Nectar in a Sieve (9 page)

"That you have so much passion in your body," she said insolently, "that you seek assuagement thus. Your husband would give much to know where you have been tonight."

I saw her mouth forming these words, her eyes halfhooded and mocking, then I saw her face suddenly close to mine and did not realise I had thrown myself at her until I felt her body in my grip. An overwhelming rage possessed me, I kept shaking her furiously, I could not stop. Her slender body was no match for mine. I saw her head fall back, the thin sari she wore slipped from her shoulders. Then I saw that it was not tied at the waist but below the navel, like a strumpet's, and that she was naked below. Sandalwood paste smeared her swelling hips, under her breasts were dark painted shadows which gave them sensuous depth, the nipples were tipped with red.

I released her. She stood there before me panting, with her hair shaken loose and coiling about her shoulders.

"Guard your tongue," I said, "or it will be the worse for you."

She said nothing for a moment, while she rearranged her garments, recovering herself a little; then once again that maddening, insulting half-smile curved her lips.

"And for you," she said, with knives in her voice, "and for your precious husband."

With that she was gone.

I went alone to summon my daughter's husband.

"Take her back," I said. "There is nothing wrong with her now, she will bear you many sons yet."

"I would," he replied, with a hint of sorrow in his eyes, "for she was a good wife to me, and a comely one, but I have waited long and now I have taken another woman."

I went away. Ira was waiting, eagerness shining from her.

"You must not blame him," I said. "He has taken another woman."

She said not a word. I repeated what I had said, for she seemed not to understand, but she only looked at me with stony eyes.

Thereafter her ways became even more strange. She spent long hours out in the country by herself, spoke little, withdrew completely into herself and went about her tasks with a chill hopelessness that daunted me. No one could see in her now the warm lovely creature she had been, except sometimes when Selvam came to her, perching on her lap and coaxing a smile from her, for she always had a special love for him. As my pregnancy advanced she turned completely away from me. Sometimes I saw her looking at me with brooding, resentful eyes, and despite myself I could not help wondering if hatred lay behind her glance.

Then at last my child was born, a nicely formed boy, smaller than the others had been, but of course I was older now. We nicknamed him Kuti, which means tiny, and being a happy, untroublesome baby everybody took pleasure in his arrival. None more so than Ira: the transformation in her was astonishing as it was inexplicable. I had feared she might dislike the child, but now it was as if he were her own. She lost her dreary air, her face became animated, the bloom of youth came back to her.

"Our daughter is herself again," said Nathan to me. "I have heard her carolling like a bird."

"She is happy with the child," I replied, "but I do not know what is to become of her in the future."

"Always worrying," he chided. "It is not a mercy that she is young again, should one not be grateful?"

He was a man and did not understand. How could I stop worrying? We had no money to leave her. Who would look after her when we were gone and the boys were married with families of their own? With a dowry it was perhaps possible she might marry again; without it no man would look at her, no longer a virgin and reputedly barren.

No one had been more upset about the outcome of Ira's marriage than Old Granny. It was she who had arranged the match, and though failing in health she thought it her duty to come to me. She had aged considerably since the last time I had seen her. She walked slowly, pausing before each step to gather strength for the next; her hands kept up a slight, shuddering movement like the nervous flutter of a bee on a flower.

"No fault of yours, or the girl's or her husband's," I told her. "It is Fate. Nevertheless, I do not like to think of the future."

"Why fear?" said the old lady. "Am I not alone, and do I not manage?"

I thought of her sitting in the street all day long with the gunny sacking in front of her piled with a few annas' worth of nuts and vegetables; and I thought of Ira doing the same thing, and I was silent.

"It is not unbearable," said she, watching me with her shrewd eyes. "One gets used to it."

It is true, one gets used to anything. I had got used to the noise and the smell of the tannery; they no longer affected me. I had seen the slow, calm beauty of our village wilt in the blast from the town, and I grieved no more; so now I accepted the future and Ira's lot in it, and thrust it from me; only sometimes when I was weak, or in sleep while my will lay dormant, I found myself rebellious, protesting, rejecting, and no longer calm.

CHAPTER XII

ONE day in each week, when the tannery stopped work, Arjun and Thambi would help their father on the land, and this gave Nathan great pleasure. He liked to see his sons beside him, to teach them the ways of the earth: how to sow; to transplant; to reap; to know the wholesome from the rotten, the unwelcome reed from the paddy; and how to irrigate or drain the terraces. In all these matters he had no master, and I think it helped him to know he could impart knowledge to his sons, more skilled though they were in other things, and able to read and write better than any in the town.

The rest of the week they worked at the tannery, going there soon after daybreak and not coming back until it was dark. By the time they had entered their late teens they were earning good wages: a rupee for each day's work, and without fail they would hand me their earnings, keeping nothing back for gaming or whoring as many of the lads did. Each morning I cooked rice for them, sometimes dhal or vegetables as well, which they took with them to eat at midday; and when they came home I gave them rice water and dried fish, sometimes a little buttermilk or perhaps even a few plantains I had kept from selling. But from what they gave me I had also to buy clothes for them, for they were expected to put on shirts over their loincloths, and red turbans on their heads, so that although we had full bellies and were well clothed, there was not much left over, and the hope I secretly cherished of putting by some money for Ira soon withered; and when it finally died I recovered my peace of mind and was happy enough.

