The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [71]
“Another day another dollar, penny saved is penny earned, no pain no gain, business is business, gotta do what ya gotta do.” These axioms were a luxury unavailable to Biju, of course, but he repeated them anyway, enjoying the cheerful words and the moment of camaraderie.
“Have to make a living, what can you do?” Biju would say.
“You are right, Biju. What can I do? Here we are,” he ruminated, “for more opportunity. How can we help it?”
He hoped for a big house, then he hoped for a bigger house even if he had to leave it unfurnished for a while, like his nemesis Mr. Shah who owned seven rooms, all empty except for TV, couch, and carpeting in white. Even the TV was a white TV for white symbolized success out of India for the community. “Hae hae, we will take our time with the furniture,” said Mr. Shah, “but house is there.” Photos of the exterior had been sent to all the relatives in Gujarat, a white car parked in front. A Lexus, that premier luxury vehicle. On top of it sat his wife looking self-satisfied. She had left India a meek bride, scrolled and spattered with henna, so much gold in her sari she set off every metal detector in the airport—and now here she was—white pantsuit, bobbed hair, vanity case, and capable of doing the macarena.
Twenty-five
They took Mutt to the Apollo Deaf Tailors to be measured for a winter coat that would be cut out of a blanket, since the days had passed into winter, and while it didn’t snow in Kalimpong, just turned dull, all around the snow line dipped, and the high mountains around town were brindled white. In the morning, they found frost in the runnels, frost on the crest, and frost in the crotch of the hills.
Through cracks and holes in Cho Oyu, came a sterile smell of winter. The bathroom taps and switches threw off shocks. Sweaters and shawls bristled with aroused fibers, shedding lightning. “Ow ow,” Sai said. Her skin was a squamous pattern of drought. When she took off her clothes, dry skin fell like salt from a salt cellar and her hair, ridiculing gravity, rose in crackling radio antennae above her skull. When she smiled, her lips split and spilled blood.
Vaselined shiny and supple for Christmas, she joined Father Booty and Uncle Potty at Mon Ami, where, in addition to the Vaseline smell, there was an odor of wet sheep—but it was only their damp sweaters. A thatch of tinsel on a potted fir glinted in the light of the fire that razzmatazzed and popped, the cold smarting beyond.
Father Booty and Uncle Potty sang together:
Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?
When nobody answered, they shouted all the louder—
WHO THREW THE OVERALLS IN MRS. MURPHY’S CHOWDER??
And they all joined in, drunk and wild.
______
Oh, beautiful evening—
Oh, beautiful soup in the copper Gyako pot, a moat of broth around the chimney of coals, mutton steam in their hair, rollicking shimmer of golden fat, dried mushrooms growing so slippery they’d slither down scalding before you could chomp upon their muscle. “What’s for PUDS?” Lola, when she said this in England, had been unsettled to find that the English didn’t understand…. Even Pixie had pretended to be bewildered….
But here they comprehended perfectly, and Kesang lugged out a weighty pudding that united via brandy its fraternity of fruit and nut, and they made the pudding holy with a sanctifying crown of brandy flame.
Mustafa climbed to his favorite place again, on Sai’s lap, turning first his face to the fire, then his behind, slowly softening, until his bottom began to dribble down the chair and he leaped up with a startled yowl, glaring at Sai as if she had been responsible for this indecency.
For the occasion, the sisters had brought out their ornaments from England—various things that looked as if they might taste of mints—snowflakes, snowmen, icicles, stars. There were little trolls, and elf shoemakers (why were cobblers,