Family Matters (30 page)

“No,” he ordered, “let it stand.” Then he became conscious of the tone he was using. “Sorry, Villie, too much stress for me.”

“I understand,” she said, and patted his shoulder.

Pushing down on the mattress with his hand, Yezad flipped over on to his back. The violent movement rocked the headboard. Breathing hard, he muttered that the room was boiling hot. His feet scrabbled away at the sheet to pull it down, and he dried his clammy palms against his pyjamas. Moments later he pulled the sheet up again, shivering, his sweat running cold.

He turned towards the alarm clock, and got up on his elbow. Such a loud ticking, he thought, no wonder it was keeping him awake. The numbers no longer glowed in the dark as they did when it was new.

Squinting, he leaned closer: half past midnight. Matka had closed.

Roxana tried to soothe her husband by putting her arm over him, but he tensed in her embrace. Despairing, she released him, asking herself if the end of their marriage was approaching, now that even her touch repulsed him.

At last his squirming and writhing began to wind down; she sensed he was falling asleep. His legs kicked the darkness a few times before settling with his knees drawn up to his stomach.

Then, from the front room came the sound of her father talking in his sleep. He was not agitated tonight, it sounded like contented murmurings, and she was glad for him, but she still worried about Yezad being awakened. Oh Pappa, she wished silently, please not too loud, Pappa.

They had been to a matinée.
The Magnificent Ambersons,
which was showing at the Regal. Afterwards, he and Lucy went for a stroll along Cuffe Parade. This was the routine of their early years: cinema in the afternoon, a long walk, then dinner at a restaurant like Volga or Parisian. But the film had left them pensive, thinking about pride and arrogance, about downfall and disgrace. The sea was rough, the high wind making it difficult to talk as it whipped their voices and hair and clothes.

They found a bench in a sheltered spot. Now the smell of rain was in the early-evening air. The vendors of coconut water, sugar cane, peanuts had all disappeared. Only a little girl selling flowers was still there, scurrying up as soon as she spied them. “Chamayli, sahab? Chamayli for memsahab?” she pleaded in a high-pitched voice.

He bought a strand of jasmine and tried to fix it in Lucy’s hair. But she was not used to wearing flowers. She took them off, wrapping them round her wrist. He raised it to sniff the fragrance. “Jasmine wrist and rose-petal hand,” he said.

He kissed her palm, then began licking her fingers, one by one. A few minutes later he said, “Why are we wasting time here? My parents will have left by now.”

She was reluctant to go home with him, afraid of being surprised. But he assured her that his father and mother would be at Sammy and Jini Kotwal’s annual whist drive and dinner, which never ended before one in the morning; there was no chance of running into them. “And even if we do – well, you have to meet them at some time.”

It started to rain, and they took a taxi. The traffic became slower, the horns louder. The windshield wiper kept jamming, and the driver had to reach outside to get it going with a nudge. He had a towel on the front seat for his soaking arm.

When the taxi arrived at Chateau Felicity, the ground-floor neighbour, Mr. Arjani, was at his window, enjoying the downpour. “Hello, Nari!” he hailed him, adding pointedly, “Your parents are out, I saw them leave half an hour ago.”

Nariman nodded, and as they passed his door he could be heard sharing the news excitedly with Mrs. Arjani, that the Vakeel boy was bringing home a brand-new girlfriend. Nariman glanced at Lucy’s face while waiting for the lift. “Pathetic, aren’t they,” he whispered.

Upstairs, he put on the security chain so the door couldn’t be opened, just in case. She asked, Wouldn’t it better to lock the door to his room instead?

“My room doesn’t lock. And they would walk right in, even if it were shut.”

“Oh God,” she cringed at the thought. “Is this worth it?”

“Yes,” he whispered, nibbling her ear, lifting her hair to kiss her neck.

“You should cover up your ancestors’ portraits,” she said as they went down the long passageway to his bedroom. “They’re all scowling at me.”

“They were never loved by an angel.”

She sat on the bed to take off her shoes. He drew the curtains, and the dusk-laden room grew dark except for a scribble of light at the overlapping panels. He switched on the table lamp. They started to undress, and when she was down to her underclothes she pointed shyly to the light: “Turn it off.”

“I need to see you – all of you. Please.”

“Why?”

“To let all my senses worship you.”

She paused, and continued to unbutton, pleased by his answer but complaining she could never win an argument with him. Standing behind her, he undid her brassière, then sniffed the back of her neck. He raised her arm and sniffed under it. She laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Worshipping with my nose.” He stood before her, buried his face between her breasts, and inhaled. Kneeling, he hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband of her underpants and slid them to her ankles. She stepped out of them and waited. Still kneeling, he leaned forward and rubbed his nose in her hair. Her hands held his head to keep it there a moment longer.

