The Hope of Shridula (29 page)

Rajeev glanced again at the scattered pile of newspaper clippings. Immediately Miss Abigail's smile melted into wrinkled distress.

"Dear me, dear me, where is my brain? I have not yet offered you tea." Miss Abigail turned in her chair toward the door and called out, "Lelee! Lelee, dear! Do bring a pot of tea, and two of my porcelain cups. Biscuits, too, if you please. There's a good child!" She turned back to Rajeev and beamed. "Perhaps the good doctor and his wife will join us."

Rajeev's eyes darted to the empty doorway. "Perhaps another time," he said quickly. "The hour is being late. I must to be going."

"Oh, I am so very sorry," Miss Abigail said. "Please, you must come again. I did so enjoy our visit."

"Yes," Rajeev said as he backed toward the door.

"You will not mind if I remain seated, will you? Excitement does go to my head and I find it difficult to move about. Why, when I was younger, I would—"

"I am not to be minding at all," Rajeev said as he moved toward the door. "Please,
mem,
not at all."

"I will be sure to give your regards to the doctor and his wife," Miss Abigail called after him. "And do greet Lord Mountbatten for me when next you see him, won't you?"

Rajeev closed the door behind him and ran all the way to his horse cart. The sun had begun its descent, yet the air remained hot and perfectly still. Hauntingly silent, too, he couldn't help but notice. Not a whisper, not a footfall, not the rustling of a leaf. Rajeev whipped up the horse, and he never looked back.

Before he even clambered down from the cart, Rajeev could hear his father's rants echoing out from the veranda. He considered going around the back of the house to his own room, but he quickly discarded that possibility. Like it or not, he needed to stay on the good side of his father. Nothing else seemed to be working in his favor. Besides, family influence just might help in his quest for a position with the new government, even though that was up north in Delhi and his family was in the south. Of course, his father's wealth wouldn't hurt any. So Rajeev sucked in his pride, pasted a smile on his exasperated face, and strode as casually as he could to join his father and brother.

"I may as well have no sons at all, for all the good you two do me!" Saji Stephen shouted. Nihal Amos sat beside him, sucking the last of the juices from a lamb bone. When Rajeev entered, Nihal looked up with relief.

"It should be much quieter in the house now," Nihal Amos commented. "What with fewer people living here, and no screaming children about."

"It does not sound any more quiet to me," Rajeev said, looking directly at his father. "Besides, you should not get used to it. My family will be back after Amina has a chance to bid her family farewell."

"Do you not mean Durga?" Nihal Amos grinned broadly.

A blush tinged Rajeev's face.

"Never mind!" Saji Stephen snapped. "While we sat on the veranda discussing the state of India, and arguing about communists and Gandhi and all the others who would bind us up with laws, our fields have turned into a wasteland!"

"You are the landlord," Nihal Amos reminded him.

"I am also the father of two sons who sleep under my roof and eat my food and give orders to my servants, yet who do not one thing to assist me!"

Rajeev lifted his hands to his throbbing head. Humiliated in the village by a lowly spice vendor. Worried over his willful wife who might at this very moment be on the road to Muslim Pakistan with his children. Enduring the entire village's gossip. Watching the safe haven he took such great pains to procure dissolve into a nest for a madwoman and her disfigured servant. It was too much for such a suffocating day. Absolutely too much. Rajeev's face burned bright red as he turned blazing eyes on his father.

"Sleep all alone under your roof, Father. Lick every last morsel of food off your platter until you choke." Rajeev didn't roar or bellow, but his even voice seethed with red-hot fury. "Do with your servants as you will. What does it matter to any of us? Will not Glory Anna's husband take possession of everything of value in the end?"

"Stop!" Saji Stephen ordered. "You will not talk to me this way!"

"Tend to your fields or not, whichever pleases you. I no longer care. The world has changed, but you have not."

