The Crow Eaters (11 page)

HAVING instructed Harilal to see no one disturbed him, Freddy sorted out a heap of work during the uninterrupted afternoon.

At about five o’clock Harilal finally allowed Yazdi into Freddy’s presence.

‘Yes, Yazdi?’ said Freddy, barely looking up from the letter he was reading. ‘Sit down.’

Yazdi sat gingerly on the chair. Freddy looked up. Yazdi was rigid with tension and his large dreamy eyes were alarmingly bright.

‘I want to get married, Papa,’ he said, holding Freddy’s gaze steadily.

‘I should have guessed!’ Freddy struck his forehead in a mock, self-deprecatory gesture.

Yazdi flushed, thinking of all the times he had tried to corner his father alone while Faredoon sought Soli’s company.

‘Don’t you think you are a bit young to decide? You’re only fifteen your mother tells me. How will you support your wife?’

Yazdi remained obstinately quiet.

‘Well, who is the lucky girl?’ inquired Freddy, thinking to humour his son with a show of interest. He knew the romance would be short-lived. And, if the puppy love withstood the test of time, at least four years in Yazdi’s case, they could get married. There was no harm in it.

‘Well, who is she?’ repeated Freddy resting his elbows on the table and leaning forward with low-lidded, amused eyes. ‘Anyone we know?’

‘No, you don’t know her. She’s a girl who comes to my school. Her name is Rosy Watson.’

Freddy had not been prepared for this. His face stiffened visibly. ‘What kind of a name is that? I don’t think I know any Parsi by the name of Watson.’

‘She’s not Parsi. She is an Anglo-Indian.’

Father and son were both as pale as whitewashed walls.

‘Come here,’ said Freddy in a strange, harsh voice.

His face twitched uncontrollably. Yazdi came round the table and stood before his father. Freddy got out of the chair. He gave his son a hard, level look. Yazdi felt his long stringy frame cringe involuntarily but he held his ground. Suddenly, Freddy raised his arm and slapped the back of his hand hard across Yazdi’s face. The boy staggered back.

‘You have the gall to tell me you want to marry an Anglo-Indian? Get out of my sight. Get out!’

Desperately holding back the tears that stung his eyes, Yazdi left the room.

Freddy sank down in his chair, drained of all strength. His hands trembled.

This was the first time he had struck any of his children.

Putli served Freddy his cup of tea. Salted pastry, lentil cakes, and bread and butter were already on the table. She had an entire family of servants working for her now; a husband and wife, son and daughter-in-law team, but she insisted on doing all the little things for her husband and her sons herself. She rose at the crack of dawn and dutifully filled the house with song. She sang with a determined cheerfulness, inviting the spirits of prosperity and good health to her household. Then she set about adorning the landings with patterns of fish, and entrance doors with garlands of fresh flowers – omens of good fortune.

Loath to see the servants idle, she kept them busy. The house was thoroughly scoured every day. Carpets were beaten, walls brushed, furniture moved aside and floors scrubbed with soap and water until they shone like Dresden china. The brick floors had long been replaced by glazed tiles arranged in flowering patterns. Putli industriously supervised all the
work, and when the daily orgy of spring-cleaning was spent, retired to the kitchen to prepare delicacies. The servants chopped onions, peeled vegetables, ground spices and kneaded the flour. Putli was left with little to do but mix recipes and stir the pans. Undaunted, she resourcefully busied herself washing potatoes and tomatoes with soap. Spare moments were devoted to making
kustis
. She spun the white lambswool into seventy-two fine strands and wove them into a long thin hollow tape. The tape was turned inside out and ceremoniously washed. Her finely made
kustis
were in great demand, not only in Lahore but in Karachi as well. Her proudest moments came when her children were formally initiated into the Zarathusti faith at their
Navjote
ceremonies. Then, invested with the outward symbols of the faith – the undershirt,
sudreh
and the
kusti
, they were girded to serve the Lord of Life and Wisdom.

Freedom of choice is a cardinal doctrine in the teaching of Zarathustra. A child born of Zoroastrian parents is not considered a Zoroastrian until he has chosen the faith at the
Navjote
ceremony. Zarathustra in his Gathas says:

Give ear to the Great Truths. Look within with enlightened mind (lit: flaming mind) at the faith of your own selection, man by man,
each one for himself
.

