Em and the Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

  On days like this – no, at moments like this – it was quite possible to forget all the tags – mad, manic depressive, bipolar – and frolic with her through van Goghian fields of free association.

  ‘There’s something brave about a piece of glass that is fated to live its life as a toffee when it could have been a bulb or a thermometer,’ she said. ‘But I can’t imagine anyone window-shopping these days.’

  ‘They do. People say they do it all the time,’ Susan assured her.

  ‘I wonder. How can anyone go window-shopping when people actually buy glass toffees? How does one say “That’s what I’m going to buy when my boat comes home” when you’re already buying whatever you want?’

  ‘I think your budget would constrain you still.’

  ‘It would, I suppose. But window-shopping was tourism once upon a time. You never thought you would take any of that stuff home. You didn’t think it would belong to you. Like the Taj Mahal. You went to look at it and then you got a good shot of it running in your veins. You now had some beauty under your eyelids.’

  ‘It was enough?’

  ‘It was enough. You could live with the street on which you lived. I remember I cried when I saw my first vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was so glad someone had thought to make something like that. I felt it was a kindness to women everywhere. But I certainly didn’t think we could afford one. I don’t even think I asked.’

  ‘So you and The Big Hoom just stood in bookshops and read?’ I asked to bring her back to where we’d started.

  ‘No. I don’t think that was allowed, or even encouraged. Not at Lalvani’s or at Thacker’s. You could read the back of the book and maybe sniff a few pages, but I remember Mr Lalvani once bearing down on a customer, hissing, “Do you want to damage the spine?” I thought he was going to damage that man’s spine instead.’

  Augustine and Imelda did not start dating at any real point in time. It simply became clear that they were dating. As if by an unspoken agreement, without anyone admitting it, they began to go around.

  ‘Going around? Is that what you call it these days? It makes me dizzy.’

  ‘What did you call it?’

  ‘Dating, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s better or what?’

  ‘No, it’s stupid. Half dry fruit and half almanac. But I think if The Big Hoom had asked me out on a date, I would have refused.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was prudish, I think. We all were. We thought no one would marry us if we weren’t virgins. I remember listening to stories about women putting lemon juice there or cutting themselves to bleed and I remember thinking, “What a lot of fuss. So much easier not to do anything at all so you don’t have to fake it.”’

  ‘But a date was hardly going to end in . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know that now,’ she said a little testily. ‘But then? In the American magazines, it seemed like there was a strict calendar. You didn’t kiss on the first date or you would be seen as cheap and he wouldn’t respect you. If you went on a second date and didn’t let him kiss you, you were a tease. I thought: “What happens if you meet a man you like to talk to but don’t want to kiss?” But you couldn’t be like that. You had to let him kiss you and then you could do some necking after that but no petting . . .’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘I think, but don’t quote me, necking was above the shoulders and petting was below it.’

  ‘But when did you know?’ Susan wanted to know. ‘When did you know that he was the one?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is there a moment? Like that?’ Em asked, snapping her fingers. ‘Maybe there is. Let me see. How about a cuppa while I rack my brains?’

  Susan obliged, but when she was back, the conversation had wandered somewhere else – to the story of the priest who had fathered six boys and baptized them all because they were his nephews.

  • • •

  It was many years later that I discovered how Imelda knew that Augustine was the one. I discovered it from an old letter she had written a friend, a letter she had forgotten to post but remembered to preserve.

  . . . he breezed into the office with chocolate for one and all. He had a whole bunch of them he had swiped from some swanky do to which he had been invited. Though Gertie says no one says ‘do’ any more because it’s common. It’s common? Well, so be it. If I had had the good sense to write in pencil, I might have made myself uncommon and corrected that to ‘party’, but ‘party’ sounds like something with cake and cold drink. And ‘function’ sounds like a bunch of local yokels making speeches. Well, whatever. I shall say ‘do’ if I want. Begone, Gertie.

  Where was I? Ahn? (Anh? Aahn? Nothing looks right.) The chocolate mints. I’m writing this letter in fits and spurts because Mae is fluttering around looking like she’s about to rearrange the furniture, while I’m trying my best to be the immovable object against which the irresistible force must expend itself. Or must it? I don’t know. Will ask Him Who Knows All About Engineering. And promptly forget.

  Oh stop it! I’m doing it again.

  And now Mae’s saying it is time for my bath, which is a sure way of making me plant myself . . .

  She won. She always does. She said I was beginning to smell. So I went and had a bath that was a lick and a promise, but when I came back All Was Lost and I had no Alternative But to Flee and am writing to you now in the Irani café at the end of the lane with the beady eye of Mr Ghobadi on me. He knows me too well to uproot me when my tea is done and the last crumb of mawa cake wiped from my plate, but he resents the occupation of his space without the earning of some pounds and pence and pice.

  As I was saying.

  The mints went down nicely with all the girls. (I did mention that the chocolates had mints in them, non?) But Audrey was not among those accounted for. She had stepped out to buy some feminine sanitary products. I wish there was a nice word for them things. Pads? I suppose. Okay, she went out to buy some pads and did not get her share of the goodies. Of course, Gertie had to rub it in. Gertie has had it in for her ever since Audrey announced the nuptials. She can’t bear it. When Audrey asks us whether we prefer mauve gauze or pink tulle for the bridesmaids, her joy turns to ashes in her mouth.

