MONEY TREE (16 page)

They disconnected, and a middle-aged, over-weight man, who’d seen too much and felt too little, sat back on the bed thinking about blue eyes and gym membership.

I
t was a long night for Anila, full of terrible dreams. She was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. When the first light brushed the hut and softened the darkness of her room, she lay quiet, thinking about her life. She looked over at her daughter Aastha, soundless on her cot. Only a small billowing of her chest confirmed she was alive. Aastha was more precious to Anila than her own life. She wanted something better for her. A husband who would be kind to her, not like the man forced on her.

Dilip had his mother’s looks and her conceits. They shared the same puffy face and sallow skin. Their small hands – which were frequently entwined – were cut from the same roll of dough. Their eyebrows were continuations of each other’s. His mother was forever touching him and stroking him, and placing sweets in his mouth.

Her wedding night had been worse than she’d feared. Dilip had been a grunting thoughtless fish on top of her, his skin sweaty and yielding. Mercifully it had been as short as it was brutal. It had set the pattern for a nightly agony that left her nauseous and unfulfilled. Despite the perfunctory process, she’d found herself pregnant within three months.

Her mother-in-law made no allowances. They were living in
her spare room in a village where Anila was a stranger. The household chores led straight onto work in the small field they rented. Anila was more servant than daughter-in-law. Especially when the dowry money stopped flowing after her father’s death. Dilip took to beating Anila. Sometimes she was so sore that she could not go to work in the field. Then Dilip’s mother beat her again and called her lazy.

Anila endured the beatings as her daughter grew from baby to
schoolgirl. What choice did she have? Until one day a year ago. . .

At first light Anila stole out of the hut to fetch the water and prepare the fire to make the morning bread - everything with the gentlest touch to avoid making a noise. Dilip had not come home till late and she knew he liked a long sleep to recover. Especially if he’d lost more money at the dice game; the pattern these days. She knew that her mother-in-law would also expect to catch up on sleep. She’d waited up for her son, soothing him and tucking him in.

Anila carried her sleeping daughter outside and tenderly washed her face and hands as the child blinked awake in the warming sun. She left Aastha outside to study her school book and scrawl her letters in the dirt for practice.

But coming in from the bright light into the darkened room Anila didn’t see Dilip’s discarded sandal. She stumbled and fell all her length into the rickety cooking range; a small fire with a frame holding a pot of steaming rice. She managed to stifle her own cries of pain and shock as her hands scrabbled among the hot coals, but the clatter of the pots and pans, and the hissing of steam and the singed smell of burning rice filled the hut.

A mound of bedding flew up and an angry bellow reverberated round the single room. The curtain was torn back, and Dilip’s mother shrieked and flung the first stone at Anila from the ever handy pile by her mattress. Anila scrambled to her feet.

‘So sorry, so sorry! I will fix everything!’

But apologies were never going to be enough. Her husband and her mother-in-law would want retribution. Wanted scolded ears, thrashed flesh and piteous appeals for mercy from this ungrateful, useless, penniless creature that they’d given house to. All their generosity at taking such a troublesome wastrel into their bosom had been flung back in their faces. Why, she wasn’t even of their caste! The dowry hardly made up for the shame of diluting the family bloodline. Anyway, the money was all spent.

Anila’s husband was the first to find his whippy bamboo stick. Anila backed into the corner and crouched there, arms covering her head, presenting a smaller target for them to get a good swing. Suddenly a small figure burst into the hut and hurled herself on top of her mother to shield her.

‘Don’t hit her! Don’t hit!’

Anila smothered her daughter in her arms and turned her into the corner so that her own back would take the flailing canes. In that moment, Anila made a silent vow. She could take the beatings – it was only pain - but she would never allow Aastha to grow into a cowering, damaged young woman. Broken before she’d ever known life or love.

Dilip and his mother paused for a moment, astonished at the child’s intrusion. The girl was just as bad as her useless mother. See how she shamed her father and her grandmother. Such ingratitude would not go unpunished.

One night shortly after, when the snores of her husband and her mother-in-law chorused in their sleep, Anila gathered up her daughter and slipped out the hut, taking only the clothes they stood up in, and some dried bread and vegetables  secreted from their meagre rations. They simply walked away. Over three days they trudged home to Chandapur and Anila’s mother. In the weeks to come, Dilip came and raged at her door. His mother joined him, shrieking like a harridan, demanding Anila’s return or payment of more money to let her go. There was still an outstanding amount on the dowry and they wanted every paisa of it.

But eventually son and mother grew bored.
There was nothing left to milk from Anila and her mother, except fear and despair. Even that lost its edge and became tedious. Dilip announced he was divorcing her and left her to the life of a permanent social outcast. At least they hadn’t marked her; one woman in her village had had her face burned off in a kitchen ‘accident’. Another had been blinded by acid so she would never set eye on another man.

Now, a year on, Anila was taking another gamble with her life. This time there was no fall-back position. This time she could not walk away. She lay on her back clutching her small purse to her chest, and tried not to let the silent tears that were running down her cheeks and past her ears erupt into a flood. Today was no time to be weak. Today she would need all her dead father’s strength and her mother’s wits if they were to avoid destitution. She rolled over and touched her sleeping daughter – lightly, so as not to wake her – and drew strength and purpose from the contact. Then she rose and began to prepare herself.

But before Anila could go down to the village centre and begin her wait for the wood gatherer she heard her name being called. It was Leena and Divya. They were squatting on the ground in front of her hut. Leena’s bright smile was hidden. She was looking down and frowning, and drawing circles in the dirt with her finger. Divya’s thin arms were gripping her knees tight as though she was afraid they’d start knocking if she let go.

