And the children, by and large, treated him well; there were very few instances of vicious harassment, not counting the advantage they took of a weakness Tehmul had. Things that travelled through the air enchanted him — things that soared, swooped or dived, things flying and fluttering in freedom. Whether it be bird or butterfly, a paper dart or a falling leaf, he never tired of trying to possess it. Aware of his fascination, sometimes the children would toss a ball or twig or pebble his way, but always slightly out of reach. Always, he would gamely persevere to catch it and fall over himself. Or they would throw a football away from him, then stand back and watch him stumble after it. Just when he thought he was catching up, his uncoordinated feet would kick the ball further, and his frustrating chase began over again.
But on the whole, Tehmul got along well with children. It was the grown-ups who ran out of patience with some of his annoying habits. He loved following people: from the compound gate to the building entrance, and up the stairs, always wearing a big grin, till they shut the door in his face. It bothered some of them so much, they would hide by the gate and peer into the compound to see if the coast was clear, or wait till his back was turned and then sneak through. Others dealt with it by yelling and shooing him off, wildly waving their arms till he understood he was not wanted, though utterly bewildered as to why this should be so.
If Tehmul’s trailing habit did not irritate them, his scratching habit was certain to. He scratched perpetually, like one possessed, mainly his groin and armpits. He scratched with a circular movement, a churning, scrambling, stirring motion of his hand, and those who sought more subtlety in a nickname than Tehmul-Lungraa called him Scrambled Egg. Women claimed he did it deliberately to annoy them. They said that his hand regularly moved downward in their presence, and it was rubbing and caressing himself that he did, more than scratching. Muà lutcha, they said, knew perfectly well what all his parts were for, never mind if his head was not right — what with a big packet like that, and no underwear even to keep it all in place, it was shameful to have him wandering around dingle-dangle.
Lastly, the words of Tehmul-Lungraa’s abbreviated vocabulary always emerged at breakneck speed, whizzing incomprehensibly past the listener’s ear. It was as if some internal adjustment had been made to make up for the slowness of his legs with the velocity of his tongue. But the result was extreme frustration for both Tehmul and the listener. Gustad was one of the few who could decipher his speech.
‘GustadGustadchickenrace. GustadGustadchickenranfastfast. IcaughtIcaughtGustad.’ Tehmul proudly displayed the bird by its legs.
‘Very good, Tehmul. Well done!’ said Gustad, his practised ear sorting out the spate of words. Tehmul’s cascading utterances were always bereft of commas, exclamation marks, semicolons, question marks: all swept away without the slightest chance of survival. The verbal velocity only allowed for the use of the full stop. And it was not really a full stop the way Tehmul used it; rather, a minimal halt anywhere he chose to re-oxygenate his lungs.
‘GustadGustadrunningrace. Fastfastchickenfirst.’ He grinned and pulled its tail.
‘No, no, Tehmul. Race is over now.’ He took the chicken and handed it to the butcher waiting, knife in hand. Tehmul clutched his own throat, performed a slitting gesture and emitted a terrified squawk. Gustad could not help laughing. Encouraged, Tehmul squawked again.
Miss Kutpitia had watched the chase from her window upstairs. She stuck her head out and applauded: ‘Sabaash, Tehmul, sabaash! Now we will get you a job as the chicken-catcher of Khodadad Building. Now you are not only the rat-catcher, you are rat-and chicken-catcher.’ Shaking with what might have been silent mirth, she withdrew her head and shut the window.
Tehmul did not actually catch the rats, he merely got rid of the ones caught by the tenants of Khodadad Building. The Pest Control Department of the municipal ward office offered twenty-five paise for every rat presented to it, dead or alive, as part of its campaign to encourage all-out war against the rodent menace. So Tehmul earned a little money this way, collecting and delivering rats trapped in his neighbours’ wood-and-wire cages. Those who were squeamish gave the cages to Tehmul with the rats still alive, the job to be completed by the municipality. Death by drowning was the official policy. The cages were immersed in a tank and withdrawn after a suitable interval. The corpses were thrown on a heap for disposal, the empty cages returned with the appropriate sum of money.
But when his brother was out of town, Tehmul did not convey the live rats directly to the municipality. He first brought them home with a desire to entertain them in the municipal manner, to teach them to swim and dive. A bucket of water was filled and the rats ducked one by one. He pulled them out before the end, gasping and suffocating, and kept on till he was bored with the game, or a miscalculation drowned the rats.
Sometimes, for variety, he boiled a large kettle of water and poured it over the rats, emulating the neighbours who were brave enough to exterminate their own trappings. But unlike them, he poured the boiling water a little at a time. As the rats squealed and writhed in agony, he watched their reactions with great interest, particularly their tails, proud of the pretty colours he could bestow on them. He giggled to himself as they turned from grey to pink, and then red. If the scalding did not kill them before he ran out of boiling water, he dropped them in the bucket.
One day, Tehmul’s secret was discovered. No one seriously censured him for it. The neighbours agreed, however, never again to hand over a live rat to Tehmul.
But perhaps he understood more than people assumed. When Miss Kutpitia mentioned rat-catcher his grin disappeared and his face clouded shamefully. ‘Gustadbigbigfatrats. Municipalrats. GustadGustaddrowningswimmingratsdivingrats. Chickenranbigknife.’
‘Yes,’ said Gustad, ‘OK.’ He had never quite decided on the best way of conversing with Tehmul. He invariably found himself speaking faster and faster if he was not careful. It was safest to use nods and gestures, combined with monosyllabic responses.
Tehmul followed him to the flat. He grinned and waved goodbye. Dilnavaz, Roshan and the boys were waiting by the door. ‘The string was untied from the chicken’s leg,’ said Gustad. ‘How that happened is what I am wondering.’ He looked meaningfully at them. The butcher returned to the kitchen, the bird firmly in his grasp this time, and Roshan’s eyes started to fill. ‘Yes,’ said Gustad sternly, ‘I would like to know very much how. Expensive chicken I buy, to celebrate birthday and IIT, then the string is untied. What kind of thanks is that?’
From the kitchen came the tell-tale screech. The butcher emerged, wiping his knife on a rag. ‘Good chicken, seth, lots of meat.’ He left with a salaam in Gustad’s general direction.
Roshan burst into sobs, and Gustad abandoned his line of questioning. All four looked at him accusingly, then Dilnavaz went to the kitchen.
Two crows were peering curiously through the wire mesh of the window. The limp mass of feathers and flesh on the stone parapet beside the tap held their attention. When she entered, they cawed frantically and spread their wings, hesitating for a moment, then flew away.
Chapter Three
i
Just hours before the dinner party, Miss Kutpitia excused herself from the invitation Dilnavaz had extended against Gustad’s express orders. Miss Kutpitia explained that when she sat down to breakfast that morning, at the table’s very centre was a lizard, motionless, staring insolently, flicking its tongue. If that wasn’t bad enough, when she wrenched her leather sapaat from her left foot and thwacked the lizard dead, its tail broke off, and continued to wriggle and dance on the table top for at least five minutes. That, said Miss Kutpitia, was a definite omen. She was not going to step outside her home for the next twenty-four hours.