The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [41]
Now he walked through the greasy bus station with its choking smell of exhaust and past the dark cubbyhole where, behind a soiled red curtain, you could pay to watch on a shaking screen such films as Rape of Erotic Virgin and SHE: The Secrets of Married Life.
Nobody here would be interested in the cook’s son.
At the Snow Lion Travel Agency, the cook waited to claim the manager’s attention. Tashi was busy chatting up a tourist—he was famous for charming the Patagonia pants off foreign women and giving them an opportunity to write home with the requisite tale of amorous adventure with a sherpa. All around were brochures for the monastery trips Tashi organized, photographs of hotels built in the traditional style, furnished with antiques, many of which had been taken from the monasteries themselves. Of course he omitted the fact that the centuries-old structures were all being modernized with concrete, fluorescent lighting, and bathroom tiling.
“When you go to America, take me along also,” said Tashi after he had sold the tourist a trip to Sikkim.
“Yes, yes. I will take us all. Why not? That country has lots of room. It’s this country that is so crowded.”
“Do not worry, I am saving my money to buy a ticket, and how are you, how is your health?” Biju had written. One day his son would accomplish all that Sai’s parents had failed to do, all the judge had failed to do.
The cook walked by the Apollo Deaf Tailors. No point saying anything there, since they would literally turn a deaf ear just as they did to customer complaints after they’d made a hash of everything, stripes horizontal instead of vertical, the judge’s clothes made in Sai’s size and Sai’s clothes made in the judge’s size.
He went into Lark’s Store for Tosh’s tea, egg noodles, and Milkmaid condensed milk. He told the doctor, who had come in to collect the vaccines that she stored in the Lark’s fridge, “My son has a new job in U.S.A.” Her son was there as well. He shared this with a doctor! The most distinguished personage in town.
Walking home in the dusk, he told those catching their breath from carrying heavy loads uphill, resting right on the road, where mud and grass wouldn’t spoil their good clothes. When a car came by they got up; when it passed they settled back again.
He told Mrs. Sen, who, of course, also had a child in America: “Best country in the world. All these people who went to England are now feeling sorry….” Her hand gestured significantly to the house of her neighbors at Mon Ami. The cook then went and told Lola, who hated a challenge to England but was kind to him, because he was poor; it was only Mrs. Sen’s daughter who was a threat to be lopped off at the neck. He told the Afghan princesses, who paid him to deliver them a chicken each time he went to the market. They boiled the chicken the same day, since they had no fridge, and each day until it was gone, they recooked a portion in a different style—curried, in soy sauce, in cheese sauce, and, at that blissful time when, overnight, gardens all over Kalimpong came up in mushrooms, in mushroom sauce with a bottlecapful of brandy.
He told the monks playing football outside the gompa, hitching up their robes. He told Uncle Potty and Father Booty. They were dancing on the veranda, Uncle Potty at the light switch turning it on off on off on off. “What did you say?” they said, turning down the music to listen. “Good for him!” They raised their glasses and turned up the music again: “Jam-balaya… pumpkin pie-a… mio maio….”
Then the cook stopped at the last stall for potatoes. He always bought