The Inheritance of Loss (13 page)

"I have a new job in a bakery and the boss leaves us in complete charge. . . ."

It was
haat
day in Kalimpong and a festive crowd thronged to the market in a high pitch of excitement, everyone in their best clothes.

The cook folded up the letter and put it in his shirt pocket. Feeling joyful, he descended steeply into the
haat,
pushing his way between bent and bowed Nepali ladies with golden nose rings dangling and Tibetan women with braids and prayer beads, between those who had walked from faraway villages to sell muddy mushrooms covered with brackish leaves or greenery, already half cooked in the sun. Powders, oils, and ganglions of roots were proffered by Lepcha medicine men; other stalls offered yak hair, untidy and rough as the hair of demons, and sacks of miniature dried shrimp with oversized whiskers; there were smuggled

foreign goods from Nepal, perfumes, jean jackets, electronics; there were kukri sickles, sheets of plastic rainproofing, and false teeth.

When the cook and judge had first arrived in Kalimpong, wool caravans were still coming through, chaperoned by Tibetan muleteers in furry boots, earrings swinging, and the earthy smell of men and beasts had run a hot current against that exquisite scent of pine that people like Lola and Noni came from Calcutta to sample. The cook remembered yaks carrying over two hundred pounds of salt and, balanced on the top, rosy babies stuffed in cooking pots, chewing on squares of dried
churbi
cheese.

"My son works in New York," the cook boasted to everyone he met. "He is the manager of a restaurant business.

"New York. Very big city," he explained. "The cars and buildings are nothing like here. In that country, there is enough food for everybody."

"When are you going, Babaji?"

"One day," he laughed. "One day soon my son will take me."

Dried azalea and juniper lay bundled in newspaper packages. He remembered the day the Dalai and Panchen Lamas came to Kalimpong, and they had burnt this incense all along the path. The cook had been in the crowd. He was not Buddhist, of course, but had gone in a secular spirit. The muffled thunder of prayer rumbled down the mountain as the mules and horses stepped pom-pommed out of the fog, bells singing, prayer flags flying from the saddles.

The cook had prayed for Biju and gone to bed feeling pious, so sparkily so that he felt clean although he knew he was dirty.

Now he walked through the greasy bus station with its choking smell of exhaust and past the dark cubbyhole where, behind a soiled red curtain, you could pay to watch on a shaking screen such films as
Rape of Erotic Virgin
and
SHE: The Secrets of Married Life.

Nobody here would be interested in the cook’s son.

At the Snow Lion Travel Agency, the cook waited to claim the manager’s attention. Tashi was busy chatting up a tourist—he was famous for charming the Patagonia pants off foreign women and giving them an opportunity to write home with the requisite tale of amorous adventure with a sherpa. All around were brochures for the monastery trips Tashi organized, photographs of hotels built in the traditional style, furnished with antiques, many of which had been taken from the monasteries themselves. Of course he omitted the fact that the centuries-old structures

were all being modernized with concrete, fluorescent lighting, and bathroom tiling.

"When you go to America, take me along also," said Tashi after he had sold the tourist a trip to Sikkim.

"Yes, yes. I will take us all. Why not? That country has lots of room. It’s this country that is so crowded."

"Do not worry, I am saving my money to buy a ticket, and how are you, how is your health?" Biju had written. One day his son would accomplish all that Sai’s parents had failed to do, all the judge had failed to do.

The cook walked by the Apollo Deaf Tailors. No point saying anything there, since they would literally turn a deaf ear just as they did to customer complaints after they’d made a hash of everything, stripes horizontal instead of vertical, the judge’s clothes made in Sai’s size and Sai’s clothes made in the judge’s size.

He went into Lark’s Store for Tosh’s tea, egg noodles, and Milkmaid condensed milk. He told the doctor, who had come in to collect the vaccines that she stored in the Lark’s fridge, "My son has a new job in U.S.A." Her son was there as well. He shared this with a doctor! The most distinguished personage in town.

