Aug 13, Saturday, 11:05 p.m.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss... every morning you greet me...

Captain von Trapp sang the song on loop on the tavern’s stereo, and Mario, mop in hand, apron tied around his ample midriff, sang along, as was his nightly routine at Tavern Edelweiss in Calangute, Goa. Famed Goan artiste Mario Miranda’s art adorned the tavern’s walls, its monochrome decor complementing the artist’s unmistakably minimalist, slice-of-life aesthetic. If the artist was Mario’s namesake, then Captain von Trapp was his voicesake.

Outside Tavern Edelweiss, the wind hummed its sibilant, sibylline tune.  Regular riffraff that haunted Calangute's favorite watering hole had mostly gone home to sleep off the night's inebriation, for they would be commanded by their wives and mothers to seek forgiveness inside the gleaming nave of St. Aloysius Church come morning. As happening as Baga Beach was to the younger crowd, nearby Calangute was also a place in which the constant hum of its long-timers’ lives created an atmosphere that was as calm as the slumberous sea after a raging high tide. The tavern had long disgorged its customers, raucous and subdued alike, to the streets that were lit more by the lights of passing vehicles than by street lamps. This was one place where, be you tourist or resident, you could find your way home in the dark: there was always a helpful, brolly-in-hand local dandy, himself exiting another pub who would point you in the direction you needed to go, a passing car that stopped when the driver spotted your thumb pointing skywards, the stray dog you sometimes fed biscuits to emerging from an invisible corner to help you traverse a treacherous alley, or familiar, tree-lined, shrub-adorned winding streets with trash strewn on either side that led you home, to your bed, from a day that was done.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss... you look happy to meet me...

Mario, tavern owner, just plain and simple Mario with his flat-top Frankenstein head, burly hands, and hairy ears, was mopping up the unpatroned floors of the tavern. It was just past 11:00 p.m., and Mario was particular about closing the tavern to patrons at 10:30 p.m. on the dot every evening. Local Goans knew of his rule and obliged uncomplainingly. They liked him and his singing and his collection of tipples and treats far too much to antagonize him. And traveling stragglers were tipped off either by local patrons or the ever-smiling Mario a few minutes past 10 o’clock that the doors would close in a few minutes, so if they could please hurry up and gobble up the last pieces of bebinca on their plates and down the last dregs of their chosen libation.

No one escaped this rule. Well, maybe Rustom, but he wasn’t a customer so much as he was Mario’s best friend. Or Mario was his. It wasn’t clear, and in friendships that have stood the test of time such as these, the who-and-whom order doesn’t matter now, does it? Inside the tavern, the lone figure of Rustom, head butler of the Braganza mansion, sat hunched over at a table near the northern corner, nursing a glass of house port. The silent plunk of his teardrops into his glass of wine went unheard as Mario sang Edelweiss, Edelweiss. And though Rustom lived in the staff quarters at Casa de Braganza rent-free as its butler, Mario’s tavern, and his apartment on the top floor of the tavern, were Rustom’s true home. He could be found at Tavern Edelweiss a few times each week after work for a quiet hour of conversation over copious amounts of Mario’s port wine.

Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow...

On the table, a button rose picked in the morning by Mario wilted in a white ceramic bud vase, scarlet fading to a lifeless red, a forlorn figure against the moonlight filtering in through the open window. A light mist shrouded the outside world, veiling the night in its greyness. In the distance, you could see the spire of St. Aloysius sticking up, a solemn and silent reminder for the depraved to seek redemption during Sunday mass. Holiday cottages on either side of the Edelweiss remained quiet and unlit, the world having retired to forget another uneventful Saturday. Occasionally, the stillness of the night was pierced by the howl of a dog somewhere out there in the world, far yet ominously near.

Most of the chairs were turned over and perched on the tables, but Mario's friend and brother Rustom could sit at his table for as long as he wanted. Captain von Trapp had long been a hero to Mario, and even if aproned, mopping Mario couldn't quite summon the captain's decorum and pewter button demeanor, he could still vee-fy the w with more aplomb than the captain ever did. Edelveiss, Edelveiss, he sang. Mario's mopping didn't bother Rustom, never had, so accustomed was he to the sound, but in the eeriness of the night, the slosh served as a plaintive metronome to the chiaroscuro of Rustom’s moonlit silhouette.

Bloom and grow forever...

Mario was the closest thing Rustom had to family in these parts of Goa. Rustom’s parents were long deceased, he had no siblings, and he had inherited only Rustom Senior’s penchant for butlering and his starched uniform by way of wealth and vocation. That, and his receding hairline. After his father had passed, Rustom had stepped into his role of chief butler at the Casa de Braganza to continue his family’s tradition of butlering for Goa’s most affluent family. He was forty-one, halfway balding with a pitiful combover, and married to his job.

Mario's repeated exhortations over the years to Rustom to quit his job had fallen on deaf ears. You may not have a butler's uniform here, but you will have the freedom you need from that wench. And in return for tending the bar, you will get all the wine you can drink, Mario kept telling him. But Rustom, unemancipated that he was from his father's expectations of him, had not heeded Mario's counsel. For so tied was he to the soil of Casa de Braganza, the soil to which his ancestors had pledged their lives, that their command was not something he could easily disregard.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss, bless my homeland forever...

Mario came swishing and swashing over to where Rustom sat at the table farthest from the door.

“So, she met karma, huh?” Mario said, wryly.

“Don’t say that, Mario,” Rustom responded softly.

“Well, she had to meet her karma at some point. Just like your father said she would.”

Rustom said nothing. He continued to stare at the world outside, not meeting Mario’s gaze.

Mario waited a beat before dropping his mop into the bucket of water to make his way over to Rustom’s table. He sat across from his friend and looked at him with kindness.

“You know what I mean. I bear no ill will towards her, but she did break your heart.”

“I know, I know, but this is not what I thought would happen.”

“Well, what did you think would happen? It runs in her family! Remember her mother?”

“Yes, but...”

Captain von Trapp continued to croon on the stereo. Mario continued to look at his friend, and Rustom continued to look out of the window at the yellow streetlight outside, casting its long shadow on those who were trying to decide whether to go home or wish away another sunrise by pretending it wasn’t round the corner. A stray dog sought kindness from those still lingering in the liminal in-between, but tonight, it seemed like most everyone was lost in their own world to pay the hungry mongrel any heed.

Rustom sat still, as still as the night, a defeated man, unsure of the part he had played in the grand scheme of things: perhaps only during hours of reckoning does a man realize how unprepared he is to reckon with the hour. He sat with his back to the door and the world, for that was his way. When you refuse to face the world, choosing instead to turn your back on it, chances are you won't see misery coming and might be blessed by that welcome respite of blissful ignorance before it all comes crashing down on you.

“Damn it, brother. I hate her for what she did to you. There. I said it.”

There’s a way friends look at you when you are not being truthful with yourself, and that was the look Mario gave Rustom before returning to his sloshing mop. Because nothing takes the sweetness out of a glass of port wine like a fat salty teardrop falling into it from a sad man’s eyes.

Plunk, plunk...

Slosh, slosh...

Edelweiss, Edelweiss...

*

Aug 12, Friday, 10 a.m.

The previous morning, Nazneen Braganza stood at the top of the stairs inside Casa de Braganza.

The Braganza bungalow, with its gleaming mahogany banisters, had housed several generations of the Braganzas. Built in the late 18th century by Hector Braganza, Casa de Braganza was to Calangute a monument of historical significance with its arched trellis, cobbled and winding pathway, sixteen rooms, thirteen bathrooms, and abundant servants' quarters in the basement. It had also been home to several generations of local cooks, butlers, gardeners, caretakers, and other assortments of help, who were thankful for a roof over their heads and steady livelihood in Goa's ever-tumultuous economy.

Nazneen was the widow of Oscar Braganza, recently deceased. Casa de Braganza's decor was an embarrassment of gaudy riches gathered from the Braganzas’ world exploration trips: mosaic tiles from Morocco, Mughal masonry, European style ceiling cornices, vases and paintings and knickknacks and bric-a-brac from every country that they traveled to as rich man and trophy wife. Their lifestyle was driven purely by a bloodlust of acquisition; having no heir left them with bucketfuls of money to throw away. Over time, Casa de Braganza transformed into an eclectic smorgasbord of clueless, impetuous affluence, the vulgar kind with no specific aesthetic: just pomp and show purely for bragging rights at the parties they regularly hosted. Oscar Braganza became accustomed to championing Nazneen's shopping expeditions while indulging his own vanity, acquiring a bust here and a plinth there, expensive delusions of hideous grandeur, so he would never have to run out of things to boast of during their December soirées, when the seven-tiered chandelier would glint down on the attendees. "Swarovski! From Austria", Oscar Braganza would verbally ejaculate into the gathered, easily-impressed ears that gaped in awe at the glitz around them.

