Nectar in a Sieve (13 page)

CHAPTER XV

ONE day Raja went out as usual and did not come back. At dusk they brought his body home slung between two men, one at the head and one at the feet. There was a small trickle of blood running from his mouth, fresh and still bright red, and more blood from a cut in his head, dark and congealed here and matting his hair.

They laid him on the ground. They bowed their heads and shuffled their feet and spoke in low voices and then they went away. It was real; yet it seemed a nightmare, it could not be true that my son lay dead before me. Thus my thoughts, dazed and confused, injecting pain where there was numbness; and my mind, furtively touching the edges of realisation, then fleeing from it in terror.

He had been caught, they said; something about money. What had my son to do with money, who had not a pie of his own! He was not very strong, they told me. They merely laid hands on him, and he fell. As if I did not know how thin and brittle he had grown! But why should others lay hands on him? They told me, but the sense of their words escaped. They told me, but

I could not remember. They repeated themselves again and again, but I kept forgetting. I heard Ira begin to sing a low dirge; she was rocking gently back and forth, and she was crying.

"What are you crying for?" I said. "You have little enough strength, without dissolving it in tears."

She looked at me stupidly, and away, and down at her brother. Her sorrow flowed to me; the numbness began to clear. I tried frantically to keep it -- I might as well have tried to imprison a cloud.

For this I have given you birth, my son, that you should lie in the end at my feet with ashes in your face and coldness in your limbs and yourself departed without trace, leaving this huddle of bones and flesh without meaning.

Already I think, the eyes must be closed, though death has glazed them, and I do so; the jaw must be tied, for it is sagging, I put a bandage about it; the body must be washed and I wash it; and Ira comes to help and cleanses the mouth which I have forgotten to do. These things were you, now there is no connection whatever; the sorrow within me is not for this body which has suffered and in suffering has let slip the spirit, but for you, my son.

Nathan prepares the bier, I see him lifting the body on to it. Then he goes out, walking towards the town. At dawn the funeral drums begin, and soon after our friends and neighbours come. Granny first, though hardly able to walk; then Durgan; Kannan with his wife, bearing a few jasmine buds; and Kali, bringing with her a muslin cloth to cover the bier. They pay their respects in silence, and when the sun has risen, the men pick up the bier and depart; but the women stay behind, for this is the custom. All that morning the sound of the drums comes faintly to us, rising and falling, rising and falling with the wind; until at last a final beat comes quivering through the air and we strain our ears for the next, but this, this sound which has already gone, is the last.

Now not even a heap of bones: only a few ashes to show that once a man has lived.

Raja had not been dead three full days when two officials from the tannery came to see us, and the one who was tall and burly with long moustaches did all the talking, and the other who was thin and insignificant stepped timidly in his shadow and agreed with what he said.

"The watchmen were only doing their duty," the tall one began. "They are engaged to protect our property, you understand."

"I understand."

"No violence was used," he said. "Only enough to stop him. You agree, it was necessary."

"He was doing nothing."

"On the contrary. He was seen in the yard, where he had no business to be, and when the chowkidars caught him they found he had stolen a calfskin."

"I do not believe it," I said. "What use had he for such a thing?"

"Not in itself maybe," he replied in a strained voice, as if struggling to keep his temper, "but of course he could have sold it -- sold it anywhere. We have had a lot of losses recently."

"You cannot blame my son," I said wearily. "We live from hand to mouth, as you can see. . . there is no wealth here, such as your goods might have brought."

"I am not blaming your son alone," he said carefully, "but of course it is well known your sons have been troublemakers. Now we do not want any trouble from you, you understand. The lad was caught in the act of stealing -- maybe, as you say, for the first time and in a moment of weakness -- still, he was caught, and for the consequences that followed, no one was to blame except himself. He should not have struggled. In these circumstances you naturally have no claim on us."

"Claim?" I said. "I have made no claim. I do not understand you."

He made a gesture of impatience.

"You may think of it later, and try to get compensation. I warn you, it will not work."

Compensation, I thought. What compensation is there for death? I felt confused, I did not understand what he was getting at. There was a pause. The timid man said kindly: "He was not brutally treated or anything, you know. They merely tapped him with a lathi, as he was trying to escape, and he fell. He must have been very weak or something."

"He was," I said. "He worked hard, and ate little."

"Naturally, it must have been a blow for you," said the timid one. "It is hard to lose -- that is --" He tailed off incoherently, seeing his companion's glance fixed on him.

"The point is," the other said, and he thumped on the floor to emphasize his point, "that no fault attaches to us. Absolutely none. Of course, as my friend has said, it is your loss. But not, remember, our responsibility. Perhaps," he went on, "you may even be the better off. . . . You have many mouths to feed, and --"

The thinner man raised his hand to check him, appalled by the words, yet scared by his own daring. Poor little mouse, that gesture must have taken all his courage, he had none left for speech. His aggressive companion stopped short; the look of surprise spreading over his face was quickly replaced by displeasure. He turned to me.

"I did not intend to wound you. But sometimes the truth must be stated, unpalatable as it is."

I nodded. There was no sense in agreeing or disagreeing, the gulf between us was too wide; it was no use at all flinging our words at each other across that gaping chasm.

"So you agree," he insisted. "No responsibility attaches to us."

"Yes," I said, my lips felt stiff.