  So Gertie rubs it in: ‘None for you, poor dear?’ And then he fetches up at my desk and says, ‘We have a problem.’

  I handed over my chocolate because I knew what the problem was. And anyway, couldn’t tell him, but those chocolates with mint in them taste like toothpaste. He grinned and winked and bounced off to make Aud feel less like the odd one out. (I worked out that pun. I know one is supposed to say, ‘Forgive the pun,’ but I worked it out so why should I ask forgiveness? The English language is very complicated, hein?) And when I was on my way home that evening – he was off on another client meeting – I realized that I had plighted my troth over a chocolate mint. I am no I. I am now part of a we. Wee wee wee, I wanted to weep and run all the way home and bury my head in my mother’s lap.

  Not that . . .

  The fragment ended there.

  • • •

  Most of what I know about their love came from Em in her garrulous phases, and the occasional letter or scrawl in one of her diaries that she showed me. Little of it came from The Big Hoom. Not because he was a man of few words – he was a salesman and could talk the milk into butter, as they said in Moira – but he does not seem to have wasted too many on his Beloved. His letters to her are classic ‘male’ letters. This one was written before they were married; he was away on a buying trip to France.

  Beloved,

  Arrived in Paris to weather that to my subtropical body seemed intolerably cold. Yet the young lady waiting at the airport to receive her boyfriend was wearing a mini skirt. I took pains not to notice this, but it did rather obtrude upon the consciousness.
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  I will be meeting with several of the suppliers. The problem, of course, is that we would like to deal with the Europeans but the government of India would like us to deal with the East Europeans. It’s a matter of bloc politics. Now, I was going to suggest to the French that they should set up a company, a small independent company with a branch in Prague. We could then deal with Prague and they could invoice us in francs through the holding company. You will point out that the currency is the rub, right? But it seems that the Communist bloc is quite pragmatic about these things; they would like to be paid in dollars so I suppose francs won’t upset the government too much.

  There is the likelihood also that they might turn this down as too much work. But I think if we promise them an estimated 600 machines in the next three years, that’s almost a three per cent increase in their sales. That is why I want to deal with Corbeaux and not Franco. Franco would not get excited at the thought of 600 machines; they’d probably shrug and ask me to do business in the way business should be done.

  I miss you very much but I need hardly say that. You would like Paris, I think. There’s a casual beauty about it, rather like yours.

  All my love,

  Augustine

  His letters offered little. And Susan and I rarely asked him any questions about their meeting or their romance. By the time we were prying teenagers, The Big Hoom had become one of those solid-as-a-rock men of the world who rarely give the impression that they have a past or a private life.

  Their courtship lasted nearly twelve years. Family legend says that they might have gone on for another twelve, perhaps forever. Imelda had moved on from ASL, found a job at the American Consulate that paid much better. Augustine met her outside her office every evening and they walked to their favourite bookshops, and occasionally went to the movies. They were happy enough doing this. But Em had a godmother and aunt, combined in one person, who wielded enormous moral power in the family, and when Em’s thirtieth birthday was coming up, her Tia Madrinha Louisa decided to take a hand in the matter of Augustine and Imelda and the bookshops.

  One afternoon, two senior women, dressed in silk and magnificent Sunday hats, presented themselves at the offices of Ampersand Smith Limited. They asked to speak to A. G. Mendes and were ushered into his cabin.

  ‘You must forgive us for intruding upon you like this,’ said one of them in perfect Portuguese. ‘But we are only motivated by the love of the young ones of our family.’

  Augustine goggled a bit.

  ‘I am sure you are,’ he replied in Portuguese for he had studied the language in school. ‘But you will forgive my incomprehension when you realize that I do not know who you are.’

  ‘We are not in the habit of introducing ourselves,’ said the older lady. ‘I suggest you ask Mr Andrade who works here with you to introduce us.’

  Under normal circumstances, Augustine would have simply thrown back his head and roared for Andy. But something told him this might startle the old ladies into dropping their large purses, shiny patent leather objects with wicked golden clasps. He called a peon and asked if Mr Andrade might not be free to drop by.

  Andrade came in and sized up the situation in a moment. He put on a formal air and proceeded to make introductions as if the two women had been strolling in the prasa and had come upon Augustine quite by chance. He gestured to Augustine that he should rise to his feet and with the same, almost imperceptible, gesture indicated that it was not necessary for the ladies to rise.

  ‘Dona Bertha, Dona Louisa, may I present my good friend, Augustine Mendes? This young man has a bright future at the sales department here, ladies. And these ladies, Agostinho, are my mother’s close friends. She has known them for many years. Perhaps you have some acquaintance with the daughter of one who is also the niece of the other and who worked with us for some years.’

  That was when things fell into place for Augustine. Andrade asked to be excused and left.

  And so the young engineer was left in his cabin with the battleaxes.

