The Crow Eaters Read Online Free Page B

to fetch one.
    The doctor, a ferocious, undersized Englishman with a sandy moustache and bald head, won Freddy’s eternal gratitude by declaring, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you that a little dieting won’t cure – stop all that “pure butter, pure cream, pure fat” nonsense.’
    Five minutes later, Freddy found himself plunged into a well of despair from which he never really emerged.
    ‘Doctor,’ Jerbanoo asked with piteous hesitancy, ‘I have not revealed this to my child even – but I often get a pain in my chest, here, right here. I know it is my weak heart … I’ve known it a long time. What am I to do? Oh, doctor, am I to die so young?’ she sobbed, her compelling, attractive eyes sparkling with tears.
    ‘Now, now Mama – ooooh my poor Mama!’ cried Putli, rising gallantly to the occasion. Freddy tried to disguise the happiness that Jerbanoo’s revelation had occasioned in him. Lowering his lids he looked grimly in the vicinity of Jerbanoo’s weak heart.
    After thumping the barrel-like chest and listening through his stethoscope, the doctor pronounced sentence on Freddy’s happiness.
    ‘Must have been a touch of heartburn – overeating again. Your heart’s as tough as a steam engine. It’ll see you through eighty years if something else doesn’t pack up first.’
    In retrospect, Freddy realised that his stars had been particularly feeble at the time. Everything went wrong collectively. His health deteriorated, his thinking was confused and his energy depleted. So effective was the malignity of Saturn in his horoscope that he weakly watched Jerbanoo usurp his authority in every sphere, impotent to counter the topsy-turvy turn of domestic events.
    Jerbanoo stomped around with a smug, challenging look in her snappy eyes that Freddy dared less and less to meet. At the slightest hint of protest, at the mildest counter-suggestion, she would cannonade into an injured fury and scream at the very top of her voice for the benefit of the neighbours. Or, popping her offended eyes, she would sag into a melancholy fit of weeping so prolonged that Freddy, terrified of the resultant effect on his perpetually pregnant wife, was forced to appease and calm her with presents.
    Bullied and blackmailed, Freddy felt himself sink into a muddy vortex.
    Once, striking his forehead in exasperation he remonstrated:
    ‘For God’s sake, keep your voice down – must you always bray like an ass? Can’t you keep your voice human? What will the neighbours think.’
    The retaliation to this impulsive rebuke was so severe that he never repeated his mistake.
    ‘And now my own son-in-law is calling me a donkey!’ shrieked Jerbanoo. The frizzy knot at the back of her neck came loose and the braid settled thin and quivering on her shoulder. ‘And now I’m forbidden even to talk in this house! Oh Putli take me back … Oh, my child, take me back to my childhood village. I will not spend a single moment in this house; not any more … not any more!’ she cried, flinging her arms around Putli and sobbing on her breast.
    Putli glared at Freddy with tight-lipped censure. The exhortations of her mother’s friends having taken effect, she flatly intoned: ‘How dare you call my mother a donkey. How dare you! I would like to see anyone try and stop her from speaking in this house!’
    ‘Look, I’m not telling her to stop talking,’ explained Freddy wearily. There was a plea of despairing confusion in his eyes. ‘I’m merely requesting her not to shout so loud.’
    ‘Requesting? Requesting?’ snorted Jerbanoo, rearing her head like a cobra from Putli’s bosom. ‘You are always calling me names. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t touch this, don’t touch that – you go on and on until I feel frightened even to open my mouth; even to drink a drop of water in this house!’
    Freddy choked with fury. The accusations were absurd and unjust. He was the one condemned to prowl around the house stealthily, not daring to