Read Online The Last Burden by Upamanyu Chatterjee - Free Book Online

Champagne! Baba?’ proffers Jamun. ‘Won’t you? Champagne?’
    No, too late. Their disinclination dispirits the junket a bit. Possibly, all would’ve been pleased to rejoice together, without abrasion and discord. But a swarm of explanations behind their abstention, about which the sons introspect a while, waveringly, with abating impetus, investing the reluctance of their parents with less and less priority. Perhaps the parents intuit that the daughter-in-law will not welcome them and therefore neither will the two sons. Or maybe they, with the grumpiness that is the sensitivity that age doesn’t smother, wish to be the hub of the joviality and are huffed at being solicited as an afterthought Perhaps they wish to be wooed, for which the sons have no time. Possibly, they might’ve been pleased had Burfi rather than Jamun coaxed them to sip and are miffed that he has not budged. Maybe they imagine that he considers that champagne bought in New York will be squandered on them, who’ve never been overseas. Perhaps they truly are convinced that the time is too late and they too wrinkled to revel into the dead of night. Too late. Jamun attempts once more, flaccidly, from the dining room doorway to his, father’s sluggishly receding back, ‘Positive? Not even one?’
    ‘They won’t, Jamun, all right,’ trills Burfi from behind, half-waspishly; to Jamun, his inflexion seems to utter, why’re you wasting time, rush and join us, and listen to my yarns of 52nd Street and Park Avenue. Jamun intuits that his father hears the same meaning in Burfi’s voice.
    Through the exhilaration, the dry wine, the vignettes and the Marlboro smoke, Jamun fancies that he hears his mother call, a removed but indomitable bawling. He shuffles to her room, traversing his father’s. From his bed, Shyamanand pronounces, ‘She’s been bellowing for you for the last ten minutes. We could turn to dust here and you in the same house’d never be aware till disturbed from your carousal by the stink.’
    ‘I’ve been hollering and hollering for you for the past twenty minutes, and from his bed your father’s been hooting at me not to bawl and swamp his reading. Will you please lessen the speed of the fan? I guess the night’ll get chilly afterwards. I’vejust been floundering here like a fish, waiting for some soul to scale down the fan for me. You know that if I reduce it, the fan’s so prankish that it’ll promptly stop dead. I only need it a bit less.’
    Jamun twiddles the speed regulator of the fan a few times. He is feeling a little sinful at not responding sooner to his mother and a little piqued with himself for feeling sinful. ‘If you twirl the knob only clockwise, the speeds usually don’t go haywire.’ They both contemplate the ceiling for a time, like believers waiting for some portent from a doom merchant.
    ‘Isn’t that now too slow? If the room gets too stuffy, then I’ll perspire, won’t sleep, I’ll catch a chill from the cold sweat. Of course, I can’t open even one window because of that maddening black cat – it’ll saunter in, fishing about for a nook to doze in – you all are greatly entertained – but you should instead find beastly – the thought that more than once I’ve been hauled out of a rare sleep by a stinking, footloose cat trying to wrap itself around my face. Yes, my face! At least the cat finds my face appealing, unlike your father.’
    Jamun spins the knob once more. They both wait again, Urmila recumbent, Jamun upright, wishing to teeter with the champagne, ogling upwards. ‘It was at 3, I moved it to 1, this is now 2.’
    Urmila murmurs, with ample misgiving, ‘This can’t be 2. See – isn’t it stopping altogether?’
    The fan groans more torpidly and sonorously. Its axial disc, like a giant, waxen carrom striker with three fine, concentric, silvery hoops, and its circumambient chalky blur, which is like a whitish gramophone record when at superspeed, decelerates to a three-limbed