The Last Burden (35 page)

But the convoluted links. Mrs Hegiste, for sure, knows that Jamun tups his washerup and housekeeper, but even after months, doesn’t quite know how to react. She’s always believed – or, rather, presumed – that only weirdos – widowers, lonelyhearts, dissipated and dispossessed feudal lordlings, misogynists with incurable afflictions, cranks traumatized in childhood, bachelors with insanity in the family, oddballs like, that – actually sleep with the lower orders; in contrast, Jamun is young, healthy, middle-class and seemingly sensible. She dislikes Kasibai – because of the expression on the faces of her husband and even her bloody grandfather whenever they sight her. Yet Kasibai is the only other female Maharashtrian in the vicinity, her sole interlocutrix for a chinwag in Marathi.

And Vaman. Hegiste is downright certain that Jamun, now and then, also has it off with his maidservant’s son, that the urchin is inseparable from his mother and very likely lies with her and Jamun. Neither Vaman nor Kasibai is sure of his age, but he enjoys the wits of a twelve-year-old, and his physique seems an underripe seventeenish. He’s presumably never known anything other than kink, for Kasibai has once or twice implied to Mrs Hegiste that to torment her, in front of her eyes, Vaman’s father the stallion has, ever so often, mounted his own son. Hegiste never alludes directly to Vaman’s ruttish links with Jamun, and Jamun customarily disregards all the innuendo – his winks, the asides and cautions.

Sometimes, however, he does respond, perhaps to a whisper during lunchhour gossip at the office, or a nudge during a saunter for cigarettes, when he’s introspecting – on nothing specially, but in a vague manner, on diverse families – Kasibai’s, his own, Burfi’s, Kasturi’s, – and the fearsome intricacies of fosterage. ‘Well, in a family, the most hideous things can happen without the wider world knowing – without even other members of the family catching on, and if the incident – the misadventure – has been adequately distanced by Time – the real cock of the walk – then it doesn’t even remain grisly; it becomes sort of spicy.

‘Consider, for example, the yarn of Kuki’s family. Kuki’s a childhood friend. We went to the same school in the same bus, and we’ve kept in touch all these years. He’s now engaging, sleek and unscrupulous. His parents are divorced, and they split up while Kuki’s mother was carrying. Curious, isn’t it. The marriage failed because of Kuki’s grandfather, who sounds redoubtable by any standard – and certifiable too. Forthwith upon his son’s marriage, he wished to enjoy his daughter-in-law – and presumably requested his son to direct her to his room after dinner or something. Kuki’s father is a ninny, because he actually blabbed to his wife the old satyr’s designs. When she declined, the maddened and horny – always a feral combination – father-in-law, for some days, importuned his son to woo her. When that too didn’t come off, the venerable ogre buggered his own issue, Kuki’s father, instead. The tale stupefied me for days. I was flabbergasted that I – ordinary, commonplace me! – actually knew someone whose family background was this fable of horrors. And knew damnably well! Kuki and I’d been neighbours, we’d flown kites together, and when we’d run out of milk or tea, our aya’d usually send one of her sidekicks to their kitchen for replenishments. Out-wardly, they were like us – though richer, of course – they’d been to Singapore, and had a fridge and TV almost a decade before we did, or could – and I suspect that from then on, I accepted that rectitude and lucre were connected, that Kuki’s grandfather couldn’t’ve conducted himself so had he not been on the gravy train, had he not viewed everything – individuals, events, relationships – materially. Kuki’d tell me that his mother frequently stated that her father-in-law – the fiend! – used to declare that his son was, after all, his seed; what was the son’s, ergo, was also his, the begetter’s. Apparently, Kuki was pricked enough by these pronouncements to demand of his mother why, by their reasoning, his grandfather hadn’t used his son’s toothbrush and his undies.

‘“But he did, and mine too,” was, ostensibly, Kuki’s mother’s reply. “He’d glide into our bathroom when I wasn’t
in, and swipe my lingerie off the towel rack.’’’

Hegiste doesn’t intend ever to snoop into his friend’s precise relations with his domestics; besides, he’s pretty certain that his most lascivious imaginings will more approximate the reality than anything that Jamun might confess to him. Thus, if he and Mrs Hegiste, for instance, are disturbed at three a.m. by the detonating of Jamun’s front door, the noisy snivelling of Vaman as he rattles down the stairs, by the titter of Mrs Hegiste’s insomniac grandfather as he watches, from the verandah, Vaman trudge through the gate, Hegiste, six hours later, when they amble off to office, won’t tease Jamun with any questions about the night; instead, he’ll only curl up against Mrs and drowsily murmur, ‘Jamun’s riding his hippo and the stripling hasn’t been allowed to join them. If he chooses, he can kneel by the bed, with one paw on his tool and a pinkie up his arsehole, and pirouette. So he’s spurted off in a tizzy to presumably jerk off into the well behind the hooch kiosk.’

