The Inherited Custody

CHAPTER XII

The dining table rang the room with the tingles of dead spoons, slating against the steel plates, round, that shone against the bulb above. The mush of the curry and rice grew cold, and Rustom left them untouched, tired and hungry, drinking or pushing water down his dried-up throat, gulping loudly until the sip could visibly be seen under his chin, slipping its way down the neck. And then he looked up, delicately, at his wife- the one he didn't speak to anymore. For reasons unknown, discomfort became a friend, a daily visitor, crawling between them like a caterpillar and echoing with a reverb.

When he looked at her, her face was down, bent and lost, chewing softly, soundly, and the chewing sound became the other instrument of the night. She lurked a little forward, and under the dimly lit bulb, her face looked grave, like an image carved out of thick stone, lessing its corners to create life- one that spoke and listened. Then, her hand flew and brushed back a gray hair dangling at her face, tucking it behind her ear, the bangles she wore jingling like summer.

After what had happened, the house reigned with nothing more than a strong sense of hopelessness, as if life had resisted itself to breathe amongst the walls. From now on, they only kept waiting for something to happen, for the other to talk, for the words that filled the air around them to turn into sound.

After dinner, while she stacked the utensils on the shelf, still wet, Rustom went inside the bedroom and opened the blanket that his wife had folded in broad daylight. And then he sat there quietly waiting and reading and waiting. It took about an hour for her to come into their bedroom and then into the bathroom, where she changed into her long nightdress. She turned off the small lamp on her side of the bed and laid under the same blanket and pretended to sleep.

The light from the bulb sliced the room like a sharp knife; the shadows of his fingers brushing the paper visible to her like a glamorous movie.

She couldn't sleep with the light on, the shimmer glowing throughout the walls and penetrating the thin eyelids she tried keeping shut. He wasn't reading anymore, she noticed. She turned to see the book lying open on his chest, unlike her, and the man sat there asleep, unbothered.

She watched his stony face, the mustache sprayed over his lips like a thick dome of a tired bush, lightly growing gray at the tips. She couldn't help but look, just watch in the loud echo of the silence that shook her often from the insides. She reached over to him, her hand reaching across his body, their faces against each other, so close that the air they let out of their nostrils mingled and disappeared, and she watched shamelessly the peace on his face- somehow the reflection of the distraught of hers, and she turned the lamp off.

The room crept of the night's shadow.

When morning came, nothing changed. It was a rigid time as if the hours strode with long steps but planted its thump in their very house. Like always, she was in the kitchen.

She dropped her hands and bent a little, picking up her long and bright nightdress, letting the peacock tail that trailed around the floor behind her be while she walked into the veranda to remove last evening's washed clothes.

When she walked back into the house, a ray of sun followed her. She went into the kitchen to boil milk, one from the packet delivered by the milkman before the sun came up. From the edge of one of the doorless cabinets, she removed two cloves of cardamom from a packet and peeled them, threw them into the boiling liquid, and then turned the stove off before the milk made its way above and across the saucepan and onto the stove. The thin film formed over the surface was first discarded into a separate bowl, and the milk was strained into a small glass.

On a day like this, when he didn't have to go to work, he'd lay spread around like a splash of water on the ground, sulking and tired. At times, when he wasn't listening to the radio and got bored with himself, he'd go for long walks by the beach. But she stayed back, cooking and cutting and cleaning.