Tiger Hills (33 page)

Nanju knew these stories by heart. Avvaiah recounted them to him each December when they visited the Kambeymada house for the Puthari festival. It never occurred to him to stop her, though; it made him so happy just to sit there by his mother's side, listening. He liked to place his head in her lap as she spoke, and she'd draw him close, laughing. He beamed now as she pulled him affectionately into the crook of her arm.

So absorbed was Nanju in Devi's chatter that he forgot the reason for their visit. When they reached the house, the crowds of mourners were a sudden, shocking reminder. Nanju looked overwhelmed at what seemed to him like a river of milk. Lapping against the outer pillars of the house, spilling over the steps and onto the verandah, sitting, standing, talking, weeping; men, women, and children all come to pay their last respects in spotless funeral white. He stayed close to his mother as they maneuvered through the crowd and into the inner courtyard. The Nayak's freshly washed body was decked out in his finest velvet kupya and laid on a mat, his mustache oiled and twirled into a magnificent silver handlebar, his forehead smeared with sandalwood paste and anointed with a single gold sovereign.

“Touch his feet, monae.”

The dead Nayak's toes felt waxy, like the translucent plugs of camphor Avvaiah kept in the prayer corner at home. Nanju hurriedly withdrew his hands and followed Devi as she sat with the other women. “Go outside, why don't you?” she encouraged.
“Go talk with your cousins.” He shook his head shyly and leaned against her. After a moment, she sighed and stroked his arm.

People kept streaming in, packed so close he could not even see to the far wall where the tiger skin was hung. A group of children of varying ages sat at one end of the courtyard, trying to be solemn but forgetting every so often, whispering and giggling among themselves until an adult told them sharply to be silent. Nanju peeped at them from behind his mother. They beckoned to him to join them, and he at once got flustered, looking away as he shifted even closer to Devi.

They sat for what seemed like hours. Nanju began to fidget. “Sit straight,” Devi whispered. “Don't slouch like a Poleya—are you Tukra's child or mine?”

“How long must we stay?” he whined. “I'm hungry, Avvaiah.”

“Shhh. Look.” A group of his uncles entered the inner courtyard, each of them freshly shaven-headed like Appaiah and him. “It must be time for the cremation.” Nanju watched curiously as his uncles lifted the Nayak's corpse into a chair and hoisted it upon their shoulders. The funeral drums started to play, and women began to cry as they rose to their feet. Avvaiah was standing ramrod-straight, her eyes fixed on the pallbearers. They slowly circled, east to west—once, twice, three times, Nanju counted under his breath. The Nayak's head slumped forward on his chest, the turban slipping askew. The pallbearers started down the steps that led toward the field. Somberly the men in the gathering filed after them.

Unsettled, Nanju slipped his hand into his mother's. She flinched, startled, as if she had entirely forgotten that he was there too. “Nanju,” she said, as if reminding herself of his name, “you must go with your uncles to the cremation.”

“No—” Nanju began in alarm, but she was already approaching one of his uncles.

“Will you take Nanju with you?”

“Avvaiah, no,” Nanju protested again in fright, but his uncle had taken his hand.

“What, monae! Stop hiding behind your mother's pleats, we
will find her when we return. For now, your place is here, with the other men of your family, yes?”

Tukra had once told Nanju what happened to dead bodies. The Poleyas had originally left their dead in the forests, tipping them into pits and piling leaves and stones over them so wild animals could not get at them. Slowly, though, they had begun to mimic the Coorg tradition of cremating their dead. Tukra claimed he had attended many, many funerals.
Aiyo,
it was dangerous work! The ghost of the deceased had been known to rise up from its sizzling corpse many a time,
fssst,
just like that, and possess one or other of the onlookers.

Nanju had jeered at Tukra's tall stories, but now his words seemed all too real. He tugged experimentally at his uncle's grasp, but it was firm and would brook no nonsense.

He was a man, he told himself, was that not what Appaiah had said to him, that he was growing so fast? He was nearly five, and he would not be afraid. His head started to itch and he rubbed a sweaty palm over it. It was a hot afternoon, the dust rising around him as he descended reluctantly toward the fields.
My shorts,
he fretted to himself, trying to brush them down with his free hand. Avvaiah had told him that he must not dirty them.