But if Hegiste ever pumps, and Jamun is straightforward, he’ll concede that the most exacting bit of his carnal life is the interlocution with his participators. Times out of number, he’s craved for a likeminded soul to share this grisly comedy with, to marvel with him at the chasm between the mentalities of his playmates and his own. Vaman, in particular, continues to jolt Jamun with the unintelligence, the callow materiality of his concerns. He is passive and vain before, during and after coition – indeed, throughout the day. He is most often found on Jamun’s bed, lolling, emptyheadedly simpering at the looking-glass, waiting to be inflamed, or to be biffed on his skull by Kasibai and walloped off to some overdue chore. From time to time, in his unmodulated, grating hoarseness, his barbaric Marathi-Hindi, he’ll sniffle or sigh, ‘If you give me the cash, I could scoot off to Bombay, tuck into some healthy food – chicken biryani, mutton chops – so that my chest broadens, then ‘I’d proffer myself for a superfine role . . .’ Or, ‘Do I need a haircut? Off Rocket Maidan, a new hairdresser’s opened up, with all the dandy styles. Twenty-five rupees per trim – that’s
how skilled he is. Why don’t you . . .?’ For sure, Jamun ignores this drivel as best he can (or shoos the sluggard out for biscuits or cigarettes), just as he is deaf to Kasibai’s tireless demands for a few thousand rupees to redeem some ten godforsaken square inches of land in Yavatmal.

‘But I’m flat broke, Kasibai. Why don’t you deposit the whopping salary that you lever out of me every month in a bank and pick up some interest instead of stashing it away in your pussy or spilling it on that dildo of a son?’

It is enervating, though, to speak smut to your maidservant because you believe that she’d like to hear the lingo that you presume she’s been reared on, and then to observe her blanch with hurt. Jamun feels droopy and immature, ashamed of his existence. When he isn’t enkindled by them, he is frequently disgusted by their boorishness, by the smacking sounds that Vaman emits while he chomps, by Kasibai’s thunderous hawking and expectorating first thing in the morning; for the months that he’s known them, he’s haphazardly striven to educate them for his own peace of mind (‘Flush, you fucker, flush! Why don’t you ever remember that this handle is not fucking decorative! . . . Kasibai! Whatever’re you – but that black isn’t grime or crud! – you can’t scrape – it’s the material – oh, fuck your mind –’, derisorily caving in here at having to hatch Hindi-Marathi equivalents of ‘non-stick’, ‘frying pan’ and (phew) ‘teflon’), but without conspicuous progress, principally because he isn’t interested in them as fellow creatures. Which stricture Jamun himself will parry with, ‘Balls, they aren’t my family, or anything like that. . . I’m not yoked to them by blood, or nurture, or the years. In any case, all these shackles can splinter; what endures is only a blind and unreasoning notion of duty. If we acquitted ourselves with others as they merited, then we wouldn’t’ve abandoned our aya in a charitable hospital with just her TB and her diabetes for company. She wasn’t us, so we exonerated ourselves.’

With a second tea in his hand, Jamun dawdles about the flat, pointing out to Kasibai the evidences of her slackness in his
absence – the grime on the curtains, the crud in the kitchen sink. The furnishings are minimal and comfortless. On a desk borrowed from the office squats his turntable that revolves at bloody 30 r.p.m. Underneath the window that looks on to the verandah lies the divan without a mattress on which he turns in when he’s put off by K and V. Alongside the kitchen door dangles last year’s calender of the National Gallery, London, displaying for June Degas’s
Beach Scene.
Had Kasturi ever cohabited with him, the flat would’ve bloomed with tulips and gladioli, warm rugs, and bamboo curtains to lineate the light. Such had her own room seemed – cordial, vivid – when he looked in on her the evening after mourning.

To finally cast off the yards of cream linen feels momentous. ‘For good,’ Jamun declares to Burfi as he stows away the folded, wrinkled cloth in the chest in the drawing room on which roosts the TV. ‘Oops, sorry, no, once more yet – one down, one to go. Though I gather from Chachacha that you can’t wear these robes ever again. Doesn’t peeling these off truly feel like moulting? With a new skin, through into another life?’

‘I presume that these subtleties’ll suggest themselves to you afresh when Baba passes over. Meanwhile, when’re you going to begin swilling again? Chhana phoned this morning to check if we’d nosed out the will; I fenced with: “Is this evening okay to resume vices on? Thank God Ma and I didn’t inhabit different time zones – figuring out when mourning finishes, in that jumble, would’ve been phew.”’

