She shrank from him. “The tigress is still angry,” he said and left for the office.
Mrs. Shroff tried to soothe Dina, promising to discuss it later with Nusswan, maybe convince him to hire a part-time ayah, but her resolve melted within hours. Matters continued as before. As weeks went by, instead of restoring fairness in the household, she began turning into one of the chores on her daughter’s ever-growing list.
Now Mrs. Shroff had to be told what to do. When food was placed before her, she ate it, though it did her little good, for she kept losing weight. She had to be reminded to bathe and change her clothes. If toothpaste was squeezed out and handed to her on the brush, she brushed her teeth. For Dina, the most unpleasant task was helping her mother wash her hair — it fell out in clumps on the bathroom floor, and more followed when she combed it for her.
Once every month, Mrs. Shroff attended her husband’s prayers at the fire-temple. She said it gave her great comfort to hear the elderly Dustoor Framji’s soothing tones supplicating for her husband’s soul. Dina missed school to accompany her mother, worried about her wandering off somewhere.
Before commencing the ceremony, Dustoor Framji unctuously shook Mrs. Shroff’s hand and gave Dina a prolonged hug of the sort he reserved for girls and young women. His reputation for squeezing and fondling had earned him the title of Dustoor Daab-Chaab, along with the hostility of his colleagues, who resented not so much his actions but his lack of subtlety, his refusal to disguise his. embraces with fatherly or spiritual concern. They feared that one day he would go too far, drool over his victim or something, and disgrace the fire-temple.
Dina squirmed in his grasp as he patted her head, rubbed her neck, stroked her back and pressed himself against her. He had a very short beard, stubble that resembled flakes of grated coconut, and it scraped her cheeks and forehead. He released her just when she had summoned enough courage to tear her trapped body from his arms.
After the fire-temple, for the rest of the day at home Dina tried to make her mother talk, asking her advice about housework or recipes, and when that failed, about Daddy, and the days of their newlywed lives. Faced with her mother’s dreamy silences, Dina felt helpless. Soon, her concern for her mother was tempered by the instinct of youth which held her back — she would surely receive her portion of grief and sorrow in due course, there was no need to take on the burden prematurely.
And Mrs. Shroff spoke in monosyllables or sighs, staring into Dina’s face for answers. As for dusting the furniture, she could never proceed beyond wiping the picture frame containing her husband’s graduation photograph. She spent most of her time gazing out the window.
Nusswan preferred to regard his mother’s disintegration as a widow’s appropriate renunciation, wherein she was sloughing off the dross of life to concentrate on spiritual matters. He focused his attention on the raising of Dina. The thought of the enormous responsibility resting on his shoulders worried him ceaselessly.
He had always perceived his father to be a strict disciplinarian; he had stood in awe of him, had even been a little frightened of him. If he was to fill his father’s shoes, he would have to induce the same fear in others, he decided, and prayed regularly for courage and guidance in his task. He confided to the relatives — the uncles and aunts — that Dina’s defiance, her stubbornness, was driving him crazy, and only the Almighty’s help gave him the strength to go forward in his duty.
His sincerity touched them. They promised to pray for him too. “Don’t worry, Nusswan, everything will be all right. We will light a lamp at the fire-temple.”
Heartened by their support, Nusswan began taking Dina with him to the fire-temple once a week. There, he thrust a stick of sandalwood in her hand and whispered fiercely in her ear, “Now pray properly — ask Dadaji to make you a good girl, ask Him to make you obedient.”
While she bowed before the sanctum, he travelled along the outer wall hung with pictures of various dustoors and high priests. He glided from display to display, stroking the garlands, hugging the frames, kissing the glass, and ending with the very tall picture of Zarathustra to which he glued his lips for a full minute. Then, from the vessel of ashes placed in the sanctum’s doorway, he smeared a pinch on his forehead, another bit across the throat, and undid his top two shirt buttons to rub a fistful over his chest.
Like talcum powder, thought Dina, watching from the corner of her eye, from her bowed position, straining to keep from laughing. She did not raise her head till he had finished his antics.
“Did you pray properly?” he demanded when they were outside.
She nodded.
“Good. Now all the bad thoughts will leave your head, you will feel peace and quiet in your heart.”
Dina was no longer allowed to spend time at her friends’ houses during the holidays. “There is no need to,” said Nusswan. “You see them every day in school.” They could visit her after being granted his permission, but this was not much fun since he always hovered around.
Once, he overheard her in the next room with her friend Zenobia, making fun of his teeth. It only served to confirm his belief that the little devils needed monitoring. Zenobia was saying he looked like a horse.
“Yes, a horse with cheap dentures,” added Dina.
“An elephant would be proud of that much ivory,” continued Zenobia, raising the stakes.
They were helpless with laughter when he entered the room. He fixed each one with a black stare before turning away with menacing slowness, leaving behind silence and misery. Yes, it worked, he realized with surprise and triumph — fear worked.
Nusswan had always been sensitive about his bad teeth and, in his late teens, had tried to get them straightened. Dina, only six or seven then, had teased him mercilessly. But the orthodontic treatment was too painful, and he abandoned it, complaining that with a doctor for a father, it was surprising his condition had not been taken care of in childhood. As evidence of partiality, he would point to Dina’s perfect mouth.
Distressed by his hurt, their mother had tried to explain. “It’s all my fault, son, I didn’t know that children’s teeth should be massaged daily, gently pressed inward. The old nurse at Dina’s birth taught me the trick, but it was too late for you.”
Nusswan had never been convinced. And now, after Dina’s friend left, she paid the price. He asked her to repeat what was said. She did, boldly.
“You have always had the habit of blurting whatever comes into your loose mouth. But you are no longer a child. Someone has to teach you respect.” He sighed, “It is my duty, I suppose,” and without warning he began slapping her. He stopped when a cut opened her lower lip.
“You pig!” she wept. “You want to make me look ugly like you!” Whereupon, he got a ruler and whacked her wherever he could, as she ran around trying to escape the blows.
For once, Mrs. Shroff noticed that something was wrong. “Why are you crying, my daughter?”
“That stupid Dracula! He hit me and made me bleed!”
“Tch-tch, my poor child.” She hugged Dina and returned to her seat by the window.
Two days after this row, Nusswan tried to make peace by bringing Dina a collection of ribbons. “They will look lovely in your plaits,” he said.
She went to her school satchel, got out her arts-and-crafts scissors, and snipped the ribbons into small pieces.
“Look, Mamma!” he said, almost in tears. “Look at your vindictive daughter! My hard-earned money I spend on her, and this is the thanks.”
The ruler became Nusswan’s instrument of choice in his quest for discipline. His clothes were the most frequent cause of Dina’s punishment. After washing, ironing, and folding them, she had to stack four separate piles in his cupboard: white shirts, coloured shirts, white trousers, coloured trousers. Sometimes she would strategically place a pinstriped shirt with the whites, or liberate a pair of pants with a hound’s-tooth check among the white trousers. Despite the beatings, she never tired of provoking him.
“The way she behaves, I feel that Sataan himself has taken refuge in her heart,” he said wearily to the relatives who asked for updates. “Maybe I should just pack her off to a boarding school.”
“No, no, don’t take that drastic step,” they pleaded. “Boarding school has been the ruination of many Parsi girls. Rest assured, God will repay you for your patience and devotion. And Dina will also thank you when she is old enough to understand it’s for her own good.” They went away murmuring the man was a saint — every girl should be fortunate enough to have a brother like Nusswan.
His spirit restored by their encouragement, Nusswan persevered. He bought all of Dina’s clothes, deciding
