Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights Read Online Free PDF

slip of a thing named Magda Manezes who looked like a fragile little twig next to the spreading banyan of the Father’s body. The Very Rev. Fr. Jeremiah D’Niza soon became a little less than perfectly celibate, and fathered a fine male child, instantly recognizable as his son by his distinctive ears. “The Hapsburgs and the D’Nizas are both lobeless,” Father Jerry liked to say. “Unfortunately, the wrong lot became emperors.” (The rude street boys of Bandra knew nothing of Hapsburgs. They said that Raphael’s lack of earlobes was a sign that he was not to be trusted, a sign of insanity, of being an exciting long word, a psychopath. But that was ignorant superstition, obviously. He went to the movies like everyone else and saw that psychopaths—mad killers, mad scientists, mad Mughal princes—had perfectly normal ears.)
    Father Jerry’s son could not be given his father’s surname, of course, the decencies had to be observed, so he received his mother’s instead. For Christian names the good pastor named him Raphael after the patron saint of Córdoba, Spain, and Hieronymus after Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus of the city of Stridon, a.k.a. Saint Jerome. “Raffy-’Ronnimus-the-pastor’s-sonnimus” he was among the rude boys playing French cricket in Bandra’s sainted Catholic streets—St. Leo St. Alexiou St. Joseph St. Andrew St. John St. Roques St. Sebestian St. Martin—until he grew too big and strong to be teased; but to his father he was always Young Raphael Hieronymus Manezes grandly and in full. He lived with his mother Magda in East Bandra but was permitted to go over to the tonier west side on Sundays to sing in his father’s church choir and to listen to Father Jerry preach without any apparent awareness of his own hypocrisy about the fiery damnation that was the inevitable consequence of sin.
    The truth was that Mr. Geronimo in later life had a poor memory, and so, much of his childhood was lost. Fragments of his father, however, remained. He remembered singing in church. Mr. Geronimo had a bit of the Latin as a child, at Christmas in song bidding the faithful come in the ancient Roman tongue, w -ing his v ’s as his father commanded. Wenite, wenite in Bethlehem. Natum widete regem angelorum. But it was Genesis that got him, the Vulgate that was his namesake Saint Jerome’s work. Genesis, especially chapter one, verse three. Dixitque Deus: fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Translated by himself into his personal Bombay “Wulgate”: And God said, Cheap Italian motor car, beauty soap of the film star. And there was Lux. Please, Daddy, why did God want a small Fiat and a bar of soap, and also please, why did he get the soap only? Why couldn’t he make the car? And why not a better car, Daddy? He could’ve asked for a Jesus Chrysler, no? Which brought down upon him a predictable jeremiad from Jeremiah D’Niza, plus a thunderous reminder of his wrong-side-of-the-blanketness, Don’t call me Daddy, call me Father like everyone else, and he skipping with a giggle out of reach of the pastor’s vengeful hand, singing cheap Italian motor car beauty soap of the film star.
    That was his whole childhood right there. He always knew that church wasn’t for him but he liked the songs. And on Sundays all the local Sandras came to church and he liked their flipped-up hairdos and their cheeky flouncing. Hark the herald angels sing, he taught them at Christmas, Beecham’s pills are just the thing. If you want to go to heaven, take a dose of six or seven. If you want to go to Hell, take the whole damn box as well. The Sandras liked that and let him kiss them secretly on the lips behind the choir stall. His father so apocalyptic in the pulpit hardly ever hit him, mostly just let his son’s mouth run out of blasphemous steam, understanding that bastards have their resentments and must be allowed to air them in whatever form they come out, and after Magda’s death—she was a polio victim in those olden days