The Crow Eaters (5 page)

A venerable Mussulman, with a beard like a bib around his chin, passed with properly averted eyes. He was followed by a train of children and burqa-veiled women. Two of the children stayed to dance a jig and sing: ‘Parsi, Parsi, crow eaters! Parsi, Parsi, crow eaters!’

Jerbanoo took a threatening step forward and they scampered away. The huddled knot smiled with tolerant indulgence. This little ditty was a well earned tribute to their notorious ability to talk ceaselessly at the top of their voices like an assembly of crows.

The platform was almost deserted by the time the merrymakers reluctantly dispersed.

The happy mood continued all the way home and Freddy resumed his chair at the store till with a light heart.

He sat back musing idly and calculated the returns on his insurance policies. His lips parted in a dreamy smile and his fingertips drummed a merry tattoo. He’d be rich – in his old age perhaps – when he’d need money most. Aglow with a sense of security and achievement, he day-dreamed.

After a while, when Harilal approached the table, Freddy sat up and guiltily wiped the smirk off his face. He leaned forward and assuming a busy air, picked up a pencil. For want of something better, he noted down the figures of the premium he was committed to pay. He added the figures absently – and then it struck him! He felt as if, stepping on a safe-looking crust of ice, he had plunged into the chill depths of the Arctic Ocean. The full weight of his commitment to the glib stranger sank in. Astronomical figures reeled before his eyes, and crushing the paper he buried his head in his arms.

‘Anything wrong, sir?’ asked Harilal anxiously. Freddy shook his head and the clerk walked away quietly.

No doubt Mr Toddywalla, Mr Chaiwalla, Mr Bottliwalla and Mr Bankwalla were in an identical state of shock.

Blinking back his tears, Freddy wondered what had come over him to make him behave so foolishly. His straitened finances were in no condition to meet even a fraction of the premium. The honey-tongued gentleman had talked him into a lot of trouble – they had unwittingly harboured a snake!

Freddy had insured everything insurable. His children, his wife and his mother-in-law: the last in consideration of the age she kept flaunting at them. The fellow had implied Freddy would reap rich harvests on her demise – he’d made it sound as if Jerbanoo’s flight to heaven was just round the corner. ‘Hah!’ he grunted bitterly. Freddy felt like kicking himself for his idiotic impulsiveness. The English doctor’s pronouncement rang dismally in his ears. She might outlive him, for all he knew …

As for his store, there was not the remotest chance of its catching fire, being looted or caving in. Freddy plucked at his quivering chalky lips and groaned.

FREDDY’S cloud of despair thickened as the week progressed. He did not even notice Jerbanoo’s presence. He allowed her to corner all the drumsticks and liver without comment. Putli grew alarmed. She tried to draw him out but he snapped at her peevishly.

Freddy was already in debt. A condition both stigmatised and loathed by Parsis. Although he owed a very small sum his secret debt assumed all the harrowing proportions of mendicancy, disgrace and ruin. He saw himself charged and jailed for insolvency, his property and possessions auctioned, his destitute family shuttled from one kindly home to the next …

And Jerbanoo didn’t help any. Her dismal pronouncements weighted the scales of his imagined doom catastrophically. He was sure her malign intent and ill-starred tongue were at the root of all his misfortunes. Sinister forces were at work undermining all his efforts. She was the jinx. He once again felt hopelessly sunk in a quagmire – with one difference – this time he was further trapped by the weight of a mountain.

Freddy’s misfortunes found an outlet. As always, Jerbanoo was the catalyst. Piously before supper she had trudged through the house with the sandalwood fire, wearing her
mathabana
open and austerely tucked behind her ears like an Egyptian head-dress. She had not bothered to knot it at the back when she sat down to dinner. Glancing at her, Freddy thought she looked like an Egyptian mummy.

This was a momentary diversion, and soon he lapsed into his world of premonitions and envisaged calamities. He picked at his food abstractedly, and in silent gloom.