Walking home in the dusk, he told those catching their breath from carrying heavy loads uphill, resting right on the road, where mud and grass wouldn’t spoil their good clothes. When a car came by they got up; when it passed they settled back again.

He told Mrs. Sen, who, of course, also had a child in America: "Best country in the world. All these people who went to England are now feeling sorry. . . ."

Her hand gestured significantly to the house of her neighbors at Mon Ami. The cook then went and told Lola, who hated a challenge to England but was kind to him, because he was poor; it was only Mrs. Sen’s daughter who was a threat to be lopped off at the neck. He told the Afghan princesses, who paid him to deliver them a chicken each time he went to the market. They boiled the chicken the same day, since they had no fridge, and each day until it was gone, they recooked a portion in a different style—curried, in soy sauce, in cheese sauce, and, at that blissful time when, overnight, gardens all over Kalimpong came up in mushrooms, in mushroom sauce with a bottlecapful of brandy.

He told the monks playing football outside the
gompa,
hitching up their robes. He told Uncle Potty and Father Booty. They were dancing on the veranda, Uncle Potty at the light switch turning it on off on off on off. "What did you say?" they said, turning down the music to listen. "Good for him!" They raised their glasses and turned up the music again: "Jam-balaya . . . pumpkin pie-a . . .
mio maio. . .
."

Then the cook stopped at the last stall for potatoes. He always bought them here so he didn’t have to carry them all the way, and he found the daughter of the owner at the counter dressed in a long nightie, as had become the fashion. You saw women everywhere in nighties, daughters, wives, grandmothers, nieces, walking to the shops, collecting water in broad daylight as if on their way to bed, long hair, ruffly garments, making a beautiful dream scene in daylight.

She was a lovely girl, small and plump, a glimpse through the nightie placket of breasts so buttery that even women who saw them were captivated.

And she seemed sensible in the shop. Surely Biju would like her? The girl’s father was making money, so they said. . . .

"Three kilos potatoes," he told the girl in a voice unusually gentle for him.

"What about rice? Is it clean?"

"No, Uncle," she said. "What we have is very dirty. It’s so full of little stones you’ll crack your teeth if you eat it."

"What about the
atta?

"The
atta
is better."

Anyway, he said to himself, money wasn’t everything. There was that simple happiness of looking after someone and having someone look after you.

Sixteen

When Sai became interested
in love, she became interested in other people’s love affairs, and she pestered the cook about the judge and his wife.

The cook said: "When I joined the household, all the old servants told me that the death of your grandmother made a cruel man out of your grandfather.

She was a great lady, never raised her voice to the servants. How much he loved her! In fact, it was such a deep attachment, it turned one’s stomach, for it was too much for anybody else to look upon."

"Did he really love her so very much?" Sai was astonished.

"Must have," said the cook. "But they said he didn’t show it."

"Maybe he didn’t?" she then suggested.

"Bite your tongue, you evil girl. Take your words back!" shouted the cook.

"Of course he loved her."

"How did the servants know, then?"

The cook thought a bit, thought of his own wife. "True," he said.

Nobody really knew, but no one said anything in those days, for there are many ways of showing love, not just the way of the movies—which is all you know. You are a very foolish girl. The greatest love is love that’s never shown."

"You say anything that suits you."

"Yes, I’ve found it’s the best way," said the cook after thinking some more.

"So? Did he or didn’t he?"

________

The cook and Sai were sitting with Mutt on the steps leading to the garden, picking the ticks off her, and this was always an hour of contentment for them.

The large khaki-bag ones were easy to dispatch, but the tiny brown ticks were hard to kill; they flattened against the depressions in the rock, so when you hit them with a stone, they didn’t die but in a flash were up and running.

Sai chased them up and down. "Don’t run away, don’t you dare climb back on Mutt."

Then they tried to drown them in a can of water, but they were tough, swam about, climbed on one another’s backs and crawled out. Sai chased them down again, put them back in the can, rushed to the toilet, and flushed them, but even then they resurfaced, doing a mad-scrabble swim in the toilet bowl.

