Rohinton Mistry - Such A Long Journey

She taught Dilnavaz how to appease the little creatures and put their spirits at rest. Dilnavaz listened good-naturedly, in one ear and out the other, till one day Miss Kutpitia arrived suddenly with the necessary ingredients to conduct the appeasement procedure. Certain herbs were burnt on hot coals while the patient inhaled the rising vapours.

Whether the birds and fish decided to forgive Darius, or whether Dr. Paymaster’s medicine overcame the illness was uncertain. But Darius resumed his exercise programme and was amply rewarded in muscles, to his father’s delight, and his own relief that finally he had succeeded at something.

‘Come on, come on! Show them!’ said Dinshawji.

‘Be a sport,’ said Gustad, and Darius displayed his biceps.

Dinshawji feigned fear and fell back in awe, hands folded over his chest: ‘Ohoho! Look at the size of that. Keep far away, baba. In mistake if you land one on me, I will be completely flattened and battened.’

‘Daddy, please!’ said Roshan. ‘The donkey song!’

This time, Dinshawji seconded the proposal. He was familiar with Gustad’s fine baritone. Sometimes, they had song sessions with friends in the bank canteen during lunch hour. ‘OK, Gustad,’ he said. ‘Time for “Donkey Serenade”. Let’s have it.’

Gustad cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and began:

There’s a song in the air,

But the fair señorita doesn’t seem to care

For the song in the air.

So I’ll sing to the mule,

If you’re sure she won’t think that I am just a fool

Serenading a mule…

When he came to the section that started with ‘Amigo mio, does she not have a dainty bray’, everyone tried to join in. They stayed with him till he reached ‘hee hee haw’, where the last note had to be held for so long that they all ran out of breath, while Roshan burst out laughing with the effort, and Gustad finished the song alone: ‘You’re the one for me! Olé!’

‘Encore! Encore!’ said Dinshawji. Everyone clapped, including Dilnavaz, who had appeared silently by the sideboard to listen. She loved to hear Gustad sing. She smiled at him and went back to the kitchen.

Dinshawji turned to Roshan. ‘Now it’s time for muscles again. How are your muscles today? Let us see, let us see!’ She raised her arm, imitating her father and Darius, then aimed a playful blow at Dinshawji’s shoulder.

‘Careful, careful!’ he moaned, ‘or it will be twelve o’clock for me.’ Reaching out with his bony, gangly fingers as though to test her muscle, he began tickling her. ‘Ohohoho! What muscles! Gilly gilly gilly ! Here’s another muscle. And another one. Gilly gilly gilly !’ Roshan was out of breath, laughing wildly and rolling over the sofa.

Dilnavaz emerged from the kitchen and looked disapprovingly at Dinshawji. She said dinner was on the table.

The chicken had been successfully divided into nine pieces. The absence of Miss Kutpitia and Dinshawji’s wife, thought Dilnavaz, was fortunate. Even if Dinshawji started by taking two pieces, it would leave something in the dish at the end. She made a polite gesture to the guest to begin.

‘Ladies first, ladies first!’ said Dinshawji, and Darius echoed him. ‘Naughty boy!’ Dinshawji pretended to chide him, winking broadly. ‘Slow with that beer, it can climb quickly to the head!’ The two had struck a rapport, and Gustad was pleased. He looked at Sohrab. Such a moody boy — if only he could be more friendly, like Darius.

The brown sauce, in which the chicken swam, was perfect, as Gustad had predicted. The aroma, said Dinshawji, could make even a corpse at the Tower of Silence sit up with an appetite, it was that wonderful. Whereupon Dilnavaz eyed him distastefully. Did the man have no sense of decency, mentioning such things at the dinner-table, on a birthday?

Besides chicken, there was a vegetable stew made of carrots, peas, potatoes and yam, liberally spiced with coriander, cumin, ginger, garlic, turmeric and whole green chillies. And there was rice, studded with cloves and cinnamon sticks: fragrant basmati rice that Dilnavaz had obtained from the black-market fellow for this special day, trading one week’s quota of fat, tasteless ration-shop rice for four cups of the slender, delicious grain.

They helped themselves to the stew first. There was a tacit understanding that the chicken would provide the climax. Said Gustad to Dinshawji, ‘You see this chicken waiting patiently for us? This morning it was anything but patient. What excitement! It escaped from the kitchen into the compound, and the goaswalla —’

‘You mean you brought it home alive from the market?’

‘Of course. Makes all the difference in the taste, you know, slaughtering fresh and cooking—’

‘Can you please explain to Dinshawji later? After we eat?’ said Dilnavaz sharply. The two men looked up, surprised, and glanced around the table. Her sentiments echoed silently from the other three faces.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Gustad. He and Dinshawji resumed attacking the stew with gusto, but the others pushed their food back and forth on the plate. Roshan’s countenance had acquired the slightest tinge of green. Gustad realized how seriously he had erred: something had to be done to restore the good appetite. ‘Wait, everybody, wait,’ he announced. ‘We haven’t yet sung “Happy Birthday” for Roshan.’

‘ Arré, not allowed to delay “Happy Birthday”. Chaalo, chaalo ! Right now!’ Dinshawji clapped his hands, having taken the cue.

‘But food will get cold,’ said Dilnavaz.

‘How long does “Happy Birthday” take?’ said Gustad. ‘Ready: one, two, three,’ and with a wave of his hand he led the singing. Once he had started, everyone joined in enthusiastically, and as they came to ‘Happy Birthday, dear Roshan’, and Roshan smiled with pleasure at the mention of her name, Dinshawji reached over to tickle her again, ‘ Gilly gilly gilly !’ catching her completely by surprise. She almost fell off her chair with laughing.

Then Gustad raised his beer glass: ‘God bless you, Roshan. May you live to be an old, old woman in good health — learn a lot, live a lot, see a lot.’

‘Hear, hear!’ said Dinshawji, and everyone sipped from their glasses. Roshan had Raspberry in hers. Dilnavaz had only water, but she swallowed a little beer from Darius’s glass. ‘For good luck,’ she said, shutting tight her eyes as it went down bitterly, then opened them and beamed at everyone, looking slightly surprised.

‘Wait, wait,’ said Dinshawji, and Darius at once said, ‘Hundred and twenty pounds.’ ‘Naughty boy!’ parried Dinshawji, then continued, ‘Hold on to your glasses, everybody.’ He cleared his throat and placed his right hand over his heart. Unmindful of his tongue’s perpetual difficulties with the ‘sh’ sound, he began reciting to Roshan:

I wiss you health, I wiss you wealth,

I wiss you gold in store;

I wiss you heaven on earth,

What can I wiss you more?

There was more clapping, and sips were taken from glasses round the table. ‘Bravo!’ said Darius, ‘bravo!’ and then the flat was plunged into darkness.

For a moment there was that surprised silence touched with fear which clutches the heart on such occasions. Almost immediately, however, the sound of breathing and other normal noises resumed. ‘Everybody stay seated,’ said Gustad. ‘First, I will get my torch from the black desk. Check what’s wrong.’ He groped his way slowly. ‘Probably a fuse or something.’ He switched on the torch but the light was dim. The beam gathered strength after he thumped the bottom.