A Fine Balance (32 page)

“So. What’s the name of the company?” asked Ishvar.

“I don’t know.”

“The address?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why so pleased? Your cunning plan got you nothing.”

“Patience, patience,” he mimicked his uncle. “It got me something.” He flashed the money and narrated his afternoon’s adventures.

Ishvar began to laugh. “Only to you could such things happen.” Neither of them seemed disappointed – it may have been the money, or relief at the failure: finding the export company would have led to some difficult choices.

A mobile Family Planning Clinic was parked outside the hutment colony when they got home. Most of the slum-dwelling multitudes were giving it a wide berth. The staff were handing out free condoms, distributing leaflets on birth-control procedures, explaining incentives being offered in cash and kind.

“Maybe I should have the operation,” said Om. “Get a Bush transistor. And then the ration card would also be possible.”

Ishvar whacked him. “Don’t even joke about such things!”

“Why? I’m never getting married. Might as well get a transistor.”

“You will marry when I tell you to. No arguments. And what’s so important about a little radio?”

“Everybody has one nowadays.” He was imagining Shanti at the beach, twilight fading, while his transistor serenaded them.

“Everybody jumps in the well, you will also? Learning big-city ways – forgetting our good, humble small-town ways.”

“You get the operation if you don’t want me to.”

“Shameless. My manhood for a stupid radio?”

“No, yaar, it’s not your manhood they want. The doctor just cuts a tiny little tube inside. You don’t even feel it.”

“Nobody is taking a knife to my balls. You want a transistor? Work hard for Dinabai, earn some money.”

Rajaram came up, displaying the condoms he had collected at the clinic. They were handing out four per person, and he wondered if they would get their quota for him if they didn’t need it. “Who knows when the van will come this way again,” he said.

“Are you a frequent fucker or what?” said Om, laughing but envious. “Not going to keep us awake again tonight, are you?”

“Shameless,” said Ishvar and tried to whack him as he skipped away to visit the monkeys.

Dina reread the letter from Mrs. Kohlah that had arrived with the first rent cheque, postdated to Maneck’s moving day. The three pages listed instructions concerning the care and comfort of Aban Kohlah’s son. There were tips about his breakfast: fried eggs should be cooked floating in butter because he disliked the leathery edges that got stuck to the pan; scrambled eggs were to be light and fluffy, with milk added during the final phase. “Having grown up in our healthy mountain air,” continued the letter, “he has a large appetite. But please don’t give him more than two eggs, not even if he asks. He must learn to balance his diet.”

About his studies, Aban Kohlah wrote that “Maneck is a good, hardworking boy, but gets distracted sometimes, so please remind him to do his lessons every day.” Also, he was very particular about his clothes, the way they were starched and ironed; a good dhobi was indispensable to his sense of well-being. And Dina should feel free to call him Mac because that was what everyone in the family called him.

Dina snorted and put away the letter. Eggs floating in butter, indeed! And a good dhobi, of all things! The nonsense that people foisted on their children. When the boy had visited last month, he seemed nothing like the person described in his mother’s letter. But that was always the case – people hardly ever saw their children as they really were.

To prepare the room for his arrival, Dina carried out her clothes, shoes, and knickknacks, making space for them amid the tailoring paraphernalia. Place was found in the trunk on the trestle for her stock of homemade sanitary pads and snippets. The larger leftovers of fabric, with which she had recently started to design a quilt, went into her cupboard’s bottom shelf. The pagoda parasol remained hanging from the top of the boarder’s cupboard, it wasn’t going to bother him there.

Her old bedroom was empty and ready for Maneck Kohlah. Her new bedroom was – horrible. I’ll probably lie sleepless, gasping for breath, she thought, hemmed in by the stacks of cloth. But it was out of the question to put the boarder in with the sewing-machines. That would make him run back to his college hostel.

She selected pieces of cloth from the bundle under the bed and settled down to make more patches for the quilt. Concentrating on the work made the anxieties about tomorrow fade. Ridiculous, she felt, to even think of competing with Aban Kohlah and the luxuries of her home in the north. Giving Maneck the bedroom was the only concession she would make.

W
HEN MANECK KOHLAH FINISHED
moving his belongings from the college hostel to Dinas flat, he was soaking with sweat. Fine strong arms, she thought, watching him carry his suitcase and boxes noiselessly, setting things down with care.

“It’s so humid,” he said, wiping his forehead. “I’ll take a bath now, Mrs. Dalai.”

“At this time of the evening? You must be joking. There’s no water, you have to wait till morning. And what’s this Mrs. Dalai again?”

“Sorry – Dina Aunty.”

Such a good-looking boy, she thought, and dimples when he smiles. But she felt he should get rid of the few hairs at his upper lip that were trying so hard to be a moustache. “Shall I call you Mac?”

“I hate that name.”

He unpacked, changed his shirt, and they had dinner. He looked up from his plate once, meeting her eye and smiling sadly. He ate little; she asked if the food was all right.

“Oh yes, very tasty, thank you, Aunty.”

“If Nusswan – my brother – saw your plate, he would say that even his pet sparrow would go hungry with that quantity.”

“It’s too hot to eat more,” he murmured apologetically.

