The Crow Eaters (26 page)

TANYA had had a hard time during the absence of her enemies. Ironically, she missed them. Her deliverance from Jerbanoo and Putli had only allowed a freer and more direct development of friction between her and Billy. They felt stranded: Tanya defenceless against Billy’s stinginess, and Billy helpless before her extravagance.

Billy was expanding the business and doing well in diverse ventures. Tanya knew he was making a lot of money and she could not comprehend his strange attitude. They battled furiously. They argued, each desperately trying to make the other see reason, but their battles ended in a baffling stalemate.

Tanya was sick two mornings in a row. Billy took her to see Dr Bharucha. He confirmed what they suspected. Tanya was pregnant.

Billy was solicitous to the extent of telling her to look after herself while he spent all day at work. Each morning he asked her, was there anything she wanted? And thriftily brought back only those items on her long list that were absolutely essential.

Tanya asked for money.

‘What do you want with money? I’ll get you anything you want, you’ve only to ask!’

Considerate of her delicate condition, Billy took over the chore of household budgeting. He inspected the account of purchases presented by the servants and advanced money directly to the cook. Tanya was relieved of the burden of receiving any money at all.

Tanya’s own money was prudently locked up in securities that neither he nor she could touch.

Tanya became miserable – and then despairing. She tried to attract Billy’s sympathy. She got dizzy spells. She had cravings. She craved pomegranate and pineapple – Billy offered her radishes.

Billy came home for lunch every afternoon. He allowed himself an hour in which to eat and rest. This midday home-coming was ritualistic. The clamour of his bicycle bell on the drive alerted the tense household. Tanya, and later the three children, gushed forth to the portico to kiss and greet him as he locked his cycle. In summer he was relieved of his sola-hat, handed a glass of iced water, and led to the bathroom to wash. In winter there was a flurry to take his overcoat and muffler, pat his icy hands, and adjust the coal brazier closer to his feet.

Then he sat at the table before a salad bowl and selected a long, white radish. Laying the radish on his plate, its leafy crown overflowing, Billy attacked it with his knife. Slash. Slash. Slash. Three precise clicks on the plate, and the crunch of crisp vegetables crushed between energetic molars. Slice. Slice. Slice. And again the loud smacking crunches. He came home preoccupied and he ate without speaking.

The cook peeped from behind the kitchen door. As soon as the radishes were consumed, he served a piping hot and frugal meal.

After lunch Billy retreated to the bedroom, tied a handkerchief round his eyes and fell asleep flat on his back. He was up within the exact time limit he had set himself.

This never varied, except that the clamour of the bicycle bell was to be replaced by the toot of the Morris Minor he acquired in 1940.

At this moment in our story in 1929, Freddy, Jerbanoo and Putli are in England and Tanya is expecting.

Tanya has eaten. She finds it difficult to keep Billy’s late lunch hours. December is bitterly cold in the high-ceilinged,
whitewashed, brick-walled rooms and Tanya has slept curled up beneath a heavy quilt. She has awakened to the slice and crunch of Billy’s beginning to feed. Slipping out of bed guiltily, she has wrapped herself in a shawl, duty-bound to keep her mute husband company during meals. She sits across the table.

Suddenly she says: ‘Don’t do that!’

‘What?’

‘I feel sick. I can’t stand that noise! Why do you make such a performance of eating radish? It’s only radish!’

‘It’s good for the liver. Here, have some,’ offers Billy. ‘Much better for you than pomegranate. You won’t feel sick.’

Tanya strikes out, and the proffered plate flies clattering to the floor.

‘I want pomegranate,’ she pants. ‘I want pomegranate!’

Billy is hurt, his faced closed and sullen. Tanya has grown to dread this expression. It could bode the onset of a non-speaking spell that once lasted a full week. She had not been able to penetrate his ice. Confused and terrified, she saw him turn into a monstrous stranger. She could not relate the grim set of his mouth and his accusing, suspicious eyes to the gentle lover she had married.

The cook now replaced Billy’s plate and he began slicing through another radish with the harsh showmanship of an award-winning actor.

Tanya watched his scowl as he worked his gnashing jaws, and suddenly she threw up.

Billy didn’t even glance her way.

Tanya wobbled to her room, stretched out on the bed, and told the baby’s maid in a faint voice, ‘Call sahib, I am going to faint.’

The maid delivered the message and Billy, scared out of his wits, rushed to his wife’s bedside. This was a new stratagem reserved by Tanya for dire emergencies.

Billy patted Tanya’s hands, rubbed her feet, laid wet towels on her face, wrung his hands in anguish, and sent servants on futile errands to fetch this and that. His frenzied efforts
delighted Tanya. She almost wept beneath her swoon-closed lids.

The moment she emerged from her faint, Billy flew to her side, penitent and pale-faced, and all lover!

