Mention of sweet cream made Gustad’s hungry stomach rumble, reminding him of the saucer he used to have every morning, with crusty broon bread, as a boy. Mamma would skim it off the top of the milk, after it was boiled and cooled. Nowadays, the bhaiya’s milk was of such poor quality that no amount of boiling and cooling could produce anything worthy of the name of cream.
iv
The stench was strong along the black wall as Gustad returned home from work. Ignorant people will never understand the wall is not a public latrine, he thought. He flung his hands about his head to ward off the flies and mosquitoes. And it wasn’t even the mosquito season yet.
He opened the door with his latchkey and confronted Dilnavaz’s stern look. ‘One after the other, your sons make trouble,’ she said.
‘Now what?’
‘Mr. Rabadi was here. Complaining that Darius is after his daughter, that it looks very bad in the building.’
‘My son after that idiot’s ugly little fatty? Rubbish.’
The feud between Gustad and Mr. Rabadi went back several years. Mr. Rabadi once owned what he liked to consider a great slavering brute of a dog: Tiger, a cross between Alsatian and Labrador. Tiger was very friendly, and quite harmless, but Mr. Rabadi had created a menacing aura around him. He dressed him in collars that sprouted threatening studs and spikes, took him for walks on the end of a massive chain instead of a regular leash, and armed himself with a stout stick, purportedly to discipline the brute should he get unruly. While the master brandished his daunting paraphernalia, the portly Tiger plodded placidly beside him, gentle and at peace with the world.
Early in the morning and late at night, Mr. Rabadi used to walk Tiger in the compound. Tiger would scratch and sniff in search of a suitable spot, usually selecting Gustad’s vinca and subjo bushes, of which he had grown quite fond. Being a large dog, his deposits were copious and rather malodorous, and sat in the bushes till the kuchrawalli came next morning to sweep the compound. Gustad repeatedly requested Mr. Rabadi not to let the dog go in the bushes, but the latter countered that it was not possible to control a big, powerful animal like Tiger. And in any case, asked Mr. Rabadi, how would Gustad feel if someone dragged him out of the WC when he wanted to go?
So the quarrels and retaliations continued. Once, at night, when Gustad saw the two outside in the bushes, he opened the window and emptied a bucket of cold water, drenching them both. ‘Oh! So sorry,’ he said with a straight face. ‘I was just watering my plants.’ Tiger seemed to enjoy the ducking. He barked and wagged his tail, but Mr. Rabadi stormed off shouting threats into the night, while the sound of laughter floated earthwards from various windows in the building.
By the time he was seven, Tiger had grown obese and inactive. The short walk in the compound was enough to drain him, and it took much encouragement to get him huffing and puffing back up the stairs. One morning, however, something got into his head and he bolted. Despite his corpulence, he did seven tearing laps round the compound, one for each year of his short life, before Mr. Rabadi was able to stop him. But the strain must have been excessive for Tiger’s unaccustomed heart. He expired that day with the setting sun, and Mr. Rabadi promptly made an appointment with Dustoorji Baria, to seek an explanation for the strange death of Tiger the dog.
Dustoorji Baria prayed all day at the fire-temple except for the two hours spent each morning dispensing advice to people like Mr. Rabadi. Unburdened of his normal priestly duties because he was getting on in years, he used the spare time to cement his relationship with his contact Up There who, he claimed, was the source of his divinations.
Dustoorji Baria gave advice freely and unstintingly; no situation was out of his realm. In a matter of moments he revealed why Tiger’s death had to come the way it did. But more importantly, he gave precise instructions to Mr. Rabadi regarding his next dog: it must be white in colour, he said, and female, weighing no more than thirty pounds, standing no taller than two feet; and Mr. Rabadi could give it any name so long as it began with the fourth letter of the alphabet. He also prescribed a tandarosti prayer for the dog’s health, to be recited on certain days of the month.
Armed with Dustoorji Baria’s specifications, Mr. Rabadi went shopping. It was a great relief for everyone in Khodadad Building when Tiger’s successor turned out to be a little white Pomeranian called Dimple. Gustad’s bushes held no special charm for Dimple because, by this time, all of Darius’s departed fishes and birds had thoroughly decomposed. But the resentment between the two men did not decrease or disappear.
‘The dogwalla idiot will say anything,’ said Gustad. ‘Where is Darius now?’
‘Still playing outside, I think.’ Dilnavaz swatted with a newspaper. ‘What a nuisance, so many flies.’
‘That disgusting wall,’ said Gustad. ‘And after it’s dark the mosquitoes will come. I saw flocks of them today.’
When Darius arrived at dinner-time, Gustad demanded to know exactly what had happened. ‘Nothing!’ said Darius indignantly. ‘Sometimes I talk to Jasmine if she is there with my friends. I talk to everyone.’
‘Listen. Her father is a crackpot. So just stay away. If she is with your friends, you don’t join them.’
‘That’s not fair,’ protested Darius. But the truth was, Jasmine was the only reason he saw his friends so often of late. The melting effect that her soft brown eyes had on him was delicious, a feeling he had never known.
‘Fair or not fair, I don’t care. I don’t want the dogwalla idiot complaining again. Discussion over. Let’s have dinner.’
But dinner was quite a challenge, with flies buzzing and hovering over the food, and mosquitoes dive-bombing everywhere. Roshan shrieked each time one landed in her plate, while Darius tested his reflexes by trying to catch them on the wing. ‘Shut all the windows tight,’ said Gustad, ‘and we’ll kill the ones inside.’ Everyone was sweating in the heat before long, however, and the windows had to be opened.
Somehow they got through dinner. ‘People keep pissing on the wall as if it was their father’s lavatory,’ said Gustad, slapping his neck and prying off a dead mosquito. In the medicine section of the sideboard he found a small half-used tube of Odomos. ‘Have to buy another one tomorrow. The mosquitoes will make the Odomos manufacturers fat, that’s all.’ They shared what was left in the tube in order to get through the night.
Chapter Six
i
Gustad inquired hopefully, every day, when he came home from work, if Jimmy had written. But a fortnight later, there was still no word from the Major about the favour he wanted. One evening, Roshan rushed to the door as she heard his key rattle. ‘Daddy, can I have a rupee for school? Mother Claudiana said during assembly that tomorrow is the last day to join the raffle and the prize is a beautiful imported doll from Italy which is as tall as me with a long white wedding dress and she also has blue eyes.’ She stopped to inhale.
He drew her to his side and hugged her. ‘My sweet little bakulyoo! So much excitement? You will become like Tehmul-Lungraa, talking fastfastfast.’