Don't Let Him Know (13 page)

But the next day she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Romola called the doctor. It was just age, he said. She was so old that all the pieces that held her together were falling apart as if they were rusty.

‘But her heart still keeps pumping,' he said to Avinash. ‘She is a tough one.'

‘Call Renu-pishi,' Amit's grandmother said to his father. ‘I think we should start informing people.'

The next day and the day after Amit watched his relatives parade through the house. They talked in low voices and stood near the door to Great-Grandmother's room drinking endless cups of tea. Romola had made Mangala change the old faded curtains. Amit thought that was funny since Great-Grandmother didn't really notice anything. Thursday came and went. Only Amit remembered the puffed-rice mowas Great-Grandmother had wanted to make. Instead, her bedside table was piled up with foil-wrapped sheets of tablets and bottles of pink and white liquids that Mangala had to give her every hour, on the hour.

On Saturday his mother called Amit down to Great-Grandmother's room. The shades had been pulled down and the room was full of shadows and smelled of medicine and disinfectant. The dirty old fan whirred listlessly overhead. Great-Grandmother lay on the bed, breathing through her mouth in loud choking gasps. Mangala was pressing her feet and sniffling loudly. The room was full of relatives who huddled around the bed, their murmurs buzzing like flies. Amit's grandmother sat at the foot of the bed though she had nothing to do.

‘Come in, dear,' said Romola seeing Amit hesitating near the door. She seemed tired. Amit could even see some white hairs near the front of her head that she had not plucked out.

She took a little brass pitcher and said, ‘This has holy water from the Ganga. Put a few drops in your Boroma's mouth.'

Amit shrank back because he did not want to go near Great-Grandmother. She smelled funny, ripe and musty at the same time, and her loud wheezing scared him. The room smelled stale and old. He couldn't hear the doves any more.

‘Go on,' said his grandmother. ‘It's your duty. Your Boroma will find peace in heaven if you give her some Ganga water now.'

Amit stood near Great-Grandmother, one hand clutching his mother's sari while with the other he gingerly poured a few drops between her parched old lips. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were dry and cracked. She smelled as if she was rotting, though he had heard his mother tell Mangala to give her a sponge bath that very day. He could see the straggly white hairs on her chin. They were almost longer than the cropped hair on her head.

As the drops of water dribbled into her mouth and ran down her wrinkled chin, he wished he was giving her mango chutney instead – thick orange-red mango chutney, great sticky drops of it.

Late that night Mangala came and banged on his parents' bedroom door long after all the shops on the street had shut down and the only sounds were the yapping street dogs fighting over the garbage. Lying curled up in his bed Amit could hear nothing except the taut urgency in their voices. He heard his father going downstairs while his mother started dialling the telephone. Soon she went downstairs as well. He heard his grandmother talking to someone on the telephone. Amit saw the lights come on and wondered if they would ever come to get him.

When he finally heard his mother at his door, he quickly shut his eyes as if he had been asleep all along.

When they took Great-Grandmother away, no one wept – not his grandmother, not his father nor his mother. Only Mangala cried piteously. Romola just seemed drained and tired. ‘Don't cry,' she kept telling Amit even though he was not crying. ‘She had a long life and lived to see her great-grandchildren.'

The next day they stripped her bed. When they pulled up the mattress, they found to their surprise little bottles of mango chutney stashed under it. Fat slices of mango swimming sluggishly in pools of hot-sweet red-gold syrup. Great-Grandmother had been hiding away her precious mango chutney, for a time she might be totally bed-ridden.

On seeing that Romola burst into tears.

Trying to console her Amit said, ‘But look Ma, they are still full. She did not eat any.'

But that did not stop her tears at all.

 

Amit looked at the jars of mango and lime pickles and chutneys standing at attention next to each other on the shelf. And he wondered if any of them would taste like his Great-Grandmother's mango chutney. He felt a lump in his throat.

