The Toss of a Lemon (51 page)

“Sita!” Sivakami’s voice comes from the courtyard. Sita wheels and whacks her elbow on the heavy wood door. “Not one more word like that!”

The songbirds stop their twittering. Sita slinks back inside like a mean pet cat in a family of dog lovers.

It is shortly after midnight by the time the preparations are complete. The moon has waxed full and burns candle-bright, so Vani does, too. Janaki listens to the last strains of Vani’s practice as she washes her face and hands, and Kamalam’s, in the moonlight by the well.

Vairum steps off the stairs into the main hall as Janaki and Kamalam lay down their sleeping mats. He speaks to Sivakami with a roughness that has increased with the years.

“Still hasn’t appeared?” It’s not a question. “What will we do if he hasn’t come by morning?”

Sivakami sighs. “We go ahead, even without him. We can use a stand-in, if necessary.”

“Makes sense. He uses a stand-in for every other function of fatherhood—except the original one, pardon me.”

Everyone else likes to sleep in the darker areas of the hall, but Janaki places her reed mat over a cold, striped mat of moonlight. Cold, milky moonlight pours in the window and runs over her face, along the grooves between her nostrils and cheek, collects in her collarbone, between her lips, in her cupped palm and the clench of her fist, and chills her finally to sleep.

The next day, the inauspicious period of raahu kaalam doesn’t end until 10:30, so everyone has plenty of time to rise and bathe and grow hungry—none will be permitted to eat cooked food until after the puja. Thangam and the baby take their first bath since the birth and Thangam applies turmeric paste to her skin. It makes an ordinary woman appear golden, but on Thangam’s arms and countenance it has a dulling effect. The baby is gently massaged with sesame oil, with special attention to shaping the features of his face.

From today, he will be called Krishnan, since he is the eighth child and a boy, just like the hero-child of myth. The name certainly fits, coo his sisters: just see his lusty yells, his kicking and writhing, his handsome face. He has all the strength and charm and mischief of the god. Clearly, he is more than equal to multi-headed sea serpents and poison-nippled wet nurses. Without doubt, he could steal butter and charm any village lady into forgiving him.

But just in case—and especially if all the admiration to which he will be subjected makes him vulnerable to the evil eye—baby Krishnan will receive today a black cord to be tied below his belly. On the cord, among a few other tiny trinkets, will hang a cup containing a snippet of his umbilical cord, and a bit of Laddu’s, the older brother who lived, sealed in with gold. Sivakami stubbornly overrode suggestions that the cup include a pinch of Thangam’s gold dust. She can’t believe that others persist in seeing Thangam’s dust as auspicious: to her it seems quite clear that Thangam sheds when she is at her lowest, that in some way, the dust is her essence, her promise, her vitality draining from her. It’s no wonder it has healing properties—she has no doubt about that—but it is not indicative of fulfillment or joy.

The puja is to commence in about ten minutes. Priest, mother and child are assembled, along with Rukmini and Murthy, Gayatri and Minister and their children, and assorted other neighbours. Even neighbours not present for the ceremony will attend the feast—it’s mostly of the feast that even those assembled are thinking. Fortunately, this ceremony is not a long one. The question, as always, is how to plug the conspicuous Goli-shaped hole. Thangam is releasing dust in volumes as though the stuff might fill the void, or, failing this, mask it. Rukmini, clumsy and helpful, gathers it into a dish. Vairum, looking disgusted, finally clears his throat with a snort and looks at Sivakami as though challenging her to make a decision. She takes a breath and turns to the priest, wondering what she will say.

She is spared. There is a commotion in the street, then the front door swings open and their hopes and fears are confirmed: Goli has finally arrived. Sita runs gleefully to greet him. “Appa, Appa, a new little brother!”

He speaks over the little girl’s head. “Hello, folks, hello!” His high, handsome brow and ruddy features shine as though he could make the sun sweat. “What’s all this?”

Sita trails behind him, a weak smile at the ready in case he should turn and see her.

“The eleventh day,” Sivakami responds. “The eleventh day after the birth ...”

“What? Oh, I thought it was the... Wait until you—look what I brought! Son, you!” He is waving in Laddu’s general direction. “You come, help me.”