The cremation pyre had been assembled at the far end. The pallbearers lifted the corpse onto the logs. Nanju tried his best not to stare at his great-grandfather and attract the ire of his ghost, but try as he might, his eyes returned time and again to the corpse. The logs shifted slightly, and the Nayak's hand slipped lifelessly to one side. From where Nanju stood, it seemed as if his great-grandfather was pointing an accusing finger straight toward him. He swallowed and looked away.

Cuck-oo, cuck-oo,
a cuckoo called sweetly from the branches overhead. Nanju glanced up at it, but his eyes were pulled back to the Nayak. Three of his uncles circled the pyre; the cuckoo called again as they torched the wood. Flames crackled their way toward the corpse, wisps of smoke reaching into the air. The fire probed at the figure of the Nayak, testing the tasseled ends of his sash. Nanju made a small sound in his throat as it coiled slowly about
the sleeve of the Nayak's kupya, setting it aflame. The flames crept higher, flickering over the wide expanse of chest. Nanju was transfixed, unable to look away. The fire rose higher still, lapping at the Nayak's chin, scorching that magnificent, gleaming mustache. A slow, sizzling sound, like fish in a pan.
Cuck-ooo,
the bird trilled, twitching its tail, and with a sudden
WHOOF
the entire pyre burst into flame. To Nanju's horror, the Nayak's hand seemed to rise through the flames,
pointing straight at him.
Nanju tore free from his uncle's grasp and, pushing through the mourners, fled pell-mell across the fields back toward the house, screaming for his mother.

“Avvaiah! AVVAIAH!”

She whirled around, eyes wide with fear. “Nanju? What is it, are you hurt? What's the matter, monae, what happened?” He shook his head, that burned-hair smell still in his nostrils, trying hard not to cry. “Then what … is the cremation already over? What's this? Did you wet yourself ? Nan-ju.”

Nanju looked down at himself, his cheeks hot with shame. “Avvaiah,” he mumbled, hanging his head.

“Nanju … ,” Devi began, aware of the women looking in their direction.

“Here, monae.” One of the grand-aunts bustled toward Nanju, a plate in her hand. “You look hungry. Will you eat some ottis? The other children have already eaten; you must be hungry, too. It's okay, kunyi, stay here with us and eat.”

Nanju sat down heavily with the plate, trying to hide the wet stains on his shorts. His legs were still trembling. He began stuffing chunks of otti into his mouth, trying to block the memory of the jerky, puppet-like movements the Nayak's body had appeared to make in the midst of the leaping flames.

“Really, Devi,” his grand-aunt said softly. “What were you thinking, sending the child alone?”

Devi stiffened, masking her guilt with a haughty toss of her head. “He is a man of this house, too, is he not? It is his duty.”

“His
duty?
There is a time and place for everything, you should not have—” She stopped short as a third woman approached them.

The woman smiled at Nanju and he smiled tremulously back, trying not to stare. She was so fat!

“Devi akka, how are you?”

“Not as well as you, evidently.”

Nanju looked up at Avvaiah. Her voice sounded funny. She was smiling, Nanju saw, but it was one of those pretend smiles that did not reach her eyes.

“Yes,” the other woman laughed. “It took a few years, but my husband has done me in at last, good and proper.” She rubbed her belly contentedly.

“I saw him carry the body down to the fields.” Devi said the first thing that came to her mind. Machu's wife looked quizzically at her, and Devi turned hastily toward Nanju to compose herself.

She was pregnant.
Machu's smiling, happy wife was full with child. The child that should have been hers.
Theirs.
Filled with a sudden fury, Devi snapped at Nanju.

“What are you doing, staring up at me like that? Stop dawdling and eat your otti, or is even this too much to ask?”

Devi lay awake that night, able neither to sleep nor rail nor weep for fear of who might hear. She had not attended Machu's wedding. She had vowed to, at first. She would look her best, she promised herself, look so beautiful she would trounce the bride. Ultimately, though, she had been unable to, sitting frozen at the edge of her bed, the sari she had so painstakingly selected lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Tukra had had to repeat his question many times before she had finally responded. No, she had said dully, they would not be traveling to the Kambeymada village after all.

