The Selector of Souls Read Free

it was her fault for sleeping so soundly. As soon as she unlocks the double gates and pushes them open, he strides past her, bounds up the driveway, dashes upstairs and begins shouting at his mother.
    Mem-saab is standing at the front door of her apartment, fumbling with the zip of her dressing gown. Confronted by her son’s ferocious look, she gazes first at Amanjit’s lips, then over his shoulder at Damini, her eyes huge and questioning.
    This turbaned man, who Damini knew when he was still coaxing his beard with coconut oil, towers over his mother and shouts, “You knew I was coming, and you locked me out of my father’s house!”
    Aman could be yawning or yelping for all Mem-saab knows. He should speak slowly. He should remember Mem-saab can’t lip-readproperly through a moustache and beard—even a tidily rolled, hair-netted beard such as his.
    Damini ducks past them through the doorway, and takes her place behind Mem-saab. She lays her hand gently on Mem-saab’s shoulder. “Be more respectful, Aman-ji,” says Damini, her respectful “ji” coming with effort. “No one was trying to lock you out. See, everything is open.” She needs an excuse to come between them—she takes a dupatta from its hook behind the door, and offers it to Mem-saab to cover her head. “She’s old and left without a man to protect her.”
    That should shame him. He should remember his duty to protect his mother. But there’s no shame in the look he flashes at Damini. That look says she may have been his mother’s ears since he was twenty-two, but she is only that pair of ears. “Go, Damini-amma.” His thumb jerks past her eye. “Go sit in the kitchen.”
    Damini ignores that thumb as she used to ignore his tantrums, and helps Mem-saab to her room instead. Mem-saab’s grip on her arm is tighter than usual.
    Aman is now shouting down the stairs for Khansama, the cook who is probably still in his servant quarters. “Bring my suitcase,” he yells. The Embassy-man, his wife and children, who rent the five bedrooms on the ground floor, must be well woken up by now. She hears the cook’s sandals slap-slap on the driveway as he runs to the gate.
    Damini fetches Mem-saab’s silver water glass and her pills. Mem-saab says, “Tell Aman I am not signing any more papers. I already gave him twenty-five percent of this house last time he came.” She makes her way to the bathroom and closes the door.
    Water purrs into the plastic bucket. Mem-saab’s preparing to bathe, without taking a single cup of tea.
    Damini goes to deliver Mem-saab’s message but Aman has pointedly closed the door to his father’s room. She can hear him inside, unpacking. She could shout or write a note to slip under the door,but Mem-saab’s message might make matters worse. Soon he will want breakfast.
    Mem-saab has begun reciting the Japji aloud in her tuneless chant—she must have emerged from the bathroom. The prayer takes about twenty minutes. Mem-saab should eat breakfast immediately afterwards, to avoid further argument.
    Damini opens the screen door to the kitchen and pops her head in so she doesn’t have to remove her sandals. The rail-thin cook looks up from his cane stool, his face grey-brown as a potato. Why doesn’t he just wear a moustache and beard? Then he won’t look like a parched lawn every morning. Hairy forearms poke from his sleep-rumpled kurta and rest upon pyjama-clad knees. Even his toes look like small potatoes.
    “Khansama,” says Damini, severely enough to pull him together, “Serve Mem-saab her breakfast.”
    Back in Mem-saab’s room, she squats in front of Mem-saab’s chair and enters the chant with her. When the prayer is over and Mem-saab opens her eyes, Damini mouths soundlessly, “What does he want you to sign?”
    “He wants me to give
all
of this house to him and Timcu.”
    “Will they live with us?” Damini mouths. Khansama will need to know—he has four children and a wife in the one-room servants’ quarters