When everyone had served themselves, Dina noticed Rustom’s Shirin Aunty and Darab Uncle on the verandah, a little secluded from the rest, and went to them. “Please eat well. Have you taken enough?”
“More than enough, my child, more than enough. The food is delicious.” Shirin Aunty beckoned to bring her closer, and beckoned again, to make her bend till Dina’s ear was close to her mouth. “If you ever need anything — remember, anything at all, you can come to me and Darab.”
And Darab Uncle nodded; his hearing was very sharp. “Whatever the problem. We are like Rustom’s parents. And you are like our daughter.”
“Thank you,” said Dina, understanding that this was more than a customary welcoming speech from the other side. She sat with them while they ate. Near the dining table Nusswan, miming with plate and fork, signalled to her to get some food for herself. Yes, later, she mimed back, and stayed with Shirin Aunty and Darab Uncle, who watched her with adoring eyes as they ate.
A few guests still remained when Nusswan gave the caterer’s men the go-ahead for the cleanup. The lingerers got the hint and said their thanks and goodbyes.
On the way out, someone clutched Rustom’s lapel and giggled, whispering with whisky breath that the bride and groom were fortunate not to have a mother-in-law on either side. “Not fair, not fair! No one to question you whether the equipment worked on the first night, you lucky rascal! No one to inspect the bedsheet, hahn!” He prodded Rustom in the stomach with one finger. “You’re getting off very lightly!”
“Good night, everybody,” said Nusswan and Ruby. “Good night, good night. Thank you very much for coming.”
When the last guest had departed, Rustom said, “That was a lovely evening. Thank you both for arranging it.”
“Yes, it really was, thank you very much,” added Dina.
“You’re welcome — most welcome,” said Nusswan, and Ruby nodded. “It was our duty.”
Originally, Dina and Rustom had agreed with Nusswan’s suggestion to spend the night there. Then they realized that the rooms would have to be put back in order after the party. So it was more convenient to go straight to Rustom’s flat.
“Now don’t worry about anything, these fellows will clear up, that’s what they are paid for,” said Nusswan. “You two carry on.” He gave them both a hug. It was the second time that day for Dina. The first time had been in the morning, after the dustoorji had finished reciting the wedding benediction; it had also been the first time in seven years.
A small lump came to her throat. She swallowed as Nusswan quickly passed his fingers over his eyes. “Wish you lots of happiness,” he said.
Dina fetched a valise that was packed and ready for the night. The rest of her things would be delivered later. Nusswan was going to let her have some furniture from their parents’ possessions. He accompanied them down the cobbled walkway to a taxi and waved goodbye. She noticed with surprise that his voice quavered as he said, “All the best! God bless you!”
They woke up late the next morning. Rustom had taken a week’s leave from work, though they couldn’t afford to go anywhere on a honeymoon.
Dina made tea in the gloomy kitchen while he watched anxiously. The kitchen was the dingiest room in the flat, its ceiling and plaster blackened by smoke. Rustom’s mother had cooked over coal fires all her life. Her brief acquaintance with kerosene had not been propitious — there had been a spill, and flames, and burns down her thighs; coal was more obedient, she had concluded.
Rustom had wanted to paint the kitchen before the wedding, along with the other rooms, but the money had refused to stretch that far. He began to apologize for the flat’s condition. “You are not used to living like this. Just look at these horrible walls.”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s fine,” she said happily. “We’ll get it painted later.”
Perhaps it was due to her presence in the flat, unusual at breakfast time, but he began detecting new deficiencies around him. “After my parents died I got rid of things. Seemed like clutter to me. I was planning to live like a sadhu, you see, with only my violin for company. Instead of a bed of nails, the screeching of catgut to mortify myself.”
“Are the strings really made of cat intestines?”
“Used to be, in the olden days. And in the very olden days, violinists had to go out and hunt down their own strings. There were no music shops then, like L. M. Furtado or Godin amp; Company. At all the great conservatories of Europe, they taught music as well as animal evisceration.”
“Now don’t be silly so early in the morning,” she scolded, but his bizarre humour was what she liked most about him.
“Anyway, I have found my beautiful angel, and the sadhu days are over. The catgut can take a rest.”
“I enjoy your playing. You should practise more.”
“Are you joking? I sound worse than the fellow last week at Patkar Hall. And he played as though his f-holes were blocked.”
“Chhee, how filthy!”
He laughed at the face she made. “I can’t help it — that’s what they are called. Come, let me show you my f-holes.” He took the violin case down from the top of the cupboard. “See the shape of the two openings in the soundboard?”
“Oh, it looks just like a running-hand f.” She traced the curves with a finger, and touched the strings gently. “Play something while you have it open.”
He shut the case and, rising slightly on his toes, slipped it on top of the cupboard. “Play, play, play — that’s what my parents used to say.” He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I wish I had at least kept their double bed.” Then he asked shyly, “Were you comfortable last night?”
“Oh yes.” She blushed at the fresh memory of the narrow single bed in which they had clung together.
After a breakfast of an omelette and buttered toast, he opened the front door and said there was a surprise for her. “It was too dark to show you last night.”
“What is it?”
“You have to step outside.”
She saw the new brass nameplate gleaming in sunlight, engraved Mr. amp; Mrs. Rustom K. Dalai. He basked in the pleasure it gave her. “Day before yesterday is when I screwed it on.”
“It looks lovely.”
“Changing the nameplate was easy,” he chuckled. “It’s much more difficult to change the name on the rent receipt.”
“What do you mean?”
“The rent is collected in my father’s name though he’s been dead for nine years. The landlord hopes I will get impatient, offer money to transfer the flat to my name. He keeps hinting.”
“Are you going to?”
“Of course not. There’s nothing he can do, the Rent Act protects us. It doesn’t matter in whose name the rent receipt is issued. And you are entitled to live here too, as my wife. Even if I were to die tomorrow.”
“Rustom! Don’t say such things!”
He laughed. “When the rent-collector comes with the receipt in my father’s name, sometimes I feel like telling him to go up, to heaven, to the renter’s new address.”
Dina rested her head against his shoulder. “For me, heaven is in this flat.”
Rustom drew her close and hugged her. “For me too.” Then he gave the nameplate another shine with his sleeve. While they were admiring it, two handcarts rolled up and stopped by their door, laden with things from the Shroff residence.
At first, Rustom had arranged for a small lorry because Dina had requested Nusswan to let her have Daddy’s huge wardrobe, the one with the carved rosewood canopy of a sunburst and flowers. She would forgo everything else, she said, for this one item. Nusswan promised to consider it but refused in the end. He said that squeezing the wardrobe through the narrow door of Rustom’s flat would damage it, the scratches would be unfair to their father’s memory, and, besides, its proportions wouldn’t suit the tiny rooms.