“Yes, I suppose compared to your healthy mountain air it’s boiling here.” She decided he needed putting at ease. “And how is college?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“But you didn’t like the hostel?”

“No, it’s a very rowdy place. Impossible to study.”

There was silence again through several morsels, the next attempt at conversation coming from him. “Those two tailors I met last month – they still work for you?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’ll be here in the morning.”

“Oh good, it will be nice to see them again.”

“Will it?”

He didn’t hear the edge in it, and tried to nod pleasantly while she began clearing the table. “Let me help,” he said, pushing back his chair.

“No, it’s okay.”

She soaked the dishes in the kitchen for the morning, and he watched. The flat depressed him, the way it had when he had come to inspect the room. He would be gone in less than a year, he thought, thank God for that. But for Dina Aunty this was home. Everywhere there was evidence of her struggle to stay ahead of squalor, to mitigate with neatness and order the shabbiness of poverty. He saw it in the chicken wire on the broken windowpanes, in the blackened kitchen wall and ceiling, in the flaking plaster, in the repairs on her blouse collar and sleeves.

“If you are tired you can go to bed, dont wait for me,” she said.

Taking it to be a polite dismissal, he withdrew to his room – her room, he thought guiltily – and sat listening to the noises from the back, trying to guess what she was doing.

Before going to bed herself, Dina remembered to turn on the kitchen tap in order to be roused by its patter at first flow. She lay awake for a long while, thinking about her boarder. The first impression was good. He didn’t seem fussy at all, polite, with fine manners, and so quiet. But maybe he was just tired today, might be more talkative tomorrow.

Maneck did not sleep well. A window kept banging in the wind, and he felt unsure about rising to investigate, afraid of stumbling in the dark, disturbing Mrs. Dalai. He tossed and turned, haunted by the college hostel. Finally escaped, he thought. But it would have been much better to go straight home…

He was up early; the open tap turned out to be his alarm clock as well. After cleaning his teeth he returned to his room and did pushups in his underwear, unaware that Dina, having finished in the kitchen, was watching through the half-open door.

She admired the horseshoe of his triceps as they formed and dissolved with his ascent and descent. I was right last night, she thought, nice strong arms. And such a handsome body. Then she blushed confusedly – Aban in school with me… young enough to be my son. She turned away from the door.

“Good morning, Aunty.”

She turned around cautiously, relieved to see he was wearing his clothes. “Good morning, Maneck. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She acquainted him with the bathroom and the working of the immersion water heater, then left. He shut the door to undress, moving carefully in the small, unfamiliar space. Hot water steamed, ebullient in the bucket. He tested it with the fingertips, then plunged his hand past the wrist, exulting in the warmth. He realized it was only the dank monsoon day making the steam threaten and cloud so thick, no more scalding than the dreamy mist that would be hugging the mountains at home now.

If he shut his eyes he could picture it: at this hour it would be swirling fancifully, encircling the snow-covered peaks. Just after dawn was the best time to observe the slow dance, before the sun was strong enough to snatch away the veil. And he would stand at the window, watch the pink and orange of sunrise, imagine the mist tickling the mountain’s ear or chucking it under the chin or weaving a cap for it.

Soon he would hear the familiar sounds from downstairs as his father opened up the store and stepped outside to sweep the porch. First, his father would greet the dogs who had spent the night on the porch. There was never any trouble with the strays; Daddy had an arrangement with them: they could sleep here and feed on scraps so long as they left in the morning. And they always went obediently at first light, albeit with reluctance, after nuzzling his ankles. In the kitchen Mummy would stoke the boiler with shiny black coal, fill the tea kettle, slice the bread, and keep an eye on the stove.

At this hour, as the pan hissed and sputtered, the aroma of fried eggs would begin to travel upstairs and to the porch. The appetizing emissary would deliver wordless messages to Maneck and his father. Then Maneck would leave the moving-mist panorama and hurry to breakfast, hugging his parents, whispering good morning to each before sitting down at his place. His father had a special big cup, from which he took great gulps of tea while still standing. He always drank his first cup standing, moving around the kitchen, gazing out the window at the early-morning valley. When Maneck was sick with a cold or had exams at school, he was allowed to drink from his father’s cup, with its bowl so huge that Maneck thought he would never finish, never drain its depths, and yet he had to keep drinking if he was to triumph and reveal the star-shaped design at the bottom, changing colour through the final trace of liquid, appearing and disappearing as he sloshed it around…

Shaking water off his wet forearm, Maneck tried to shut the leaking tap – a bad washer – and gazed abstractedly at the steamy swirls haloing his bucket of hot water. His homesick imagination made him see the hills float through the fog again, passing from nimbus to nothing. He sighed, stood on the high step enclosing the bathing area, and hung his clothes on the empty nail next to his towel. The third nail was occupied by a brassière, with something else behind it – knitted from strong, rough yarn, like a thumbless glove. Curious, he pulled it out to examine. A bath mitt, he decided, and stepped off the ledge, picking up the mug to splash himself with water from the bucket.

Then he saw the worms.
Phylum Annelida
, he remembered from biology class. They were crawling out of the drain in formidable numbers, stringy and dark red, glistening on the grey stone floor, advancing with their mesmeric glide. Maneck froze for an instant before leaping back to the safety of the ledge.