But before plunging in the piston she glimpsed, between the bedpost and the wall, a large tin of Ostermilk on the floor. The servant dived under to retrieve it. The tin was shut tight, she had to pry the lid open with a spoon. And as it came off, there rose a stench powerful enough to rip to shreds the hardy nostrils of a latrine-basket collector. She quickly replaced the lid, fanning the air vigorously with her hand. Minocher seemed to be dozing off, olfactory nerves unaffected. Was he trying to subdue a smile? Daulat could not be sure. But the tin without its lid was placed outside the back door, in hopes that the smell would clear in a while.
The bedbug inspection was resumed and the Flitting finished without further interruption. Minocher’s bed was soon ready, and he fell asleep in it.
The smell of the Ostermilk tin had now lost its former potency. Daulat squinted at the contents: a greyish mass of liquids and solids, no recognizable shapes or forms amongst them. With a stick she explored the gloppy, sloppy mess. Gradually, familiar objects began to emerge, greatly transmogrified but retaining enough of their original states to agitate her. She was now able to discern a square of fried egg, exhume a piece of toast, fish out an orange pip. So! This is what he did with his food! How could he get better if he did not eat. Indignation drove her back to his bedroom. She refused to be responsible for him if he was going to behave in this way. Sickness or no sickness, I will have to tell him straight.
But Minocher was fast asleep, snoring gently. Like a child, she thought, and her anger had melted away. She did not have the heart to waken him; he had spent all night tossing and turning. Let him sleep. But from now on I will have to watch him carefully at mealtimes.
Beside the oil lamp Daulat returned to the present. Talking to visitors about such things would not be difficult. But they would be made uncomfortable, not knowing whether to laugh or keep the condolence-visit-grimness upon their faces. The Ostermilk tin would have to remain their secret, hers and Minocher’s. As would the oxtail soup, whose turn it now was to sail silently out of the past, on the golden disc, on the flame-raft of Minocher’s lamp.
At the butcher’s, Daulat and Minocher had always argued about oxtail which neither had ever eaten. Minocher wanted to try it, but she would say with a shudder, “See how they hang like snakes. How can you even think of eating that? It will bring bad luck, I won’t cook it.”
He called her superstitious. Oxtail, however, remained a dream deferred for Minocher. After his illness commenced, Daulat shopped alone, and at the meat market she would remember Minocher’s penchant for trying new things. She picked her way cautiously over the wet, slippery floors, weaving through the narrow aisles between the meat stalls, avoiding the importunating hands that thrust shoulders and legs and chops before her. But she forced herself to stop before the pendent objects of her dread and fix them with a long, hard gaze, as though to stare them down and overcome her aversion.
She was often tempted to buy oxtail and surprise Minocher — something different might revive his now almost-dead appetite. But the thought of evil and misfortune associated with all things serpentine dissuaded her each time. Finally, when Minocher had entered the period of his pseudo-convalescence, he awakened after a peaceful night and said, “Do me a favour?” Daulat nodded, and he smiled wickedly: “Make oxtail soup.” And that day, they dined on what had made her cringe for years, the first hearty meal for both since the illness had commandeered the course of their lives.
Daulat rose from the armchair. It was time now to carry out the plan she had made yesterday, walking past the Old-Age Home For Parsi Men, on her way back from the fire-temple. If Minocher could, he would want her to. Many were the times he had gone through his wardrobe selecting things he did not need or wear any longer, wrapped them in brown paper and string, and carried them to the Home for distribution.
Beginning with the ordinary items of everyday wear, she started sorting them: sudras, underwear, two spare kustis, sleeping suits, light cotton shirts for wearing around the house. She decided to make parcels right away — why wait for the prescribed year or six months and deny the need of the old men at the Home if she could (and Minocher certainly could) give today?
When the first heap of clothing took its place upon brown paper spread out on his bed, something wrenched inside her. The way it had wrenched when he had been pronounced dead by the doctor. Then it passed, as it had passed before. She concentrated on the clothes; one of each in every parceclass="underline" sudra, underpants, sleeping suit, shirt would make it easier to distribute.
Bent over the bed, she worked unaware of her shadow on the wall, cast by the soft light of the oil lamp. Though the curtainless window was open, the room was half-dark because the sun was on the other side of the flat. But half-dark was light enough in this room into which had been concentrated her entire universe for the duration of her and Minocher’s ordeal. Every little detail in this room she knew intimately: the slivered edge of the first compartment of the chest of drawers where a sudra could snag, she knew to avoid; the little trick, to ease out the shirt drawer which always stuck, she was familiar with; the special way to jiggle the key in the lock of the Godrej cupboard she had mastered a long time ago.
The Godrej steel cupboard Daulat tackled next. This was the difficult one, containing the “going-out” clothes: suits, ties, silk shirts, fashionable bush shirts, including some foreign ones sent by their Canadian nephew, Sarosh-Sid, and the envy of Minocher’s friends. This cupboard would be the hard one to empty out, with each garment holding memories of parties and New Year’s Eve dances, weddings and navjotes. Strung out on the hangers and spread out on the shelves were the chronicles of their life together, beginning with the Parsi formal dress Minocher had worn on the day of their wedding: silk dugli, white silk shirt, and the magnificent pugree. And to commence her life with him all she had had to do was move from her parents’ flat in A Block to Minocher’s in C Block. Yes, they were the only childhood sweethearts in Firozsha Baag who had got married, all the others had gone their separate ways.
The pugree was in its glass case in the living-room where Daulat had left it earlier. She went to it now and opened the case. It gleamed the way it had forty years ago. How grand he had looked then, with the pugree splendidly seated on his head! There was only one other occasion when he had worn it since, on the wedding of Sarosh-Sid, who had been to them the son they never had. Sarosh’s papers had arrived from the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi, and three months after the wedding he had emigrated with his brand new wife. They divorced a year later because she did not like it in Canada. For the wedding, Minocher had wanted Sarosh to wear the pugree, but he had insisted (like the modern young man that he was) on an English styled double-breasted suit. So Minocher had worn it instead. Pugree-making had become a lost art due to modern young men like Sarosh, but Minocher had known how to take care of his. Hence its mint condition.
Daulat took the pugree and case back into the bedroom as she went looking for the advertisement she had clipped out of the Jam-E-Jamshed. It had appeared six days ago, on the morning after she had returned from the Towers Of Silence: “Wanted — a pugree in good condition. Phone no. ____.” Yesterday, Daulat had dialled the number; the advertiser was still looking. He was coming today to inspect Minocher’s pugree.
The doorbell rang. It was Najamai. Again. In her wake followed Ramchandra, lugging four chairs of the stackable type. The idea of a full-time servant who would live under her roof had always been disagreeable to Najamai, but she had finally heeded the advice of the many who said that a full-time servant was safer than an odd-job man, he became like one of the family, responsible and loyal. Thus Najamai had taken the plunge; now the two were inseparable.