The Toss of a Lemon (57 page)

Bharati spits back over her shoulder, “Follow him tonight. You’ll find it soon enough.”

She pushes her way past teachers and students, to wash her face and clothes at the school pump. Neither girl is permitted to walk home unescorted, so, abject, stony, dishevelled, they finish out the afternoon on their shared bench.

As Janaki is learning things about her father that she doesn’t want to hear and claims not to believe, the man himself mounts the steps of Sivakami’s veranda. Vairum, having spent the morning inspecting the oil processing plant he is to open that afternoon, is lying down for a few minutes before leaving to drop in at Minister’s salon.

“Hullo!” Goli yells from the door. “Hullo! Vairum! Big chances afoot-come on out.”

Vairum slowly descends the spiral staircase into the main hall, as Sivakami, having her own meal in the kitchen, stands hurriedly and goes to wash her hands.

“Well, well!” Goli rubs his own hands together. “You are looking prosperous these days-filling out!” Vairum puts his hands on his hips as Goli continues, “So—I have a proposal.”

“Want to sell me another tract of your family land, eh?” Vairum stands on the last step, looking down at Goli. “Must be getting down to the last few parcels now. I sent for the registrar first thing this morning to make sure this wouldn’t take any longer than necessary.”

The young official, who had been sitting in the vestibule between the front door and the entrance to the main hall, unfolds his gaunt frame and pokes his head in hopefully.

Goli looks at him stupidly and then points at Vairum. “You hang on-don’t you assume anything, little man. We’ve got some bargaining to do.”

“I pay better than anyone else in the presidency, Athimbere, in part so I don’t have to waste time bargaining. Your father knew that better than anyone, and I know you know it, too, which is why you’re coming to me.”

“How dare you mention my late father,” Goli snarls, advancing on Vairum.

The lands in question passed into Goli’s possession the year prior, with his father’s death. Before that, Vairum had twice made similar transactions with the older man, who had fallen into the same troubles as so many Brahmins, his need for cash outpacing his ability to coax income from crops, forcing him to sell off.

“Either sit down and do what you came here to do, you fool, or get out,” Vairum tosses back. “We’re not doing each other any favours.”

Sivakami tries to intervene from the kitchen entrance with a civility. “Please, Vairum, offer the son-in-law coffee. It’s almost ready.”

“Fool? Fool? As if I need your stinking cash.” Goli reaches into a document case he carries and flings a set of papers at the registrar. “Who is the fool here?”

Vairum indicates to the young official that he may begin. “I would say it’s the one who fathers children he can’t support. Ah—” He holds up a finger as Goli winds up with a retort. “One word out of you and this deal is off—I defy you to find anyone else who will buy these lands for as much money as you need. And you and I both know you need it now.”

Goli makes a noise of strangulation and goes out into the garden. What, Sivakami is wondering, does he need the money for? It must be some debt. She knows he gambles—but surely he can’t have lost this much money on cards? Another business scheme gone awry, she supposes.

As Vairum begins counting the stamp papers and checking the description of the property against the deed, he instructs the official to put the property in Thangam’s name, carrying on the tradition Sivakami’s brothers started.

“You may be willing to rob your children of their inheritance, Athimbere,” Vairum comments loudly, “but I am not.”

“Vairum!” Sivakami says again from the kitchen, and he looks at her sharply. She wants to say what he already knows, that he is the better man and that he need not remind Goli of that, but she cannot say that with Goli and Thangam present, even though Thangam has lain with her eyes closed, on a reed mat cushioned with homemade quilts, in one corner of the main hall, throughout this exchange, which she gave no indication of hearing. Sivakami’s thought makes her feel slightly as if she is betraying her daughter. Regardless, Vairum already knows it, so she need not say it. Instead, she remonstrates, “The neighbours might hear.”

Vairum’s lip curls. He turns back to the paperwork, finishing it off with a flourish. “Your turn to sign, Athimbere,” he says, rising. “Take it to my bank in Kulithalai. The manager is expecting you.” He puts on his shoes at the door and leaves before Goli re-enters.

