Nectar in a Sieve (18 page)

"Mother, what is a bastard?"

What does one say to a child? What possible answer is there? I saw Ira eyeing the boy, startled, wary, trying to guess how much innocence and how much knowledge lay behind the question, wondering how little and how much she could tell him, questioning in her turn to gain time.

"Why do you ask?"

"I want to know".

"It is a child whose birth his mother did not wish for."

"Oh," he said, looking at her speculatively. "Did you wish me to be born?"

"Yes, of course, darling," Ira cried, and all the guilt of her efforts to have an abortion was in her voice. "I would not lose you for anything. Why do you have to ask?"

"I wanted to know," he repeated lightly, noncommittally, not knowing how cruelly he had hurt his mother.

Some days later he tackled her again.

"Mother, have I got a father?"

"Yes, dear, of course."

"Where is he?"

"Not here, my son; he is away."

"Why does he never come to see us?"

"He will when he can."

"But why not now?"

"Because he cannot. You will understand when you are older."

"How old?"

"I do not know myself. Now run away and play. You must not ask so many questions."

The first lie; many to follow. The distressing, inescapable need for lying.

"I would have told him his father was dead," I said, "as he certainly is to all intents and purposes. It would have been easier."

"Do not interfere," Nathan said. "It is for Ira to decide."

Ira looked heavy-eyed and hurt. "Yes; you are right," she said. "I should have told him that. I was not prepared for the question -- he is such a baby still."

"He did not think of it himself," I said. "He is as yet too young. No doubt one of his companions."

"Leave it, leave it," said Nathan. "Do not upset the girl any more."

He put out his hand to Ira, but she shied away from him. I saw her leave the hut.

"It is no use going to her," Nathan said sadly. "Such comfort as there is to be had must come from her own spirit."

Nevertheless, after a little while he did go to her and his gentleness melted her last remnants of control, for she began to weep. I heard her crying for a long time.

CHAPTER XXIII

MY third son, Murugan, who was a servant, married a girl from the town in which he worked. We had not seen her, nor did we know her family, and the marriage, in the second year after Sacrabani's birth, was solemnised at her parents' house without either of us being present. Had it been at all possible we would have gone, but it proved beyond our power. The town was over a hundred miles away, and since the harvest had been a poor one and Selvam was earning very little we had not the money to go by rail. Durgan, it is true, had a bullock in addition to his milch cows, and a cart which he offered to lend us for a small sum, but Nathan was not fit enough to undertake the journey there and back. He was nearing fifty and no longer as healthy as he had been. He had begun to suffer from rheumatism, and apart from this had had several attacks of fever, from each of which he recovered more slowly and emerged weaker. Sometimes in the middle of sowing or reaping or tilling, or the innumerable tasks the land demanded, he would stop and straighten up, breathing hard and trembling. Often he was unable to continue work and was forced to lie down in the hut for a while. Ira and I did what we could; but the land is mistress to man, not to woman: the heavy work needed is beyond her strength. Several times Kenny came to see him bringing food and sometimes medicine; he told me bluntly that my husband was not getting enough to eat.

"We eat well enough when the harvest is good," I answered him, "but of course we have our lean times."

"Too many," he said. "Your husband needs milk and vegetables and butter, not plain rice day after day."

I looked at him incredulously. "Those can only come our way when the yield is rich," I said. "It cannot be always or indeed even frequent, for we are not rich, you understand."

"I was not thinking," he muttered. "Of course I know this too." Then one day he told me that my husband would not recover until he stopped worrying.

"He is very anxious about you," he said. "You must try and reassure him."

"I would do so if only it were in my hands. But what comfort can one offer a man who sees his family wholly dependent on him and no one else to see to them?"

When I had said the words, I thought, Perhaps he will despise me for my weakness; perhaps this will make him think I am a self-pitying good-for-nothing, anxious only for my own well-being, and I added quickly: "There are others to consider besides myself. . . . I do what I can but it is not much."

"I had not thought otherwise," he said gently. "Tell me, is there no one else apart from your husband?"

"No one. My sisters have children of their own -- besides, they live very far away, we have not seen them for many years. My sons -- well, they have made their lives elsewhere, as you know."

There was a silence, and I thought, Now I have wounded him. . . . I did not mean to. I made a move towards him, but he seemed to shrink back. Both hands came up to bury his face.

"I do not grudge --" I began timidly. He took his hands away, I saw the imprint of pain on his face.

"And I have taken the last of them," he said. "Why do you not say it? It is true. I have taken him and there is no recompense."

For a moment the words would not come; there was room in me only for feeling, very deep, very tender, for this man who felt for me.

"You have taken nothing that was or would have been ours," I said at last. " Selvam never belonged to the land; he would never have been a farmer like his father. Do not torment yourself that he has turned from it and found his peace with you. We would not have had it otherwise."

"Yet in your hearts you may have wished for something else."

"If so, we have long since forgotten it. We would not wish for our son other than what he would wish for himself. He has chosen well."

Another silence.

