How was Eddie to recognize the Man who was about to change his life forever? Was he tall or short, did he have a limp, did he have thick dark eyebrows, was he fair, was he young or old? Maybe he had a squint and had to wear two-inch-thick lenses. Maybe he was hunchbacked. He dismissed that possibility instantly. Any man who aspired to his mother’s hand would have to be good looking.
‘Are you Mr Furtado?’
It was getting close to six. If he didn’t act quickly the Man would slip through his fingers.
‘What?’
‘Mr Furtado? Are you Mr Furtado?’
Eddie was keeping a lookout for the gentleman at the corner of Chawl No. 17.
‘Do I look like Mr Furtado?
That was an odd question if he had ever heard one. Did Mr Furtado have his name spelt out on his forehead?
‘I don’t know.’
‘Stupid bugger, don’t waste my time.’
The man walked past Eddie and past Chawl No. 17. Eddie realized that the fellow was right. It was stupid of him to take a position at the corner of the building. The only way he could narrow his margin of error was to stand inside the building at the bottom of the stairs. It would be ideal if he positioned himself on his own floor, but Granna was certain to catch him and order him back into the house. She had forced Eddie to put on the white silk shirt and the deep blue trousers that he had worn at her grand-niece Judy’s wedding. The trousers didn’t quite reach his ankles and they were a little tight around the waist, but Granna, who usually indulged him, was adamant about this choice of garments. She even made him wear a burgundy bow.
‘Sit on the bed next to your sister and don’t fidget.’ Sit next to Pieta, didn’t Granna know that she was asking for trouble? Just look at Pieta. You would think Mr Furtado was coming to meet her. She wore a white blouse with puffed sleeves that were gathered with red ribbons and a tutu-like skirt made of sky-blue organza. Her pearly white shoes were topped by blue socks that matched the sheer organza. She had waist-length hair which she thought the Queen of Sheba would have envied. She left it loose and at the slightest pretext shook her head and let it swirl around.
He could have forgiven her anything (and there was much to forgive, according to him, her patronizing airs, her coming first in class in every subject) but the expression on her face. It made him violent. He wanted to scratch it out the way some boys in class ran their nails on the blackboard till everybody dug their fingers into their ears and begged them to stop. Those prissy lips pressing upon each other and that sunny, oh so sunny, holier-than-thou look in her eyes. Not just the eyes, her forehead, her mistily pink cheeks, the almost invisible pores in her flawless complexion, everything told you, ‘Look at me. I’m better than you and everybody else you know. Kiss my feet. Now. Because if you don’t, I may change my mind and you may never again get an opportunity to do so.’ If it meant wiping out her life to wipe out that look, he was willing to do so.
He yanked at the red ribbon on her sleeve which disappeared under the white cloth and resurfaced every couple of centimetres.
Granna had disappeared inside the kitchen where Violet was changing from black cotton to black silk under duress; they could hear Granna insisting that she wear the pearl necklace Victor had given her. ‘Granna, Mom, Eddie is tormenting me and has torn out the ribbon from my blouse and ruined my hair and is making it impossible for me to live with him under the same roof.’
How he loathed her at such moments. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, unpredictable about Miss Prim and Preening. Normally Pieta needed to call upon heaven and its Lord of hosts to get a response from Granna. Today things were different. Before she could complete her tirade, Granna had smartly whacked Eddie on his back. ‘Not today, Eddie. Not a word to Pieta. And don’t touch her. Sit still, do you hear me? And as for you, little Miss Muffet, one more word against your brother and I’ll chop off your hair.’
Granna went in and Eddie sprang out of the open door. ‘Granna, Eddie’s run away though you had told him not to move.’ He would have to deal with Pieta some other time, he had more urgent matters on hand. He took off his bow as he ran down the stairs. He would have liked to get into more sensible clothes but there was no time for that.
‘Mr Furtado?’ He had let five men enter Chawl No. 17 without springing the question on them. They were Hindus and he knew his mother was not about to marry one of them. He wondered how he could separate the Hindus from the Catholics with such assurance. It was not a question of dress. The majority of them wore the same clothes as Catholic men. It was certainly not because they didn’t wear a cross on a chain, hardly any Catholic men wore them outside their shirts. Catholics spoke English and not too many of the Hindus he knew did. But they didn’t have to open their mouths for him to tell them apart. So what was it? Was ‘Roman Catholic’ written in large letters on his people’s foreheads and ‘Hindu’ on theirs? Was it the way they walked or stood or the way they held themselves? Did religion make people look different? Or was it language? Because even among Hindus, he could tell a Gujarati from a Maharashtrian and a Punjabi from a Bengali. Did one’s mother tongue leave a permanent mark on one, change the way one’s face was set and alter the contours and lines of one’s features?