Today, Oscar was no more. And Nazneen was holding fort at the top of the stairs, a perch that allowed her to look down on the servants she commanded. Rustom, whose grandfather and father had served the Braganzas before him, stood ready to answer the doorbell at the foot of the stairs, ears alert to Nazneen’s command. His expression remained stoic, but you could  tell he was absorbing every word uttered by their memsahib, as she was known to them, even though his eyes remained firmly trained on the door.

Rustom was in his butler's tuxedo with a tail, starched collar and white gloves in place, details that Oscar Braganza had insisted on from each of his butlers, who had all trained at the Royal Indian Butler Academy, at the Braganzas’ expense. Rustom's thinning hair was slicked back with gel, a small bump visible on the top of his head beneath the sparse combover.

Nazneen was the sole beneficiary of the Braganza estate, the line of Braganzas ending with her reckless marriage to a much older, very impotent Oscar Braganza: corpulent liquor baron, first wife deceased by an act of suicide for not bearing him a child, himself recently deceased from a heart attack, aged fifty-eight. No stone had been left unturned in the wish for an heir to the Braganza throne, and of course, the blame would conveniently transfer from Oscar's defunct vas deferens to Nazneen's barren womb, the very notion of malfunctioning manhood absurd, and well, unacceptable in moneyed society. All those surreptitious visits to the fertility clinic, on the pretext of getting Nazneen primed to receive the seed of life — in actuality, many wasted hours of porn magazines and furtive efforts sans issue — hadn't been able to coax out of Oscar Braganza a scion to his vast estate.

Nazneen was the undisputed queen of pregnant pauses when it came to her staff: her voice would steel, her gaze would slither and slide to reptilian keenness, and with just the tiniest, almost imperceptible shift in the angle of her sight, she would take in her servile audience across the wide hallway, until she had everyone's undivided attention. Nazneen cleared her throat. She had an announcement to make.

"I will be away for a few weeks starting next Wednesday per Dr. Menezes’s advice. If anyone of you needs me, I will be reachable between ten in the morning and noon every day."

At the foot of the stairs, standing outside the kitchen, Miriam, the matronly cook, was wringing her hands. If it was Dr. Menezes’s advice, it was serious. Miriam's nervous hands were always in the habit of wringing a dish towel, tangerine halves, or themselves. It was silently agreed upon by the staff that the maker's kindest gesture towards Miriam had been that her arms were too short to reach up and wring her own neck, just long enough to reach for the citrus juicer on the shelf atop the double sink in the kitchen. "Will you come back?" her tentative voice quavered. "Please don't forget us." How would they survive? What would she do?

Miriam made the meanest shrimp vindaloo as far as the eye could see up and down the coast, and her lagan nu custard beat every dessert in Goa’s many patisseries, but tact was not her middle name. And she was terrified of every single change in circumstance.

Nazneen, born middle-class Parsi, married moneyed Goan-Catholic, had long shunned traditional attire in favor of more modern, fuss-free clothing of pantsuits, silk blouses, and diaphanous gowns for festive occasions. She was in her late thirties but looked a decade younger. Her dense brown hair was pulled into an elegant chignon each day by her hairdresser, Sylvie Hairstylewalla, who fashioned Nazneen's hair every morning before lady Braganza descended the curving, carpeted staircase for breakfast. There was just the one twirl of hair that would cascade down the front of her face, spritzed into place with hairspray to soften the look.

Nazneen was immaculately put together before her staff got their first glimpse of her every day. Today, in her elegantly haughty hour of misfortune, an hour that seemed way too soon following her husband's demise seven months earlier, the shock of which Miriam was still recovering from, Nazneen demanded the same degree of grief from those in her employ, a sentiment she seldom was the recipient of.

For Nazneen, for as long as they had known her, had been full of herself. Her large, expressive eyes, the color of a spitting fire, flanked the bridge of a pert nose that was always up in the air, dotted with an archipelago of moles that only added to her exquisite beauty. Arrogance had been a part of her even before she was gifted her first diamond, inevitably followed by several more by her late husband, who, all through their marriage, had been transfixed by her iciness. She emanated coldness with all the insouciance of raging rapids.

Nazneen trained her withering, unfeeling gaze upon a still hand-wringing Miriam, the mask of authority never slipping. "Thank you for your concern, Miriam. I will do my best not to forget you." And without skipping a beat, she trained her gaze on Rustom. "Rustom, I would like to see you in my office tomorrow evening after tea, please."

*

August is monsoon season in Goa: cool, clean, minty crisp. Truth be told, no true Goan complains about inclement weather any time of the year. Goans just make do according to season and its attendant mood swings. If footwear tends to squelch on the streets during the monsoons where rainwater meets grass growing along the sidewalks, cheap, rubber flip-flops do the trick, for your lower limbs and the fabric that attire them will need a good washing once you get home anyway. And in the soles and armpit and crotch-drenching heat of the summer, sandals that are easy to slip your feet into and get out of before thresholds are breached are the sensible — rather, only — choice. Fancy threads and slingbacks are for the rave-loving elite and their offspring who get chauffeured around in air-conditioned cars, hopping clubs and leaving misdemeanors behind for local policemen with greased palms to deal with. For the average Goan, life choices are more functional than fancy.

Rustom had inherited his father's position as the head butler in the Braganza household upon the demise of the older Rustom twelve years ago: two years fresh out of heartbreak, avowed to bachelorhood thereon. And to stay in their trade without confusion, the Rustoms had arrived at the most elegant solution to differentiate between generations. For as long as the older Rustom was alive, the younger Rustom would be just Rustom, and the older, Rustomji. Providence hadn't yet visited upon the Rustoms a necessity for another layer of hierarchical clarity, as never once had three generations of butler Rustoms been alive at the same time.

Nobody knew that Rustom's first name was Reza, and perhaps even he himself had forgotten it.

This way, the Braganza household would just have to get used to a different face to the same name and responsibility: even that not so much, for the five generations of Rustoms that had served the Braganza family had all been six foot three, with male pattern baldness, a slight physical stoop that also doubled for veneration to the family they served, familial hypermetropia requiring them to look at the world with their head at an angle that lent them an air of natural snootiness, and that deliberate butler manner that invited confidences sans tut-tutting judgment.

It is said that Cyrano de Bergerac’s nose was the index of his great soul. In Rustom’s case, his unimpressive combover spoke volumes about his fortune, or the lack thereof.

Rustom, for that's how he now thought of himself, had also inherited Rustomji's disdain towards Nazneen Braganza nee Daruwalla, if to a lesser degree. Nazneen had replaced the older Mrs. Braganza as the lady of Casa de Braganza because her late husband, Oscar Braganza, was in want of a new trophy wife after the death of his first wife. And lovely, lissome Nazneen from the Rustoms' own community, social climber above all else, was on the ready to be courted, wined, dined, and wedded.

Parsi girls didn't marry into affluent Goan-Catholic households, especially not when they had promised their heart and undying love to unassuming young Parsi men. "She is a wretched concubine to an alcoholic's check!" Rustomji had wheezed on his deathbed, his own liquor-ravaged liver failing his body, in an irate tirade before he breathed his last. "Mark my words," he said. "She will die because of it, clutching her final pestilent payment that she cannot cash!"

When Rustom first arrived to replace Rustomji as Casa de Braganza's butler, the news of his jilted past spread like wildfire in the servants' quarters. It is the way of small, contained towns that gossip is the bloodline that keeps the community together in shared unhappiness, and to forget their own misery, they collect around the campfire of there but for the grace of God go I . But no one talked about Nazneen in Rustom's presence, though by their shifty glances and whispered gibberish, he knew he was the topic of their pressing conversation. It had taken all his will to not run away, and inch by painfully humiliating inch, he had earned his place in their tight-knit collective by refusing to participate in their salacity.

All except Mehrzad the caretaker, a bouncing, rotund, beaver-eyed man of undisguised glee, usually at the cost of someone else's misfortune. That Rustom's subservience could be bought by throwing him a knowing glance, tsk-ing in his general direction, and saying quasi-commiserative nothings became standard practice for the staff, who stopped just short of chiding their mistress for jilting him. Though this was deliberate, for behind his back, there were only sniggers about his lofty ambition. Expecting a woman like her to marry a commoner like him, no less! What kind of a fool do you have to be!

In return for their discretion, Rustom found himself providing unsolicited favors: taking their mail into town, bringing back small tokens of appreciation from the florist or the patisserie, filling in gaps in their duty rosters with his hours. He had handed to every single one of them, on a silver platter, an upper hand in their dynamic with him.

All but Miriam took advantage of his terror, though he wondered at times if her cloying maternal concern wasn’t more toxic than Mehrzad’s glee. But Mehrzad was only too happy to accept the bottles of Cabernet Oscar Braganza would give to Rustom on occasion, that Rustom would pass on to Mehrzad once their master had turned his back. Mehrzad had practically salivated at the salacious bit of information about Rustom and Nazneen, hence becoming the favored recipient of Rustom's unending gratitude for leaving him alone.