In bed, with his ear upon her chest, he listened to her heartbeat. He kissed her, tasted her tongue, then her ears, and her nipples. Lower, he licked her navel, then meandered below …

The doorbell rang. The sound travelled savagely through the silent flat, pursued by a cluster of aggressive knocks. They sat up in bed, their pleasure already in tatters. Nariman decided to ignore the noise – whoever it was would go away concluding no one was home.

But the knocking and the bell continued. Thinking he heard his father’s roar, he stepped into the hallway to listen. Yes, it was him. They rushed to put their clothes on. Lucy hurried to the drawing-room, straightening her hair as she went. After a cursory glance at his own person in the hall mirror, he unchained the door.

His mother’s face was colourless, as though she were going to faint. His father was supporting her on one side, Soli Bamboat on the other. He took over from Soli, and asked what was wrong.

“My usual,” said his mother, her voice coming in a gasp. She tried to smile. “Blood pressure dropped suddenly again.”

With his mother’s weight on his shoulder, they went down the passageway to his parents’ room. He helped to take her shoes off. After she was safely in bed he left the room with his father.

Now his father lost his temper. “And may I ask what is going on here? Your mother is ill, I bring her home and find we are locked out of our own house! While she staggers on the doorstep!”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you so early.” He detected the evening’s liquor on his father’s breath, and Soli’s too.

“That’s no excuse!” his father thundered. “Why must you —”

Then through the drawing-room door he spotted Lucy. “So this is the reason!”

“Yes,” said Nariman quietly. “I had to put the chain on, you don’t respect my privacy.”

“Bay-sharam! What kind of unnatural son seeks privacy from his own parents? Unless he is planning filthy behaviour?” He gestured towards Lucy on the sofa, who was staring out the window, away from them.

“Shh, Marzi, poor Jeroo is slipping, you’ll wake her up,” said Soli, the vowels confounding him as usual. “Let’s have some piss and quiet. We can deescuss all this later when she is filling better.”

“Later? Already it’s too late! This son of mine has turned my house into a raanwada, bringing his whore over here! It’s the kind of immorality that’s destroying the Parsi community!”

Nariman crossed the room to take Lucy’s hand and lead her out of the flat They didn’t wait for the lift, in case his father opened the door to shout more abuse.

Not until they had put two flights between them could he feel safe. They stopped in the silence of the stairwell. “I’m sorry, Lucy. And I’m ashamed of my father’s behaviour.”

“It’s not your fault” she said, keeping her composure although her voice trembled. “Just bad luck.”

They smiled and shared a long kiss, sheltered by the bend in the stairs. After seeing her off in a taxi, he returned upstairs.

Retreating to his room would not help – his father would follow him there. So he waited, ignoring the flood of words, till a pause prompted him to speak.

“I have only one thing to say. When you call the woman I love a whore, and our home a raanwada because I invite her here, you disgrace the role of father. And I despair for you.”

“Oh Nari, Nari!” intervened Soli. “You must never spick to your father like that, no matter what the risen.”

“My son has never respected me like a father. Here is the proof, Soli, you just heard him.”

The accusations and bitter recriminations continued, with Soli trying to make peace between them. He cajoled and scolded alternately. “Come, Marzi. Forgive and forget. Enough, Nari, not another word.”

There was silence now, and Soli took the opportunity to philosophize: “Boys weal be boys, Marzi. Better that he has all his fun and froleek now. Afterwards, find a nice Parsi gull and settle down. Right, Nari? No hanky-panky after marriage.”

He seemed determined to pursue his humorous approach to mending the rift: “So tell me, Nari. This gull-friend of yours – will she have to tell her padre in confession what you two deed today?”

He ignored his father’s friend, who guffawed and continued, “1 have it on good eenformation that these padres make the gulls tell all the juicy details – was he touching you, were you touching him, did he put it een?”

Soli laughed again, his belly heaving, and his father chuckled. They cautioned each other about disturbing Jeroo. Then Soli began teasing
Nariman for his lack of humour, and Nariman snapped that he had found nothing remotely funny in his puerile remarks …

About to go to her father’s bedside, Roxana remembered Yezad’s tortured sleep and restrained herself. Her father’s mumbled fragments persisted in the darkness. Yezad’s arm slammed the headboard. Had he heard Pappa too? Or was it the demons in his own head?

Her father continued in a subdued way, not the angry blast from before. She heard Jehangir make soft kissing sounds to comfort him, and her heart filled with a strange, painful happiness. What a beautiful boy, God bless him, so dependable, so grown-up, who could tell from his behaviour he was just nine …

She lay with her eyes open, listening. Pappa’s suffering she could guess at. But she would have given anything to understand Yezad’s hell. If he wouldn’t confide in her during their waking hours, she wished he could at least talk in his sleep, give her some hint of what was eating him.