Rohinton Mistry - Such A Long Journey

Gustad swung, and the leather whistled as it cut through the air. Dilnavaz ran between the two, the way she used to when the boys were little. The cowhide lashed her calves and she screamed. Two red weals started to emerge.

‘Move aside!’ shouted Gustad. ‘I am warning you! Tonight I don’t care what happens! I will cut your son to pieces, I will—’

Roshan started sobbing and screaming. ‘Mummy! Daddy! Stop it!’ Gustad tried over and over to reach his target, but Dilnavaz’s manoeuvres foiled him.

Through her sobs Roshan screamed once more. ‘Please! For the sake of my birthday, stop it!’

The belt continued to swing, though nowhere as effectively as that first perfect stroke. The misplaced blow had taken away much of the vigour and keenness from Gustad’s arm. ‘You coward! Stop hiding behind your mother!’

Before either Sohrab or Dilnavaz could respond, a shrill cry rang out. ‘Enough is enough! This is sleeping-time, not fighting-time! Save the rest for morning!’

The voice was Miss Kutpitia’s. It had the same pitch and cadences that were evident on mornings when she decided to shriek at the milk bhaiya. Gustad was furious. He rushed to the window. ‘Come to my door and speak if you have something to say! I am not living free here, I also pay rent!’ He turned to Dilnavaz, livid. ‘See? That’s how your friend behaves. Saali witch!’

‘But she is right,’ said Dilnavaz resolutely. ‘All this shouting and yelling in the middle of the night.’

‘Very nice! Take her side against your husband. Always against me only.’ Bitter to the marrow, he fell quiet. Outside, all was silent again. But he waited defiantly by the window in case a retort from Miss Kutpitia was forthcoming.

Dilnavaz took the opportunity to hustle Sohrab, Darius and Roshan out of the room and into bed. Left alone, Gustad’s anger started to ebb. He saw the belt clenched tightly in his hand, and threw it in a corner, then blew out the candles on the dining-table. The room was still too bright for him. He adjusted the wick of the kerosene lamp and returned to stand by the window. The black stone wall could barely be discerned; it had melted into the inky night.

Dilnavaz returned. ‘They are all in bed. Waiting for you to say goodnight-Godblessyou.’ He did not answer. She tried again. ‘I went to Sohrab. See.’ She held out her sleeve where it was damp. ‘His tears. Go to him.’

Gustad shook his head. ‘He will have to come to me. When he learns respect. Till then, he is not my son. My son is dead.’

‘Don’t say such things!’

‘I am saying what must be said. Now he is nothing to me.’

‘No! Stop it!’ She caressed the welts on her calves, and he saw her do it.

‘Seventeen times I have told you not to come in the middle when I am dealing with the children.’

‘Nineteen years old now, he is no longer a child.’

‘Nineteen or twenty-nine, he cannot speak to me like that. And for what reason? What did I do except be proud of him?’

The bewilderment behind his anger was touching, and she wanted to comfort him, help him understand. But she did not understand herself. She touched his shoulder gently. ‘We must be patient.’

‘What have we been all these years if not patient? Is this how it will end? Sorrow, nothing but sorrow. Throwing away his future without reason. What have I not done for him, tell me? I even threw myself in front of a car. Kicked him aside, saved his life, and got this to suffer all my life.’ He slapped his hip. ‘But that’s what a father is for. And if he cannot show respect at least, I can kick him again. Out of my house, out of my life!’

She touched his shoulder once more, and went to the table. ‘I’ll put away everything in the kitchen. Then we can go to sleep.’ She began piling up the dirty plates and glasses.

Long after Dilnavaz had cleared the table, wiped off the crumbs with a moist rag and gone to bed, Gustad sat beside the soft glow of the kerosene lamp. He was grateful for the lamp. He knew that if the electric light was on, he would still be angry.

Feeling reckless, he mixed together whatever remained in the bottles: Bilimoria’s XXX rum, lemon, Golden Eagle, soda water. He tasted it and made a wry face. Nevertheless, he drank half the glass, then went to his grandfather’s black desk. It had two side-by-side drawers. The one on the right was smaller, and under it, a cabinet formed the supporting pedestal. He tried to open the cabinet door quietly; it had always been tight. His hands were a little unsteady. It swung open with a soft moan of wood against wood.

The smell of old books and bindings, learning and wisdom floated out. On the top shelf, at the rear, were E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and the two volumes of Barrère and Leland’s Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, the 1897 edition. Like the furniture, Gustad had rescued these from his father’s bankrupt bookstore. Reaching in, he pulled out Brewer’s Dictionary and opened it at random. He held it up to his nose and closed his eyes. The rich, timeless fragrance rose from the precious pages, soothing his uneasy, confused spirit. He shut the book, tenderly stroking its spine with the back of his fingers, and replaced it on the shelf.

Some works by Bertrand Russell, a book titled Mathematics for the Millions, and Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations also stood on this shelf. They belonged to his college days, the only books he had managed to keep. He used to joke with Malcolm the musician that he was going through college on the Buy-This-Year, Sell-Next-Year textbook plan. How nicely all these would have stood in the bookcase Sohrab and he were planning to make. Not now. The boy is nothing to me now.

Occupying the front of the shelf, flat on their covers, lay an abridged Webster and a pocket edition of Roget blanketed by a higgledy-piggledy miscellanea: dog-eared envelopes, plastic boxes containing paper clips and rubber bands, two rolls (half-and three-quarters-used respectively) of sellotape, a bottle of Camel Royal Blue Ink, an unlabelled bottle of red ink (used exclusively for inscribing greeting cards or white wedding-gift envelopes: salutations, blessings for a long, happy life and, in the bottom left-hand corner, the amount enclosed). Other odds and ends on the shelf were not readily identifiable. Parts of dismembered pens, a glue bottle’s rubber cap-cum-nipple, a bladeless penknife, a metal clamp assembly divorced from its file, lay tangled in string and rubber bands.

The bottom shelf was devoted entirely to files, folders and old magazines. He carefully lifted a stack overflowing with variegated rectangles of yellowed newsprint, and groped for the letter. His fingers closed on it. He let the stack settle back. A box of ancient rusting nibs, from the days before ballpoint pens, lost its perch. The nibs inside collided, metal to metal, and metal to cardboard. The sound came and went, like a maraca played and silenced instantaneously.

He took the letter to the lamplight. He had read it several times, secretly, since its arrival. The envelope was typewritten. The return address was a post office box in New Delhi, and the sender’s name was absent. It had elicited a mixture of nervousness and curiosity the first time: he did not know anyone in New Delhi. Inside was a single sheet of paper, of excellent quality, thick and fibred. He read it again.

My dear Gustad,

This letter must come as a big surprise to you. After all this time, you must have given up on me, especially because of the way I left Khodadad Building.

You are very angry with me for that, I know. I am not good at letter-writing, but please accept my sincere apologies, and believe me when I say I had no choice. If I make up some excuse, I would be lying, and I do not want to do that. I am still not at liberty to tell you details, except it is a matter of national security. You know I was doing work for the government after leaving the army.