Not after Nazneen’s announcement that morning, though. As they all gathered in the staff dining hall for dinner, Rustom could not wait for it to end: he could tell Mehrzad and gang were itching to ask him questions and barely managed to eat a few forkfuls of Miriam’s vindaloo before excusing himself from the table.

The staff rooms were in the servants' quarters, laid out cheek-by-jowl on both sides of the narrow corridor that separated the two rows in the basement of the bungalow. That night, Rustom wondered what awaited him the next day as he got ready for bed.

Some nights, after Nazneen and Oscar had dined, and the staff had finished their dinner, if there were no other guests to be received, Reza would retreat to his room: a dinky 64 square foot hole in the wall with a single cot, a bed stand, a lamp, and a built-in wardrobe. The door would lull the voices outside into an indistinct cadence, and Rustom would nurse a glass of port wine or sherry — feny was too harsh for his taste — allowing the evening shadows to settle around him before retiring to bed.

Oftentimes as he lay drowsing, fighting the tug of war between wakefulness and sleep, his thoughts would turn towards those stolen hand in hand walks with Nazneen on the beach during their courtship. They had made a tacit decision to not be seen together during the day, choosing to meet near sunset to avoid risking inciting local gossip. On those evenings, the fading sun had glinted on the unstill waters, leaving a crimson-streaked walkway from this shore to that. Crows cawed their way over to the sodden sands to peck at sea-dweller carcasses washed ashore Fishermen returned with full boats and bulging nets that they tied to the jetty before hauling home their day's yield. And Nazneen would giggle at something Rustom said, or she would pout.

Many of these memories hid behind a black curtain in his mind, but sometimes, they emerged out from the deep recesses behind that curtain to taunt him. Ever since their doomed love affair, thousands of hearts had melted, hearts had melded, hearts had broken, and hearts had healed. But in the vast hearts-and-love scene in the universe’s grand scheme of things, his remained shattered, and he remained stuck in his emotional cul-de-sac that bore the name Nazneen, his desires ossified into memories.

Once his inamorata, now his employer. Then, madly in love, gazing at the woman he had hoped to make a home and a life with, adoration naked in his eyes; now extending ceremonial courtesy towards her in a bungalow in which he was merely a servant among many.

What could she possibly have to say to him now?

This had been his routine for the last twelve years: his mornings were spent in his occupation-mandated, straight-backed posture, and his evenings slumped in adult resignation inside his room or in the safety net of Tavern Edelweiss. As the boyfriend turned butler still hung up on his unrequited love, it was unthinkable to Rustom to hate the woman for more than a minute at a time, even if he agreed with his father’s sentiments about her, but one question lingered in his mind long after the conscious hours of the day were done and his mind slunk towards sleep: why? And more precisely: why me?

*

Aug 13, Saturday, 7 a.m.

The next morning, the moist earth was still fragrant with petrichor. Outside, the steady drizzle of the rain sluiced the well-tended rose and plumeria shrubs in the front yard. Inside, the storm-darkened parlor was alive with the scent of coffee and buttered toast from the kitchen.

Rustom found Miriam sobbing in the kitchen. Miriam walked around with a great swelling of sympathy in her chest, ready to dole it out to the first unfortunate, put-upon soul to cross her path each day. Everyone needed sympathy, it seemed, and she had plenty to give; and the more she gave, the more her reserve grew. She was a cornucopia of empathy for the human condition.

She was making akoori, spiced, herbed, and loaded scrambled eggs, and buttered ladi pav, and try as she might, Miriam was unable to bring herself to think of anything else but Nazneen’s announcement from the day before.

Rustom knew he needed to make his escape from the kitchen before things got out of hand. Not one for conversation, particularly not this conversation, particularly not with Miriam, God no, because she was the last person that he wanted to be rude to. He needed to keep his wits about him today.

“Oh, Rustom!” Miriam said, her voice a mélange of dips and shudders made snifflier by the diced onions on the chopping board. He was afraid she would snivel all over them, but stayed quiet, choosing to pour himself a cup of coffee before he had to answer the morning’s first doorbell.

“Oh, Rustom!” she cried, as she diced tomatoes and chillies and ginger and garlic and rolled up sprigs of cilantro, separating the stalks from the leaves to save the leaves for the garnish. The chopped stalks would cook along with the akoori to flavor it.

“Oh, Rustom!” she sobbed, as she broke two dozen eggs into a large dish and began to gently whisk them to get yolk and albumen to meld and come together with large dollops of full-fat cream. This was one of her life’s philosophies: fat made everything better.

“Oh, Rustom!” she wailed, as she bent down to excavate a tray of golden ladi pavs out of the oven, their yeasted, bumptious bosoms risen in acquiescent surrender to Miriam’s expert kneading.

“Oh, Rustom!” she lamented, as she set down the butter dish on the table. Miriam sourced the butter from a local dairy farmer, Pinto, who brought her colostrum every time one of his cows gave birth so she could make her famous kharwas that she would share with him. And even though she wasn’t really in a state of mind to enjoy the molten pudding today, she would still make it because dairy was her greatest failing and her one true love.

Before he could bite his tongue, he exclaimed: “Oh, for god’s sake!” Miriam wasn’t one to blaspheme. She turned to face him, mouth agape. “Can you stop crying at least until you have finished cooking? I don’t want to eat akoori that’s been salted with your snot!” Miriam did not have a single mean bone in her body. She may have been a blubbering mess today, but far be it from her to be sloppy and not wipe her nose with her handkerchief as she moved from one chopping task to another. She had been crying and cooking simultaneously for as long as her mind was able to travel back in memory, and it was a drill no one in the world knew better than she did. But Rustom’s uncharacteristically sharp words stung her enough for her to gain some composure. She turned her back to him to give her full attention to the task at hand.

Presently, she stopped sniffling long enough to focus on making the akoori. Rustom nursed his cup of coffee in silence while Miriam heated ghee and dropped cumin seeds into it and tipped in the onions to caramelize them a bit before throwing in the rest of the ingredients. While the liquid gold eggs-and-cream mixture burbled with the spices and the herbs to come together into pillowy, flavorful clumps, he gulped down the last of his coffee, and with as little noise as he could make, tiptoed over to the sink to place the cup in. He was about to make his exit when she exclaimed “Oh, Rustom! My heart goes out to you, child.”

Saying this, she crumpled into a sobbing mess in front of the sink, clutching the counter for support. Rustom hesitated before reaching over to give her an awkward hug. She had lost her husband to a long bout of colon cancer just over two years ago.

“I’m so sorry I lashed out at you, Miriam. You are the last person on earth I want to hurt.”

“It’s okay, child. I feel your pain. You have no one to call your own. All you inherited from your father was his baldness, and you serve as a butler to the woman you once loved. There is not much you have to feel happy about.”

Rustom paused for a minute before turning on his heels and walking out of the kitchen. The rest of the day went by in a blur: his mind a jumble, his emotions atumble, his heart heavier than lead, most of all with the memories that had jumped out from behind his mind’s curtain the night before, hostile in their intent; where did all the time go, he wondered, for it seemed like just yesterday, after high school, during his college years, Rustom had worked as handyman and dishwasher and waiter in almost all of Tito’s shacks on Baga Beach, and Rustomji had encouraged him to make some money so he could afford to take Nazneen out to the movies without asking his father for pocket money — besides, Rustomji had told him, when you get an actual butler job, you will have learned to be thankful to not have to wait on people anymore in beach shacks — and so here we are; and today was the one day where he did not want to lose his composure, please god, please don’t do this to me, can we just make sure I get through the day without anything untoward happening until I get to Edelweiss and Mario tonight, not that anything could be more untoward than what the last twelve years of his life had been — as he answered the doorbell each time it rang and glided through the festooned hallways and staircases of Casa de Braganza and averted his gaze whenever he felt Mehrzad’s beady eyes turn in his general direction — so memsahib wants to discuss things with you, huh? — and stayed out of Miriam’s matronly reach and kept his cool even as the gossipy whispers of the rest of his colleagues caused the little hairs on the nape of his neck to prickle; even though the bungalow had enough nooks and crannies he could escape to, it seemed as though that there was nowhere to hide today, in this grand house built by the late Hector Braganza, Oscar’s great-great-great-grandfather — I wonder how our fates and paths and karma came to be this entangled, he wanted to ask Hector, that you build a mansion as grand as this, and somehow, try as I might, I cannot seem to escape into darkness from my minuscule existence — but because he was not the sort of man who questioned anyone or anything, because he was not the sort of man to shake his fist at the injustices of his fate, nor the sort of man to demand reparations or fairness, yet also not the sort of man to not wonder where things went so wrong that he did not know which way to turn to change the trajectory of his inevitable fate, he went about the day doing what he was paid to do — he had been, after all, Oscar’s Man Friday, keeper of confidences extraordinaire, overlooking Oscar's shenanigans with pointed politeness, even during those times when Oscar Braganza would pat his wife's bottom and call her "Duckie", Rustom would remain unfazed, though he seethed inwardly, imagining deflating Oscar Braganza and his giant ego with a pin from Miriam’s pincushion — and that was to serve as an invisible prop to the grandiosity of the Braganza existence, and that is what he did today until it was time to bring Nazneen her evening tea, and it was finally time.