The shirt and trousers feel peculiar too, as though he was decking up for an occasion – an interview, or a colleague’s wedding reception. Kasturi’s parturition has been right as rain – a couple of hours or so of labour – and she and her healthy baby have returned home on the fourth day. Jamun shows up there at eight to run into the entire family in the living room – her husband, her babbling sister, the parents, her cadaverous grandfather. He congratulates them and they condole with him. Kasturi’s husband is still bearded, but appears to’ve fattened a bit since his marriage. ‘Kasturi and the baby are resting now,’
leers the grandfather; he’s always loathed Jamun. ‘No, she awoke some fifteen minutes ago,’ confutes the husband, ‘and is at the moment only gawping besottedly at her effort. Would you like to chat to her right away or d’you want to watch some minutes of the night cricket first?’

Kasturi’s face is towards the window; her eyes are shut. The room is suffused with the bouquet of flowers; Jamun sees them everywhere – maroon roses in a carafe on her desk; white lilies in a brass dustbin at the door, a fan of gladioli above her head, a gush of jasmine in a plastic jug on a hifi speaker alongside the window. The curtains are new, a bright interlacing of tangerine, pea-green and violet. Highcoloured mats on the floor, and two glowing batiks mounted on opposite walls. Through the open windows, the gusts from the sea are mollifying. He is discomposed by a forceful aura in the room of plenitude, of contentment and smugness, as though he’s edged into a warm, ripe fruit; all that is paramount now is to struggle to sustain through one’s life this easeful consummation.

Within reach of Kasturi is the crib. Kasturi looks glossless. Jamun’s entrails seems to shimmy inside him; all at once flashes across his mind, with spotless lucency, an image from an obscure September evening: he’s on the roof of his apartment block, watching the river, orange and thick; in the same instant, a resplendent white bird floats past the trees and a youthful mother, who’s very recently borne, gracelessly descends the incline of the gynae hospital. The swan and the mother together prod in him an overpowering desire to be fecund, to yield issue.

Half-smiling at the evocation, he raises the rose-pink netting of the cradle to peep, for the first time, at his daughter. She looks the usual – reddish, contorted, wrinkled, displeased, distressed, unenlightened. Unthinkingly, Jamun chuckles at her, and to himself. ‘Hello, my petite sexbomb.’ The infant twitches somewhat and curls a lip at him, which he accepts as a sign of recognition. He speculates whether he can gather the baby in his arms. ‘Your shaven head looks fine,’ voices Kasturi. She is smiling. He kisses her on the cheek. ‘I’d’ve visited you in the
nursing home, but my mourning outfit’d’ve attracted a good many loafers.’

‘Ah, never mind. So how’ve you been?’ They’re happy to gaze at each other, even a bit pink with a sort of awkwardness. ‘You look radiant, Kasturi, and she is entrancing. Here, I’ve brought her a little something. You could start her off on it straight away, to ensure that she takes after her mother.’

Kasturi tears open the wrapping to discover two Lakme face powder compacts. She slopes against her pillows and shuts her eyes, smirking. Jamun stretches out for her hand. Thus they sit for a time, more or less in stillness. From the living room sputter in the muted excitements of night cricket.

Impossible – of course – that Jamun hasn’t mulled over the snarl that he and Kasturi’ve enmeshed themselves in. But being self-absorbed, he’s viewed it just as an item in the larger shambles of his life – that is, as a detail that he can only observe, inertly, as on a screen. For flickers of a second at a time – like prizing open a gravestone just to breathe in the cadaver – he’s wondered precisely what Kasturi’s trumped up for her husband, how she’s okayed it with him. Perhaps she’s faked the periods she’s missed, or with him craftily used some contraceptive. Then Jamun’s willed the lid shut, resolving not to speculate on the future, but to confront each of its freaks – like Shyamanand’s meeting Kasibai – only when it glides up to him, like headlights emerging out of black fog.

‘Does it hurt very much – your mother’s absence?’

He rubs his cranium selfconsciously. ‘Not all the time.’ He closes his eyes and with braced fingers massages his scalp. It feels like a sheath over a knob. ‘My mother knew of this.’ He indicates the crib with his chin. ‘Don’t ask me how. I’ve never whispered a word of this to anyone. But she guessed or something – she knew. On the day that she suffered her coronary, in the morning – it was her wedding anniversary, and we were arranging roses in Doom’s porridge mug – she gabbled a bit – bizarre exposés about her past which I didn’t wholly buy – she kind of sotto voced, all on a sudden, holding the last rose in her
left hand, “You and Kasturi’ve to do right by your child” – something like that. My first, my every first, reaction was nothing – a blank. I didn’t look at her and didn’t respond. Just then, somebody breezed in, or the telephone rang.’ He opens his eyes and smirks diffidently at Kasturi. ‘Whatever is a godfather? Can’t I be one? Or a fosterfather? She’ll grow up with the lifestory of the tragedienne of a Hindi weepie, and consume the final six reels of her life in searching for her actual begetter.’ A puff from the window tingles his crown. ‘Do you accept that knotty questions resolve themselves without mortal help? Of course, they might not be disentangled the way we’d wish them to. That afternoon, several months ago, we were on the sands, in stinging rain, and you –’