Cyrus Mistry - Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

I was devastated and, I have no doubt, Temoo was, too. But even more unbearable and frightening to witness was the enormity of Farida’s pain; my poor three-year-old cried inconsolably every night after her mother’s passing; and her tears wouldn’t cease until they were snuffed out by sheer exhaustion, or crushed under masses of accumulated sleep.

Initially, a panic-stricken concern for finding ways to distract the child from her overwhelming grief bonded us: two adults, relatively inexperienced in the ways of parenting, we urgently sought means to help her cope. But independently of our efforts, Farida displayed a gracious willingness to not dwell on sorrow and, as if to compensate herself, grew exceedingly attached to her grandpa.

We needed each other, Temoo and I–I, more than he. I had to keep working, and was often away from home for long hours, while he kept my daughter company. A smug awareness of this imbalance in our respective compulsions gradually became evident. It took the form of a sublime indifference on his part towards my own disquiet, which I had expressed on numerous occasions: that between us we might end up spoiling the little princess at the centre of our lives if we indulged her every whim.

At this time, Temoo was still drinking. The rowdiness of his younger days, which I’d heard something about while Seppy was still around, would erupt, suddenly, late in the night and, within moments, his outpourings of grief turn abusive. But, such imprecation and insult as were spewed out during these nocturnal displays of rancour were not directed so much at me as at my father, who Temoo claimed had ‘robbed and ruined’ his family. Somewhat incoherently, his ranting ran on late into the night; long after I had stopped listening, after I realized it was impossible to tell whether he was mourning his recently deceased daughter, Sepideh, or her long-departed mother, Rudabeh, for whose tragic end Temoo squarely placed the blame on Framroze’s head.

During one such particularly rowdy and rage-filled spectacle one night, Farida woke up. Aghast at seeing her usually kind and affectionate grandpa in the wild state he was in, she burst into tears. To his credit, I should say, after that traumatic night, which must have been harrowing for Temoo, too, he gave up drinking. Yet his tearful incoherence on this occasion brought back to mind those drunken tirades. I had almost switched off listening when I realized he was saying something quite different.

‘Your father is a good man, I’ll admit it. .a saintly man, in fact. He will outlive me, of course. I have but a few days left. That’s why I’m speaking to you. .’ His tone of voice, too, had dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘Ask your father for the ruby earrings. . Ask him.’

My face must have expressed total incomprehension. I had never heard Seppy mention any such earrings before.

‘They were Rudabeh’s earrings, from her father’s time. Framroze kept them when she moved out of his home. At first he said it was for safekeeping. . Later, he denied it. Completely. Denied having any memory of them. He didn’t give them back. . It’s not fair, is it? Not fair at all. . Now at least, they should come down to Farida. . Framroze may be a good man, I won’t deny it, but how can he do such a thing?’

I nodded agreement, but even now my face must have shown disinterest. I could not see myself visiting Father one evening to ask for some chimerical earrings that had belonged to long dead Rudabeh. But Temoo emphasized once more, with much seriousness and urgency:

‘They are real rubies. .large ones. .in a beautiful gold setting. .’ For a brief moment, I thought I saw his dull eyes glint. ‘Should be worth a lot of money. Lots and lots of it. . They must go to Farida now. . Tell him that was my last wish, tell him that’s what I said before I died.’

In those days I often heard about Vispy, that he had been seen loitering around the Towers complex in the evenings, but to what purpose or pleasure I had no clue. Then one night, I surprised him alone in the cottage of a dead young woman whose body Dollamai had just washed and laid out in preparation for the morning’s funeral. The light in the room was off, but the glow of the oil lamp and the dying embers of the afarghan revealing.

He was on the floor near the corpse, and the sheet covering the dead woman was in disarray. He moved away very quickly and stood up when I opened the door and switched on the light.

‘Vispy! What’re you doing here?’

He looked sheepish. My heart sank. I had come to the funeral cottage only to retrieve a bottle of sanctified bull’s urine which Dollamai told me she had forgotten there by mistake.

‘Well, I was just passing through, you see. .I thought. .I was just. .’ His voice sounded thin and unsure of itself. ‘No, it isn’t what you’re thinking, Phiroze. .’ he said, running his hand over imaginary beads of sweat on his forehead.

‘What am I thinking?’

My voice sounded rather more aggressive than I would have liked it to. I stared at him for one long moment, then looked away. .but in the very next, I felt quite ashamed, for he went on to explain, sounding perfectly sincere.

‘You see, I knew this lady. .I had met her several times. . Ask Vera if you don’t believe me; it was she who introduced us. . If Shernawaz had lived, I had planned to propose to her. To marry her. .’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Vispy. .I’m so sorry. . Then you’ll be at the funeral tomorrow?’

‘Yes, of course, yes,’ Vispy said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

And he left quickly, looking very relieved. Obviously, that wasn’t sufficient reason to doubt what he was telling me. Yet the gratitude he felt in that moment — for letting him off the hook? — made me wonder. Could prolonged sexual deprivation drive a man to such extremes? Again, I was ashamed to be thinking such thoughts about my own brother.

A few months later, when Father died, Vispy did me a return favour. Involuntarily, my mind once again connected it with the night on which I had surprised him in the funeral cottage. Perhaps it is entirely twisted of me to think of it that way. But this favour, if I can call it that, bestowed on Farida, gave her a significant advantage.

Father was eighty-six when he died, still in good health, and able to manage his personal needs and chores without assistance. Though he remained, as it were, titular head priest of the Soonamai Ichchaporia Agiari, a few years before he died, I believe, a couple of relatively junior priests had significantly relieved him of his administrative duties there.

As a child, I had been very close to Father. Later the rift between us widened, and for a while I felt we had become adversaries. In spite of that, his death came as a great emotional shock to me. Initially, when Vispy informed me of his passing, over the telephone, it was as if, despite his advanced age, I could feel only disbelief. As though in the deepest recesses of my mind, I had wished him to live, and actually believed he would, forever.

It was after midnight when Vispy called. The watchman summoned me to Buchia’s office, now occupied by his successor, a slightly younger man called Rutnagar, to take the call. In the meantime, though, Vispy had already been speaking to Rutnagar, notifying him about Framroze’s death, and arranging for the hearse to be sent early in the morning. The funeral was planned for 4 p.m., the next afternoon, and Vispy told me when I took the phone, that he had already telephoned the offices of Jam-eJamshed and Bombay Samachar just in time for the announcement to appear in the morning’s newspapers.