Nectar in a Sieve (25 page)

We did not try to dissuade him, although the thought of going without him was saddenina. In the short time he had spent with us we had come to be curiously dependent on the boy, respecting his independent spirit as much as his considerable knowledge of the city and its many kinds of people. Yet I thought, what I did not wish to think, of the time when the disease that had claimed his fingers would creep up, eating away his limbs -- or attack some other part, his feet or his eyes. What then of this bright fearless child who boasted that he stood alone? There is a limit to the achievements of human courage.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FROM counting annas, as the days went by, we began to count rupees. Four rupees, five, six. Even Puli began to show excitement. There was the time when we worked so well -- or the stones were so kind -- that we earned a rupee in a single day. I handed the coin as usual to Puli, who thrust it into the ragged pouch which covered his manhood. Where he transferred the money we gave him from there I do not know. It was his own business and he never told: certainly not one pie was ever lost. We walked back jubilant that day in the coppery twilight already edged with black, like ashes around dying embers. A thin drizzle was falling, so fine it might have been dew, the ground beneath my feet felt like the earth in the early morning and no longer a street. In fancy I was already home.

The single, twisting road that led from the quarry soon split into several streets, the main one leading to the bazaar, and it was this that I took.

"I will go on to the temple," said Nathan. "I am a little tired . . . besides it does not take two to buy rice cakes."

"Maybe a little more than rice cakes this time," I said cheerfully, winking at the boy. "You go oni we will give you a surprise."

I went to the small shop as I did each morning, Puli in eager step beside me, and the vendor hailed me as an old customer. He was a good man, for all that I bought so little from him: he sought out the largest rice cakes for the same money, and sometimes a lump of ghee to go with it as well.

"Wait a bit," I said, as he began to wrap the rice cake in a plantain leaf. "There may be a little more today."

"Come into money, have you?" he cried, chuckling and slapping his thigh with a loud report. "Well, you have come to the right man. I have a selection such as few have and, mark you, cheaper than anybody else! What will you have? Potato fritters, crisped in butter and melting inside, or these fried pancakes I have myself stuffed with onions? . . . Something sweet for the boy? . . . Sugar-whirls, or these exquisite curly-curlies?"

What shall it be, what shall it be? I inspected all the delicacies, which I had never dared to do before, and I found it next to impossible to decide between them. Puli, hopping up and down beside me, was likewise veering from one dainty to another. "The pilau there, such a lovely smell, and it has roasted nuts in it -- or no, I think the fritters will last longer. . . ."

In the end we bought the fried pancakes, one each, paying six annas for the three, and four annas for two rice cakes.

"Well, if we are extravagant it is only once," I said, seeking to console my uneasy mind. "Ten annas is only a little over what we usually spend. The change will do us good."

But the recklessness did not end there. As we walked on we passed a hawker, and he had a sensitive nose and sniffed that we had a little money and little control to go with it and he came after us pulling out and exhibiting his wares, and at last he took out a small wooden cart on wheels to which he attached a string and pulled it along behind him as he came following us.

"A dum-dum cart," cried Puli, and he echoed after the man, "We need not buy, let us only stop and watch," and he tugged at my sari. So we stopped to look at the toy and indeed it was a pretty thing, lovingly made and exactly like a real cart, the wood skilfully carved, with painted spokes to the wheels and a yoke which moved on the necks of the painted oxen.

"Pull it and hear the drum beat," said the wily man, holding out the string to Puli, and how could he resist it, who was only a child, when I myself was enchanted! So he jerked the string and as the cart came towards him the legs of the oxen moved and the carter's hands rose and fell and the drum-sticks he held in them came down upon the tiny drum in front of him -- a real drum, cunningly made with cords up the sides and skin stretched tightly over the top. Dum-dum-dumdum went the drum, the quicker you pulled the faster it beat.

"Two annas only -- you will never be able to buy cheaper. It cost me all of that to make. . . . There is no profit to me in it, I only sell because I must. I have not sold one toy all day."

I sneaked a glance at Puli and he was looking at me with eyes like lamps. He still held the string between the stumps of his fingers, and kept yanking at it as if the drumming was sweet to his ears.

"Why do you not pay for it with your own money if you want it?" I said uneasily. "I see you begging every day. . . . You know I have spent more than I ought already."

"Two annas more won't matter," he wheedled. "I promise I will never ask you for anything. . . ." "But you have money of your own," I repeated. "I have seen it myself."

"I have spent it all," he said pitifully. "People gave at first but now they are used to me. . . . It is a hard world."

Again I thought, He is a child after all, still tender, still eager. Whatever he may say or do he has lived only a short time, not easily. And even as I nodded he began fumbling at his pouch, unable in his haste to undo it, until at last I had to do it for him, taking from it the coins I needed, still warm from his body, and handing them to the hawker.

Then extravagance grew frenzied, encouraged by this lapse, and I could not stop myself from taking out two more annas to buy another cart. For my little grandson, I thought, who has had so much to bear from his birth, and I pictured his white transparent cheeks flushing with excitement while Ira hovered nearby with her face like a flower and the rare smile that graced it.

The hawker took the money from me and made off quickly -- no doubt fearing that I would come to my senses. We continued on our way, Puli dragging one cart behind him, I carrying the other together with the rice cakes, the pancakes and the two-anna piece which was all that was left of the day's earnings; while I thought again and again of what I would say to my husband.

Now we were within the precincts of the temple and I caught sight of Nathan and ran towards him, bidding the boy pick up the cart with its infernal drum: but no, he was bewitched, the cart must come dum-dumming behind him.