If there was nothing to be done in the fields Nathan would accompany me when I went to market. This happened so seldom that it was always an occasion, and to round it off we would go to the tannery to see our sons. They invariably came out at midday for their meal, and we would sit with them for a few minutes, talking while they ate their rice and enjoying the rest. Then one day -- a bright, soft morning with a whisper of rain in it -- we got there to find the gates closed and guards posted along the iron railings that encircled the compound.

Midday, mid-afternoon, still no sign of any workers. At last I pluck up courage to enquire of the guards -- it needs courage, for they are in uniform, and have lathis strapped to their wrists.

The first one is surly. "Begone! I have no time for idle women!"

The next swings his lathi jauntily; he does not know anything, he will not say.

So to the next. He is a big, hefty fellow, and he looks down at me and says there has been trouble -- the workers will not be out today -- no, not even to eat.

My knees turn to water. "What trouble?" I stammer. "Are my sons in it?" He shakes his head, he does not know.

My husband is behind me. He supports me a little with his arm and we go home. And wait. At last they come, long after dusk, with the faces of angered men, though neither is yet twenty.

"What has happened?" we ask with trepidation. They are still our sons, but suddenly they have outgrown us.

"Trouble," they say. "We asked for more money and they took from us our eating time."

I bring out some dried fish and rice cakes. They are ravenous. "More money," I say, "What for? Do they not pay you well already?""What for?" one echoes. "Why, to eat our fill, and to marry, and for the sons we shall beget." And the other says, "No, it is not enough."

I do not know what reply to make -- these men are strangers. Nathan says we do not understand, we must not interfere: he takes my hand and draws me away. To his sons he is gentle.

Into the calm lake of our lives the first stone has been tossed.

Looking back now, I wonder how it came to pass that not until that fateful day did we realise the trouble that had been brewing. No gossip, not a whisper, had come to us of the meetings the men had held at which my sons had been spokesmen; nor of the agitation that followed; nor of the threats by the owners -- there were now four -- of the tannery. All this we heard only later.

Then one day they did not go to work.

"We shall not go back until our demands are met," Thambi said. "All the workers have stopped. We do not ask for charity, but for that which is our due."

"How can you force them?" I said. "Are they not the masters? For every one of you who is out, there are three waiting to step into your place."

"We will see," he replied in a hard voice, and I dared say no more.

When a whole week had passed thus, the tannery officials called a meeting to announce that those who did not return to work would be replaced. My sons came home from that meeting even more silent, if possible, than they had been in the past. This was the test, and it failed. The next morning the tannery had its full complement again, most of them workers who had gone back, the remainder men who were only too glad to obtain employment.

For so long hope and the heat of battle had sustained Arjun and Thambi. Now there was only bitterness.

"The people will never learn," Arjun said savagely. "They will rot before they do."

People will never learn! Kenny had said it, and I had not understood, now here were my own sons saying the same thing, and still I did not understand. What was it we had to learn? To fight against tremendous odds? What was the use? One only lost the little one had. Of what use to fight when the conclusion is known? I asked myself, and got no answer. I went to my husband and he was perplexed twice over.

Of course ours was not the only family involved. There were several others, among them Kali's, and she came to bemoan the result.

"Two more mouths to feed," she complained. "Only one of my three sons had the sense to go back. I do not know what is to become of us, for the land cannot sustain us all. So much for reading and writing," she said, accusing me with eye and finger. "Did I not say no good would come of it? Now look into what mess your sons have led us!"

"Ay, and out of it to better things," said Thambi, with flint in his voice, "but for spawn like yours who have sold themselves cheaper than dirt."

"You will speak with respect," I cried, "or else --"

Then Nathan interrupted, so violently that I started.

"Enough!" he shouted. "More than enough has been said. Our children must act as they choose to, not for our benefit. Is it not enough that they suffer?"

The veins on his forehead were bulging. I had never seen him so angry before. Kali went away. Then the men went too, father and sons, leaving me alone who had no understanding.

Once more Nathan was sole provider for us, and we forgot the good living we had known. The reserves of grain I had put by began to dwindle despite my care. Fortunately, harvest time was near, and I consoled myself with the thought of it.

Arjun and Thambi began to frequent the town more and more, coming and going at all hours with no word as to what they did, and I suffered it in silence, for I knew they had no money to lead them to harm, and I had no cure for the restlessness that afflicted them.

One morning I was laying out some clothes to dry in the sun when Selvam came running in, his face hot and excited.

"Tom-toms are beating," he announced breathlessly. "The town is full of drummers, they are calling for men."

I stopped my work and gazed at him, and all at once my heart turned over. It was as if a scene long past were occurring again -- this was not Selvam but Arjun, and he was telling me not of drummers but of bullock carts bringing the tannery to us brick by brick. I passed my hand over my eyes, feeling slightly giddy.

"Come and see, come quickly," the boy was saying, eager and unnoticing. The others crowded round and he repeated his story with relish. He had roused his brothers' interest and I was forgotten.

When they had gone -- a triumphant Selvam in the van -- and the place was quiet, I did indeed hear the drums, muffled and distant, insistently calling. Well, I thought, if it concerns me I shall hear soon enough, and if not I shall have saved myself a walk. . . . So with ordinary things I sought to still my qualms.