*

Aug 13, Saturday, 5 p.m.

An evening walk on the promenade in the monsoon season brought with it a vision of God’s splendor and the careful, intentional attention that the maker had paid to Goa in his crafting of this corner of the world nuzzling the Arabian Sea: the canopies of trees lining dusty streets that had thus far looked parched and starved filled out and came verdantly alive; undulating clouds thundered and marched towards the shore from the horizon like soldiers marching right after their war cry towards victory; the sun gracefully bowed out of the scene to allow the dark, on the wings of twilight, to descend over the earth each evening; and then there were the balmy breeze and the salty air that permeated everything around them. Rustom enjoyed these walks on the promenade, by himself, when the master and his wife were holidaying or partying and away from the residence. On these evenings, even Casa de Braganza’s God-awful ugly skyline did not bother him. Rustom suffered from the quiet insecurity of having grown up in a house where he had had to constantly make excuses for his anxious mother, who, bless her heart, had lived only to make excuses for her husband. Quiet time by himself was the most precious commodity. And despite the humidity, the evening promised to be pleasant.

But today was not an evening for a quiet walk by himself. Nazneen would want to take a walk on the promenade, and now that Oscar was no longer around to indulge his wife’s every whim and fancy, it would fall on Rustom to accompany her on her walk. He knew that she would invite him to join her, like she had countless times before since Oscar’s death, he just knew it. This had made him the butt of jokes to Mehrzad, who was careful to never let Nazneen see his viciousness, saving all his jibes for Rustom’s ears instead.

He had been summoned to Nazneen’s office today at 5 p.m. When the monsoons arrive in Goa, the days grow darker, with only a sliver of sunlight here and there to light up the parlor, sitting inside which Nazneen partook in her evening tea between 4 and 5 p.m., lingering over the afternoon news while enjoying tiny bites of whatever Miriam had rustled up that day for tea. As soon as evening tea — slices of dodol, khari biscuit, and cups of steaming chai — was put away, Rustom was summoned to clear the tray.

He dreaded what was to follow: the walk, whatever Nazneen had to say to him, being that close to her while being far below her station, the peering eyes from behind the curtains of the windows of Casa de Braganza, the murmurs, ranging from pity to curiosity to nastiness, and the many explanations he would have to offer ad nauseum to placate everyone in the staff quarters once the upper world had gone to sleep.

Shortly, he followed Nazneen to her office, gliding up the staircase in his unhurried butler manner, a ritual he knew now like the back of Nazneen’s hand, her quick laugh, her stormy moods: switch on the decorative ceiling lights, one by one, so they illuminated Nazneen’s path up the staircase while keeping pace with her footsteps. A butler does not shuffle, does not fumble, does not trip. Each footstep is carefully, deliberately considered to provoke neither anger nor anxiety, nor kick over pots of succulents that dotted the staircase, like he had been taught by Rustomji.

Like someone once said, all the clutter in the house used to be money that the Braganzas had to spend one way or another. If it wasn’t a crystal chandelier or decorative ceiling lights, it was cacti. “Shall we go take a walk, Rustom?” she asked. It was not a question so much as it was an instruction, and both knew this.

“Yes, your ladyship,” he replied. When he had first called her that, Mehrzad had smirked. But it was what Rustomji had taught him to do, it was what the job demanded, it was all that he knew. He did not have much, but he knew the conventions of his trade, and he would do right by his father’s memory.

Hearing him say that to her today made her wince, but she was careful not to show it. As she made her way out the parlor door, he followed, keeping two footsteps between them. Walking from the parlor to the back of the house, where the balcony doors opened to the promenade, he stared straight ahead, the sight of the stormy sea ahead of them, feeling the prick of every single arrow from all the invisible eyes on his back.

They walked down the pathway to the promenade, a gift from Oscar Braganza to his wife, because all he knew was that he loved the woman he had married, and he wanted to offer her every single delight that he could. Besides, she had asked for it in her list of demands when he had proposed to her, and when it came to his lady love, Oscar Braganza was nothing if not a man of his word. No beach in Goa was without hippies and beach shacks and tourists, so having a promenade at an elevation to separate them from the beach bums below was something that suited Oscar Braganza well.

Shortly, Rustom was relieved to no longer feel the piercing arrows on his back as they put some distance between themselves and the mansion.

“You can now walk with me, Rustom. Don’t walk behind me. When I talk to you, I need to see you.”

“Yes, your ladyship.”

He still maintained a distance of two steps between them.

Back when they were dreaming of a life together, he would shyly call her memsahib: she was the master and mistress and supreme overlord of his heart after all, and there was nothing more important than placing her on a pedestal. Her outgoing, forward-thinking, starry-eyed nature had attracted, spoken to, beckoned his reticent, wallflower persona: she had even dreamed his dreams for him. While she knew that butlering was in his blood, she had wanted a life far away from it as possible. She had filled his head with ideas and possibilities that were nowhere near the realm of his imagination, arousing a primeval longing in his soul he did not recognize from this lifetime.

Below the promenade, on the beach, stray dogs milled about between throngs of potbellied tourists and local fishermen who were both enjoying their evening tipple at one of Tito’s many thatched-roof shacks that lined the beach.  It was a beautiful evening, the kind that every beachgoer is witness to every single day, but the kind that takes their breath away anyway, because no other evening has been as beautiful as this one here, right now. Clouds were gathering near the horizon; a throng of homeward bound birds screeched in the overcast August skies.

Nazneen stopped to gaze at the stretch of the skies in front of them, the sinking sun slinking behind the clouds. He stopped two steps behind her, hands clasped behind his back, and gazed out at the same grey expanse that she did.

“Remember the day up on that hill in Amboli?”

Which one, he thought. The day when I asked you to marry me, or the one when you broke my heart? Both were a very long time ago, but he remembered.

“When you asked me to marry you? Do you remember how you tumbled down the hill? To chase after that orange that fell out of the picnic basket? Even before I could call out to you that we had another that we could share, you ran after it, your clumsy feet no match for the slope of the hill, tumbling down quicker than I could gather my words together. I laughed so hard that day, I cried." Tiny specks of gold danced in Nazneen's eyes as she said it, and even though he could not see them from where he stood, he knew that’s what they did.

He didn’t answer her. He knew she would get to her point by herself.

“God, what a mess I’ve made of everything.”

A gust of wind whipped Nazneen’s hair into her face, and it took all of Rustom’s control to not brush her hair aside.

“Dr. Menezes says I have early-stage Alzheimer’s, Reza.”

Rustom turned to look at her, mouth slightly agape.

“Just like my mother. Small things, like adding an extra spoon of sugar to my tea, misplacing my earrings, forgetting what I came to get from the office or the fridge. I knew even before he confirmed it.”

In the amber glow of twilight, she looked resplendent as ever. All he needed, all he had ever needed, was to steal a glance at her to feel alive. A darkness settled around his soul.

He turned away from her to look at the sea again.

“I know I have no right to ask anything of you, but I still will, knowing you the way I know you. I have no allies, no one to call on when things get worse. You are the only person I trust. I will need you, Reza, and you will be there when I do.”

Thunder trumpeted in the distance, and a bolt of lightning flashed near the horizon.

“You know what my biggest regret is?”

Nazneen told him: that in her attempt to court a life of luxury and acquire riches and make a better life than the one she had had with him, she had forgotten to collect happy memories, that her memory bank was now a wasteland.

“But I will not apologize to you. Whatever I did, whatever I chose, I did it knowing full well what I was doing. No one was going to make my life’s choices for me. You understand that, don’t you?”

Yes. Yes, I do.

"You won't forget me, will you, Reza? Even when I no longer remember you?"

How could I?

He turned again to look at her, really look at her for the first time in years. We are temporal beings: our awareness extends in the direction in which we think time moves, but time is cruel and conniving for it is formless, without direction. We travel with time, imprisoned within its march, starkly aware of how short our timespan is in this one life, and we comport and contort ourselves to become who someone else wants us to be, and one day, wonder who we really are.

But in this one lone moment in all the moments that make up time, one lone moment that stood still, Rustom saw Nazneen, the woman he had fallen in love with, like he had always known her — luminous, stubborn, unaware of anything but her own needs — the keening wail of the incoming storm whistling the broken notes of their forgotten song.