"Do you never," he said, "think of your future? While you still have your strength and can plan?"

"Naturally we think. But plan! How can we? It is not within our means."

"Is there nothing you can do?" he asked. "Nothing at all?"

"What can we do? There are many like ourselves who cannot provide for the future. You know it yourself."

"Yes; I know. . . . I do not know why I asked; it was needless. There is no provision at all," he said, speaking half to himself, "neither for old nor young nor sick. They accept it; they have no option."

He looked so stern that I grew alarmed.

"Do not concern yourself," I said diffidently. "We are in God's hands."

He looked up sharply, abruptly as if some chain of thought had been rudely broken: then he left me.

Nathan was lying within. "What happened?" he asked, turning to face me. "You were a long time."

"We were talking, that is all."

"What about?"

"You are as persistent as your grandson," I said, "but being older you should know better. We were talking about Selvam. Kenny thinks he will be good. He is shaping well."

"I am glad. Tell me, did he not say anything about me?"

"Only that you were not to worry and then you would soon be on your feet."

"Worry? What about? Did he say?"

"About anything. You are to rest."

"Well," he said. "I can see you are guarding your tongue. Never mind; I can guess. But I shall be well soon -- you will see."

A few days later he was up and to my astonishment for the next year or so he had no further trouble. Then one day when I was congratulating myself on his recovery the blow fell.

I was out gathering cow dung, I did not see Sivaji come, and he left quickly as soon as he had delivered his message. I came with my basket half-laden and saw my husband sitting on the floor staring out before him, a dazed expression on his face and his lips trembling loosely. Sacrabani was crouched in a corner, hugging his knees in his arms and his pink, fascinated eyes halfcurious, half-terrified, fixed on his grandfather. I sent the child out and went to Nathan, thinking he had had another of his attacks, but he seemed to wake up when he heard my voice and waved me away.

"I am all right."

"Here -- drink this. You will feel better." I tipped the mud pot and filling his bowl handed it to him. He drank obediently as if to please me, spilling a little in the process. He was still shaking. I sat beside him waiting.

"The land is to be sold," he said. "We are to move. Sivaji came this morning. He says there is nothing to be done."

I could not take it in. I gaped at him unbelieving. He nodded as if to emphasize that what he had said was so.

"The tannery owners are buying the land. They pay good prices."

The tannery! That word brought instant understanding. Realisation came like a rocket, swift and fiery.

"They can't," I remember saying helplessly. "It is our land; we have been here thirty years."

Nathan opened his hands, trembling, impotent.

" Sivaji tells me there is a profit to be made. The landlord has completed the deal, papers have been signed. We must leave."

Where can we go? I wanted to ask; but that was a question at present without an answer, and I refrained. Instead he put the question. "Where are we to go? What shall we do?"

"How much time have we got?" I asked, preparing for the worst.

"He does not expect us to leave at once. He has given us two weeks' time in which to go, which is lenient."

A dozen lines of thought began and continued in my brain without ending; crossing, tangling, like threads on some meaningless warp. My head was whirling. I must sit down and think, I said to myself, but not now, later. Follow each thought to its conclusion, decide what we are to do for ourselves, plan as Kenny said for ourselves and our children. This present chaos is madness.

"I do not know why they need this bit of land," I said, in the manner of people who must say something for the sake of the sanity which speech can bring.

"Certainly they cannot build on it; it is a swamp, meant only for rice-growing."

Nathan shrugged. "Who knows. Perhaps they can drain it, tighten the soil; they have resources beyond our imagining. Or perhaps they wish to grow rice for their own men."

He too was speaking like me, automatically, for the sake of speaking. I made another effort, a pitiful one, for the words I said were the last to bring comfort.

"At least we shall not have much to carry. The granary is almost empty."

He nodded in dull agreement. Then once again we relapsed into silence, sunk in our own thoughts.

Somehow I had always felt the tannery would eventually be our undoing. I had known it since the day the carts had come with their loads of bricks and noisy dusty men, staining the clear soft greens that had once coloured our village and cleaving its cool silences with clamour. Since then it had spread like weeds in an untended garden, strangling whatever life grew in its way. It had changed the face of our village beyond recognition and altered the lives of its inhabitants in a myriad ways. Some -- a few -- had been raised up; many others cast down, lost in its clutches. And because it grew and flourished it got the power that money brings, so that to attempt to withstand it was like trying to stop the onward rush of the great juggernaut. Well, I suppose there were some families who saw in it hope for their sons: indeed, many still depended on such earnings, and if my sons had still been there my thoughts might have been different; but for us as we were now, and others like us, there could be only resignation and resentment. There had been a time when we, too, had benefited -- those days seemed very remote now, almost belonging to another life -- but we had lost more than we had gained or could ever regain. Ira had ruined herself at the hands of the throngs that the tannery attracted. None but these would have laid hands on her, even at her bidding. My sons had left because it frowned on them; one of them had been destroyed by its ruthlessness. And there were others its touch had scathed. Janaki and her family, the hapless chakkli Kannan, Kunthi even. . . .