Read Online The Meagre Tarmac by Clark Blaise - Free Book Online

although nothing is as it was in India, even in polite, conservative, what used to be called bhadralok , Bengali society.
    â€œWhere do they stay, uncle?”
    â€œIn this room.”
    There are no other spare rooms. It is a small house.
    â€œThey are waiting for me to die. They expect me to move in with Sukhla-pishi.”
    That would be his oldest sister-in-law, the one we call Front Room Auntie for her position at the window that overlooks the street. She is over eighty. Nothing happens on Rash Behari Avenue that she doesn’t know. The rumor, deriving from those first post-Partition years, is she had driven Anil-kaku , her young husband, my oldest uncle, mad. He’d died of something suspicious which was officially a burst appendix. Something burst, that is true. Disappointment, rage, failure of his schemes, who can say? It is Calcutta. He was a civil engineer and had been offered a position outside of Ballygunge in a different part of the city, but rather than leave the house and neighborhood, Sukhla-pishi had taken to her bed in order to die. (I should add that modern science sheds much light on intractable behavior. Sukhla-pishi is obviously agoraphobic; a pill would save us all much heartache.) Anil-kaku turned down the job and she climbed out of bed and took her seat on the windowsill. All of that happened before I was born. There had been no children — they were then in their middle-twenties — so she became the first of Youngest Uncles’ lifelong obligations.
    â€œThis is your house, uncle,” I said. “Don’t be giving up your rights.” As if he hadn’t already surrendered everything.
    â€œRights were given long ago. Her mother holds the lease.”
    I should say a few words about my cousin-sister Rina. She is most unfortunate to look at, or to be around. I was astonished that she’d found any boy to marry, thinking anyone so foolish would be like her, a flawed appendage to a decent family. We’d been most pleasantly wrong. He was handsome, which goes a long way in our society, a dashing, athletic flight steward with one of the new private airlines that fly between Calcutta and the interior of eastern India. We understood he was in management training. Part of the premarriage negotiation was the best room in the house, that would allow him to pocket his housing allowance from the airline while subletting the company flat, and his own car, computer, television, stereo, printer and tape recorder. He’d scouted the room before marriage since the demands were not only generic, but included brand names and serial numbers.
    â€œI cannot say more, they are listening,” said my uncle.
    It was then that I noticed the new furnishings in the room, a calendar on the wall from Gautam’s employer. This wasn’t Youngest Uncle’s room anymore, though he’d lived in it for over fifty years. He’d sobbed over Nirmala on that bed. The move to the sunny, dusty, noisy front room, rolling a thin mattress on Sukhla-pishi’s floor, had already been made. Next would be Gautam’s selling on the black market of all the carefully boxed, unopened electronics I’d smuggled in.
    â€œLet us go for tea,” I suggested, putting my hand on his arm, noting its tremble and sponginess. I kept an overseas membership in the Tollygunge Club for moments like this, prying favourite relatives away from family scrutiny, letting them drink Scotch or a beer free of disapproval, but he wouldn’t budge.
    â€œThey won’t permit it,” he said. “I’ve been told not to leave the house.”
    â€œThey? Who’s they?”
    â€œThe boy, the girl. Her.”
    â€œRina? You know Rina, uncle, she’s — “ I wanted to say “flawed.” On past visits I’d contemplated taking her out to the Tolly for a stiff gin just to see if there was a different Rina, waiting to be released. “ —