Nectar in a Sieve (10 page)

"They are calling for labourers," Arjun said, not looking up. "It would be a good opportunity for us."

Only Arjun and Thambi, who had stayed in the town until nightfall, and my husband and I, were up. The others were long asleep.

"They are paying well," Arjun resumed. "It would be good for us to work again. It is not fitting that men should corrupt themselves in hunger and idleness."

"I have heard," said Nathan, "that labour is required of you not here, but in the island of Ceylon."

"Yes. It is work in the tea plantations of Ceylon."

"You may not have the knowledge for such work."

"They will teach us -- they have said so."

"Who will pay for the journey -- is it not one of many hundreds of miles?"

"True. They will arrange everything, and everything will be paid for."

So Nathan was silenced, for he saw they were men and had made their decisions, but how could I let them go, who were my own flesh and blood, without a fight?

"Promises," I said. "Fair words. Who is to see if they are honoured? What is to happen if they are broken?"

"They need labour," Arjun said drily. "Self-interest alone will keep these promises."

"What is it that calls you?" I said. "Is it gold? Although we have none, remember that money is not everything."

"It is an important part of living," he answered me patiently, "and work is another. There is nothing for us here, for we have neither the means to buy land nor to rent it. Would you have us wasting our youth chafing against things we cannot change?"

"Indeed no," I said. "But Ceylon is a distant land, its people are not ours. How will you fare?"

"No worse than here," they replied. "No worse than here."

The wick was spluttering in the oil. There were only a few drops left in the coconut shell, but there was none to replenish it. We sat on in the darkness. Then at last I made one more effort.

"If you go you will never come back," I cried. "The journey costs hundreds of rupees, you will never have so much."

The tears came, hot and bitter, flowing and flowing as if the very springs of sorrow had been touched in my body. They spoke soothingly -- of how much they would earn, and how one day they would return -- as one does to a child; and I listened to them; and it was all a sham, a poor shabby pretence to mask our tortured feelings.

They left at first daylight, each carrying a bundle with food in it, and each before he went kissed Nathan's feet, then mine, and we laid our hands on them in blessing. I knew we would never see them again.

"They are growing up," Nathan said. "Would you have them forever at your breast?"

"Ah, no," I said wearily. "They must go their way. Only it seems to me their way lies far from here. Two sons have gone, now the third is going -- and not to the land, which is in his blood, but to be a servant, which he has never been. What does he know of such work?"

"He will learn," said Nathan. "He is quick and has an agile brain. Should you not be thankful that he goes no further than two days' journeying, and that it is a good house that takes him? Kenny himself has assured you of that -- you should be grateful that he has recommended our son."

"I am indeed," I said, flat and dispirited. "He has done much for us."

"You brood too much," Nathan said, "and think only of your trials, not of the joys that are still with us. Look at our land -- is it not beautiful? The fields are green and the grain is ripening. It will be a good harvest year, there will be plenty."

He coaxed me out into the sunlight and we sat down together on the brown earth that was part of us, and we gazed at the paddy fields spreading rich and green before us, and they were indeed beautiful. The air was cool and still, yet the paddy caught what little movement there was, leaning slightly one way and the next with soft whispering. At one time there had been kingfishers here, flashing between the young shoots for our fish; and paddy birds; and sometimes, in the shallower reaches of the river, flamingoes, striding with ungainly precision among the water reeds, with plumage of a glory not of this earth. Now birds came no more, for the tannery lay close -- except crows and kites and such scavenging birds, eager for the town's offal, or sometimes a pal-pitta, skimming past with raucous cry but never stopping, perhaps dropping a blue-black feather in flight to delight the children.

Nathan went and plucked a few green stems and brought them to me. "See how firm and strong they are -- no sign of disease at all. And look, the grain is already forming."

I took the paddy from him and parted the grass and there within its protective husk lay the rice-grain, just big enough to see, white, perfect, and holding in itself our lives.

"It promises a good harvest," he repeated eagerly. "We shall be able to pay the landlord, and eat, and perhaps even put by a little. We may even make enough to visit our son -- would not that be good?"

Thus he sought to comfort me, and after a time I was with him, thinking pleasurably of harvesting, and of plucking the pumpkins swelling on the vine, and visiting our son -- and so we made our plans.

Before long Kenny brought me news of my third son. He was doing well, he said. His employer was well pleased with his work, he would be well looked after and I had no cause for his anxiety. The boy would soon be writing to me himself.

"It is very kind of you to tell me," I said. "You have done much for me and mine."

"It is nothing," he said. "You ask little."

I glanced at him, sitting there in our hut with long, haggard face and eyes like a kingfisher's wing, living among us who were not his people, in a country not his own, and of a sudden I was moved to ask him if he was indeed alone.

"Alone?" he said. "I am never alone. Do you not see the crowds always at my door? Have you ever known me to lack a following?"

"I did not mean that," I said, quietly waiting.

He did not reply at once. His face had shrivelled. I have offended him, I thought, panic overcoming me. Why did I have to speak?. . . The silence deepened. Then at last he looked up. "I am surprised you have not asked me before," he said. "It is many years since I saw you in your mother's house."

