“None. In fact, he was dead against it. The wife’s a disciple of Sai Baba …”

“Stop!” screamed Harbart, clapping his hands over his ears, “Stop! Say no more! I won’t listen, no, no, no!”

Binayendra and Atashi are taken aback.

A moment later Harbart uncovered his ears and chuckled wryly. “Forgive me. Never went to school, never learned my letters, so never learned to hold my tongue. Now, just for a moment, let us assume you are correct. But if you are indeed correct, then how can this be so?”

“How can what be so?”

Harbart pointed to the paper, to the M–4 scrawled upon it.

“What does that mean?”

“Mean? If I tell you what it means, then my game is done. Oh, oh, oh, here come Shiva and Durga, such a plan being hatched, I tell you. Tell me, in this super-slick superficial age, how many can achieve even the middle level of virtue? How many can ascend to the fourth plane? When I die, do you think I’ll get there? No, I’ll be one of the lowest lapsees, slowly devoured by the pests of hell. Your son, on the other hand, now lives in eternal joy—as if in the garden of the gods, as if incarnated in the body of a demigod, glowing with the light of divine bliss.”

Atashi, entranced, hangs upon his every word.

“And you know what he said? He said, ‘Puja-prayers, all that stuff’s useless, you have to know how to die.’ He was full of good thoughts when he died, so he’s reaping the rewards now. Such joy, such joy! Mother, Mother mine, why did you not show us all this earlier, Mother … why?”

A grave Binoyendra-babu led a silent Atashi into the back seat of their Ambassador car and went home, his heart full with the knowledge that his pilot son had attained the state of medium virtue, had acquired abundant joy and ascended to the fourth plane—and his wallet lighter by the weight of two fifty-rupee notes.

“Your …”

“My?”

“I mean, how much should I give?”

“Give? Give. Don’t want to give? Don’t give. He who lives on alms, he who is spat upon daily, how can he set a price? If I had at least a degree or two, then perhaps I could have told you how much you should give.”

On the way out, Binayendra tucked two fifties beneath Harbart’s pillow.

That night, twenty was spent on a bottle and eighty put away in the trunk.

*

A few days later, Harbart climbed up to the second floor and gave his Jyathaima a hundred rupees and his Dhanna-boudi a box of sweets. “For Phuchka and Bulan. A treat from their uncle.” Big sweets for their big blows. Didn’t spare a kicking for Dhanna-dada either: “Dada, I hope you tried the sweets?” Dhanna-dada had emitted only a grunt in reply.

A few more days later, Dhanna-boudi said, “Thakurpo, so many maids and servants, all using that outside bathroom. Why don’t you use the one inside the house instead? Has anyone told you not to?”