The Mendonça Mystery and Other Stories

Grandma and the Old Warrior

Illustration by Krittika Ramanujan

Stories © 2016 by Michael Chacko Daniels

Illustrations © 2016 by Krittika Ramanujan and Aaron Bass

Front Cover Illustration by Aaron Bass

Back Cover Illustration by Krittika Ramanujan

This e-book is a digital version of the book first published by Writers Workshop (India) in a gold-embossed, hand-stitched, hand-pasted, and hand-bound limited print edition.

ISBN: 978-1-4835626-0-5

Also by Michael Chacko Daniels

POETRY

Split in Two

Morning in Santiniketan

FICTION

Anything Out of Place Is Dirt

That Damn Romantic Fool

The Mendonça Mystery and Other Stories

All these books were first published by Writers Workshop (India)

in gold-embossed, hand-stitched, hand-pasted, and hand-bound limited print editions.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which these stories first appeared: Sing an Indian Name, Denver Syntax, 2005; Life, the 27 Bryant Version, Apollo’s Lyre, 2006; Touch me? Vaya Con Dios Inbound on the 22 Fillmore!, Cricket Online Review, 2006; Three Dozen Mangoes for Mr. Diefenbaker, Dragonfire, 2006, SHALLA Magazine, 2008; Mudka-Potka Gobble Village Chic, Hackwriters, 2008; Naga in the Negev, Hackwriters, 2008; The Makeover of the Son of Cochin Cohn, Popular Ink, 2008; Riders of Dragon Number 19, Hackwriters, 2008; Fruit for the Gods, Hackwriters, 2010; Where the Clear Creek Narrows, Hackwriters, 2010; Finding Memories in the Library on a Rainy Day, Hackwriters, 2010; Shadows of Spread Wings, Hackwriters, 2010; Grandma and the Old Warrior, Hackwriters, 2010; The Confirmed Bachelor of the Bombay YMCA, Hackwriters, 2011; Zach Runs from a Great Man, Hackwriters, 2011; The Mendonça Mystery, More Voices on the Verandah, An Indo-Anglian Anthology, 2012.

For Teresa, Molly, James, Mariam, Jessy, and Roy

Michael Chacko Daniels is a former community worker and clown who grew up in Bombay, India. He lives and works in San Francisco. WRITERS WORKSHOP has published four of his books: Split in Two (poetry, 2004); Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (novel, 2004); That Damn Romantic Fool (novel, 2005); and Morning in Santiniketan (haiku, 2010).

His past adventures include five years as a Volunteer In Service To America, four as editor/publisher of the New River Free Press of Grand Rapids, Michigan, four as assistant editor in San Francisco at The Asia Foundation, and sixteen at Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living. He helped to establish the Jobs for Homeless Consortium of Alameda County in 1988, and to run it through mid-2004. He is an alumnus of St. Michael’s High School, Wilson College, University of Bombay Department of Economics, and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Aaron Bass is a studio artist who primarily works in printmaking media. He studied printmaking at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Tyler School of Art, and Tamarind Institute, and has an MFA from the University of New Mexico. He has worked for a community print shop, the leading press manufacturer in the United States, and taught at the University of New Mexico. Currendy, he is a faculty member in the Studio Arts department at the Southwest University of Visual Arts. Aaron resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife Krittika Ramanujan, son Simon, and a variety of quadrupeds.

Krittika Ramanujan is an artist who was born in Chicago, traveled extensively, and lived in India as a child. She has had solo shows about three ongoing bodies of work: Dante’s Divine Comedy, mammal skeletons (Coterminus), and human rights and lynching (Ghost Puppets). She was a member of the Fine Arts Gallery in Chicago, and is represented by Leich Lathrop Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She studied painting at Indiana University at Bloomington and received an MFA in printmaking from the University of New Mexico. She lives in New Mexico with her husband and son.

A million thanks

to my first reader,

Molly Daniels-Ramanujan,

my editor, Naomi Rose,

and the two artists whose

illustrations grace this collection:

Krittika Ramanujan & Aaron Bass.