Laddu runs out willingly and they struggle back in with a large crate leaking straw. With a creak and tear of wood, Goli removes the top of the crate and digs through the stuffing.

“Catch!” he cries.

Luscious, exotic malgoa mangoes—Goli tosses them one by one by one by one over the austere, pious little hall. Shooting stars. The children run after them. The adults, bewildered, reach and jump on the spot. And starbursts: one, then another, explodes ripely against the clean brick floor. Visalam, eight and a half months pregnant, slips and falls in a mango slick.

A gasp goes up like a lost balloon, three more stars plop from the firmament and Gayatri rushes to aid the fallen girl. Visalam’s face is crumpled, as if she is about—to—sneeze—or—cry—then ... “Ha, ha, ha, ha ...” She rolls over laughing, and the others, tentatively, do too. Sivakami looks relieved, then severe. Vairum only looks severe. Thangam looks away. The priest has one eye on the hourglass, but he’s as up for a good laugh as anyone.

Now Goli is reaching inside his coat again, and pulling out... what now? Pens. Shiny, new pens, far beyond the reach of every day. These, too, he tosses in the air. “Catch, children, catch!” he cries. The pens turn and glint. Gold like Thangam and straight like arrows, they circle in the late-morning sun that seeps in through chinks.

Janaki is thrilled and aghast. Such opulence, such waste! There are mangoes ripening on the trees in the yard, not malgoas, which come from far away and are terribly expensive, but still, perfectly tasty, or maybe not perfectly, but good enough. And if they need pen and ink at school, they dip a nib tied to a twig into ink mixed from powder. What need could they have, mere children, for such luxuries? It has never occurred to her to want them. But as she looks at Sita, Janaki sees it has occurred to her sister. Sita has no real taste for either food or penmanship, but her look implies she could cultivate both, given food and pens that were worth her while.

Goli is lugging in yet another crate, pronouncing like a street huckster, “And for my bride Thangam, as beautiful as the day I married her, the gift of music!”

Thangam blushes fast and deep under her turmeric mask, and all the other women blush briefly for her, too—such inappropriate comments...

But what could this be? A wooden box with a brass crank like a shrugging arm. Goli affixes something like an enormous trumpet-blossom to its side. The guests gape, the puja forgotten, as Goli pulls two large black plates out of the packing with a flourish. “Stand back, friends, a little room please.”

He fits the disk onto the top of the box, turns the crank a dozen rotations, then lifts a lever from the box with a point he sets upon the record. Crackles, hisses and pops begin emerging from the great flower, but before the Brahmin-quarter denizens can start to fear the snakes or insects or whatever will follow, the hall is filled with music.

The good people of Cholapatti listen in astounded silence, motionless, until a few come forward cautiously to peer into the bloom’s private depths. Surely a thumb-sized musician must sit there amidst stamens and pistils, writhing snakes and whirring beetles. They pull back from the flower’s empty darkness to look, mystified, at Goli, who winks, raises his eyebrows, gestures toward the machine, offering no explanation. Thangam hangs back shyly. She doesn’t try, as the others do, to find the music’s source. She owns it, it is hers. Goli said it was. Here is proof, if anyone wants it: he does think of her. Sita stands proudly beside the contraption, policing the crowd.

The music is not nearly so impressive as Vani’s, but few of those assembled appreciate this. Janaki is among them, aware of how dull and uninspired the playing is, but she must admit that this does not diminish the thrill. The player’s absence gives her an appeal beyond Vani’s reach. Oh, listen! The song ended and the tiny musician said her name. Where is she? Maddening. Several advance again to try to see her, as Murthy begins pompously explaining how the technology works.

Janaki looks at her aunt, who had finished her playing amidst the final puja preparations. Is Vani hurt at all the attention being given to a mediocre musician who is not even here? Most villagers don’t appreciate her playing anyway, and since her melancholic phase began some weeks back, a few have actually complained. Her recent improvisations remind a person so strongly of old grief, it’s been hard to get things done. Fights have broken out. Perhaps the appeal of the absent Madras musician’s mechanical recital is increased by the villagers’ recent feeling of estrangement from Vani.

Though she appears to be paying attention to the new music, Vani doesn’t look in the direction of the gramophone or the crowd. As the record ends, Vani sweeps the room with a glance, her eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. Janaki, too, is caught in her net of disdain—the only person to notice it, the least deserving. Vani goes upstairs.