Aug 13, Saturday, 11:05 p.m.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss... every morning you greet me...

Captain von Trapp sang the song on loop on the tavern’s stereo, and Mario, mop in hand, apron tied around his ample midriff, sang along, as was his nightly routine at Tavern Edelweiss in Calangute, Goa. Famed Goan artiste Mario Miranda’s art adorned the tavern’s walls, its monochrome decor complementing the artist’s unmistakably minimalist, slice-of-life aesthetic. If the artist was Mario’s namesake, then Captain von Trapp was his voicesake.

Outside Tavern Edelweiss, the wind hummed its sibilant, sibylline tune.  Regular riffraff that haunted Calangute's favorite watering hole had mostly gone home to sleep off the night's inebriation, for they would be commanded by their wives and mothers to seek forgiveness inside the gleaming nave of St. Aloysius Church come morning. As happening as Baga Beach was to the younger crowd, nearby Calangute was also a place in which the constant hum of its long-timers’ lives created an atmosphere that was as calm as the slumberous sea after a raging high tide. The tavern had long disgorged its customers, raucous and subdued alike, to the streets that were lit more by the lights of passing vehicles than by street lamps. This was one place where, be you tourist or resident, you could find your way home in the dark: there was always a helpful, brolly-in-hand local dandy, himself exiting another pub who would point you in the direction you needed to go, a passing car that stopped when the driver spotted your thumb pointing skywards, the stray dog you sometimes fed biscuits to emerging from an invisible corner to help you traverse a treacherous alley, or familiar, tree-lined, shrub-adorned winding streets with trash strewn on either side that led you home, to your bed, from a day that was done.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss... you look happy to meet me...

Mario, tavern owner, just plain and simple Mario with his flat-top Frankenstein head, burly hands, and hairy ears, was mopping up the unpatroned floors of the tavern. It was just past 11:00 p.m., and Mario was particular about closing the tavern to patrons at 10:30 p.m. on the dot every evening. Local Goans knew of his rule and obliged uncomplainingly. They liked him and his singing and his collection of tipples and treats far too much to antagonize him. And traveling stragglers were tipped off either by local patrons or the ever-smiling Mario a few minutes past 10 o’clock that the doors would close in a few minutes, so if they could please hurry up and gobble up the last pieces of bebinca on their plates and down the last dregs of their chosen libation.

No one escaped this rule. Well, maybe Rustom, but he wasn’t a customer so much as he was Mario’s best friend. Or Mario was his. It wasn’t clear, and in friendships that have stood the test of time such as these, the who-and-whom order doesn’t matter now, does it? Inside the tavern, the lone figure of Rustom, head butler of the Braganza mansion, sat hunched over at a table near the northern corner, nursing a glass of house port. The silent plunk of his teardrops into his glass of wine went unheard as Mario sang Edelweiss, Edelweiss. And though Rustom lived in the staff quarters at Casa de Braganza rent-free as its butler, Mario’s tavern, and his apartment on the top floor of the tavern, were Rustom’s true home. He could be found at Tavern Edelweiss a few times each week after work for a quiet hour of conversation over copious amounts of Mario’s port wine.

Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow...

On the table, a button rose picked in the morning by Mario wilted in a white ceramic bud vase, scarlet fading to a lifeless red, a forlorn figure against the moonlight filtering in through the open window. A light mist shrouded the outside world, veiling the night in its greyness. In the distance, you could see the spire of St. Aloysius sticking up, a solemn and silent reminder for the depraved to seek redemption during Sunday mass. Holiday cottages on either side of the Edelweiss remained quiet and unlit, the world having retired to forget another uneventful Saturday. Occasionally, the stillness of the night was pierced by the howl of a dog somewhere out there in the world, far yet ominously near.

Most of the chairs were turned over and perched on the tables, but Mario's friend and brother Rustom could sit at his table for as long as he wanted. Captain von Trapp had long been a hero to Mario, and even if aproned, mopping Mario couldn't quite summon the captain's decorum and pewter button demeanor, he could still vee-fy the w with more aplomb than the captain ever did. Edelveiss, Edelveiss, he sang. Mario's mopping didn't bother Rustom, never had, so accustomed was he to the sound, but in the eeriness of the night, the slosh served as a plaintive metronome to the chiaroscuro of Rustom’s moonlit silhouette.

Bloom and grow forever...

Mario was the closest thing Rustom had to family in these parts of Goa. Rustom’s parents were long deceased, he had no siblings, and he had inherited only Rustom Senior’s penchant for butlering and his starched uniform by way of wealth and vocation. That, and his receding hairline. After his father had passed, Rustom had stepped into his role of chief butler at the Casa de Braganza to continue his family’s tradition of butlering for Goa’s most affluent family. He was forty-one, halfway balding with a pitiful combover, and married to his job.

Mario's repeated exhortations over the years to Rustom to quit his job had fallen on deaf ears. You may not have a butler's uniform here, but you will have the freedom you need from that wench. And in return for tending the bar, you will get all the wine you can drink, Mario kept telling him. But Rustom, unemancipated that he was from his father's expectations of him, had not heeded Mario's counsel. For so tied was he to the soil of Casa de Braganza, the soil to which his ancestors had pledged their lives, that their command was not something he could easily disregard.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss, bless my homeland forever...

Mario came swishing and swashing over to where Rustom sat at the table farthest from the door.

“So, she met karma, huh?” Mario said, wryly.

“Don’t say that, Mario,” Rustom responded softly.

“Well, she had to meet her karma at some point. Just like your father said she would.”

Rustom said nothing. He continued to stare at the world outside, not meeting Mario’s gaze.

Mario waited a beat before dropping his mop into the bucket of water to make his way over to Rustom’s table. He sat across from his friend and looked at him with kindness.

“You know what I mean. I bear no ill will towards her, but she did break your heart.”

“I know, I know, but this is not what I thought would happen.”

“Well, what did you think would happen? It runs in her family! Remember her mother?”

“Yes, but...”

Captain von Trapp continued to croon on the stereo. Mario continued to look at his friend, and Rustom continued to look out of the window at the yellow streetlight outside, casting its long shadow on those who were trying to decide whether to go home or wish away another sunrise by pretending it wasn’t round the corner. A stray dog sought kindness from those still lingering in the liminal in-between, but tonight, it seemed like most everyone was lost in their own world to pay the hungry mongrel any heed.

Rustom sat still, as still as the night, a defeated man, unsure of the part he had played in the grand scheme of things: perhaps only during hours of reckoning does a man realize how unprepared he is to reckon with the hour. He sat with his back to the door and the world, for that was his way. When you refuse to face the world, choosing instead to turn your back on it, chances are you won't see misery coming and might be blessed by that welcome respite of blissful ignorance before it all comes crashing down on you.

“Damn it, brother. I hate her for what she did to you. There. I said it.”

There’s a way friends look at you when you are not being truthful with yourself, and that was the look Mario gave Rustom before returning to his sloshing mop. Because nothing takes the sweetness out of a glass of port wine like a fat salty teardrop falling into it from a sad man’s eyes.

Plunk, plunk...

Slosh, slosh...

Edelweiss, Edelweiss...

*

Aug 12, Friday, 10 a.m.

The previous morning, Nazneen Braganza stood at the top of the stairs inside Casa de Braganza.

The Braganza bungalow, with its gleaming mahogany banisters, had housed several generations of the Braganzas. Built in the late 18th century by Hector Braganza, Casa de Braganza was to Calangute a monument of historical significance with its arched trellis, cobbled and winding pathway, sixteen rooms, thirteen bathrooms, and abundant servants' quarters in the basement. It had also been home to several generations of local cooks, butlers, gardeners, caretakers, and other assortments of help, who were thankful for a roof over their heads and steady livelihood in Goa's ever-tumultuous economy.

Nazneen was the widow of Oscar Braganza, recently deceased. Casa de Braganza's decor was an embarrassment of gaudy riches gathered from the Braganzas’ world exploration trips: mosaic tiles from Morocco, Mughal masonry, European style ceiling cornices, vases and paintings and knickknacks and bric-a-brac from every country that they traveled to as rich man and trophy wife. Their lifestyle was driven purely by a bloodlust of acquisition; having no heir left them with bucketfuls of money to throw away. Over time, Casa de Braganza transformed into an eclectic smorgasbord of clueless, impetuous affluence, the vulgar kind with no specific aesthetic: just pomp and show purely for bragging rights at the parties they regularly hosted. Oscar Braganza became accustomed to championing Nazneen's shopping expeditions while indulging his own vanity, acquiring a bust here and a plinth there, expensive delusions of hideous grandeur, so he would never have to run out of things to boast of during their December soirées, when the seven-tiered chandelier would glint down on the attendees. "Swarovski! From Austria", Oscar Braganza would verbally ejaculate into the gathered, easily-impressed ears that gaped in awe at the glitz around them.