  He didn’t do too badly. He offered them tea and biscuits. They were very impressed that the biscuits were British. Word had got around. Perhaps Andy had told the staff that it was an important meeting for AGM, a decisive one, and the staff had rallied.

  ‘The Big Hoom told me later that they were very formal and polite,’ Em said.

  The exchange, from what I have gathered, went something like this:

  ‘Our circumstances are not what they once were,’ says the elder woman. ‘Bertha was driven from her home in Burma by Herr Hitler. Very little was left.’

  ‘Our chemist shops,’ Bertha adds. ‘And the this-thing.’

  ‘Teak plantation,’ says Louisa. ‘She means the teak plantation.’

  ‘That’s what I this-thing,’ says Bertha. Louisa ignores her.

  ‘I see,’ says Augustine, although he doesn’t. He hasn’t yet learnt his future mother-in-law’s conversational style.

  ‘But much wants thissing-thissing,’ Bertha says.

  ‘Much wants more,’ says Louisa. ‘And enough is a feast.’

  It becomes clear to Augustine that he is confronted by a double act. (They had always been close, but over time, Bertha and Louisa had got to the point where they could finish each other’s sentences.)

  Louisa: Where are you from?

  Augustine: Moira.

  Louisa: That is a good village.

  Bertha: Thissing.

  Augustine: Pardon me?

  Louisa: Christian.

  Augustine: Yes, I suppose it is.

  Louisa: Are you related to F.X. Mendes of Astora?

  Augustine: No, I don’t think so.

  Bertha: He was our thissing.

  Louisa: Father.

  Augustine: The editor F.X. Mendes?

  Bertha: Yes.

  Augustine: I have heard of him.

  Augustine is not being facetious. He really has. F.X. Mendes had conducted, through the civilized medium of his newspaper, a case against the toilet of a wealthy brahmin. The facts: the brahmin’s home faced a plot, long unused, upon which he had had his eye. One day, he discovered that it had been bought by a man of unquestionably lower caste. He also discovered that the low-caste man was intent on building on his land and was going to build a house, by virtue of funds supplied to him by his brothers who were settled in East Africa and doing ‘quite well for themselves’, a term by which opprobrium and praise – in equal measure – may be heaped upon those who try to get beyond their station. And to build a house right in front of that of the only rich man in the village – and a brahmin – was an act of hubris that demanded a suitable response. At that time, no one thought much of having an outhouse, a pig toilet at which an eager porcine nose might suddenly meet one’s rear end as one squatted. The rich man had a bright idea. He would build an indoor toilet. He would build it so that it came very close to the living room of his new neighbour. He would then fart in the upstart’s face each morning.

  It was this terrible plan that F.X. Mendes worked to foil. It is entirely likely that he ran other campaigns. It is entirely likely that he opposed Portuguese rule or supported it fervently. No one knows. No one remembers. They only remember that F.X. Mendes fought the toilet case and won it. Depending on who is telling it, there is either admiration at the old man’s stubborn insistence on the rights of the poor or incredulity that newspaper columns should concern themselves with such petty matters.

  Bertha and Louisa must have both peered into his face to see on which side of the divide Augustine fell. To have a famous father can be a terrible burden.

  Augustine: My brothers often said he wrote beautiful Portuguese.

  Bertha: He was quite this-thing but now this-thing.

  Augustine: He made his mark.

  Louisa: Do you speak Konkani?

  Augustine (switching to Konkani): I speak Ko
nkani.

  He knows there is a slippery patch coming along. (In those days, and among the kind of women who were sitting in front of him, there were those who maintained that Konkani was the language of the tiller of the soil and the bearer of the load. They maintained as well that Portuguese was the language through which Goans could dream of some success in Lisbon where everyone always told them how beautifully they spoke the language. And then there were those who believed that Portuguese was a foreign import that belonged only to a certain community and that Konkani was the fertile red mud of their inheritance.)

  Augustine waits for judgement. Then Louisa puts him out of his misery: ‘That is good. Too many young people do not speak their mother tongues.’

  Bertha: Your parents?

  Augustine: My father is dead.

  Louisa: Please accept our sincere condolences.

  Augustine: It happened a while ago.

  Louisa: We always regret the loss of a departed parent.

  Augustine: Indeed we do.

  Louisa: Do you have perpetual Masses sung in his honour?

  Augustine: No.

  (Augustine was not a believer in a personal god who would listen to your prayers. Even less did he believe that you could pray for someone else. And to have a third party, a disinterested third party, offering intercessory prayers on behalf of people they did not know, seemed outrageous to him. After all, these Masses were subdivided into thousands, since perpetual Mass cards were sold at almost every church in the world and by the minute. There would never be enough priests for even a hundredth of a Mass per soul, and the idea of asking the powers that be to consider minuscule fractions of benefit accruing to the dead seemed far more ridiculous than any other dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. ‘He was a natural Protestant when I met him,’ Em would say. ‘He protested everything.’)

  Louisa: Then we shall organize it for you.

  Bertha: What’s your this-thing?

  Augustine: I beg your pardon?

  Bertha (impatient): Where do you thissing?

  Augustine takes a wild guess and names his parish: Our Lady of Victories.