He was intrigued by these questions but had no time for them just now. The rumpled man with an even more rumpled face whom he had just accosted was saying something.
‘Which Furtados did you have in mind? The ones from Mhapsa are known as the cashew-kings of the East Indies. They own half of Mhapsa. Very upper crust, their voice carries weight even in Lisbon. The grandsons are a dead loss. Not a patch on their grandfather. He was the enterprising one. Ambitious, ruthless and devious. It was his eldest son, the current head of the family, who consolidated the empire, diversified, went into shipping and mining. His third son Joachim was with me in school, a real wastrel.’
‘But are you Mr Furtado?’ What was this weirdo talking about? Eddie had run out of patience.
‘I guess you could say we are. I’m married to my third cousin. On her mother’s side, they have some Furtado blood, not the Mhapsa Furtados, mind you, but the ones from Diu.’
Mother of God, he could have strangled the man. Was he never going to say whether he was Mr Furtado or not.
‘Is your wife alive?’
‘I resent that question, young man. I deeply resent it. Of course she is …’
There was another man fixing his tie on the first floor-landing. He wore a double-breasted suit with a herringbone pattern. His pallor was ashen. He had thinning hair which he was patting down at that moment. In three leaps Eddie was standing next to him. The suit hung loose on the man, he had obviously lost a lot of weight. He had transparent skin which was stretched thinner than that of an over-inflated balloon. Beads of perspiration stood out on his closely shaven upper lip and the lobes of his ears.
‘Are you Mr Furtado?’
The man almost jumped with surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘Going up to see Mrs Coutinho?’
‘How do you know so much about me?’
Eddie looked around. This fellow was even more nervous than he was.
‘Everybody knows.’
‘Everybody? How? Have there been others before me?’
Shoot. How was he going to answer this one? He shrugged his shoulders.
‘That many? How many?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘You’ve lost count? Mary, Mother of God, what am I getting into? Is this Coutinho woman, this Violet, a worldly woman?’
‘What’s worldly?’
Mr Furtado ignored Eddie’s question.
‘Does she have any boyfriends?’
The man’s transparent fears struck some deep chord within Eddie. They fed his imagination and liberated him. He would have been surprised and hurt had anyone told him he was lying. Life was nothing but a series of possibilities. Why was only one chosen to be reality? Fiction was a fact that had not yet occurred but certainly could. (Would anyone have predicted a fortnight ago that the widow Violet would entertain the idea of getting married again?) By now Eddie’s re-working of the truth had more to do with the artistic impulse than the thought of material gain.
He said, ‘Lots. Sixty-seven.’
‘How do you know the exact number?’
‘Arre, everybody in the building knows.’
Eddie’s blood tingled. He felt alert and buoyant. It was not merely the exhilaration of inventing a new mother that thrilled him. Instead of her being the boss and putting the brakes on him whenever she felt like it, he could now control her future and reshape her past. Her fate was in his hands. He was able to render Mr Furtado’s suspicions prophetic and self-fulfilling.
‘Oh,’ said Mr Furtado. Eddie could see that it was taking some time for the information to sink in. ‘Would you say then that she’s a fast woman?’
Eddie didn’t quite see his mother as a racing car but he liked the idea.
‘Very fast.’
‘They have parties?’
‘No parties, sharties.’ One of Granna’s pet phrases came back to Eddie. ‘Every day’s a carnival.’
‘Drinks?’
‘Drinks, dance, music. All the neighbours complain but they don’t listen.’
‘Why don’t they call the police?’
‘What can the police do?’
‘She’s got them in her pocket too? Does she also drink?’
‘Like a fish.’ He saw his mother sprawled out like Mr Mendez in Room 63. Her eyes were glazed, the bottle in her hand empty and she was screaming, ‘Sala, give me a drink. Who do you think is paying for it? Your father? I am. With my blood, sweat,’ at this point Mr Mendez usually started to cry, ‘and tears. See them? See?’
‘Then why does she need a husband?’
‘To earn money, what else? Granna said once you’re there, Ma can take it easy.’
Alarms seemed to go off in Mr Furtado’s parchment face. His eyes bulged and he became short of breath.
‘Is she your mother?’
Shit, shit, shit, how could I have let that slip out.
‘What?’ He played for time.
‘Why did you call her Ma?’
Eddie was now impatient with the man’s obtuseness.
‘Because I was repeating what Eddie’s grandmother said.’
‘What else did she say? I thought at least she would be a decent person.’
‘What decent? Everybody in their house is a chor. She said that the children can go to college instead of working because you would look after them.’
‘If those witches think they’re going to get a slave by putting a ring on my finger, they’re in for a surprise. I’m nobody’s fool, you tell them that.’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘No, no. Not yet. What are her children like? Don’t be shy. You can be quite frank with me.’