Today, Oscar was no more. And Nazneen was holding fort at the top of the stairs, a perch that allowed her to look down on the servants she commanded. Rustom, whose grandfather and father had served the Braganzas before him, stood ready to answer the doorbell at the foot of the stairs, ears alert to Nazneen’s command. His expression remained stoic, but you could  tell he was absorbing every word uttered by their memsahib, as she was known to them, even though his eyes remained firmly trained on the door.

Rustom was in his butler's tuxedo with a tail, starched collar and white gloves in place, details that Oscar Braganza had insisted on from each of his butlers, who had all trained at the Royal Indian Butler Academy, at the Braganzas’ expense. Rustom's thinning hair was slicked back with gel, a small bump visible on the top of his head beneath the sparse combover.

Nazneen was the sole beneficiary of the Braganza estate, the line of Braganzas ending with her reckless marriage to a much older, very impotent Oscar Braganza: corpulent liquor baron, first wife deceased by an act of suicide for not bearing him a child, himself recently deceased from a heart attack, aged fifty-eight. No stone had been left unturned in the wish for an heir to the Braganza throne, and of course, the blame would conveniently transfer from Oscar's defunct vas deferens to Nazneen's barren womb, the very notion of malfunctioning manhood absurd, and well, unacceptable in moneyed society. All those surreptitious visits to the fertility clinic, on the pretext of getting Nazneen primed to receive the seed of life — in actuality, many wasted hours of porn magazines and furtive efforts sans issue — hadn't been able to coax out of Oscar Braganza a scion to his vast estate.

Nazneen was the undisputed queen of pregnant pauses when it came to her staff: her voice would steel, her gaze would slither and slide to reptilian keenness, and with just the tiniest, almost imperceptible shift in the angle of her sight, she would take in her servile audience across the wide hallway, until she had everyone's undivided attention. Nazneen cleared her throat. She had an announcement to make.

"I will be away for a few weeks starting next Wednesday per Dr. Menezes’s advice. If anyone of you needs me, I will be reachable between ten in the morning and noon every day."

At the foot of the stairs, standing outside the kitchen, Miriam, the matronly cook, was wringing her hands. If it was Dr. Menezes’s advice, it was serious. Miriam's nervous hands were always in the habit of wringing a dish towel, tangerine halves, or themselves. It was silently agreed upon by the staff that the maker's kindest gesture towards Miriam had been that her arms were too short to reach up and wring her own neck, just long enough to reach for the citrus juicer on the shelf atop the double sink in the kitchen. "Will you come back?", her tentative voice quavered. "Please don't forget us." How would they survive? What would she do?

Miriam made the meanest shrimp vindaloo as far as the eye could see up and down the coast, and her lagan nu custard beat every dessert in Goa’s many patisseries, but tact was not her middle name. And she was terrified of every single change in circumstance.

Nazneen, born middle-class Parsi, married moneyed Goan-Catholic, had long shunned traditional attire in favor of more modern, fuss-free clothing of pantsuits, silk blouses, and diaphanous gowns for festive occasions. She was in her late thirties but looked a decade younger. Her dense brown hair was pulled into an elegant chignon each day by her hairdresser, Sylvie Hairstylewalla, who fashioned Nazneen's hair every morning before lady Braganza descended the curving, carpeted staircase for breakfast. There was just the one twirl of hair that would cascade down the front of her face, spritzed into place with hairspray to soften the look.

Nazneen was immaculately put together before her staff got their first glimpse of her every day. Today, in her elegantly haughty hour of misfortune, an hour that seemed way too soon following her husband's demise seven months earlier, the shock of which Miriam was still recovering from, Nazneen demanded the same degree of grief from those in her employ, a sentiment she seldom was the recipient of.

For Nazneen, for as long as they had known her, had been full of herself. Her large, expressive eyes, the color of a spitting fire, flanked the bridge of a pert nose that was always up in the air, dotted with an archipelago of moles that only added to her exquisite beauty. Arrogance had been a part of her even before she was gifted her first diamond, inevitably followed by several more by her late husband, who, all through their marriage, had been transfixed by her iciness. She emanated coldness with all the insouciance of raging rapids.

Nazneen trained her withering, unfeeling gaze upon a still hand-wringing Miriam, the mask of authority never slipping. "Thank you for your concern, Miriam. I will do my best not to forget you." And without skipping a beat, she trained her gaze on Rustom. "Rustom, I would like to see you in my office tomorrow evening after tea, please."

*

August is monsoon season in Goa: cool, clean, minty crisp. Truth be told, no true Goan complains about inclement weather any time of the year. Goans just make do according to season and its attendant mood swings. If footwear tends to squelch on the streets during the monsoons where rainwater meets grass growing along the sidewalks, cheap, rubber flip-flops do the trick, for your lower limbs and the fabric that attire them will need a good washing once you get home anyway. And in the soles and armpit and crotch-drenching heat of the summer, sandals that are easy to slip your feet into and get out of before thresholds are breached are the sensible — rather, only — choice. Fancy threads and slingbacks are for the rave-loving elite and their offspring who get chauffeured around in air-conditioned cars, hopping clubs and leaving misdemeanors behind for local policemen with greased palms to deal with. For the average Goan, life choices are more functional than fancy.

Rustom had inherited his father's position as the head butler in the Braganza household upon the demise of the older Rustom twelve years ago: two years fresh out of heartbreak, avowed to bachelorhood thereon. And to stay in their trade without confusion, the Rustoms had arrived at the most elegant solution to differentiate between generations. For as long as the older Rustom was alive, the younger Rustom would be just Rustom, and the older, Rustomji. Providence hadn't yet visited upon the Rustoms a necessity for another layer of hierarchical clarity, as never once had three generations of butler Rustoms been alive at the same time.

Nobody knew that Rustom's first name was Reza, and perhaps even he himself had forgotten it.

This way, the Braganza household would just have to get used to a different face to the same name and responsibility: even that not so much, for the five generations of Rustoms that had served the Braganza family had all been six foot three, with male pattern baldness, a slight physical stoop that also doubled for veneration to the family they served, familial hypermetropia requiring them to look at the world with their head at an angle that lent them an air of natural snootiness, and that deliberate butler manner that invited confidences sans tut-tutting judgment.

It is said that Cyrano de Bergerac’s nose was the index of his great soul. In Rustom’s case, his unimpressive combover spoke volumes about his fortune, or the lack thereof.

Rustom, for that's how he now thought of himself, had also inherited Rustomji's disdain towards Nazneen Braganza nee Daruwalla, if to a lesser degree. Nazneen had replaced the older Mrs. Braganza as the lady of Casa de Braganza because her late husband, Oscar Braganza, was in want of a new trophy wife after the death of his first wife. And lovely, lissome Nazneen from the Rustoms' own community, social climber above all else, was on the ready to be courted, wined, dined, and wedded.

Parsi girls didn't marry into affluent Goan-Catholic households, especially not when they had promised their heart and undying love to unassuming young Parsi men. "She is a wretched concubine to an alcoholic's check!", Rustomji had wheezed on his deathbed, his own liquor-ravaged liver failing his body, in an irate tirade before he breathed his last. "Mark my words," he said. "She will die because of it, clutching her final pestilent payment that she cannot cash!"

When Rustom first arrived to replace Rustomji as Casa de Braganza's butler, the news of his jilted past spread like wildfire in the servant's quarters. It is the way of small, contained towns that gossip is the bloodline that keeps the community together in shared unhappiness, and to forget their own misery, they collect around the campfire of there but for the grace of God go I . But no one talked about Nazneen in Rustom's presence, though by their shifty glances and whispered gibberish, he knew he was the topic of their pressing conversation. It had taken all his will to not run away, and inch by painfully humiliating inch, he had earned his place in their tight-knit collective by refusing to participate in their salacity.

All except Mehrzad the caretaker, a bouncing, rotund, beaver-eyed man of undisguised glee, usually at the cost of someone else's misfortune. That Rustom's subservience could be bought by throwing him a knowing glance, tsk-ing in his general direction, and saying quasi-commiserative nothings became standard practice for the staff, who stopped just short of chiding their mistress for jilting him. Though this was deliberate, for behind his back, there were only sniggers about his lofty ambition. Expecting a woman like her to marry a commoner like him, no less! What kind of a fool do you have to be!

In return for their discretion, Rustom found himself providing unsolicited favors: taking their mail into town, bringing back small tokens of appreciation from the florist or the patisserie, filling in gaps in their duty rosters with his hours. He had handed to every single one of them, on a silver platter, an upper hand in their dynamic with him.

All but Miriam took advantage of his terror, though he wondered at times if her cloying maternal concern wasn’t more toxic than Mehrzad’s glee. But Mehrzad was only too happy to accept the bottles of Cabernet Oscar Braganza would give to Rustom on occasion, that Rustom would pass on to Mehrzad once their master had turned his back. Mehrzad had practically salivated at the salacious bit of information about Rustom and Nazneen, hence becoming the favored recipient of Rustom's unending gratitude for leaving him alone.

