Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri [31]
"Whatever is inside this quilt is keeping me awake at night," Boori Ma said. "Tell me, where do you see them?"
Mrs. Dalal had a soft spot for Boori Ma, occasionally she gave the old woman some ginger paste with which to flavor her stews. "I don't see anything," Mrs. Dalal said after a while. She had diaphanous eyelids and very slender toes with rings on them.
"Then they must have wings," Boori Ma concluded.
She put down her broom and observed one cloud passing behind another. "They fly away before I can squash them. But just see my back, I must be purple from their bites."
Mrs. Dalal lifted the drape of Boori Ma's sari, a cheap white weave with a border the color of a dirty pond. She examined the skin above and below her blouse, cut in a style no longer sold in shops. Then she said, "Boori Ma, you are imagining things."
"I tell you, these mites are eating me alive." "It could be a case of prickly heat," Mrs. Dalal suggested.
At this Boori Ma shook the free end of her sari and made her skeleton keys rattle. She said. "I know prickly heat. This is not prickly heat. I haven't slept in three, perhaps four days. Who can count? I used to keep a clean bed. Our linens were muslin. Believe me, don't believe me, our mosquito nets were as soft as silk. Such comforts you cannot even dream them." "I cannot dream them," Mrs. Dalal echoed. She lowered her diaphanous eyelids and sighed. "I cannot dream them, Boori Ma. I live in two broken rooms, married to a man who sells toilet parts." Mrs. Dalal turned away and looked at one of the quilts. She ran a finger over part of the stitching. Then she asked:
"Boori Ma, how long have you slept on this bedding?"
Boori Ma put a finger to her lips before replying that she could not remember.
"Then why no mention of it until today? Do you think it's beyond us to provide you with clean quilts? An oilcloth, for that matter?" She looked insulted. "There is no need." Boori Ma said, "They are clean now. I beat them with my broom."
"I am hearing no arguments," Mrs. Dalal said. "You need a new bed. Quills, a pillow. A blanket when winter comes." As she spoke Mrs. Dalal kept track of the necessary items by touching her thumb to the pads of her fingers.
"On festival days the poor came to our house to be fed," Boori Ma said. She was filling her bucket from the coal heap on the other side of the roof. "I will have a word with Mr. Dalal when he returns from the office," Mrs. Dalal called back as she headed down the stairs. "Come in the afternoon. I will give you some pickles and some powder for your back." "It's not prickly heat," Boori Ma said. It was true that prickly heat was common during the rainy season. But Boori Ma preferred to think that what irritated her bed, what stole her sleep, what burned like peppers across her thinning scalp and skin, was of a less mundane origin.
She was ruminating on these things as she swept the stairwell-she always worked from top to bottom-when it started to rain. It came slapping across the roof like a boy in slippers too big for him and washed Mrs. Dalal's lemon peels into the gutter. Before pedestrians could open their umbrellas, it rushed down collars, pockets, and shoes. In that particular flat-building and all the neighboring buildings, creaky shutters were closed and tied with petticoat strings to the window