Everyone else is clamouring for the invisible musician’s return, and Goli lifts the needle to the start of the record once more. Amidst the bustle and buzz now comes Vairum’s voice, coldly inquiring whether they shouldn’t think of commencing the puja, given that the hour ticks down.

All jump to. Goli must be instructed twice in each task and always looks as though he is about to break in and say something. Sometimes he does, comments neither amusing nor relevant, but everyone laughs and pays attention. When he sees his new son, he picks him up and swings him, making the baby shriek with justifiable fear.

“He loves it!” cries Goli. “Listen to those lungs!”

Then, distracted by some new thought, he hands Krishnan back to Thangam and doesn’t seek his son again. Janaki, who had leapt forward in alarm when her father swung the baby in the air, sinks down beside her mother. Kamalam is already huddled there. She was a little too excited to feel afraid until that moment, and impressed by all the show, but now she is shaking a little. Was their father this careless with all of them?

Janaki leans on her mother, who doesn’t respond. She feels a familiar whir of disappointment but no surprise. She had tried a couple of times, before her brother was born, to be affectionate with Thangam and found that her overtures were not reciprocated. The pain has begun to lessen, though, and she takes some comfort from the simple warmth of her side.

The puja soon ends and Sivakami begins insisting the male guests and children have lunch. No one would refuse, but they let themselves be pressed as a courtesy. Janaki sets banana leaves down in a row along each side of the main hall, and Sita follows her, holding in iddikki tongs the lip of a hot pot of semolina pudding, from which she deposits a blob on each leaf as the diners sit down. Kamalam begs to be allowed to serve also and follows her sisters with a vessel full of vadais.

One lunch guest begins polite conversation, asking, “How long have you leave, Goli?”

“Oh, my schedule is my own.” Goli slurps up the initial daub of sweet. “This is a business trip for me.”

“Revenue department business?” inquires another luncher. Some of these people tried for some years to extract what they are owed for undelivered deer’s heads.

“Ha!” Goli sprays three or four morsels of rice with sambar back toward his leaf. “I’d not make any money at all, if that’s all I did.”

“What kind of a salary does the department offer?” asks an anxious-browed man from several doors away. “My son plans to take the civil service exam next year. I told him to talk to you.”

“You wouldn’t believe. Thirty rupees monthly.”

“Oh, that’s... well, it’s a good salary, of course, but to feed a family of what, eight children...”

“No, no, absolutely unjust. Very difficult to make ends meet.” Goli signals for more rice, and rasam, the next course, and Janaki and Sita run out with serving dishes. He conveys a sense of constant motion above his meal, and despite talking more than anyone, also eats more and faster.

Janaki, serving Vairum, whose indignation is writ large on his face, wishes her appa would just keep his mouth shut. She knows her father has never tossed more than a few odd paisa toward his kids’ upbringing and she turns, blushing, away from her uncle’s rage.

Another neighbour inquires with hesitant interest, “Where are you stationed currently, Goli?”

“One has somewhat just transferred to Malapura. But I am maintaining strong interests in Salem. Salem!” Goli reinforces. The man, who heard the first time, nods. “That’s where everything is happening. Everything modern.”

“Oh, is that so?” another politely remarks while belching.

“Oh, yes,” huffs Goli. “Industries! Banking! Everything is there!”

“Ah...” several men nod.

“Yep.” Goli gobbles both desserts and calls for more, and yogourt rice. “That’s where my son here had better set up. Might even get him to do his college there first.”

“College?” someone chokes lightly—another of Goli’s unpaid creditors. Eyebrows rise in a ripple among the eaters: Goli’s son Krishnan is yet a possibility but Laddu’s poor school performance is no secret.

“Sure,” Goli finishes, and drinks water, a long stream poured down his throat from a tumbler, which Janaki waits to refill, twice, from a brass jug. He belches monstrously. “If he’s going to be an engineer, lawyer, medical doctor, he has to go to college—may as well be there!”

“Oh-ho, Athimbere,” Vairum growls, making the honorific, “elder sister’s husband,” sound sarcastic. Goli turns slowly to face his brother-in-law. “How’s your money situation? Problems?”