Not after Nazneen’s announcement that morning, though. As they all gathered in the staff dining hall for dinner, Rustom could not wait for it to end: he could tell Mehrzad and gang were itching to ask him questions, and barely managed to eat a few forkfuls of Miriam’s vindaloo before excusing himself from the table.

The staff rooms were in the servant’s quarters, laid out cheek-by-jowl on both sides of the narrow corridor that separated the two rows in the basement of the bungalow. That night, Rustom wondered what awaited him the next day as he got ready for bed.

Some nights, after Nazneen and Oscar had dined, and the staff had finished their dinner, if there were no other guests to be received, Reza would retreat to his room: a dinky 64 square foot hole in the wall with a single cot, a bed stand, a lamp, and a built-in wardrobe. The door would lull the voices outside into an indistinct cadence, and Rustom would nurse a glass of port wine or sherry — feny was too harsh for his taste — allowing the evening shadows to settle around him before retiring to bed.

Oftentimes as he lay drowsing, fighting the tug of war between wakefulness and sleep, his thoughts would turn towards those stolen hand in hand walks with Nazneen on the beach during their courtship. They had made a tacit decision to not be seen together during the day, choosing to meet near sunset to avoid risking inciting local gossip. On those evenings, the fading sun had glinted on the unstill waters, leaving a crimson-streaked walkway from this shore to that. Crows cawed their way over to the sodden sands to peck at sea-dweller carcasses washed ashore Fishermen returned with full boats and bulging nets that they tied to the jetty before hauling home their day's yield. And Nazneen would giggle at something Rustom said, or she would pout.

Many of these memories hid behind a black curtain in his mind, but sometimes, they emerged out from the deep recesses behind that curtain to taunt him. Ever since their doomed love affair, thousands of hearts had melted, hearts had melded, hearts had broken, and hearts had healed. But in the vast hearts-and-love scene in the universe’s grand scheme of things, his remained shattered, and he remained stuck in his emotional cul-de-sac that bore the name Nazneen, his desires ossified into memories.

Once his inamorata, now his employer. Then, madly in love, gazing at the woman he had hoped to make a home and a life with, adoration naked in his eyes; now extending ceremonial courtesy towards her in a bungalow in which he was merely a servant among many.

What could she possibly have to say to him now?

This had been his routine for the last twelve years: his mornings were spent in his occupation-mandated, straight-backed posture, and his evenings slumped in adult resignation inside his room or in the safety net of Tavern Edelweiss. As the boyfriend turned butler still hung up on his unrequited love, it was unthinkable to Rustom to hate the woman for more than a minute at a time, even if he agreed with his father’s sentiments about her, but one question lingered in his mind long after the conscious hours of the day were done and his mind slunk towards sleep: why? And more precisely: why me?

*

Aug 13, Saturday, 7 a.m.

The next morning, the moist earth was still fragrant with petrichor. Outside, the steady drizzle of the rain sluiced the well-tended rose and plumeria shrubs in the front yard. Inside, the storm-darkened parlor was alive with the scent of coffee and buttered toast from the kitchen.

Rustom found Miriam sobbing in the kitchen. Miriam walked around with a great swelling of sympathy in her chest, ready to dole it out to the first unfortunate, put-upon soul to cross her path each day. Everyone needed sympathy, it seemed, and she had plenty to give; and the more she gave, the more her reserve grew. She was a cornucopia of empathy for the human condition.

She was making akoori, spiced, herbed, and loaded scrambled eggs, and buttered ladi pav, and try as she might, Miriam was unable to bring herself to think of anything else but Nazneen’s announcement from the day before.

Rustom knew he needed to make his escape from the kitchen before things got out of hand. Not one for conversation, particularly not this conversation, particularly not with Miriam, God no, because she was the last person that he wanted to be rude to. He needed to keep his wits about him today.

“Oh, Rustom!” Miriam said, her voice a mélange of dips and shudders made snifflier by the diced onions on the chopping board. He was afraid she would snivel all over them, but stayed quiet, choosing to pour himself a cup of coffee before he had to answer the morning’s first doorbell.

“Oh, Rustom!” she cried, as she diced tomatoes and chillies and ginger and garlic and rolled up sprigs of cilantro, separating the stalks from the leaves to save the leaves for the garnish. The chopped stalks would cook along with the akoori to flavor it.

“Oh, Rustom!” she sobbed, as she broke two dozen eggs into a large dish and began to gently whisk them to get yolk and albumen to meld and come together with large dollops of full-fat cream. This was one of her life’s philosophies: fat made everything better.

“Oh, Rustom!” she wailed, as she bent down to excavate a tray of golden ladi pavs out of the oven, their yeasted, bumptious bosoms risen in acquiescent surrender to Miriam’s expert kneading.

“Oh, Rustom!” she lamented, as she set down the butter dish on the table. Miriam sourced the butter from a local dairy farmer, Pinto, who brought her colostrum every time one of his cows gave birth so she could make her famous kharwas that she would share with him. And even though she wasn’t really in a state of mind to enjoy the molten pudding today, she would still make it because dairy was her greatest failing and her one true love.

Before he could bite his tongue, he exclaimed: “Oh, for god’s sake!” Miriam wasn’t one to blaspheme. She turned to face him, mouth agape. “Can you stop crying at least until you have finished cooking? I don’t want to eat akoori that’s been salted with your snot!” Miriam did not have a single mean bone in her body. She may have been a blubbering mess today, but far be it from her to be sloppy and not wipe her nose with her handkerchief as she moved from one chopping task to another. She had been crying and cooking simultaneously for as long as her mind was able to travel back in memory, and it was a drill no one in the world knew better than she did. But Rustom’s uncharacteristically sharp words stung her enough for her to gain some composure. She turned her back to him to give her full attention to the task at hand.

Presently, she stopped sniffling long enough to focus on making the akoori. Rustom nursed his cup of coffee in silence while Miriam heated ghee and dropped cumin seeds into it and tipped in the onions to caramelize them a bit before throwing in the rest of the ingredients. While the liquid gold eggs-and-cream mixture burbled with the spices and the herbs to come together into pillowy, flavorful clumps, he gulped down the last of his coffee, and with as little noise as he could make, tiptoed over to the sink to place the cup in. He was about to make his exit when she exclaimed “Oh, Rustom! My heart goes out to you, child.”

Saying this, she crumpled into a sobbing mess in front of the sink, clutching the counter for support. Rustom hesitated before reaching over to give her an awkward hug. She had lost her husband to a long bout of colon cancer just over two years ago.

“I’m so sorry I lashed out at you, Miriam. You are the last person on earth I want to hurt.”

“It’s okay, child. I feel your pain. You have no one to call your own. All you inherited from your father was his baldness, and you serve as a butler to the woman you once loved. There is not much you have to feel happy about.”

Rustom paused for a minute before turning on his heels and walking out of the kitchen. The rest of the day went by in a blur: his mind a jumble, his emotions atumble, his heart heavier than lead, most of all with the memories that had jumped out from behind his mind’s curtain the night before, hostile in their intent; where did all the time go, he wondered, for it seemed like just yesterday, after high school, during his college years, Rustom had worked as handyman and dishwasher and waiter in almost all of Tito’s shacks on Baga Beach, and Rustomji had encouraged him to make some money so he could afford to take Nazneen out to the movies without asking his father for pocket money — besides, Rustomji had told him, when you get an actual butler job, you will have learned to be thankful to not have to wait on people anymore in beach shacks — and so here we are; and today was the one day where he did not want to lose his composure, please god, please don’t do this to me, can we just make sure I get through the day without anything untoward happening until I get to Edelweiss and Mario tonight, not that anything could be more untoward than what the last twelve years of his life had been — as he answered the doorbell each time it rang and glided through the festooned hallways and staircases of Casa de Braganza and averted his gaze whenever he felt Mehrzad’s beady eyes turn in his general direction — so memsahib wants to discuss things with you, huh? — and stayed out of Miriam’s matronly reach and kept his cool even as the gossipy whispers of the rest of his colleagues caused the little hairs on the nape of his neck to prickle; even though the bungalow had enough nooks and crannies he could escape to, it seemed as though that there was nowhere to hide today, in this grand house built by the late Hector Braganza, Oscar’s great-great-great-grandfather — I wonder how our fates and paths and karma came to be this entangled, he wanted to ask Hector, that you build a mansion as grand as this, and somehow, try as I might, I cannot seem to escape into darkness from my minuscule existence — but because he was not the sort of man who questioned anyone or anything, because he was not the sort of man to shake his fist at the injustices of his fate, nor the sort of man to demand reparations or fairness, yet also not the sort of man to not wonder where things went so wrong that he did not know which way to turn to change the trajectory of his inevitable fate, he went about the day doing what he was paid to do — he had been, after all, Oscar’s Man Friday, keeper of confidences extraordinaire, overlooking Oscar's shenanigans with pointed politeness, even during those times when Oscar Braganza would pat his wife's bottom and call her "Duckie", Rustom would remain unfazed, though he seethed inwardly, imagining deflating Oscar Braganza and his giant ego with a pin from Miriam’s pincushion — and that was to serve as an invisible prop to the grandiosity of the Braganza existence, and that is what he did today until it was time to bring Nazneen her evening tea, and it was finally time.