The Egyptian mummy, meanwhile, both gobbled her food and mouthed her words with enviable dexterity. Her monologue fell on deaf ears, for Freddy had stopped listening to her altogether. She disturbed him no more than the flies buzzing round their food. Putli busily juggled the dishes, poured water into glasses and served the children.

Jerbanoo’s soliloquy droned on and on and towards the end of fifteen minutes she said something that pierced right through Freddy’s preoccupied stupor.

She had said, ‘… can you imagine how I feel? I may never see my sisters and brothers again! One by one they will die off and I won’t ever again see their faces! What does he care? Look at him – chewing unconcernedly like a cow. Poor dear innocent, he can’t hear a word of what I say – does he care if I live or die?’

Live or die! Live or die! The words reverberated dizzily in Freddy’s mind. And this vibration sparked the germ of an idea that had Freddy quaking in his chair. He turned pale. His legs beneath the table went limp. His hands trembled so violently that in desperation he flung his napkin on the table and, pretending to be offended by what Jerbanoo had said, marched stiff-necked from the room. He had never done this before. Jerbanoo had provoked him much worse without such a display. Putli and her mother exchanged bewildered glances and fell silent.

Freddy locked himself in his room and flung himself on his bed, trembling. The havoc wrought by the soundless detonation in his mind had shaken the foundations of his being. He felt sapped and dazed.

An hour later he opened the door to Putli’s insistent knock. Retreating like a zombie to his bed he covered his head with a pillow.

After a few anxious inquiries that met with granite silence, Putli fell asleep and Freddy spent a restless night quarrelling with his conscience.

The die was cast.

The following months kept Freddy in excruciating mental turmoil. His mind seethed with weird ideas and searing doubts. His conscience alternately roared, jeered, applauded and scorned. He had never thought so hard and his head throbbed with pain. He swallowed huge quantities of Aspirin and wandered about with a handkerchief knotted in a tight band round his aching forehead. The idea produced on that fateful evening at the dinner table, that insidious little germ, grew and grew. Feeding on his misery, on his dire monetary circumstances and on his horror of Jerbanoo, it intoxicated his soul.

Try as he might he could think of nothing else. He prayed, endeavouring to quieten the interminable discourses in his mind. But his relentless brain worked despite himself, sorting, combining and forcing his thoughts. He became an insomniac, defining principles and guidelines that were to serve him the rest of his life.

It did not take Freddy long to connect the gypsy’s prophecy with the insurance agent’s visit. If it was ordained that the man favourably would influence the course of his life, who was he to stand in the way of his own good fortune? The idea had come to him with a devastating impact, and God would take care of the rest.

In all, Freddy surmounted his mental crisis rather well. He had come to terms with his conscience, and there was nothing on his mind now but the implementation of his plans. After two gruelling months of self-doubt, Freddy once again faced the world with confidence.

The plan was exquisite in its simplicity. He went over the details carefully, examined all the angles, and in a self-congratulatory frame of mind marvelled at his brain. As usual, a proverb wormed its way into his consciousness: ‘Two birds with one stone … kill two birds with one stone,’ it whispered sagely out of the pages of his thick books. With this omen, he knew he could not fail.

MR Adenwalla had departed for Karachi in December, and by the end of February Freddy was ready for action. The plan was to be executed on Sunday, 15th March, 1901. He began an elaborate countdown.

Freddy had only twenty-one days in hand. The bulk of the action called for preparatory work and Freddy inaugurated the scheme with a subtle change in his attitude towards Jerbanoo.

Day by day, unobtrusively and suavely, he evinced more interest in Jerbanoo’s ailments and in her well-being. His polite glances now included her when he addressed his family. It was hard for him and embarrassing, since he had made a fine art of avoiding her eyes. Freddy proceeded so gradually, it was almost a week before Putli noticed that the relationship between her husband and her mother had somehow changed. It was more than she had hoped. Yet, she was troubled. Searching Freddy’s face with her candid, knowing eyes, she sometimes caught a look which disturbed her. She wondered what he was up to.

