After dinner, they examined the household effects from the flat. Nusswan was appalled by it. “Where did you find this junk?”
She shrugged. A verbal answer was not always necessary. That was one useful thing she had learned from Maneck.
“Well, there is no room for it here. Look at that ugly little dining table. And that sofa must be from Bawa Adam’s time.” He promised to call a jaripuranawalla and dispose of it within a few days.
She did not argue with him. She did not plead for the memories which fleshed the ribs of her meagre belongings.
Nusswan wondered about the change in his sister. Dina was too docile, far too meek and quiet, not like her old self at all. It made him a little uneasy. Could she be pretending? Was it part of some plan which she would spring when he least expected it?
They transferred the contents of her chest of drawers into the wardrobe standing in her old room. “It’s been waiting for you,” confided Ruby. “Your father’s cupboard. I’m really happy you’ve come back.”
Dina smiled. She removed the cover from the mattress and stored it in the bottom of the wardrobe. In its place she draped her own quilt, folded, at the foot of the bed.
“That is beautiful!” said Ruby, spreading it out to admire. “Absolutely gorgeous! But what happened in that one corner, why the gap?”
“I ran out of cloth.”
“What a pity.” She thought for a moment. “You know, I have some lovely material, it will provide the perfect finishing touch. You can complete it with that.”
“Thank you.” But Dina had already decided there was nothing further to add.
At night in bed, she covered herself with the quilt and took to recounting the abundance of events in the tightly knit family of patches, the fragments that she had fashioned with needle, thread, and affection. If she stumbled along the way, the quilt nudged her forward. The streetlight through the open window was just bright enough to identify the motley of its making. Her bedtime story.
Once, after midnight, Nusswan and Ruby knocked on the door and barged in while she was halfway through the narrative. “Dina? Do you need something?”
“No.”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course I am.”
“We heard voices,” said Ruby. “We thought you were talking in your sleep, having a bad dream or something.”
Then Dina knew she had slipped from a silent recitation into reading aloud. “I was only saying my prayers. Sorry I disturbed you.”
“It’s all right,” said Nusswan. “But I couldn’t recognize the passage at all. You better take some lessons from Dustoor Daab-Chaab’s successor at the fire-temple.” They laughed at his joke and returned to bed.
He whispered to Ruby, “Remember how she was, after Rustom’s death? How she would call out his name almost every night?”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago. Why should she still be upset about that?”
“Maybe she never got over it.”
“Yes. Maybe you never recover from certain things.”
In her room, Dina folded up the quilt. The patchwork had transformed her silence into unbidden words; it had to be locked away now in the wardrobe. She was frightened of the strange magic it worked on her mind, frightened of where its terrain was leading her. She did not want to cross that border permanently.
Nusswan gave up teasing Dina because it was no fun if she did not retaliate. There were times when he sat alone in his room, recalling the headstrong, indomitable sister, and regretted her fading. Well, he sighed to himself, that was what life did to those who refused to learn its lessons: it beat them down and broke their spirit. But at least her days of endless toil were behind her. Now she would be cared for, provided for by her own family.
Not long afterwards, the servant who came in the mornings to sweep and swab and dust the furniture was dismissed. “Bloody woman wanted more money,” Nusswan offered by way of explanation. “Saying there was an extra person in the house, creating more work for her broom and mop. The excuses these rascals come up with.”
Dina took the hint and assumed the chores. She absorbed everything like a capacious sponge. During her private moments she wrung herself out and then was ready to blot up more.
Ruby was gone most of the day now. But before leaving, she always inquired if she could help. Dina encouraged her to run along, preferring to be alone.
“It’s thanks to Dina that I am at last able to use my Willingdon Club membership,” she told Nusswan in the evening. “Previously the fees were all going to waste.”
“Dina is one in a million,” he agreed. “I have always said that. We had many fights and arguments, right, Dina? Especially about marriage. But I’ve always admired your strength and determination. I’11 never forget how bravely you behaved when poor Rustom passed away on your third anniversary.”
“Nusswan! Do you have to remind us at dinner and upset poor Dina?”
“Sorry, very sorry.” He obediently changed the topic, to the Emergency. “Problem is, the excitement has gone out of it. The initial fear which disciplined people, made them punctual and hardworking — that fear is gone. Government should do something to give a boost to the programme.”
The subject of marriage was no longer brought up in their dinner conversations. At forty-three the matter was exhausted and the goods quite shopworn, he confided to Ruby.
On Sunday evenings they played cards. “Come on, everybody,” Nusswan summoned them promptly at five o’clock. “Time for cards.”
He observed the session religiously. It breathed a feeble reality into his dream of a close family. Sometimes, if a visiting friend made a fourth, they played bridge. More often, though, it was just the three of them, and Nusswan steered the hours through round after round of rummy, doggedly enthusiastic in his pursuit of familial happiness.
“Did you know that playing cards originated in India?” he asked.
“Really?” said Ruby. Such items from Nusswan always impressed her very much.
“Oh yes, and so did chess. In fact, the theory is that playing cards were derived from chess. And they did not make their way to Europe till the thirteenth century, via the Middle East.”
“Imagine that,” said Ruby.
He rearranged his hand, discarded a card face-down and announced, “Rummy!”
After presenting his completed sequences, he analysed the errors the others had made. “You should never have thrown away the knave of hearts,” he told Dina. “That’s why you lost.”
“I took a chance.”
He gathered up the cards and started shuffling. “Okay, whose deal is it?”
“Mine,” said Dina, and accepted the deck.
Epilogue: 1984
IT WAS MORNING WHEN THE GULF flight bringing Maneck home landed in the capital after a delayed departure. He had tried to sleep on the plane but the annoying flicker of a movie being shown in the economy cabin kept buzzing before his eyelids like malfunctioning fluorescent lights. Bleary-eyed, he stood in line for customs inspection.