She had steeled herself that following Puthari to be civil to his wife. Fat, she had told herself, the girl would be fat and simple, but even she had to admit that Machu's wife was pretty. It had taken every ounce of Devi's willpower to sound even-keeled as she congratulated the girl. “May you live long,” she had said, unable to complete the blessing:
May you live long, may you have a happy life, may you die a married woman.

Once again, Machu had stayed away from her.

Still, as a year went past, and then another, Devi had found consolation in the flatness of his wife's stomach. Machu may have told her that it was over between them, but she knew, she
knew
from the way he held himself, from the way he stood when she was near, that it was far from over. It could never be. Every year, she would anxiously scan her rival's midriff; every year, she had been rewarded with a sharp sense of triumph at its virgin emptiness. He may be married in name, she had told herself, but it was clear he did not desire his wife. And who could blame him? Why, one had only to look at the woman's backside, flat as a washing stone.

Her eyes burned now with the image of that monstrously pregnant belly. The belly button poking so impudently through the folds of the other's sari, drawing attention to the life swimming within. Machu's son. There was not a doubt in her mind that the child would be a boy. The bile rose in her throat.
What did you expect? That he would be celibate forever? It was you, was it not, who asked him why he remained unwed?

Nanju moaned softly, caught in some disturbing dream. She was reminded of that afternoon, the look of sheer terror in his face as he had come running up to her. What kind of a mother was she, she asked herself unhappily, staring at her sleeping child.

“How many children should we have?” she had asked Machu once.

“Six.”

“Huh,” she had replied. “I want
ten.
Five boys and five girls, and then, when the tenth is born, you and the rest of the village will throw me the customary feast to commemorate my giving birth to ten healthy children.

“Why do you look so dubious?” she had continued merrily. “Just think, what a fine household ours will be—you, the tiger killer, and me, the mother of ten children!”

He had grinned. “I don't care about ten children, or two. However many, let them be healthy and happy, that is all.”

“Hmm … ” She pondered this point. “Maybe you are right.
Still, our first should be a boy, don't you think?” She had rested her chin upon his chest, smiling at him. “A boy, just like you.”

Nanju moaned again, burying his face into the pillow. Pressing her teeth into her lip to keep from crying, Devi patted him wearily on his arm. He shifted and then, curling himself into a tight ball, grew still once more. Devi turned toward the wall.

She awoke bleary-eyed and disoriented. It was a gray, leaden morning, an anemic mist drifting through the inner courtyard. A mass of clouds threatened rain at any moment, setting off a nagging ache in the middle of her forehead. She lay still for a moment, gathering herself. There was one last detail to take care of and then she could leave.

When the Kambeymada men gathered on the verandah, scratching their itchy, stubbled scalps, they looked startled at Devi as she walked out to join them. Did this girl have no sense of propriety? Daughters-in-law had no place in discussions about property. “My husband cannot be here,” Devi offered by way of explanation. “I … I am here in his stead and for my son, Kambeymada Nanjappa.” She pulled the end of her sari closer about her as if to ward off their disapproval.

“Yes, well. We could have informed you of our decisions later.” She pretended not to hear, casting her eyes downward as she stationed herself firmly by a pillar. The men glanced at one another, unsure of what to do, and then proceeded as if she were simply not there.

The times were changing, they concurred, the old joint family system no longer worked; the Nayak had managed to keep the family together through sheer force of will. With him gone, who would keep the peace? Better for each male member of the family to take his share of the property or its equivalent in cash. The house along with the surrounding land would go to the Nayak's oldest surviving brother and his family; the rest of the estate would be divided. They began to move through the ranks of the family, apportioning the assets. To the oldest surviving brother, a
parcel of five hundred acres. To the second, four hundred and sixteen gold sovereigns. To the third … When it was the turn of the Nayak's sons, Devanna's father was given four hundred and thirty acres. He beamed and nodded. It was fair.