‘The mother’s a saint compared to the daughter.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Eleven.’ Eddie paused for breath. ‘Eat a biscuit, step out to play, come home five minutes late, she’ll tattle about everything. She’ll take two hours to wash her hair but you take more than five minutes for a bath and she’ll scream her head off.’
‘Spoilt rotten. And the boy?’
‘Don’t you want to hear more about Pieta?’ He could have gone on for weeks.
‘I think I’ve got the picture. Tell me about the boy.’
‘The son’s a devil. Even his mother says so. She’s afraid of him.’
‘Why’s she afraid of the brat?’
‘He lies all the time. Comes and goes as he likes.’
‘That doesn’t worry me. I’ll straighten him out.’
This was too much for Eddie. He would have to put the fear of God into this man. ‘He has a knife.’
Mr Furtado was not impressed.
‘I saw him stab two people. Even threatened his mother.’
‘I can handle the boy. He won’t breathe without my permission. But his mother’s a different story.’
Eddie was not about to give up.
‘Eddie’s going to buy a gun.’
‘How do you know so much about them?’
‘We are neighbours.’
‘I really don’t know how to thank you. Will you do me one last favour?’
What now? ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t tell anyone I was here.’ Mr Furtado took out a five-rupee note and gave it to Eddie. ‘Is that a promise?’
‘Okay.’ Eddie smiled.
Mr Furtado shook Eddie’s hand.
‘Thank you. You’ve been so helpful and I still don’t know your name.’
‘Eddie Coutinho.’
Shishupal.
He knew what Shishupal felt like when he had committed his quota of a hundred crimes. He could have gone down on his knees, wept and begged and apologized and sold himself and the next hundred generations of his children and their children as slaves but it was doubtful if that would have loosened Mr Furtado’s grip on his wrist. Mr Furtado had thin long hands to match his body, the bones stuck out at the knuckles as if they had been broken. And though he was slight and had looked as if he was about to pass out a little while ago at the discovery of the infamy of the Coutinho family, he was a new man now. There was colour in his face, almost a rosy hue. He had got his breath back and though Eddie was a deadweight he was taking the steps three at a time.
There was no need to knock, the door was open. It was dark in the common passage and even darker inside. Mr Furtado groped for the electric bell and then rang a little too long. Eddie could see the trinity waiting inside the darkness. Not the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost but his mother, Granna and Pieta. They sat still like Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, who Lele Guruji said always sat at the very end of the sanctum sanctorum, the black garbha-griha of the temple. Shiva, the destroyer got up and came forward to perform the dance of death on Eddie’s limp body. Granna was wearing a silk dress with red roses printed on it. She smiled but Eddie knew that the end of the universe was no cause for sorrow to Shiva.
‘Come in, Mr Furtado. I’m so glad that Eddie came to receive you.’
Furtado stepped in but the blade-like grip of his fingers did not relax. ‘You must forgive me for this delay. I was held up by none other than your grandson.’
‘This is my daughter, Violet, and my granddaughter, Pieta. Won’t you sit down, Mr Furtado?’
‘It is my great misfortune that I have been introduced to the whole family by the wrong person. I owe you all the gravest apology.’
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Not until I’ve revealed all and whipped this viper in the breast of your family till his skin and soul have fallen off in shame.’
‘What did he do?’ Violet’s voice was low but steady.
‘Ask him.’
As someone long dead, Eddie was incapable of speech.
‘He lied. For half an hour, the half-hour that I was delayed, he told me the most deadly and dastardly lies about you, madam and you, his most revered grandmother and this innocent child.’
‘My son never lies, Mr Furtado. It does not reflect well upon the listener that he stood and listened for a full thirty minutes to all manner of lies and stories.’
‘I had no choice. He called you a fast woman and a loose one. He would have called you even worse names if I hadn’t stopped him. He said I was to earn money while all of you lived off me.’
‘I repeat, Mr Furtado, my son does not lie.’
Mr Furtado paled. He could not understand Violet. What was she saying? Was she trying to tell him that her son had told him the truth?
‘Then you’re a woman of loose morals and dubious character?’
‘I would let you be the judge,’
The subject of Violet’s marriage was closed for good after that. Eddie didn’t know what to make of his mother. People were so unreliable. He waited for her to slap him, hit him with anything that came to hand, the stick with which she hung clothes on the clothes-line, her shoes, the broom. She didn’t. Granna came to him and asked him, ‘Did you say any of those things, Eddie?’
‘Ma, that chapter is over. Whether he said anything or not is not the issue. What matters is that I made my children feel so insecure.’
He could never forgive his mother. He wanted to be shriven. She let him burn in his own hell.