"I don't know what came over me," I blurted, penitent. "I shall work very hard tomorrow to make up. You will see."

Nathan looked at me, his eyes were dull. He is exasperated, I thought. No wonder!

"We have a surprise for you," I said with false cheerfulness. "Look, pancakes!"

Nathan gave them a glance, then rose hurriedly to his feet. I saw him stagger to one side, away from the stone corridors. When the spasm of sickness was over, he came back to lean against a pillar. He was shivering.

"It was the food," he gasped. "It turned my stomach."

"You have worked too hard," I said. "It does not do to strain oneself."

"The fever has been coming all day," he said. "Since this morning."

I felt his body and it was burning hot, the skin dry and stretched. He had obviously been ill for several hours. Why did you have to do it? I wanted to say. Why? But I only said, "Lie and rest. You will feel better." And I took his head in my lap and set my hands to massaging the pain from his limbs.

The rain which had been a fine drizzle had become by morning a heavy downpour. The air, as always at the beginning of the monsoon, lay like a blanket upon the earth, damp and suffocating, but when it blew the wind came through the rain wet and chill. Nathan was still shivering, but no longer violently. I broke up the two rice cakes and we ate in silence, depressed by the ceaseless rain. Nathan has eaten his share, I thought. He must be better; it is the cold which makes him shiver. Nevertheless I said to him anxiously: "Stay behind and rest -- it is not good for you to go out in this rain. Tomorrow will be enough."

"Tomorrow and tomorrow it will rain," he replied. "It is the monsoon. I cannot sit here idling while the days slip past and we are still far from home."

We went, the three of us, to the quarry, joining the bedraggled groups of workers toiling along the winding, muddy road. Those who were richer bought and donned palm-leaf hooded cloaks which fell stiffly from head to thigh, making them look like walking beetles; but these protectors were expensive, twelve annas apiece; most of the workers did without.

Rain had softened the road, liquid mud came squelching up between my toes as I walked. Ahead and behind me were scores of footprints, many of them like small pools where water had seeped in. The cart-tracks were full of water too, long lines crisscrossing with mud flung up on either side of the trenches. Three or four empty bullock carts passed us on the way to collect the broken stones, the bullocks drawing them struggling to get through the morass, their hides slippery with rain. The cart wheels sank deep in the mud as they turned, mud spattered continuously from the creaking wheels.

"The worst season of the year," a voice was grumbling. "Next year whatever happens I shall not work."

"Pah, you say that every year."

"No, really, this time I mean it . . . even if it means not eating."

Plans, everyone had plans. They were all built on money. Save enough to keep dry, save enough to cast one's chains, save enough to go away.

The clink of stones came to us sodden with the rain, indistinct, unmistakable. A few brave souls had risen with the dawn. Up the hillside to join them, scrambling over the sharp slopes. Once I caught at a bush to help me up it was a prickly pear, and I had to spend precious minutes pulling out the thorns. Nathan behind me was panting, the breath came and went so quickly that his chest resembled a bellows.

"I will rest when we are home," he said to me impatiently. "There will be plenty of time then."

And I listened to him. All day we sat there in the rain breaking stones, and for the whole of that week, and Nathan grew neither better nor worse. On the seventh day the ague came upon him again, but he did not stop work. A kind of frenzy drove him on.

Rain. Not heavy now but monotonous, dripping on to us, splashing on the stones. No shelter on that bare hillside. The wind came whistling round it and struck at the crouched wet bodies. Hammer on stone. Stone on stone. Clink-clank-drip. The rain had even defeated Puli the lion-hearted; he would not accompany us to the quarry.

Dusk was approaching, early because of the sullen lowering clouds; when I took up the sack, not full today, the stones rattled loosely inside.

"Don't wait for me," I said to my husband. "I will be with you soon."

"Don't be long," he said.

I went quickly from him with the sack on my back; running to get to the head of the waiting queue. Six annas, less than we have earned before; but we have nearly enough now, I thought, coming through the gloom. I must see about a carter. Maybe it will not be as much as we have reckoned, then we can leave at once. My mind wandered to my home; would it still be there? I saw before me my daughter and the shy whitefaced Sacrabani. And Puli . . . if only he would come, how happy we would be, my husband and I! Not Puli, though; he would certainly refuse. I shall miss him, I thought sadly. But he -- he won't even notice our going.

Disjointed thoughts kept clattering through my brain -- or was the clatter only the rain? I stumbled down the hill-slopes, treacherous with mud and stones, sighing with relief as I reached the road.

Half way along it, I saw a small knot of people gathered. Nothing can make me stop, I thought, hurrying along. Then one of the group called: "Ai! See to your man. He has fallen."

I stopped and my senses poised themselves on the brink of insensibility, ready to swoop away at the merest nod from me. I shook off the blackness and went to him through the gathered people, who parted to let me through, then closed their ranks as I knelt beside him.

He was lying by the side of the road where someone had carried him -- not in the gutter but away from the road, to avoid the mud-churning cart wheels. His body had made a trough of the wet mud, in it he lay jerking and twitching. Next to him the swollen gutter ran like a stream, noisily; above it I could hear his hoarse breathing. I touched him and his body was as chill as the wind. The pitiless rain came splashing down uncaring. I had no shield for him. At last I unwound part of my sari, meaning to tear it, but the material would not tear: where my hands were it gave, limp and perished. In despair I wound the rags about me again. Nobody gave anything, nobody had anything to give; the men in loincloths, the women in saris tattered and sodden like mine. It makes no difference, I thought to myself, and found the words being murmured by another.