‘You don’t love me any more,’ she whispered.

‘I love you. I love you, darling,’ he all but sobbed, and it did Tanya good to hear the words she had despaired of.

Dr Bharucha arrived. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, sympathetically.

‘I want pomegranate,’ whispered Tanya.

It was the season for pomegranates. Bazaars rang with the cry of vendors promoting the fruit. Fruit stalls were red with its colourful abundance.

‘I’ll get you all the pomegranates you want,’ cried Billy.

Billy jumped on to his bicycle and pedalled furiously to the fruit shop at the end of their road. The price was too steep and he went on to the Mall. The price was still too high!

Billy rode through crowded bazaar lanes, bargaining and offering outrageously low bids. He abandoned the bazaars and pedalled all the way to the fruit-mandi. Picking his way through swarms of flies, slush, straw, and rotting fruit, he at last found what he sought.

Three hours later Billy returned with the cherished fruit and proudly presented Tanya three yellow-brown pomegranates the size and shape of crab-apples.

‘Get away! Get away from me!’ screamed Tanya flailing her arms and scattering the pomegranates like ping-pong balls.

‘But darling, I searched all over.’

‘Don’t tell me that!’ screamed Tanya. ‘Lahore is full of beautiful red pomegranates and you can find only this?’

‘But red ones are no good for you: they don’t have any strength. These have vitamins. Ask any doctor.’

‘I don’t care, you brute!’ cried Tanya. ‘I didn’t ask for vitamins. You wander all over for three hours, and get this? I should have guessed!’ Tanya jumped from the bed like a fury. She pounced on a pomegranate that had bounced off the wall and rolled beneath a chair and hurled it smashing through a
window. She was red-faced and perspiring. Billy could not restrain her. She pounced on another hapless pomegranate roosting by the dressing table and flung it out of the window. Billy was terrified. He feared for the unborn child. ‘I’ll get you what you want!’ he screamed, and scooted from the room.

He returned in three minutes and he found Tanya propped up in bed. Her hair was wet with perspiration and she was gasping with wrath and hatred.

‘There, is this what you want?’ he said, placing a large red pomegranate on her lap. He retrieved it promptly, in case she decided to smash it too, through the window.

Tanya continued her curious gaping.

Billy peeled the fruit gathering the juicy, blood-red kernels into a bowl. ‘Here,’ he said holding the bowl under her chin.

Tanya averted her chin.

Billy sat on the bed stroking her hair. He scooped the kernels into a spoon and fed her.

‘Phew! Don’t ever scare me like that again,’ sighed Billy, holding Tanya in his arms that night. Then he leapt out of bed in his rumpled nightsuit and teased, ‘Should I show you how you acted?’ and proceeded to mimic Tanya’s hysteria. ‘Get out! Get out!’ he cried, sotto voce. Prancing on his thin knobby legs, waving awkward arms, he threw an imaginary pomegranate through the window. ‘Craaash!’ He imitated the sound of the fruit smashing through the glass.

Tanya laughed.

Billy rolled his eyes up, hung his jaw slack and made a helpless, rueful face that recalled to Tanya’s mind the halcyon days of their courtship and honeymoon. He was once again the joker who enchanted, the wooer who wrote tender notes on blue paper; who once, in Simla, did not visit the toilet all day for fear of offending his loved one’s delicate sense of smell; the passionate lover who consummated his marriage despite the ferocious battery of thunder!

Billy’s renewed ardour lasted a full month. But it was, as before, an infatuation. The infatuation having run its course, he reverted to his true love, money. Tanya was helpless
against her fascinating rival. Reacting like an abandoned mistress, she attacked his passion for her adversary, and he hated her for it.

They were both raw with wounds. But Billy’s will and tenacity were greater than Tanya’s, his effort more single-minded. And Tanya finally gave in to his tyrannies. The only way to please Billy was to be absolutely submissive, and he was getting harder to please.

By the time Faredoon returned, they had established the pattern of their life – and the pattern grew more rigid and constricted with the years.

Noticing Tanya’s strange docility, Faredoon at once grasped the situation. He felt sorry for the girl but he retreated quietly from their affairs in the hope that Tanya’s buoyancy would help keep her spirits high. Putli too noticed a change, but only Jerbanoo dived into their affairs, inquisitively ferreted details, and left a trail of discord that once again had Tanya up in arms and fighting back with courage.

Tanya produced a boy. When the child, robust and fair complexioned, was a year old, Faredoon suddenly realised that Soli was reborn. The
janam patri’s
prophecy had materialised! He trembled for joy and a happy mist crept into his eyes. He watched the child grow, reliving each precious moment of Soli’s childhood.