Well, I thought, if I have not asked, it is because I have not dared; there is a look about you that is quelling, and your manner forbids such talk.

I said awkwardly, "I have thought about it more than once. . . but it is not my place to ask questions. You come and go, and it is your own concern. I do not know what made me ask you now."

"Yet, since you have asked, I will tell you," he said. "I have the usual encumbrances that men have -- wife, children, home -- that would have put chains about me, but I resisted, and so I am alone. As for coming and going, I do as I please, for am I not my own master? I work among you when my spirit wills it. . . . I go when I am tired of your follies and stupidities, your eternal, shameful poverty. I can only take you people," he said, "in small doses."

I was silent, taking no offence. Barbed words, but what matter from one so gentle? Harsh talk from one in whom the springs of tenderness gushed abundant, as I knew.

"I told you what I did, in a moment of lunacy," he said. "I do not want it repeated."

"I am not cursed with a gossip's tongue," I said, annoyed. "I would not repeat what you have said."

"Never. Understand?"

"I understand."

He rose to his feet and without another word was gone, walking with long, quick strides and stooping a little as always. A strange nature, only partly within my understanding. A man half in shadow, half in light, defying knowledge.

CHAPTER XIII

THAT year the rains failed. A week went by, two. We stared at the cruel sky, calm, blue, indifferent to our need. We threw ourselves on the earth and we prayed. I took a pumpkin and a few grains of rice to my Goddess, and I wept at her feet. I thought she looked at me with compassion and I went away comforted, but no rain came.

"Perhaps tomorrow," my husband said. "It is not too late."

We went out and scanned the heavens, clear and beautiful, deadly beautiful, not one cloud to mar its serenity. Others did so too, coming out, as we did, to gaze at the sky and murmur, "Perhaps tomorrow."

Tomorrows came and went and there was no rain. Nathan no longer said perhaps; only a faint spark of hope, obstinately refusing to die, brought him out each dawn to scour the heavens for a sign.

Each day the level of the water dropped and the heads of the paddy hung lower. The river had shrunk to a trickle, the well was as dry as a bone. Before long the shoots of the paddy were tipped with brown; even as we watched, the stain spread like some terribledisease, choking out the green that meant life to us.

Harvesting time, and nothing to reap. The paddy had taken all our labour and lay now before us in faded, useless heaps.

Sivaji came to collect his master's dues and his face fell when he saw how much was lost, for he was a good man and he felt for us.

"There is nothing this year," Nathan said to him. "Not even gleanings, for the grain was but little advanced."

"You have had the land," Sivaji said, "for which you have contracted to pay: so much money, so much rice. These are just dues, I must have them. Would you have me return empty-handed?"

Nathan's shoulders sagged. He looked tired and dispirited. I came and stood beside him, Ira and the boys crouched near us, defensively.

"There is nothing," Nathan repeated. "Do you not see the crops are dead? There has been no rain and the river is dry."

"Yet such was the contract, else the land would not have been rented to you."

"What would you have me do? The last harvest was meagre; we have nothing saved."

Sivaji looked away. "I do not know. It is your concern. I must do as I am bid."

"What then?"

"The land is to be given to another if you cannot make payment."

"Go from the land after all these years? Where would we go? How would we live?"

"It is your concern. I have my orders and must obey them."

Nathan stood there sweating and trembling.

"Give me time," he said at last humbly, "until the next crop. I will pay then, somehow."

"Pay half now," Sivaji said, "and I will try and do as you wish." He spoke quickly, as if to give himself no time to repent of his offer, and hurried away even before my husband had assented.

"No easy job for him," I said. "He is answerable, even as we are."

"That is why he and his kind are employed," Nathan said bitterly. "To protect their overlords from such unpleasant tasks. Now the landlord can wring from us his moneys and care not for the misery he evokes, for indeed it would be difficult for any man to see another starve and his wife and children as well; or to enjoy the profits born of such travail."

He went into the hut and I followed. A few mud pots and two brass vessels, the tin trunk I had brought with me as a bride, the two shirts my eldest sons had left behind, two ollocks of dhal and a handful of dried chillies left over from better times: these we put together to sell.

"Rather these should go," said Nathan, "than that the land should be taken from us; we can do without these, but if the land is gone our livelihood is gone, and we must thenceforth wander like jackals." He stared awhile at what we had to sell, and made an effort to say something and tried again and at last he said, choking, "The bullocks must go. Otherwise we shall not have enough."

But when we had added them and reckoned and rereckoned, there was still not enough. "There are the saris left," I said. "Good ones and hardly worn, and these we must sell."

I brought out the red sari that had served for both my wedding and my daughter's, and the sari and dhoti I had bought when Thambi worked at the tannery, made a parcel of them and set out.

"Ah, Rukmani," said Biswas with false welcome. "What brings you here? I have not seen you for a long time, nor had any of your succulent fruit. Would that be what you bear with you?"

"No indeed," I answered shortly, his voice grating on me as always. "For the earth is parched to dust and all that I grew is dead. The rains failed, as you know."

"Yes, yes, yes," he said, looking at me with his cunning eyes. "These are hard times for us."

Not for you, I thought. You thrive on others' misfortunes.