‘Foolish,' he told himself. ‘Crying about old Boroma, dead almost twenty-five years now.' He remembered Mangala – now dead as well. Dasu's tea-stall was long gone – swallowed up by the parking compound for a new mall. He wished he had told his girlfriend the story about his Great-Grandmother's mango chutney. But it was foolish to even try to summon up the thick, sweet taste from oceans away and decades ago. The girl was gone and he had let her go just as he had let old Great-Grandmother slip away. And now here he was, thought Amit, a twenty-nine-year old good boy, single again, programming in Microsoft Windows, with no idea what to do with his life. Or even what he was going to have for dinner.

He wondered if he should tell the store owner about the expired can of jackfruit. Instead he hid the old dented can behind the pickle jars. Then he walked out of the store without buying anything.

VI

Father's Blessing

 

Romola knew something was going to happen that day. Ma did not pack her lunchbox. Instead, Dipti-mashi from next door did. She put her sandwiches in just like that, not knowing that her mother usually wrapped them in foil first. When it was time to eat them at school she found that some of the cucumber slices had fallen out and gotten all mixed up with the sweet sandesh. The sandesh was shaped like a conch shell and very crumbly. It was quite strange – sweet cucumber. She could never think of that day again without evoking the ghost of that peculiar combination – pale green cucumber with sweet white sandesh crumbs sticking to it like little pieces of lint.

When she woke up in the morning Ma was not even there to make breakfast. The sun was out, seeping in through the pale blue curtains on her bedroom window, and she could hear the bustle of the market setting up on the street and the loud voices of the vegetable sellers. That was the time she would hear her mother humming in the kitchen, the kettle starting to boil with a loud whistle. But that morning everything was quiet inside the house.

‘Where is Ma?' she asked Bela-di. Bela-di was the old family maid. She had been working for them since before Romola was born. Even before Romola's father got married.

‘She is busy downstairs with your father,' Bela-di said.

Ma was in the sick room. That's what they called the room where Baba was ever since he got sick. Romola did not quite know what kind of sick it was but he had become very thin. Doctor Uncle came every few days and talked to Ma in a low voice. Once, seeing Romola hiding behind the curtain, he said in a jolly Santa Claus voice, ‘Well what ho, Miss Romola Dutt? Tell me the capital of Yugoslavia.'

‘Belgrade,' replied Romola twisting her skirt in her hand. Though she had been outside Calcutta only once, when she had taken the train with her parents to the seaside in Puri, Romola knew her world capitals.

‘So that school of yours does teach you something after all. Keep it up, keep it up. How old are you now?' He ruffled Romola's hair.

‘Ten, almost eleven,' replied Romola.

‘Excellent.' Doctor Uncle beamed as if she had won a prize in a spelling competition.

But Romola knew his cheerfulness was all fake, from her mother's tired, distracted smile and the dark smudges under her eyes.

That morning Ma did not even have that smile on her face.

‘Won't Ma make my breakfast?' Romola asked Bela-di.

‘You are a big girl and don't need your Ma to make you breakfast any more. Here, I made you some toast.' Bela-di put a plate with two pieces of toast in front of her. Romola inspected the toast and sulked. Bela-di didn't trust the toaster that Romola's aunt Ila had brought from England and always toasted the bread over the gas stove. The toast was soft in parts, while other parts were burned, the black sooty splotches like charred maps of small countries.

‘What's the matter now?' said Bela-di noticing her not eating. ‘Come on; eat up your toast quickly. You will be late for school otherwise.'

‘It's burnt.' Romola scowled at the two charred pieces of bread.

‘Oh ho,' said Bela-di. ‘Do I have time for all this huss-fuss? I have so much work to do. Now be a good girl and eat it quickly. Here, have it with some jelly.' She plonked a jar of guava jelly in front of her and bustled away.

At that moment, her mother came up the stairs and said, ‘Did Bela make you your breakfast?' Romola was surprised to see her mother was still wearing the same striped sari she had worn to bed last night. Usually the first thing she did was change into a fresh sari as soon as she got up.

