I wake feeling fraught and delicate like a soft-boiled egg for I have transformed into that dwindling subspecies homo septuagenari overnight, and there are few conjunctures that stupefy, that unsettle the soul more than the thought of a fallow life. Lying amid fading canvases, steamer trunks, rolled Turkish rugs, Mummy’s cut-glass perfume bottle collection, Papa’s clockwork gramophone, china and a brass candelabra from the Olympus, several dusty Betamax recorders and the cadaver of an exercise bicycle, I stare at the whirring fan with one open cataract-swept eye, dimly pitting reasons for & against remaining prone: Nobody would care if you stayed in bed, I tell myself. You’re a sad man, long in the tooth, an animal: you drool, soil your knickers. It is a downpour of self-pity, a veritable monsoon of misery, but then the urge to relieve myself compels me to the commode. There is no doubt that there is reprieve if not respite in ritual, in diurnal bowel movements (even if the exercise has become trying on account of my piles) & the pages of The New Golden Treasury of English Verse. Oh, that golden crowd! What jocund company!
Slipping into Mummy’s jungle-print robe de chambre after, I take tea and insulin on the balcony.
The sky is cloudless and blue, the air smoky and trilling with crickets; an old crow perches on the ledge above, cawing hoarsely, damnably, like the Angel Israfil. I know I won’t get any work done today – I have the feeling that it will be a very long day, or a very short one. Draining the acrid lees, I hoist myself from the cane armchair, dentures rattling in my pocket, and teeter purposefully towards the wrought-iron railing. As I consider the diagonally inclined potted cacti, the pansy bed below, I notice a pair of eyes peering at me over the horizon of the boundary wall as if I am on display, a primate shelling nuts. “Stop, Kookaburra, stop,” I chunter, returning the gaze through the interstices of the evergreens, “That’s not a monkey, it’s me.” Then I apprehend the manifest drama: I am brandishing my member, flush and bulbous and overrun with wild reddish hair and, as usual, have nothing to show for myself.
Uncannily, the eyes, fantastic obsidian eyes, follow me as I collect my genitalia in the teacup & nearly trip down the stairs. It’s not just my biscuit-box feet; no, I am curious, titillated, mortified – imagine a seraph, siren, a sphinx! But God knows mythology has long ceded to the mundane: I suspect a tarrying transvestite, or the maid’s good-for- nothing locksmith husband, or that swine Chambu, the manager of my piddling garment-dyeing operation who fleeces me every quarter and demands Other Sundry Expenses. Sundry, my foot!
By the time I fasten my robe and cross the lawn, the eyes vanish like fireflies taking flight. There is the wonted activity outside: lurching buses, rattling rickshaws, the odd donkey cart laden with galvanised steel pipes, and down the road, the street-side dentist sits on his haunches, administering what might be a root canal. Barefoot & breathless, I stand unsteadily on the toasty asphalt, considering the gaze that bored into my soul – Who did it belong to? Why was I being watched? Why today? – but then I hear the distinct voices of the Childoos over the clamour of traffic.
“Chachajaan!” they cry, “Cha! Cha! Jaan!” they chant. They are single-pasli, suffer from unfortunate bowl cuts & wear white button-down half sleeves, navy blue knickers, white socks pulled up to their scratched knees. They waddle as they run, run as they waddle, backpacks flapping, maid straggling behind. I pick them up, peck them on the cheek, and break into song: “There lived a certain man in Russia long ago!”
“He was big and strong,” they chime, “and eyes flaming gold!”
And together we bellow: “RA-RA-RASPUTIN / Lover of the Russian queen / There was a cat that really was gone / RA-RA- RASPUTIN / Russia’s greatest love machine / It was a shame how he carried on!”
We make a spectacle of ourselves – several passers-by gather and gape – and why shouldn’t we? We are loud and gay – the von Trapps of Currachee!
We might have broken into “Do-Re-Mi” next (an admittedly more apropos number) if it were not for the jaundiced attention of the authorities: I feel the quick teardrop eyes of my dear sister-in-law on my back. Not one for song and spectacle, Nargis the Opossum is undoubtedly leaning against the gate, wrist on hip, shaking her draped head from side to side like a broken doll. “Chalo, chalain, bachon,” she bids. “Lunchtime!”
Setting the children down, I surreptitiously fit my dentures into my mouth, then turn to greet Nargis, but she has already marched in, trailed by the Childoos. As they wave shyly, I wonder when I will see them again, wonder if they know it is my platinum jubilee. Not even my pal Tony has called. But then, who remembers sad old men? We die, rot, without acknowledgment, without ceremony.
I swear I could stand kerbside all day, watching the world go by, waiting for those haunting eyes to gaze upon my hairless, roly-poly, chicken-esh chest—what else is there to do?—but the day has become hot and brackish like a belch. Shutting the gate behind me, I return unceremoniously to my perch and certain ontological panic. But as I consider launching myself over the balcony for the second time, my man mercifully shambles in with my daily jug of bitter gourd juice, sporting a red-and-white baseball cap and matching joggers.
Barbarossa, former major-domo, has been yanked from de facto retirement since the couple who cooked & cleaned for us failed to return from annual leave (because Nargis is a difficult customer), despite the fact that the old hand hears voices & spends most of his time in the backyard rearing cockerels for the cockpits. Whilst he has become as weathered as a banyan, it was once said he possessed “the jib of Clark Gable.”
“I will not abide this poison!” I protest. I have been protesting for a quarter century – bitter gourd tastes like vegetal diesel – but Barbarossa insists it mitigates blood sugar, and I am beholden to him; he oft saves me from myself.
“Juice especial,” he says in English. He is known to speak English on occasion – he picked it up buttling at the Olympus – but in recent history, he is only wont to mutter gibberish such as Yessur, nossur, cocklediddledosur.
“You garnished it with hemlock?”
Stroking his freshly hennaed beard, Barbarossa announces, “Is the haypy-baday-juice!”
Kissing him on the head, I slip my man a note folded in the pocket of my robe, a tip for the wishes, the welcome watery wine, but since the old fox is not always compos mentis, I ask him how he remembered. “You friend calling,” he replies.
“I have no friends!” I cry.
“Pinto phone.”
By Jove! Pinto, good old Felix Pinto, the Last Trumpeter of Currachee! When Barbarossa informs me that I have been summoned to the Goan Association, I do my robe and proclaim, “Prepare my bath! Dust off my smoking jacket! Iron my kerchief!”
In all the excitement, I forget the obsidian eyes and nearly tumble over the balcony yet again, not unlike Adam before the fall.
Excerpted with permission from The Selected Works Of Abdullah The Cossack, HM Naqvi, HarperCollins India.