That day after school, Janaki makes a point of telling Sivakami that she is going to study up on the roof. Her books in their strap, slung over her shoulder, she treads the stairs with leaden feet, matching each step with a hand slap against the wall in the narrow stairwell. The fresh whitewash makes the pads of her hands chalky, and when she arrives in the sunlight, she claps her hands to make little dust clouds. She walks slowly around the edge of the roof as Vani plays. The sun is already slanting low enough to make two feet of shade along the western side.

Looking down into the next yard to the east, she sees Dharnakarna, the witch, feeding idli to her sister-in-law. Their tiffin hour is often amusing, the witch patiently timing the mouthfuls so they don’t get slapped across the courtyard. The sister-in-law won’t bite the hand that feeds her, but she snaps at it sometimes. Janaki moves across the back and looks down into her own courtyard and the woods behind. A brief breeze parts the lingering stillness of the afternoon air. Parrots are beginning to fly among the trees. She can’t see if Bharati is in her regular spot behind the house: she’s pretty sure Bharati won’t have come but will not go down to check, in case she has.

She circles, coming up the western side of the house, from which she can see into Rukmini and Murthy’s courtyard. Rukmini has fetched Krishnan to play with her, and Janaki hears his laughter. She moves again toward the front of the house, unable for once to sit still and listen to her aunt play. The sounds of the street dissolve as day thins into dusk.

Kamalam arrives from downstairs as Vairum comes to carry Vani’s veena to their quarters. Vani follows. Kamalam and Janaki stand in silence at the front of the roof until the moment when—you can almost miss it—outlines of shapes disappear and become one with the dusky blue air. Then Janaki says to Kamalam, “I’m going out and I’ll be back before suppertime. If I’m not, though, just say I have fallen asleep up here and don’t feel like eating. Say I’m being cranky if you are sent to wake me up.”

Kamalam is frowning. “Why... ?”

But Janaki just shakes her head and waggles her finger as she walks back to the stairs. She descends cautiously into the main hall, which is empty apart from their mother, who sits thin and pregnant against the back wall. Where is Sita? Talking with one of her friends out on the veranda. Janaki cannot leave the house, by front or back, while Sita is out there—she will be visible from the veranda as she takes the cart path out of the Brahmin quarter. She hides behind the stairs and calls out, “Sitakka! Sitakka!”

Sita shouts back, “What?”

“Come back and help me with this, just for a second.” Janaki pops her head out to yell, and then hides again.

“What?” Sita says bad-humouredly from the vestibule. “Where are you?”

“By the well, just for a second, really.” Janaki watches her mother, who doesn’t react.

Sita says an exasperated goodbye to her friend and heads for the back by way of the kitchen. As soon as she enters the pantry, Janaki scurries for the front and slips out the door as the sounds of Sita’s fury start to mount.

She picks her way along the edge of the cart path leading to the main road into Kulithalai. As she steps onto the road her heart begins to pound. She has barely been out after dark and never alone. Figures approach and she steps aside so they pass her without seeing her or inquiring as to her business. She doesn’t want to give anyone stories to carry back to the Brahmin quarter. She is risking being seen and talked about; she is risking not being seen and not being missed, should anything happen. But what choice does she have? She turns onto the main road and keeps to the shadows.

The club is within a walled compound but there is no one guarding the big iron gate. At night, the grizzled old peon patrols the compound occasionally but must also make change and sell goli choda for the card players to mix with spirits they bring themselves.

Janaki looks for a place where she can spend the next few hours unseen, waiting for her father. The clubhouse faces the tennis court. Men approach it from one side. The other side is sheltered but smells of urine; one can imagine it is used often over the course of the evening. Janaki opts for a large neem tree at the back with a branch obligingly bowed into a seat, thick enough for her skinny twelve-year-old bottom.

From there she catches only glimpses of men as they walk past the barred window. Once they are seated they are hidden from view but a large gap between the wall and the roof thatch lets her hear the men’s voices, including her father’s, rising above the slap and shuf fle of a deck of cards. From the few Janaki saw, she didn’t think they looked like an appropriate class of men to be associating with her father.

“So you transacted the necessary business with your brother-in-law today, Goli?” a man says in a Brahmin accent. Janaki is surprised that there are other Brahmins here, though she doesn’t know why she should be.