Anila squatted in front of them and faced them. ‘I know why you have come. It is about the money, isn’t it?’

The two women looked at each other, then Leena, who was always the first to let go, burst out with, ‘Please say you have not given all our money away Anila! Please tell us it is not true!’

Divya chimed in, ‘After all our troubles and adventures and going all the way to Delhi, how could you betray us?’ She said it quietly and it hurt more.

‘I have not given your money away. See, here it is!’ Anila tugged at her neck purse and pulled out the fat wad. ‘See it is all there.’

Relief spread across both her friends’ faces. ‘Then we are sorry, Anila. The other women have been telling terrible stories of you and how you had used up our 3000 Rupees. And we knew that you did not have 3000 Rupees. Only 1000 is yours. So we are very relieved that our money is still safe. We gave it to you on the journey because you were the biggest and strongest. We let you keep it here as we did not want our useless husbands getting their hands on it too soon.’ Divya smiled at Leena.

‘But now we would like to take care of our own money, if you please Anila,’ said Leena feeling brave and anxious all at once. The money sat where Anila had put it, in her lap. All Anila had to do was count out two piles of 1000 Rupees and hand them over. But that would
kill everything.

‘Listen to me, Divya and Leena. Do you trust me? Have we not been successful so far? Was it not my idea to go to the bank? And was it not me who arranged everything and got us the money and brought it all back safe and sound?’

‘Yes it was you. All those things. But what are you getting at Anila?’ There was a strain in little Leena’s face and voice again.

‘Let me tell you what happened yesterday.’ She explained about the money lender and how he was trying to stop her buying the wood. She told them of the deal which she’d struck to buy all the wood today and how she had organised a cooperative of 12 women who would pay her back once they sold their work to the agent. How it was the only way of making the great plan work. And most of all, how she needed to be able to pay for the next four days of wood.

‘But why did you not tell us of all this yesterday? And why did you not ask us about using our money in this way?’ Divya was rightly cross with her, Anila could see.  

‘Things happened too fast. I did not know what to do. But it seemed to me that if I had not acted then, all my plans would have been thrown away, and my mother and my daughter would lose everything.’ The tears were running freely down her broad face, making her tired eyes seem sadder than a widow’s. Soft Leena was crying now too.

‘But we are your friends,’ Leena wailed. ‘Why could you not trust us?’

‘I do trust you, and now I am asking for your help. I may not need any of your money but if the other women don’t pay me fast enough, I need to be able to pay Mr Roy every day so that he trusts me as a business woman. I must pay him 600 Rupees today which would leave me only 400 for tomorrow, if I only used my money. So I need your money too to tide me over. All I need is 2400 Rupees. So it is not all of our money.’

‘Almost all. It might as well be all,’ said Leena accusingly.

‘But I am sure I will get the money from the other women in four days time when the agent comes.’

‘But what if you don’t?’ Leena was sniffing now. ‘What if they can’t pay you back or their husbands won’t let them. Or the money lender gets up to his tricks again, you know what he’s like.’

‘That is why I need your money. Just for a few days. Look, I will even pay you interest if you like.’

Divya shook her head. ‘No. We don’t want to make money from you Anila. All we want is our money back within the four days. Is that not right Leena?’ Leena nodded dumbly. ‘But if you lose all the money then it must be your responsibility. You will have to pay it all back. Is that fair?’

‘That is very fair. I will take the risk.’ Anila had reached the point where she would have agreed to anything. She would have walked through hot coals if that had been required of her. She was beyond concern now. The thought of prison for herself, and the streets for her mother and daughter no longer seemed to matter. In ten years she would be dead. And maybe next time she would come back to a better life. ‘Most beautiful Saraswati, goddess of purification,’ she prayed silently, ‘into your hands I place my life this day.’      

To show their trust and to give their friend support, the two smaller women took up their now familiar stations either side of Anila and walked with her towards the sound of the straining truck engine.

A
fter three taxi detours and the purchase of a headscarf and dark glasses on her way home from Oscar’s, Erin Wishart snuck into her apartment building like someone who hadn’t paid her rent. She instructed the concierge to tell anyone who called that she’d gone away. Then she fled up the stairs avoiding the possibility of being trapped in the lift.

She
shoved open her door, hit all the lights and shouted ‘Come on in, darling. Let me show you around’ for the benefit of the hidden assassins. The silence echoed back at her. She dimmed the lights, packed a case and took one last look out at the park. She slipped down the stairs and back out the building and let four yellow cabs go by before hailing the fifth from the kerb. She made two more changes before a final trip out to Newark.

She checked into the Marriott and sat
for a long while in her darkened room staring at the glittering lights from the freeway.
Is this real? I could get killed. But I’ve done nothing. Not yet. Apart from the Lone Ranger bug, of course. Have they found it? Did Kutzov’s snooping software betray me? Surely Warwick still has some feelings for me? But why hope for rational behaviour from a bloody coke-head?

Later
, she lay back on her bed and gazed at the ceiling wondering how this craziness had started and how fast it had spiralled out of control. As her imagination drew lurid scenarios, she found herself shaking and panting. She took two of her 2 mg Melatonin pills and curled up under the duvet until warmth and fatigue enveloped her.

N
ext morning she showered away the grogginess under a torrent of hot water. She packed and then sat on the bed. She checked her watch.
I’ve got loads of time. I could head into the office as though nothing was wrong and stick my head round his door. But that would mean taking the long march down the blue carpet. Duschene was always there, desk square-on to visitors, jacket buttoned right up, guarding Warwick’s office. All he lacked were sandbags and a machine-gun. I can see his dirty wee eyes weighing me up, assessing my current position in Warwick’s hierarchy of favourites. Maybe Duschene sees me as competition?