Introduction

1. The Mendonça Mystery

2. Three Dozen Mangoes for Mr. Diefenbaker

3. The Confirmed Bachelor of the Bombay YMCA

4. Zach Runs from a Great Man

5. The Cat Who Drove the Ghost Away

6. Naga in the Negev

7. The Makeover of the Son of Cochin Cohn

8. Sing an lndian Name

9. Grandma and the Old Warrior

10. Mudka-Potka Gobble Village Chic

11. Life, the 27 Bryant Version

12. Riders of Dragon Number 19

13. Touch Me? Vaya Con Dios Inbound on the 22 Fillmore!

14. Shadows of Spread Wings

15. Fruit for the Gods

16. Where the Clear Creek Narrows

17. Finding Memories in the Library on a Rainy Day

by Naomi Rose

By way of introduction to The Mendonça Mystery and Other Stories, let me say that I’m not certain who is the more fortunate here—me or you.

Me, because I got to edit the seventeen magical, often poignant, often humorous stories in this book.

You, on the other hand—on the threshold of reading these seventeen perfected stories—get to encounter the jewels in their sparkling state: free of obstructions; ready to entertain, and to teach something of the human condition. You are in for some unexpected adventures at close and memorable range.

  There are family stories where the unlikely occurs not only in what takes place but also because how the author tells them opens up fresh new pathways in our reading experience: The Mendonça Mystery, Three Dozen Mangoes for Mr. Diefenbaker, and Grandma and the Old Warrior.

  There are finding-your-place-in-the-world stories (with the attendant difficulties that can come of that quest to remain oneself and still belong to a new world), including Zach Runs from a Great Man, "Naga in the Negev, The Makeover of the Son of Cochin Cohn, Sing an Indian Name," and "Mudka-Potka Gobble Village Chic."

  There are tall tales such as The Cat Who Drove the Ghost Away, and barely exaggerated tales filled with modern urban pathos such as Life, the 27 Bryant Version, Riders of Dragon Number 19, and "Touch Me? Vaya Con Dios Inbound on the 22 Fillmore."

  There are sweet and poignant testaments to youthful fancies, embarrassments, and unexpected compassion, as in The Confirmed Bachelor of the Bombay YMCA.

  And there is the sheer poetry of haikus in the context of atmospherically drawn moments: Shadows of Spread Wings, Fruit for the Gods, Where the Clear Creek Narrows, and Finding Memories in the Library on a Rainy Day.

Michael Daniels, himself, embodies as much variety and surprise as his stories do. He has, for example, been a tireless advocate of the homeless in both his work history (he was director of the Jobs for Homeless Consortium in Berkeley and Oakland, California) and his literary output. The story Grandma and the Old Warrior is excerpted from his novel, Savages and Other Neighbors, in which the hero, Solomon Jacob, seeks to bring housing to the underhoused. With equal full-heartedness, Daniels also tirelessly explores in his stories the insides and outsides of his characters’ sometimes endearing, sometimes all-too-human ways in both his native and adopted lands. And (here comes the surprise) he has also been—a clown.

You will see all these sides of the author’s constructed inner worlds, here—in these stories that await you now. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, on both sides of the reading experience.

Naomi Rose is a writer, editor, book developer, and musician based in Oakland, California. Born into a family of writers, she tried to escape her legacy by becoming a book editor, thinking the page of words would be sufficient. But over time, she came to realize that it was the human heart behind the words that most interested her. So she created an approach to writing called Writing from the Deeper Self, which allows her to listen deeply to herself and her clients. From this listening, beautiful, transformative writing naturally comes. Her literary relationship with Michael Daniels goes back many years, including work on his novels published by Writers Workshop. Naomi can be reached via www.essentialwriting.com.

Sixteen-year-old Mateus Mendonça of Braganza’s House, my part-time friend, loves to heighten the Mendonça mystery. Purely for my benefit, I suppose. Like the time he says, Because you love westerns, Paul, I’ll tell you a secret—but I’ll break your bones, if you tell anyone.

We are kicking ash from spent charcoal cooking fires in the vacant lot behind Braganza’s House in Mahim, Bombay.

Without any prompting, I say, I swear on my collection of Perry Masons, I’ll keep your secret as long as I—

I pause. I can’t say live. Do I want to seal my lips for that long for a Mendonça secret?

How about fifty years? I inquire.

Mateus lowers his voice. My father has a real bullwhip.

Whoopie! I say, spreading my arms wide. A real bullwhip like Lash LaRue’s?

I’m mad about comic books, the ones with cowboy heroes most of all, although Mrs. Sequeira—she lives above the Mendoncas in Braganza’s House, and claims no less than 90 per cent Portuguese lineage—has convinced Mummy that comics will rot my brains.

Better than Lash LaRue’s, Mateus says. Our whip was made back home, in Portugal…been in our family a long, long time.