“He’s going to get his comeuppance one of these days,” Goli says by way of reply.

“I hope I’m around to see it,” the first man says. “He owns half of my family properties now.”

“Yes, well, today, he opened a factory on my ancestral lands,” sputters another Brahmin. “And if that’s not enough, I swear, half my tenants are going to work in it! I could kill that guy. I swear, if he wasn’t the son of the most orthodox lady in the Brahmin quarter, I might think he’s a progressive. Did you hear what he’s paying?”

Janaki, wincing at his inelegant Tamil, listens harder.

“Vairum is canny—and fair-minded,” says a warm, gravelly voice in a non-Brahmin accent that Janaki can’t place. “Happy workers are good workers.”

“Sure, I’m all in favour of non-Brahmin uplift,” says the other Brahmin reservedly. “But for non-Brahmins like you, Mr. Muthu Reddiar, self-starters, of good family. Putting power in the hands of the illiterate masses, though—it’s a recipe for disaster.”

“The man wants to start a revolution, that’s what,” Goli cries. “He wants to be king.”

“Seems to me the Brahmins around here have profited as much as anyone from business with Vairum,” Muthu Reddiar insists, an edge to his voice. “He’s generous, you have to say that for him.”

“I don’t have to say anything good about that man!” It sounds as if Goli has thumped the table.

“All right, all right,” says the first Brahmin. “Let’s take it easy. You can rest assured that most if not all the Brahmin quarter shares your opinion, Goli.”

“What a week,” Goli complains.

“Have you been to see Chellamma?” someone asks, and Janaki starts.

“Last night. She won’t budge,” Goli growls. “Bitch.”

Janaki gapes at the crude language, feeling sick.

“Hasn’t given me the time of day since Balachandran came on the scene, and now she expects me to pay for that pup?
Ravana!”
Janaki can’t tell if he’s cursing at Bharati’s mother or just lost a hand of cards.

“So don’t pay,” the first Brahmin man advises.

“She’s got me over a barrel,” Goli says darkly. “She’ll go to my boss.”

“What—” the man starts, but Goli breaks in: “Deal. I’m done talking about that.”

The clubhouse goes briefly quiet except for the slap and slide of cards and occasional muttered words. Then the night erupts in hooting and shouts as someone wins. Janaki listens to the chime of the men’s tumblers and wrinkles her nose at a puff of tobacco smoke that has drifted from the clubhouse window.

The cycle repeats, the men’s voices blurring and sharpening with emotion and drink. At one point, Janaki drowses, shakes herself, drops off again—and drops off the branch. It’s a rude shock, but she is not hurt by the fall. She runs behind the tree when the peon looks out the window, and then remounts the branch.

It must be well on for nine o’clock when Goli finally wins a round—the biggest pot of the night, according to the ribbing he receives. He loudly claims that it only earns him back what he has lost, but it sounds as if he’s being modest. Janaki, hearing him announce his departure, perks up.

“Lads, I’m sorry to say I must take my leave of you now.”

“Come on, Goli, let us at least win back our dignity.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to face your wives without it. Not the first time, I would say.”

More hoots.

“Last time Nallathumbi here stripped himself of his dignity his wife ran from the room in fright!”

Nallathumbi makes his rebuttal. “Naked, I inspire men and frighten women. Just as it should be.”

They all laugh, satisfied. Goli takes his leave.

Janaki allows him a few moments before slipping from the tree, praying to herself, “Please go home just go home please go home just go home go home go home.” She tails him to the gate. “Go right go right right right.”

He hesitates, looking both ways, and turns left. Janaki pauses a second, to look down at her toes, bare and vulnerable as they emerge from beneath the paavaadai.
My toes
look purple in the moonlight, she thinks. How curious. She too emerges from the gate.

In the dark this is not the town she knows. The night forgives a lot; she doesn’t want to imagine what sins it lets slip by. Kerosene flares make sinister shadows that dance and dodge no matter how still the body that throws them. Janaki is frightened and focuses on her father’s back as though it is a magic charm whose powers she doesn’t know and yet has no choice but to trust.