temerity to suggest something so offensive. He threatened to remove her from his list of clients if she did not apologize. She said it was all the same to her, this close to death she couldn’t care.
Still refusing to believe her, he wondered why she would utter such a pointless falsehood. What was she hoping to gain by it? He watched in a daze of anger as pedestrians continued to throw coins in Nosey’s tin can. Unaware of the drama taking place, some of them stopped and began eyeing him suspiciously.
“They probably thought you were waiting to steal from her,” said Maneck.
“You are right. And I was so upset, I felt like yelling at them to go fuck themselves.”
Dina flinched, almost admonishing him for his language. The front room had grown dark, and she switched on the light. It made everyone blink and shade their eyes for a moment.
“But I controlled myself,” said Beggarmaster. “In my profession, we have a saying — the almsgiver is always right.”
So, ignoring the inquisitive rabble, he focused on Nosey’s claim. After the outrage came the uncertainty. He accused her of a cheap lie, of playing a vicious trick on him while passing through death’s door, leaving him forever in doubt.
Be quiet and listen, she said to Beggarmaster, I am your stepmother, whether you like it or not. And I have proof. Did you ever massage your father’s back and shoulders?
Yes, he answered, I have been a good son. I regularly massaged my father whenever he summoned me, right till the day of his passing.
In that case, said Nosey, you would have been familiar with a larger-than-normal bump, a big swelling at the nape of your father’s neck, just where the backbone began.
“I wondered how in the world she knew about it,” said Beggarmaster. “But she insisted on an answer, did he or didn’t he have a lump in that place? She would not say another word until I admitted, reluctantly, that yes, my father possessed the feature she had described. Then she was anxious to continue.”
It had happened long, long ago, when Nosey was young and her body had just learned to bleed. Beggarmaster’s father had come to her corner of the pavement late one night, when he was drunk, too drunk to be repulsed by hier physiognomy, and had slept with her. The liquor-stinking mouth made her want to refuse, but she averted her face and controlled the impulse. She lay inert, as though dead under him, letting him do what he wanted. After he finished she sat and threw up beside his snoring, rumbling body. During the night he awoke and enlarged her little splash with a torrent of bilious vomit. Later, she heard a slurping and opened her eyes; rats were supping at their mingled effluent.
Nosey assumed he must have enjoyed her body, for he kept returning on other nights, even when he was not drunk. Now she hated it less. When he lay on top of her and looked at her face without the armour of alcohol, she started to like it. She let her flesh come alive, and enjoyed melting with him. Her hands explored his body then, discovering the large knob at the nape. She giggled, and asked him about it. He joked that he had grown it for her pleasure — so she would have not one but two big bones to play with.
And thus it was that the man who could look upon her hideous face and still love her found a place in her heart. He explained what the doctor had told him about his special bone. He had been born with thirty-four vertebrae instead of the normal thirty-three, the extra one having fused at the top of the column, and responsible for his chronic pain.
Is it not your father I am describing, said Nosey, is there any doubt remaining now?
Beggarmaster agreed that all this was true. But it was only evidence of his father’s drunken fornications, and nothing else.
Not only drunken, she corrected him with pride, but sober as well. This distinction was the dearest thing in her life, and of the utmost importance to her even at death’s door.
Grudgingly he admitted it. But it was still not proof, he maintained, that Shankar was his father’s son and his own half-brother. Yes, it was, said Nosey, because Shankar had the identical protuberance at the nape of his neck, and it would take only a moment to verify it. Beggarmaster could, of course, pretend it was a coincidence, she said, but he would know the truth in his heart.
“And she was right, the truth was in my heart. Also in my heart was a great, hopeless mixture of feelings. I was angry and frightened and confused. But also happy. For I realized that I, an only child, left in the world without parents, without any relatives, was suddenly blessed with a brother. And a stepmother, even if she was close to my own age, and close to death.”
So, having accepted the truth, all his rage and resentment towards the dying woman was replaced by gratitude. He asked why she had not told him earlier. She said out of fear of what he might have done if the secret angered or shamed him — maybe killed her and Shankar, or sold them to a less pleasant owner in a far-off place where they would have been strangers. Her greatest terror was to lose the familiar pavements of her youth.
But now it did not matter, she would be dead in a short while, and he would be the sole keeper of the knowledge, to do with it as he wished. It would be up to him to tell or not tell Shankar.
He reassured her that her confidences had brought him nothing but happiness. The urgent matter was to get her to a good hospital. He wanted to make her comfortable for whatever time was left to her, and went to hail a taxi.
The first few to stop refused the fare when they saw the sick beggar-woman, concerned about the car’s interior. Finally, he flagged one down by waving a thick wad of rupees at the driver. The taxi had a broken headlight and a clanking bumper. In the back seat, with Nosey cradled in his arms through the journey, Beggarmaster heard the driver’s hard-luck story about a policeman who had maliciously damaged the vehicle because the driver had been late that week in slipping him the envelope with his parking hafta.
At the hospital there was a long delay. Nosey was left on the floor in a corridor crowded with destitutes awaiting treatment. The antiseptic odour of phenol from the stone tiles penetrated faintly through the human fetor. Beggarmaster did his best to motivate the people in charge, and spoke to a kind-looking doctor. His white coat was torn at the large lower pocket into which he had squeezed his stethoscope. Beggarmaster asked him to please hurry and attend his mother, he would make it worth his while. The doctor said in a gentle voice not to worry, everyone would be looked after. Then he rushed away with his hand in the torn pocket.
Beggarmaster assumed that medical people, dedicated to their noble calling, were not impressed by his sweat-soaked roll of rupees like most of society. But he was unable to sample more doctors and nurses to arrive at an actuarially valid conclusion. Before his stepmother could be treated, her life had ended. He consoled himself by paying for a good funeral instead of a hospital bill.
“And when all this was dealt with, I went to see Shankar,” sighed Beggarmaster. “Of course, I did not mention the main news right away, because I first wanted to think in peace and quiet about what Nosey had told me.”
He asked Shankar how the begging was going, if the platform was working well, if the castors needed oiling — the usual chitchat of inspection rounds. Shankar complained that almsgiving was drying up in this neighbourhood of misers, people were so bad-tempered. Beggarmaster knelt by his side and put a hand on his shoulder. He said it was the same trouble everywhere — it was a real crisis of human nature, a revolution was needed in people’s hearts. But he would look into it, maybe assign him a new location. He patted Shankar’s back and said not to worry, then let his fingers slip under the collar to feel the nape of his neck.
“And there, beneath my fingertips, was my father’s backbone. The same large bump. My hand was trembling with emotion. My whole body shook with excitement, I could barely keep my balance as I knelt. There was my brother before me, and there, also, my father, living in that spinal column. It was all I could do to keep from embracing Shankar, pressing him to my chest, and confessing everything.”
With a superhuman effort he had restrained himself. Premature divulgence could have caused untold anguish. First, he had to decide on the best course for Shankar. It was all very well to imagine he could take his brother home, keep him in comfort for the rest of his life, and live happily together. Such dreams were cheap, people had them all the time.
But what if Shankar could not adjust to the new life? Suppose it seemed purposeless, or worse than purposeless? A prison, where his inadequacies were highlighted instead of being put to use as they were in begging on the pavement? And more important, what if the horrific story of the early years became an ulcer on Shankar’s spirit, eating him from within, turning the remainder of his life into one bitter and ravaging accusation of Beggarmaster and his father? After such knowledge, could there be forgiveness?
“I felt it was better for me to wrestle with my own soul, contain within its bounds the truth imparted by
