DESAI, Kirian

The Inheritance of Loss

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The boys carried out a survey of the house with some interest. The atmosphere, they noted, was of intense solitude. A few bits of rickety fur­niture overlaid with a termite cuneiform stood isolated in the shadows along with some cheap metal-tube folding chairs. Their noses wrinkled from the gamy mouse stench of a small place, although the ceiling had the reach of a public monument and the rooms were spacious in the old manner of wealth, windows placed for snow views. They peered at a cer­tificate issued by Cambridge University that had almost vanished into an overlay of brown stains blooming upon walls that had swelled with mois­ture and billowed forth like sails. The door had been closed forever on a storeroom where the floor had caved in. The storeroom supplies and what seemed like an unreasonable number of emptied tuna fish cans, had been piled on a broken Ping-Pong table in the kitchen, and only a corner of the kitchen was being used, since it was meant originally for the slaving min­ions, not the one leftover servant.

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