‘Yes, but she burned the toast,' said Romola pointing to her plate.

‘Well, just be a good girl and eat it up.' But her mother was not even really looking.

‘Ma, why are you still wearing the same sari?' she asked.

But her mother merely said, ‘Bela, when you get a minute could you take Romola's lunchbox next door? Dipti will make her her lunch today. Just give her the box. She said she would send Mohan over with it when it was ready.' Mohan worked for Dipti-mashi. He was about thirteen, maybe fourteen, a lanky boy with shiny dark skin and tousled hair. Sometimes he played with Romola and her friends though he would call them babies. What he really liked to do was hang out with the drivers in the neighbourhood and tinker with cars.

‘Why not keep her at home today?' Bela-di wiped her hands on her sari. ‘Don't you think she should stay?'

‘She is too young, Bela,' said Ma. ‘She will just be in the way and get scared. It's better if she goes to school like normal. And we don't know how long this will go on.'

Everyone spoke around her as if she wasn't there. Romola wanted to say that she would much rather stay home. She had her geography class test that day and didn't want to take it. But her tongue felt tied up in knots. So she just quietly ate the middle of the bread where it was not so burned while the conversation circled around her.

‘Oh my,' said Bela-di. ‘Look at how she has eaten. She just gouged out a piece in the centre and left all the sides.'

Normally that would have resulted in an argument and a lecture. But Ma just said, ‘Let her eat whatever she wants. I don't have time for all this. She needs to get ready. I have to go downstairs. I think Doctor Mallick should be here.' Romola looked triumphantly at Bela-di and spitefully arranged the sides of the pieces of toast so it looked like a house with a big hole in the middle as if a thunderstorm had knocked it out. Then she wondered what else she could get away with.

Romola felt very grown-up as she dressed herself that day. She took her shower and dried herself carefully. She powdered herself under her arms and around her neck just like her Ma did when she got her ready. Then she even combed her hair, though Bela-di had to fix her plaits in her red school ribbon. She made sure she wore clean panties and socks and checked to see her grey school skirt had no ink stains.

Soon Bela-di came bustling up to check on her. She put her lunchbox in her school bag and went downstairs with it. Romola followed swinging her water bottle. On any other day Ma would have scolded her and said, ‘Stop swinging the bottle. All the water will fall out.' But today she had a feeling she could get away with it. And she was right; Ma did not even notice.

Her mother came out of the sick room, gave her a kiss and said, ‘Be careful. I hope you don't make too many spelling mistakes in your test. Check everything twice. Don't rush. Did you sharpen your pencil?'

‘Yes,' she replied.

Just then Doctor Uncle came out from inside the room and said, ‘Well, well, if it isn't the little scholar. So tell me, what is the capital of Austria?'

‘Canberra,' she said but Doctor Uncle did not seem to care. Perhaps, thought Romola, her geography test would be like this too. She could just write whatever she wanted and no one would care. As she walked towards the door, she saw Doctor Uncle glance at her and tell Ma, ‘What do you think . . . ?'

‘I don't know,' Ma's voice sounded worried and as frayed as her old kitchen towel. ‘All this will just make her anxious and scared. And she has an exam today. Maybe when she comes home she can sit with him for a while if his condition has stabilized a bit.'

Romola was secretly relieved. The sick room with its smell of medicines and decay scared her. Sometimes her father's eyes seemed glassy with pain, sometimes he was dozing and barely able to recognize her. When she was younger Romola wished her father would pay more attention to her. But all he liked to do on weekends was put on his cricketing whites and organize the neighbourhood boys into cricket teams. He even bought Mohan a cricket bat. Romola had once asked her father if he would teach her about off-spin and googlies but he'd just laughed and said, ‘But you're a girl.' Now his booming laugh was gone, his voice a cracked whisper. Sometimes she would see Mohan walking down the street with the bat and a little knot of anger would coil in her stomach.