One day, Freddy arrested his first-born’s headlong flight from the room. He rebuked her, saying: ‘Can’t you see your grandmother is still talking to you? Hasn’t anyone taught you to respect your elders? Go to her and hear what she has to say. Do as she tells you.’

Putli, entering the room at that moment, was so astonished, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Freddy turned his head and caught her eye unawares. The
words, so noble in their content, were charged with a special foreboding when Putli saw the sly, vindictive and triumphant look on Freddy’s face.

The next morning he told Putli, ‘Try and keep the kids quiet in the afternoon. They bother the old lady with their noise.’

‘Why this sudden concern?’ she asked sceptically.

‘Ah, well, she is an old woman after all. I feel sorry for her. I imagine she misses her relatives, don’t you think?’

He spoke with such obvious sincerity that Putli lowered her probing eyes.

And again when Freddy said, ‘I’ll be sending up a bottle of port wine. See that mother has some before lunch; she needs a tonic,’ Putli bowed her head in shame and buried all her misgivings. He had spoken with a shy reticence that touched the very core of her loving heart.

Anxious to make amends to her gentle spouse for having doubted him, Putli rushed to Jerbanoo the moment Freddy left.

‘Faredoon is sending a bottle of port wine up to you,’ she declared breathlessly. ‘See how much he cares for you? It’s only that he is too shy to show it. Some men are like that I suppose. Why, he is so concerned about you, he noticed you weren’t looking well. And he feels – he
really
feels for you; that you have been parted from your dear ones. Oh dear, how much he cares for us all … I hadn’t realised it before.’

Jerbanoo eyed her daughter’s enthusiasm with bleak, unmoved countenance. She could not bear to hear Putli praise that abominable man.

‘He does seem to have changed a bit,’ she conceded cagily, ‘but let’s see how long it lasts.’

‘Oh Mother! Give him a chance. He has his own way of showing his love for you. Try and overlook his little faults … won’t you?’

Jerbanoo averted her eyes. ‘You cannot clap with one hand only,’ she intoned sagely. ‘If your husband is suddenly being nice to me, it is because I have made such an effort to please
him. I have sacrificed so much for you all, stood so much for your sake. Maybe God at last sees fit to reward my labours.’

‘God is just. He will always reward those who work for Him,’ said her daughter, matching Jerbanoo’s high-mindedness. And upon this pious note mother and daughter parted, the one to bathe and the other to cook.

Freddy, shrewdly aware of his limitations, did not risk his equilibrium too far. He was polite and convivial only when Jerbanoo was not in one of her more sour-faced and morbid moods. Then his face grew tight and he sometimes succeeded in stemming the tide of her moribund discourses with a stern glower.

Preparatory step two: Freddy’s love of the outdoors became an obsessive passion.

He all at once discovered that his four children, and Putli and Jerbanoo were too pale. Vowing, ‘I’m going to put some colour into our cheeks,’ he threw open doors and windows, taught them breathing exercises and at every opportunity, bundling them into the tonga, took them for long drives.

One Sunday Jerbanoo, drowsy with port wine, politely declined the airing. ‘I’ll accompany you in the evenings … but I must have my afternoon rest. This is getting a bit too much for me … after all I am not as young as I once was … but it’s good for you young people. You must get out in the fresh air. Carry on. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right on my own.’

Putli protested kindly, ‘Come on Mother, we won’t be gone long. I’ll massage your back afterwards.’

But she didn’t press when Freddy intervened with an understanding murmur, ‘It’s all right, Mother. Do as you wish. We will go out together tomorrow evening.’

Putli, who had protested because she felt Freddy might be offended by her mother’s refusal, instructed the children to kiss their grandmother goodbye. Casting a diligent eye over the flat to see if everything was in order, she shooed the
family, including the servant boy, down to the tonga.

Jerbanoo was quite alone in the flat.

