Tiger Hills (34 page)

“And to Kambeymada Devanna, the house he is currently residing in.”

Devi's head snapped up. “Is that all? What of my husband's share of the land, or its equivalent value?”

“Land? There is no land. What need does Devanna have of land when he can barely walk? We are giving him the house.”

“The house will not pay us an income. What need does he have of land, you ask? All the more reason when he is an invalid! He has a wife to support, does he not, and our son?”

The elders glanced at one another. The temerity of this woman! “There is no land that has been assigned to Devanna, nor any other assets,” one of them told her curtly. “Still, if you are dissatisfied, you should talk with your father-in-law.”

“It is like this, you see.” Devanna's father would not look her in the eye. “Not a lot of land has been given to me. And as you know, I have four other sons besides Devanna.”

“Four other sons?” Devi's voice sounded unnaturally high even to her ears. She paused, trying to regain her composure. “Four other sons, father-in-law? May I remind you that Devanna is your firstborn?”

“Yes, kunyi, I know … ” Still he would not look at her. “My hands are tied, unfortunately. Things are so expensive these days … In any event, you have the house.”

“A house? My son, a scion of the Kambeymadas, and all he is entitled to is an ill-ventilated chattel? Is this fair?”

She looked around pleadingly at the elders. “Please,” she said, her voice cracking. “We do not have much. The Nayak sent us money every month, and even with that, I have had to … each grain, we count each grain that goes into the cooking pot. I do not see the money continuing now that the Nayak is gone. Be fair to my son—how are we to survive without any land?”

“No, kunyi,” Devanna's father hastened to explain. “I will continue
to send you money each month. How much do you need? A hundred rupees? Two hundred?”

“I do not want any more charity,” Devi flared. “Just give my son his due. Give us the land he is entitled to.”

They shook their heads regretfully at her. This was the best they had to offer, and a generous offer it was, too. She should take it.

Finally, desperate, Devi looked toward him.
Machu. Make them see reason.
She realized with a shock that he was not even looking at her, gazing out instead at the green smudge of the fields, the small tic in his jaw belying the deliberately bored expression on his face, telling her just how unwilling he was to intervene on her behalf.

Devi nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. “So be it,” she told them, turning to go back inside. “Keep your charity. I will make ends meet without you.”

Nanju looked at Devi, alarmed. She was always sad when it was time to leave the Kambeymada home, but he had never seen his mother cry like this before. “Avvaiah?” he asked, staring crestfallen at the tears running down her face.

She shook her head, trying to smile. “Nothing, it's nothing. Come hurry up, gather your things. We must leave for Mercara.”

She made him seek the blessings of every elder in the house, touching all of their feet herself as they stiffly wished her well. Only then did she seat herself in the cart. Nanju looked anxiously at her as they pulled away from the house. He searched for the right words. “Don't be sad, Avvaiah,” he began hesitatingly. “Appaiah told me that we have to let Kambeymada thatha go. He told me that Thatha had lived a very long life and—”

Devi nodded. “Yes, yes. I'm tired, Nanju, that's all.” She touched his cheek to soften her words. “Avvaiah has a bad headache. Do you think you can be quiet for a while?”

Nanju nodded stoutly. He was glad to leave. He wanted to go back to the calm of Mercara, to Appaiah. He looked at his mother.
At least she had stopped crying. He drew his knees up to his chin, gazing out of the cart. It would be better at home.

The clouds shifted wanly across the sky, the Kambeymada house coming into view one last time between the trees before vanishing altogether.

Tukra had just negotiated the third bend in the lane when Nanju raised his head. “Avvaiah,” he pointed. “Look.”

Machu rode right up to the cart. “Devi.

“Devi,” he said again.

She alighted gracefully and they moved to the side of the lane. Nanju craned his head, trying to hear what they were saying, but the breeze snatched away most of their words.

“Congratulations.”

“Yes.”

“Are you happy?” She tried to smile. “It will be a boy. A boy, just like you.”

“Devi. What happened back there. It was not right.”

“And yet you did nothing to stop it.”

“What good has it ever done to go up against an army? Better to catch them unawares, or take them on one at a time. Anyway”—he shook his hand impatiently—“I came to tell you this. Do not worry. I will see to it that you get your fair share.”

She laughed, a shrill, mocking sound. “I'm sure you will, just like you did this morning.”

“Devi—”

Tears threatened the back of her eyes, and she laughed again to cover them. “Here.” Nanju saw Avvaiah reach into her blouse and place something in his uncle's palm.

“I gave this to you.”

“A tiger's claw for your tigress? Yes, I know. But you have a wife now, Machu, you will have a child soon. This … you should take this back.”

He put the brooch back in her hands, cupping them hard in his own. “This is yours,” he said roughly. “Do with it as you will. Throw it in the Kaveri if you wish. But it was meant for you alone. None other than you.”

To Nanju's dismay, Avvaiah started crying again when she returned to the cart. “Hurr … Hurr,” Tukra encouraged the oxen, and they steadily moved forward again.

“Avvaiah,” Nanju said helplessly. He was a man, wasn't he? Appaiah had told him that he needed to take care of his mother, and Nanju knew he must not fail her again. “Avvaiah, Kambeymada thatha—”

“He is gone, Nanju,” she sobbed. “He is lost to me forever.” She hugged him to her, so tight that his ribs hurt, but Nanju knew it was important, very important, not to move at all.

Machu went to see the elders of the family that same evening.

“Have you gone soft in the head?” they asked incredulously, when they heard what he had to say. Machu, however, was adamant.

Two days later, when his wife went into labor, it was a boy, just as Devi had predicted. He cradled the baby in his arms, gazing wonderingly at him.