________

Remembrance, now authentic, shone from the cook’s eyes.

"Oh no," said the cook. "He didn’t like her at all. She went mad."

"She did?!"

"Yes, they said she was a very mad lady."

"Who was she?"

"I’ve forgotten the name, but she was the daughter of a rich man and the family was of much higher standing than your grandfather, of a particular branch of a caste that in itself was not high, of course, as you know, but within this group, they had distinguished themselves. You could tell from her features, which were delicate; her toes, nose, ears, and fingers were all very fine and small, and she was very fair—just like milk. Complexion-wise, they said, you could have mistaken her for a foreigner. Her family only married among fifteen families, but an exception was made for your grandfather because he was in the ICS. But more than that I do not know."

________

"Who was my grandmother?" Sai then asked the judge sitting poised like a heron over his chessboard. "Did she come from a very fancy family?"

He said: "I’m playing chess, can’t you see?"

He looked back at the board, and then he got up and walked into the garden.

Flying squirrels chased one another through the circination of ferns and mist; the mountains were like ibex horns piercing through. He returned to his chessboard and made his move, but it felt like an old move in an old game.

He didn’t want to think of her, but the picture that came to mind was surprisingly gentle.

________

The Patels had been dreaming of sending their son to England, but there wasn’t enough money no matter how much Jemu’s father worked, so they visited the moneylenders, who surveyed father and son with the sleepiness of crocodiles and then pounced with an offer of ten thousand rupees. At 22 percent interest.

There still wasn’t enough, though, and they began to search for a bride.

Jemu would be the first boy of their community to go to an English university. The dowry bids poured in and his father began an exhilarated weighing and tallying: ugly face—a little more gold, a pale skin—a little less. A dark and ugly daughter of a rich man seemed their best bet.

________

On the other side of Piphit, by the military cantonment, lived a short man with a rhinocerous-like nose that seemed to travel up, not down, who carried a malacca cane, wore a long coat of brocade, and lived in a
haveli
carved so delicately it seemed weightless. This was Bomanbhai Patel. It was his father who had discreetly helped the right side in a certain skirmish between the English and the Gaekwads, and he was repaid by the regimental quartermaster with a contract to be the official supplier of horse feed to the British military encampment at Piphit.

Eventually, the family had monopolized the delivery of all dry goods to the army, and when Bomanbhai succeeded his father, he saw the way to greater profit yet by extending his business seamlessly into another. He offered soldiers unauthorized women in an unauthorized part of town on whom they might spend their aggrandizement of manhood; returned them to their barracks strewn about with black hairs, and smelling like rabbits from a rabbit hutch.

Bomanbhai’s own wife and daughters, however, were kept carefully locked up behind the high walls of the
haveli
outside which a plaque read:

"Residence of Bomanbhai Patel, Military Purveyor, Financier, Merchant." Here they lived an idle existence inside the women’s quarters, the strictness of this purdah enforcement increasing Bomanbhai’s honor in the community, and he began to acquire little fancies and foibles, to cultivate certain eccentricities that, just as he plotted, reiterated the security of his wealth and reinforced his honor all over again. He displayed his purchases, his habits casually but planned them with exactitude—acquired his trademark coat of brocade, his polished cane and kept a pet pangolin, since he had an affinity with all big-nosed creatures. He ordered a set of stained-glass panes that flooded the
haveli
with luscious multi-fruit-colored light under which the children played, entertained by how they might look orange or purple or half orange and half green.

Traveling Chinamen selling lace and silk waited outside as their wares were taken to the women for inspection. Jewelers brought rare pieces for the daughters’ dowries, heirlooms being sold by a bankrupt raja. Bomanbhai’s wife’s earlobes lengthened with the weight of South African diamonds, so great, so heavy, that one day, from one ear, an earring ripped through, a meteor disappearing with a bloody clonk into her bowl of
srikhand.