This event brought on the last phase of Faredoon’s life. He lost his sense of challenge and striving and was content to leave the entire management of their business to Billy. He devoted himself to altruistic deeds, holding audience in his office room. He advised those who sought his advice and, having long established a reputation for impartiality and sound judgment, he arbitrated in innumerable disputes. The sphere of his authority and influence was wider than ever. And Billy encouraged Faredoon’s altruism. It enabled Billy to draw from a well of goodwill he had neither the time nor ability to develop. He used people obliged to his father and helped them discharge their obligations.

THE pattern of Billy’s life was set, his tyrannies established. He governed his household with an authority that was inviolate. Lacking confidence in himself he found it necessary to command, demand, and order about. He required stringent discipline and prompt, unreasoning obedience.

Billy’s tyrannies began with sunrise. His eyes opened and urgent signals were transmitted throughout the house by Tanya. The newspaper was rushed to him. With it, Billy hurried to the thunderbox which he commandeered for the rest of the morning. Since the bathroom was in the front of the house he had a clear view of the drive, part of the portico, and the garden. Billy never closed the bathroom doors. He sat screened from the outside by a thin reed curtain. The children briefly popped in and out, the children’s maid fetched toothpaste or towels, and the bearer sailed in with a cup of tea on a tray.

Now Billy’s thunderbox, being part of the dower received from Sir Noshirwan Jeevanjee Easymoney, had to be special. It was! It was large, it was carved, and it was inlaid with brass. When the lid, which was also the back-rest, was shut, it looked like a chest.

Enthroned, Billy sipped his tea and read the newspaper. As soon as the cup of tea was emptied, it was replaced by another. Often Billy sent for his ledgers and scrutinised them on his princely perch.

This was the hour of his business audience. Those who wished to see him at his house, and at his leisure, visited in
the morning. One by one the contractors, land-agents, purchasers and dealers would cough outside the reed curtain, say, ‘Salaam, Sethji,’ and state their case. Billy could see them clearly; they could only see the shadow of Sethji, newspaper outspread, seated on some kind of box. If he switched on the light they could see more. And, of an occasional evening when it was dark outside, they saw Sethji in all his glory, lean shanks gleaming between pyjama-top and pyjama bottom – brass inlay and carved thunderbox!

Sometimes there were small conferences, with Billy coyly negotiating with a group of men from behind his reed curtain. In fact, Billy’s thinking was sharpest at this hour. Here he initiated some of his best deals, including the deal in iron that at the onset of the war zoomed him into a billionaire. Billy was as thrifty with his time as with his money.

Billy bathed, transmitting a battery of unspoken signals. His clothes were laid out, his breakfast prepared, and the moment he walked into the dining room the cook put his buttered egg on the stove. The egg had to be just so, otherwise Billy would walk away, egg untouched, and the household was disgraced.

The morning routine never varied, except the day the thunderbox was replaced by the flush system, and the morning when Jerbanoo, hoisting the curtain announced, ‘Have you heard? I just heard on the radio: England and Germany have made war! We are going to fight!’

Billy clinched the iron-scrap deal within an hour of the news.

The house relaxed with Billy’s departure to the office. The children suddenly became boisterous, servants shouted to each other, and Tanya went for her bath.

To train a household to the extent that they seek only the master’s well-being and approbation is no mean achievement. Whereas Freddy governed his house with the aid of maxims, putting his foot down only if someone’s conduct was absurd or destructive, Billy kept his foot down all the time. He tyrannised his house, governing chiefly through Tanya. His
commandments were directed at her. They were, in order of preference:

Thou shalt not spend money!

Thou shalt not waste.

Thou shalt give me a minutely detailed account of expenses.

Thou shalt obey thy husband, and jump to his bidding.

Thou shalt bring up thy children to obey and to love me more than they do you.

Thou shalt never require anything.

Thou and thy children shall not disturb me.

Thou shalt switch off all lights and fans.

The commandments continued endlessly. Few, like Billy, have the overriding tenacity to enslave.

Tanya lived on her toes and on edge. She gave of herself obediently because she had the soul of a romantic. They make good martyrs. She gave in because Billy had been the first man to satisfy her – and the only one she was permitted to love. The tradition brooked no deviation. Besides, Billy was so rich that her father’s wealth appeared paltry. She was the wife of the richest man in the land!

Tanya was always missing things: a watch from the bathroom shelf, a bit of jewellery left carelessly on the dressing table – money. In the earlier days, nervous of Billy’s lectures, she carried out a frantic search in his absence. When he returned she affected the carefree nonchalance of a housewife to whom nothing untoward had happened and not like one who had lost a diamond ring. Billy watched for tell-tale signs of agitation like a cat playing with a mouse.

Soon Tanya learnt to accost Billy directly. He forced her into adopting the strategies of a courtesan. She coaxed, wheedled, pleaded and sweet-talked him until Billy returned the hidden treasure. In fact these were the only times Billy relaxed and enjoyed being with Tanya and she finally learnt to be as careful of her belongings as Billy wished.