Step three: In a matter of days the store was filled up with fresh stocks. Staid rows of coffee, honey, Italian olives and pickle jars gleamed on the glass-encased shelves. Rich oaken boxes of Havana cigars, liqueur chocolates, saffron and caviar, tiered decoratively in the show windows. The main bulk of space was taken up by biscuit tins, tea and other staple items. The floor to one corner was neatly stacked with small unopened crates.

Freddy’s shop was at one corner of a long row of commercial establishments facing the main street. A strip of metalled road ran along the front of the buildings, and between it and the main street was a cheery bar of grass and trees maintained by the municipality. Freddy’s immediate neighbour ran a successful brokerage. Then there was a toy shop, shoe shop, sari shop, and so on down the line, each with its own proprietors visible through the entrance.

Around the corner, across a busy thoroughfare, was the huge square block of the General Market, the main meat, fowl and vegetable bazaar.

Freddy’s immediate neighbour, the broker, called in one evening.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked with a glad, meaningful smile.

‘Oh, I just seem to be getting busier. Every day there is more and more work to be done.’

‘Business appears to have picked up?’

‘Yes, a bit,’ said Freddy modestly.

‘Good, good,’ the broker beamed.

Another time, the toy shop owner standing at the entrance to his shop salaamed as Freddy passed by.

‘How’s business these days?’ he called.

‘Seems to have taken a turn for the better. Got some new supply contracts – by the grace of God. A few new agencies also.’

‘Good, May God’s grace always be with you,’ the toy shop owner called encouragingly after him.

All in turn congratulated Freddy on his apparent success.

A narrow, brick-paved alley ran along behind the store, between the commercial flats and the back of a long tenement. The downstairs landing opened directly into this alley. Horse-carts brought goods to this entrance and cases were carried through the landing door to store-rooms at the rear of the shop.

Then, one day, a mountainous load of stocks arrived at the front entrance. The bullock-cart carrying the load was too wide for the back alley. Envious neighbours drifted closer to watch precious, choicest brand cognacs, liqueurs, whisky and vintage wines being unloaded.

Supplies started arriving at night. Cart drivers shouted up from the alley, ‘Junglewalla sahib, Junglewalla sahib,’ they called, until Freddy appeared at the dining room window overlooking the alley. Peering into the pitch-black alley, he answered, ‘Wait, I’ll be down in a minute.’

Taking a small bunch of keys hanging from a nail, and borrowing the kitchen lantern, Freddy scurried down to open the landing door.

Neighbours on either side of the alley grew accustomed to these nocturnal disturbances. At such times Freddy worked late into the night, carefully entering each item in his inventory book. He also spent long hours in his store-room quietly prising open packing cases and removing their contents. Exhausted by his labours Freddy crept up the stairs, reverently pinched out the wick of his lantern and fell into a deep contented sleep beside his slumbering spouse.

On 9th March Freddy hired a warehouse near the railway station, explaining to the apathetic landlord that he was expecting a very large shipment of goods from England. He paid three months’ rent in advance.

That night again men called up from the alley after the
household had gone to sleep. Freddy crept up to Putli’s bed and whispered, ‘I might be a little late getting back. A large consignment has arrived.’

‘All right,’ mumbled Putli sleepily.

Freddy went down the stairs quietly and opened the door. Night lay like a thick mattress over the alley. Only one window far down the line showed a dim, lamplit glow. He beckoned the men in. Large gunny bags of the sort used by a local brewery were piled all over the store-room floor. Packing cases towering in the background were barely visible in the anaemic sphere of light thrown by the lantern. Two men lifted a sack between them and staggering beneath its weight carried it to the landing door. Freddy gave a hand as they carefully hauled the sacks into the cart.

No one knew, or cared, that the cart instead of delivering a consignment, was being loaded. Springing atop the freight, Freddy directed the
rehra
to his newly rented warehouse by the station. They made three trips that night and Freddy crawled into bed around two o’clock in the morning.

This activity was carried on for three nights, until the packing cases in the store-room, stamped with expensive brand names, were quite empty.