And this freedom of choice extends also to Good and Evil; aspects of God Himself. Evil is necessary so that good may triumph. Yet Evil by itself does not exist, it is relative, depending upon the distance from God at which the individual stands upon the Path of
Asha
– the Eternal truth – the grand cosmic plan of God.

Putli sat across the table from Freddy and when he was almost ready for his second cup of tea, remarked: ‘What’s troubling Yazdi? He went down to see you, I think, and when he came up his face was red and cranky. He’s locked himself up in his
room – refuses to open the door. I don’t know what’s come over him – did something happen between you two?’

‘Yes, I slapped him.’

‘Oh!’ exhaled Putli, wondering and solemn.

‘That stupid fool wants to marry an Anglo-Indian!’

Putli turned ashen. She didn’t say a word. She knew Freddy was going out later that evening. She told the maid to bring another cup of tea. Then she talked matter-of-factly of household matters and presented her daily quota of complaints regarding the servants. When Freddy was quite calm, she timorously ventured, ‘You did quite right to strike Yazdi – but that won’t show him the right path. It might be better if you sat down with him and talked things over.’

‘I’ve thought of doing that already,’ admitted Freddy, delicately dipping pastry biscuits in the tea. ‘Just let me finish this tea.’

Freddy knocked on the door. ‘It’s me,’ he announced.

The children were conditioned to obedience; more out of love and an ingrained sense of respect peculiar to their training than to any authoritative endeavour on Freddy’s part. The children sometimes defied their mother but never their father. Yazdi opened the door at once. His sensitive face was sullen. His lids and lips were swollen and red with weeping.

Freddy felt a sharp pang of remorse. He held his lanky son to his chest, kissed his swollen lids and half carried him to the bed. Sitting side by side, his arm round the boy’s slender shoulders, Freddy gently encouraged him to talk. In a short while he elicited the full story.

Yazdi, alone among his brothers, went to a co-educational school. Overly sensitive and delicate from childhood, Putli had feared for him among the rough little boys at St Anthony’s. She had meant to transfer him to the boys’ school later, but when the time came she persuaded Freddy to allow him to remain where he was.

Yazdi’s gentle ways and unfailing courtesy made him a favourite with his teachers. He was more at ease with the little
girls in his class, seeking them out and preferring them to the boys.

Rosy Watson had been in his class from kindergarten. She had been a pitifully skinny, aloof and sullen child and he had got to know her only a year back. There was an air about her, a mysterious tragic reserve, that excited his pity. She had no friends. Sometimes, during break, the older boys talked to her. She was off-hand with them and, unlike her giggling contemporaries, astonishingly poised. Yazdi was intrigued by her composure. It was as if she was initiated to some sombre, grown-up rites – that suffused her slender body with langour and carved her beautiful face into an unsmiling, withdrawn mask.

Yazdi sought her friendship with little attentions and loyalties. He broke from his friends and tried to penetrate the arid world of her loneliness. He sat next to her in class, composing his features to match her cool insouciance. He strolled with her during break, sharing his sandwich. Little by little the girl’s reserve gave way. Responding to the sympathy in him, she offered her friendship; her embittered, unhappy confidences. She told Yazdi about her abominable stepmother, her spiteful brothers and sisters. Every day she brought a new story of suffering. He felt he glimpsed for the first time the world’s sorrows. He was filled with compassion. He felt she permitted him to peer through a rare keyhole on the world of sadness.

Their relationship had changed about a month back when she returned to school after an absence of four days. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and her wan little face, sandwiched between heavy falls of straight long hair, was puffy.

During break they went to their nook, a grassy arbour of shady hedges and trees behind the School Chapel, and there she sobbed out her anguish. Not only her stepmother, but even her father thrashed her. They had confined her to her room without food or water, strapped to her bed. They had allowed all sorts of men into the room. Yazdi thought this
was done to humiliate her even further. He did not probe into the cause that provoked this punishment. The immediate cause was always trivial and inconsequential, weighted down by the elemental fount of her stepmother’s jealous hatred and vindictiveness.