Are you happy?
she had asked.

His son roared lustily, and for the first time in a very long while the shadows shifted momentarily from Machu's heart.

Chapter 22

W
hen the Kambeymada family sent word to Devanna that they had reconsidered the division of the property, Devi knew it was all Machu's doing.
I will see to it,
he had said to her,
that you get your fair share.

Devanna stared in wonder at the letter, and then he read it again to make sure he had not misunderstood. “My father! He did this, I suppose … I hadn't expected, I never thought that …
Look,
Devi,” he said hoarsely. “A hundred acres!”

Devi had spared him the details of the denouement at the Kambeymada house, how she had pleaded with the elders and especially his father to treat Devanna equitably. She said nothing now to disabuse him of the notion of his father's largesse, but there was a fierce exultation in her eyes as she stared at the letter.
I will see to it,
Machu had promised her.

She sent Tukra to the Nachimanda village with news of this windfall, bidding Thimmaya to come at once, and they set out the very next day to inspect the property. The land that had been bequeathed to Devanna was a coffee estate that lay about half an hour outside Mercara. It had belonged to a Scottish planter, and when he had left Coorg—
I have had it with these blasted rains,
he had shouted after an especially poor season—Kambeymada Nayak had promptly bought it from him. Buy paddy acreage; this is not
the time to be investing in coffee, the Nayak's cronies had urged, but the Nayak had gone ahead regardless. “Land is land,” he had pointed out. “It can lie untended for a while until coffee prices improve.”

Devi knew little of this as she looked around her, at the array of coffee bushes, the pond glinting in the distance, the vast, dilapidated bungalow at the head of a winding gravel drive. “Iguthappa Swami,” she said softly to her father, “is looking after us once more. We will—” She stopped short at the worried look on his face.

“What?” she asked anxiously. “What is it?”

Thimmaya shook his head. “There would at least be some paddy, I hoped. This—the land is all given over to coffee.”

“It is. That's a good thing, isn't it? To own a coffee plantation, like the white folk?”

Thimmaya glanced at Devi, trying to curb the anxiousness in his breast. His poor child, how would she ever be able to … nothing she knew of coffee planting. Where could he even begin?

“Appaiah?” Devi asked again, her eyes huge. “Please. Just tell me, what is the matter?”

“The thing is, kunyi, coffee yields have not been … they have been poor for quite some years now. When the first coffee estates were planted—many years ago, when your Tayi herself was no older than you are now—in those days, they say the coffee crops did very well indeed.”

The yields realized by those pioneer white folk had been so rich, he explained, that multitudes of their brethren had followed, pouring into Coorg. The 1870s and '80s had seen their estates proliferate around Coorg. Even the Coorgs began to scatter handfuls of coffee berries here and there among their holdings, acquiring such a taste for the beverage that no kitchen was complete without a pot of strong black coffee sweetened with jaggery brewing on the fire. The truly wealthy among them, like Kambeymada Nayak, had acres of underbrush cleared from beneath their holdings of rosewood and turned over to coffee. The plants had grown robustly, producing profuse clumps of berries season after season.

And then, toward the turn of the century, things had taken an abrupt downturn. Coffee yields had fallen inexplicably low all across Coorg. No matter how the planters weeded or pruned, no matter whether the hands that tended the estates were white or brown, no matter the soil scientists brought in from Mysore nor the roosters sacrificed to the wood spirits. For nearly seven seasons now, the coffee in Coorg had been reduced to a few measly tons of output.

A breeze stirred through the estate, ruffling the coffee leaves. Devi swallowed. “How … ,” she asked Thimmaya haltingly, “just how bad is it?”

“It is a beautiful piece of land, kunyi,” he tried to reassure her. “Look how it undulates about us, so many orange trees.”

“We can't live on the oranges alone,” Devi interrupted. “Please, Appaiah, just tell me. Can I do anything at all with the property?”

“Yes,” Thimmaya replied, “sell it. The price per acre will not be good, but there are one hundred of them—your own father tills but twelve. Sell the land, and buy paddy wetlands with the money, or some acres of cardamom.”

She stared around her, crestfallen.
I will see to it,
he had said to her. It was Machu who had talked sense into the family; it was he who had got her this land.

She reached toward a coffee bush. Its leaves seemed to glow as they brushed against her fingers.
Machu got me this land,
Devi thought again. It was all she had of him.

“I will not sell,” she said quietly.

“Kunyi, come now, be practical. From the look of things, this estate has not been tended to for years.” He pointed at the trees arching over their heads. “The shade trees, look how overgrown they are. Even in good times, they must be pruned each year so that the coffee gets enough sun.” The European planters were known to be fanatical about clipping back the tree cover, and in some estates there had been a mass felling of timber. Should even a single tree trunk be left standing, these planters had warned their workers, it would be grounds for instant dismissal. “They are completely
overgrown, kunyi. Where will you get the money to have them pruned?”

“I will not sell.”

“Devi, don't be foolish. Even timber prices have been low this year. You will get next to nothing for the trees.”

She turned pleadingly to him. “Don't ask me to sell this property, Appaiah. There
must
be something else I can do.”

Thimmaya stared helplessly at his daughter. For an instant, she seemed no more than a little girl. Muthavva would be scolding her over something or other and she would race helter-skelter toward him, seeking amnesty from her mother's wrath. Such a look she would have in her face then, as he swung her high into his arms. As if her father could do anything,
anything
at all, to shelter her from all the ills of the world.

He ran his hand over a pepper vine that had been trained about the trunk of a shade tree. The vines had suffered from neglect, too; there would hardly be anything from them that year.