*

Aug 13, Saturday, 5 p.m.

An evening walk on the promenade in the monsoon season brought with it a vision of God’s splendor and the careful, intentional attention that the maker had paid to Goa in his crafting of this corner of the world nuzzling the Arabian Sea: the canopies of trees lining dusty streets that had thus far looked parched and starved filled out and came verdantly alive; undulating clouds thundered and marched towards the shore from the horizon like soldiers marching right after their war cry towards victory; the sun gracefully bowed out of the scene to allow the dark, on the wings of twilight, to descend over the earth each evening; and then there were the balmy breeze and the salty air that permeated everything around them. Rustom enjoyed these walks on the promenade, by himself, when the master and his wife were holidaying or partying and away from the residence. On these evenings, even Casa de Braganza’s God-awful ugly skyline did not bother him. Rustom suffered from the quiet insecurity of having grown up in a house where he had had to constantly make excuses for his anxious mother, who, bless her heart, had lived only to make excuses for her husband. Quiet time by himself was the most precious commodity. And despite the humidity, the evening promised to be pleasant.

But today was not an evening for a quiet walk by himself. Nazneen would want to take a walk on the promenade, and now that Oscar was no longer around to indulge his wife’s every whim and fancy, it would fall on Rustom to accompany her on her walk. He knew that she would invite him to join her, like she had countless times before since Oscar’s death, he just knew it. This had made him the butt of jokes to Mehrzad, who was careful to never let Nazneen see his viciousness, saving all his jibes for Rustom’s ears instead.

He had been summoned to Nazneen’s office today at 5 p.m. When the monsoons arrive in Goa, the days grow darker, with only a sliver of sunlight here and there to light up the parlor, sitting inside which Nazneen partook in her evening tea between 4 and 5 p.m., lingering over the afternoon news while enjoying tiny bites of whatever Miriam had rustled up that day for tea. As soon as evening tea — slices of dodol, khari biscuit, and cups of steaming chai — was put away, Rustom was summoned to clear the tray.

He dreaded what was to follow: the walk, whatever Nazneen had to say to him, being that close to her while being far below her station, the peering eyes from behind the curtains of the windows of Casa de Braganza, the murmurs, ranging from pity to curiosity to nastiness, and the many explanations he would have to offer ad nauseum to placate everyone in the staff quarters once the upper world had gone to sleep.

Shortly, he followed Nazneen to her office, gliding up the staircase in his unhurried butler manner, a ritual he knew now like the back of Nazneen’s hand, her quick laugh, her stormy moods: switch on the decorative ceiling lights, one by one, so they illuminated Nazneen’s path up the staircase while keeping pace with her footsteps. A butler does not shuffle, does not fumble, does not trip. Each footstep is carefully, deliberately considered to provoke neither anger nor anxiety, nor kick over pots of succulents that dotted the staircase, like he had been taught by Rustomji.

Like someone once said, all the clutter in the house used to be money that the Braganzas had to spend one way or another. If it wasn’t a crystal chandelier or decorative ceiling lights, it was cacti. “Shall we go take a walk, Rustom?” she asked. It was not a question so much as it was an instruction, and both knew this.

“Yes, your ladyship,” he replied. When he had first called her that, Mehrzad had smirked. But it was what Rustomji had taught him to do, it was what the job demanded, it was all that he knew. He did not have much, but he knew the conventions of his trade, and he would do right by his father’s memory.

Hearing him say that to her today made her wince, but she was careful not to show it. As she made her way out the parlor door, he followed, keeping two footsteps between them. Walking from the parlor to the back of the house, where the balcony doors opened to the promenade, he stared straight ahead, the sight of the stormy sea ahead of them, feeling the prick of every single arrow from all the invisible eyes on his back.

They walked down the pathway to the promenade, a gift from Oscar Braganza to his wife, because all he knew was that he loved the woman he had married and he wanted to offer her every single delight that he could. Besides, she had asked for it in her list of demands when he had proposed to her, and when it came to his lady love, Oscar Braganza was nothing if not a man of his word. No beach in Goa was without hippies and beach shacks and tourists, so having a promenade at an elevation to separate them from the beach bums below was something that suited Oscar Braganza well.

Shortly, Rustom was relieved to no longer feel the piercing arrows on his back as they put some distance between themselves and the mansion.

“You can now walk with me, Rustom. Don’t walk behind me. When I talk to you, I need to see you.”

“Yes, your ladyship.”

He still maintained a distance of two steps between them.

Back when they were dreaming of a life together, he would shyly call her memsahib: she was the master and mistress and supreme overlord of his heart after all, and there was nothing more important than placing her on a pedestal. Her outgoing, forward-thinking, starry-eyed nature had attracted, spoken to, beckoned his reticent, wallflower persona: she had even dreamed his dreams for him. While she knew that butlering was in his blood, she had wanted a life far away from it as possible. She had filled his head with ideas and possibilities that were nowhere near the realm of his imagination, arousing a primeval longing in his soul he did not recognize from this lifetime.

Below the promenade, on the beach, stray dogs milled about between throngs of potbellied tourists and local fishermen who were both enjoying their evening tipple at one of Tito’s many thatched-roof shacks that lined the beach.  It was a beautiful evening, the kind that every beachgoer is witness to every single day, but the kind that takes their breath away anyway, because no other evening has been as beautiful as this one here, right now. Clouds were gathering near the horizon; a throng of homeward bound birds screeched in the overcast August skies.

Nazneen stopped to gaze at the stretch of the skies in front of them, the sinking sun slinking behind the clouds. He stopped two steps behind her, hands clasped behind his back, and gazed out at the same grey expanse that she did.

“Remember the day up on that hill in Amboli?”

Which one, he thought. The day when I asked you to marry me, or the one when you broke my heart? Both were a very long time ago, but he remembered.

“When you asked me to marry you? Do you remember how you tumbled down the hill? To chase after that orange that fell out of the picnic basket? Even before I could call out to you that we had another that we could share, you ran after it, your clumsy feet no match for the slope of the hill, tumbling down quicker than I could gather my words together. I laughed so hard that day, I cried." Tiny specks of gold danced in Nazneen's eyes as she said it, and even though he could not see them from where he stood, he knew that’s what they did.

He didn’t answer her. He knew she would get to her point by herself.

“God, what a mess I’ve made of everything.”

A gust of wind whipped Nazneen’s hair into her face, and it took all of Rustom’s control to not brush her hair aside.

“Dr. Menezes says I have early-stage Alzheimer’s, Reza.”

Rustom turned to look at her, mouth slightly agape.

“Just like my mother. Small things, like adding an extra spoon of sugar to my tea, misplacing my earrings, forgetting what I came to get from the office or the fridge. I knew even before he confirmed it.”

In the amber glow of twilight, she looked resplendent as ever. All he needed, all he had ever needed, was to steal a glance at her to feel alive. A darkness settled around his soul.

He turned away from her to look at the sea again.

“I know I have no right to ask anything of you, but I still will, knowing you the way I know you. I have no allies, no one to call on when things get worse. You are the only person I trust. I will need you, Reza, and you will be there when I do.”

Thunder trumpeted in the distance, and a bolt of lightning flashed near the horizon.

“You know what my biggest regret is?”

Nazneen told him: that in her attempt to court a life of luxury and acquire riches and make a better life than the one she had had with him, she had forgotten to collect happy memories, that her memory bank was now a wasteland.

“But I will not apologize to you. Whatever I did, whatever I chose, I did it knowing full well what I was doing. No one was going to make my life’s choices for me. You understand that, don’t you?”

Yes. Yes, I do.

"You won't forget me, will you, Reza? Even when I no longer remember you?"

How could I?

He turned again to look at her, really look at her for the first time in years. We are temporal beings: our awareness extends in the direction in which we think time moves, but time is cruel and conniving for it is formless, without direction. We travel with time, imprisoned within its march, starkly aware of how short our timespan is in this one life, and we comport and contort ourselves to become who someone else wants us to be, and one day, wonder who we really are.

But in this one lone moment in all the moments that make up time, one lone moment that stood still, Rustom saw Nazneen, the woman he had fallen in love with, like he had always known her — luminous, stubborn, unaware of anything but her own needs — the keening wail of the incoming storm whistling the broken notes of their forgotten song.