.
The rumbling ball of sound that had been rolling towards them, slow and placid in the dusk, grew larger, louder. Then it detonated. The air was suddenly filled with noises of pain and terror and anger.
“Hai Ram! What’s going on?” They ran the final distance and came upon a battle in progress.
The hutment dwellers were massed on the road, fighting to return to their shacks, their cries mingling with the sirens of ambulances that couldn’t get through. The police had lost control for the moment. The residents surged forward, gaining the advantage. Then the police rallied and beat them back. People fell, were trampled, and the ambulances supplemented their siren skirls with blaring horns while children screamed, terrified at being separated from their parents.