Manika not only had the foresight to summon the eunuchs and mobilize the monkeys, anticipating the looming threat from the rabbi and his cohorts, but after that incident she made sure I was never again alone. There was not a moment subsequently when I was not surrounded by defenders and comforters—our four eunuchs and many of their fellow travelers just being there for me, spending quality time, spraying fine mists of patchouli into the air with atomizers they pulled out of their purses, Fetter Feivish and the mischievous members of his simian tribe tearing open bags of Bamba and Bissli meant for the rabbi’s kids, Bulbul and the delegation of bicycle rickshaw wallahs coming and going, and other assorted visitors. We sat around with our dupattas or the ends of our saris stretched demurely across the lower half of our faces because despite all the perfumes and joss sticks in the world, we could not deny the percolating smell of rot diffused by the microbes and bacteria released at last to gorge inside the carcass. With exemplary reverence and refinement, Manika knotted a kerchief like a pulley tightly around the still-uncovered face of the deceased as if it had a toothache, in order to close its mouth, which had been hanging down slack, wide open, revealing gray gums, an obscene dangling uvula, a swollen tongue, and all the secrets of my childhood.

It was Manika who made all the advance arrangements at the cremation ghat—paying double the fee in anticipation of what would be the extraordinary nature of our cortege, which would include the essential participation of the eunuchs in full regalia, hiring the services of a willing priest at double the price, purchasing double the amount, due to the unusual size of the body, of the best sandalwood for the pyre, the best ghee for fuel, the best incense for fragrance, and so on, price was not an object. Manika was the one who went out with two of our eunuchs as her fashion consultants on an errand to buy the shroud, as well as the lustrous saffron-colored and gold-ribboned coverings, garlands of flowers in abundance, an extra-sturdy reinforced bamboo bier on which to carry the corpse in the processional along the ghats, cords to tie it down securely, and all the other supplies. With a wall of eunuchs screening the bed for privacy, Manika washed the body and swaddled it in the thin sheet of the shroud, shooing away the flies and moths as she labored, this tiny woman performing all the heavy lifting on her own without an audible sigh or groan. And shortly before we all set out, because of the prohibition against the participation of women in the cremation rites due to the well-documented female tendency toward hysteria and the possibility that a lady overcome with grief might lunge headlong into the flames, which is now illegal, it was Manika who transformed me into the eldest son, into my male twin, into Shmelke, by draping me within the concealing folds of a pure white robe, and she shaved my head entirely, leaving only a small tuft in back, a little below the crown.