But what does your father use it for? I’m sure the whip’s real abode should be the Paul Paulose home. You don’t have any cattle. No cattle—no rustlers.

Mateus turns, raises his shirt.

I stare at dark red welts on his broad back. Their strange beauty fascinates me.

You mean he practices on you?

He doesn’t need to, Mateus explains. He’s an expert, learned to use the bullwhip from his father. He says, ‘It will stiffen your spine. Prepare you for life.’ It’s already working. I never cry when Father D. gives me a caning in school…that priest loves to cane me. Not even a whimper from me. Your father cracked your cricket bat on your older brother’s back. I tell you, a bullwhip is much better. It whistles like the wind before it strikes; then, you feel your skin ripple; afterward, your head is clean and clear. When your father starts using a belt on you, you’ll understand what I mean. Nothing like a bullwhip in all the world.

I want to ask Mateus how his father can use a LaRue-long bullwhip in their small flat, but I’m sure my part-time bully will say something like, You fool, it’s not how long it is but how you use it. I’ll show you, and you’ll shut up fast.

~ ~ ~

Other juicy secrets leak out from the Mendonça household at a steady pace. But the big one—a couple of summers ago, the day after Grandma Mendonça was buried—was so big, it filled the corridor and stairway on our floor in four-story Braganza’s House, as it does my mind, often:

Mummy, Mummy, hurry up, my youngest sister, Susykutty, called out from our flat’s doorway. Come and see—such fine drawing paper floating around outside.

Mummy, Mummy, hurry up, the Parrot sang from the cage in our kitchen.

Stop your screaming, Susykutty, Mummy yelled. Always so much hurry up. Have you forgotten our neighbors are still in mourning?

I was sure all the Mendonças heard Mummy’s voice. She grew up in rural Kerala, and although she normally spoke softly, like most Malayalee women who learned to shoot their voices across fields, city walls were no impediments to being heard.

Not anymore, Mummy, Susykutty said, clapping. Mateus and his younger brother, Miguel, are throwing the finest drawing paper at each other. It’s like a celebration. Can I join them, Mummy? I’d like some of that paper to sketch on.

Mummy went to the door, wrapping her cotton sari over her head, in a second transforming into a mournful form. I stashed the Flash Gordon comic strip safely and, in my blue T-shirt and black half-pants, hurried to see what was happening. After a long moment of blocking my view in the doorway, she shook her head at Susykutty and dragged her back into our flat.

Mummy’s eyes flared in anger, her facial lines turned down. The Mendonça boys are sad. Leave them alone. They are doing this instead of shedding tears. This is their way, a version of an ancient custom. Holding it all in. And poor Mrs. Mendonça—waiting and waiting for husband to come back from mofussil inspection tour."

I poked my head out, and before she could drag me in, I spotted strips of white paper wrapped around Mateus and Miguel, the railings, balusters, balustrades, and corridor bulb.

Sonofagun! I said, and popped back in. I’ve never seen anything like that. Could they have cooked their brains from being out in the sun too long?

Mummy, did you hear what that naughty boy just said, Susykutty yelled, jumping up and down, her ringlets bouncing. How many times Daddy has told him not to say ‘Sonofagun’?

Paul, it’s only their father’s mother’s Portuguese-style toilet paper, Mummy explained, ignoring Susykutty. "Against their mother’s wishes, the grandmother forced the boys to use it in preparation for going West. Now, at last, they can use the money for food. Anyway, water is always better. West is West, yet water is best.

Susykutty asked, "Toilet paper? What is that? Is it for toys?

Mummy explained, European people use it instead of water after going to the toilet.

Olive, a trifle older than Susykutty, suddenly surfaced. Mummy, I’m sure Susykutty also wants to know what is this thing called toilet?"

Mummy! Mummy! Susykutty’s eyes widened. Do you think they’d like to adopt me? Only sons there, no daughters. They could use a daughter. I would be a very good daughter. Loving and obedient. I already know some Portuguese.

I thought you said they were sad, I said, disappointed: I wanted to see how sadness played out with the Mendonça boys. Looks like a dance of celebration to me, not sadness.

Vertically cutting the air in front of her, Mummy told Susykutty, You stop that right now, or I’ll give you a tight slap. I am a patient woman, but you are trying my patient self. You think I carried you in this belly for nine months—she held her middle with both hands—to give you away?

Mummy looked at me. "Yes, Paul. Yes, I said that they were sad. Lotsofsadness in that family. More than you know, more than I can tell you, and more than you