Yazdi’s heart constricted with pity. His face crumpled in an effort to contain the tears that blurred his eyes. ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry,’ he begged in a barely audible voice, stroking the weeping girl’s light brown, silken hair. ‘I cannot bear to see you like this … you don’t have to live like this … I will marry you and take you away from that horrible house. I will marry you,’ he repeated with a determination that made the girl raise her bowed head and look at him.

Taking his pale, bravely determined face in her hands she kissed him. This was Yazdi’s first kiss – and the girl was beautiful.

Freddy listened patiently. His face was red. He saw much more in the simple story that his son told him. He saw the poverty of the girl’s family and the faceless depravity of their existence. He was shocked when Yazdi told him of her chastisement, shocked by his straight narrative tone: ‘They tied her to the bed and brought men into the room …’ he had said, compassion flitting across his face as he pressed closer to his father, wanting him to sympathise. It was only when he realised that the boy had missed the significance of the scene which he described with such unwitting candour (endowing the men with his own sensibilities, Yazdi imagined them embarrassed and reluctant to witness the girl’s humiliation) did Freddy understand his son’s total lack of embarrassment. Really, he’s such a baby, thought Freddy.

‘She is so unhappy, father. I’ve got to marry her. I promised … and I love her,’ Yazdi cried desperately.

‘You love her? No my child; you want to marry her because you pity her. But you cannot marry all those you pity. I pity the mangy dogs on our street, the beggars, the noseless leper who comes every Friday – do you expect me to marry them?
Your heart is too soft. You cannot expect to marry the dogs you pity!’

‘She isn’t a dog.’

‘No, but a mongrel … a mixed-breed mongrel.’

Yazdi stiffened and sitting back glowered at his father. ‘What does it matter if she is not Parsi? What does it matter who her parents are … she is a human being, isn’t she? And a fine person. Better than any Parsi I’ve met.’ An ungovernable rage at his father’s prejudice seethed in him. His eyes wild, he sprang from the bed and paced the floor.

Freddy calmly doubled up a pillow against the wall and reclined. ‘Sit down, sit down, there’s nothing to get excited about,’ he said.

Yazdi perched on the edge of the bed.

‘You are too young to understand these things … maybe I am too old to understand you. But there is one thing I would like to explain to you. Now, this is not something I alone believe. It is what our ancestors professed; and our race will go on believing till the end of time. You may think what I have to say is nonsense, but once you are past a certain age, you will see the wisdom and truth of these thoughts, I promise you. May I tell you what I believe?’

Yazdi, responding to the plea in his father’s voice, nodded. Although his demeanour was respectful, Freddy could not help noticing the defiant gleam in his son’s eye, condemning his bigotry and daring him to express it.

‘I believe in some kind of a tiny spark that is carried from parent to child, on through generations … a kind of inherited memory of wisdom and righteousness, reaching back to the times of Zarathustra, the Magi, the Mazdiasnians. It is a tenderly nurtured conscience evolving towards perfection.

‘I am not saying only we have the spark. Other people have it too: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists … they too have developed pure strains through generations.

‘But what happens if you marry outside our kind? The spark so delicately nurtured, so subtly balanced, meets something
totally alien and unmatched. Its precise balance is scrambled. It reverts to the primitive.

‘You will do yourself no harm – you have already inherited fine qualities – you have compassion, honesty, creativity – but have you thought of your children?

‘In the case of the Anglo-Indian girl the spark is already mutated. What kind of a heritage are you condemning your children to? They might look beautiful but they will be shells – empty and confused; misfits for generations to come. They will have arrogance without pride – touchiness without self-respect or compassion; ambition without honour … and you will be to blame.’

Yazdi wondered bitterly why he had expected his father to be different. He had somehow imagined him, of all people, to be above these antiquated prejudices.

‘You are as ignorant and biased as the others,’ he said, voicing his disappointment. His face was drawn and contemptuous. ‘I will never swallow such disgusting beliefs.’

‘I cannot force you. But you must grant me the courtesy of at least thinking on what I’ve said – then reject it, by all means It will help you to realise why I will never permit you to marry that girl.’