"I am glad everything is settled then. An unpleasant matter, but amicably settled." He drew his lips back, imitating a smile, and turned triumphantly to his companion.

"Did I not tell you there would be no trouble? You always fear the worst. I told you they would be reasonable."

The other did not look triumphant: if anything, he seemed to have shrunk a little, he avoided looking at me altogether; but as they went out together he glanced at me quickly, once, and in that brief moment I saw that his eyes were grieving.

"You should not care," I said very softly to him alone. "It does not matter."

He heard me and half-turned, his eyes clearing a little.

"I am very sorry for you," he said in a low voice. "May you find peace."

He went, his face overlaid with shame and misery.

CHAPTER XVI

"THERE is the reaping," I said, "and the threshing and winnowing. How shall we manage when the time comes?"

"When the time comes," Nathan said with a gleam in his eye, "the strength will be forthcoming, never fear."

I looked at him doubtfully: thin and drawn, with thighs and arms so puny that no muscle showed even when he flexed them. The rice would have to be lifted plant by plant, and the grain separated from the husk, and the husk beaten for the last few grains. . . it meant working long hours in the flooded fields with bent back, and much labouring thereafter converting the paddy into rice. It was no task for weakened bodies.

"You will see," he said with confidence. "We will find our strength. One look at the swelling grain will be enough to renew our vigour."

Indeed, it did our hearts good to see the paddy ripen. We watched it as a dog watches a bone, jealously, lest it be snatched away; or as a mother her child, with pride and affection. And most of all with fear.

As we sat there Irawaddy came to us, stepping softly.

"It is hot within," she said forlornly. "I could not rest."

She went and picked a head of paddy before sitting down beside us. I saw her fingers parting the husk, feeling for the grain within.

"How much longer?"

The same question, the answer to which she already knew, who had lived on the land since birth.

"Three weeks," Nathan's reply, grave, sincere, absolutely honest where another might have been tempted to easier words.

"It is not long to wait," I said, trying to hearten her. "And if the Gods are kind it may even be sooner."

That was what we prayed for -- that it might not be too late. The tears that brightened Ira's eyes, the silences of my husband, the twitching face of Selvam, all came from one thing, the thought, imprisoned in the brain but incapable of utterance, that Kuti might not live to see the harvesting. The rest of us might struggle on, our endurance was greater; but he was only a child, not yet five, who had already waited a long time and who had suffered more than any of us. Whether from the unsuitable food, or from the constant restless movement of his body, he had developed a thick, irritating rash which he kept scratching; and where his nails caught, sores and blisters began, destroying whatever little peace he might have had. Sometimes after moaning for hours at a stretch he would fall into an exhausted daze -- it could not be called sleep, it was nothing so sweet -- and I would go to him with beating heart to see if the fight was ended; but again and again he struggled back to consciousness, took up again his tormented living; almost I wished it otherwise.

Some two or three days later I noticed a change in Kuti: his eyes lost their dullness and the whimpering that had been so harrowing to listen to lessened and stopped. I thought it was the end -- a brief rallying, a frothing up of the last reserves of strength when there is no longer any need to hold back, like the sudden brilliant glow of an expiring taper -- since we gave him nothing, there being nothing to give, that might account for the change. The following day, however, the improvement continued, and that night he slept peacefully. I gazed at the small tired face, soothed by sleep as it had not been for many nights, and even as I puzzled about the change, profound gratitude flooded through me, and it seemed to me that the Gods were not remote, not unheedful, since they had heard his cries and stilled them as it were by a miracle. Irawaddy crept up to me as I watched, and smiled at me and the child; and I whispered, "He is better," but there was no need as she, of all people, knew.

Through relief and exhaustion I slept well that night, waking refreshed before daybreak with a renewed hopefulness. Soon all will be well, I thought. We shall eat and the strength will come back to us, and there will be no more fear. This has been a bad time but it is passing as all things must, and now it is not joy, which passes in a trice, but sorrow, which is slower in the going, and so one must be patient. A few more days' waiting, a few more days' anxiety -- it is not beyond enduring, it is not too much to ask. This I thought as I lay there, listening to the sounds of sleep and lost in my own imaginings.

The darkness was lifting when I heard the sound of footsteps, wary, soft, less heard than felt as a slight tremor of the ground. If it had been a reverberating gong, that sound could not have had more violent effect. My fancies fled headlong from me; in their place a cloud of black and grey arose, revolving before my eyes and assuming fantastic shapes and forms until at last one stood out clearly away from the swirling mists and with a face to it. Kunthi. No one but Kunthi, coming stealthily by night to thieve from us what little we had, unashamed as she was and always had been.

The footsteps were coming nearer: I raised myself on my elbow the better to listen, trying to still the thudding in my eardrums which impeded my hearing. Nearer and nearer. I stood up, bracing myself for the encounter, and stepped from the familiar darkness of the hut into the greying night outside. The figure was there, soft and blurred in outline, but a woman's. I threw myself at it, pinioning the arms savagely; thrust at it and beat it to the ground; fell on it with fury; felt the weak struggles of the body beneath mine like the feeble fluttering of a trapped bird, and exulted. The air was full of harsh sounds, but whether they issued from my throat or hers, or existed only in my imagination, I do not know. The being that was me was no longer in possession: it had been consumed in the flames of anger and hatred that raged through me in those few minutes; what took its place I do not know.