"Now see here—"

"Winston Churchill once claimed India as Britain's brightest jewel. As England's daily bread," Rajeev said. "But now India is
our
jewel. As for our daily bread, I have no desire to grow the grain for it. If I wish to be a part of the government, I must be where the government is. Tomorrow I shall pack my belongings and board the train to Delhi."

September 1947

S
omething disturbed the peacock. A prowling animal, perhaps, or maybe just the shimmering light of the moon as it rose on a night that refused to give up the day's heat. At twilight the bright blue bird flapped his way up into the trees to roost with its lady hen as was his wont, but once the moon rose it started to cry.

Aaaaaahh . . . lo! Aaaaaahh . . . lo! Aaaaaahh . . . lo!

Nihal Amos, sleeping alone on the veranda, stirred and sighed. When the ruckus continued unabated, he growled and clasped his hands over his ears.

Aaaaaahh . . . lo! Aaaaaahh . . . lo! Aaaaaahh . . . lo!

For a while, the peacock would settle down, lulled by the cooing of the peahen or intimidated by Nihal Amos's threats of boiled peacock, but as soon as Nihal started to snore, the bird started up again. As the first light of dawn touched the sky, Nihal Amos was wide-awake, most weary, and in a foul mood. He splashed water on his face, kicked his sleeping mat into the corner, and stomped around toward the garden.

The peacock flapped down from its roost and strutted directly in front of Nihal Amos, trailing its magnificent tail behind it. "You may impress your lady, but you do not impress me!" Nihal Amos growled. "Lucky for you, you are too old and stringy for the cook pot!"

Pots clattered at the back of the house. Soon the entire household would be stirring. Nihal Amos stepped into his sandals and hurried toward the road.

Saji Stephen, washed and oiled and dressed in new linen clothes, sat impatiently on his carpet under the jasmine vines. He had almost finished his breakfast of spiced rice and curry with coconut, yet still Nihal Amos did not come. Udit returned bearing a plate of bananas, mangoes, and guavas, which he set down before the landlord.

"Where is Nihal Amos?" Saji Stephen demanded. He made no attempt to hide his irritation. "The harvest begins tomorrow. Where is my lazy son?"

"I do not know, master," the servant answered. "When I came out to see that the veranda was in order, he had already gone."

Saji Stephen jumped to his feet. "Find him! I will not go to the worker settlement alone. Find my son!"

Udit bowed low and backed away as quickly as he could.

Saji Stephen kicked at the plate of fruit. The banana bunch fell off to one side and the mangoes to the other. The guavas rolled every which way across the veranda. Saji Stephen glared at the spilled fruit, and rage overtook him. Roaring, he stomped on the mangoes, squishing them into the ground. Then he chased down the guavas and trampled them, one by one, until nothing remained but a mess of fruit pulp.

"Find him!" Saji Stephen yelled. "Find Nihal Amos!"

"Nihal Varghese!"

Nihal Amos started at the sound of his name. "Hari?" he asked, glancing quickly from side to side. "Is that you?"

Instead, Mani Rao stepped out from the shadows.

"Where is Hari?" Nihal Amos asked. "I demanded to see him, not you."

"I speak of your brother, Rajeev," Mani said. "While he searches for a place of power with the new government, will he also search among the Muslims for his own family?"

Nihal Amos's eyes narrowed. "That is neither your worry nor mine. Our concern is Communists who steal. Was it just the house of my father, robbed by one angry boy, or is this now an accepted way of bringing down the rich?"

"Your brother will not find what he wants in Delhi," Mani said.

"First you have my house robbed, then you make threats against my brother!"

"I tell you the truth. Men do not establish themselves in the new government and gain power simply by going to Delhi. Delhi is the gathering place of Muslims—
lakhs
of them from all over the country."

"
Lakhs
of Muslims? Hundreds of thousands?"

"They fill Purana Quila and Nizamuddin. No room remains even in the open space around the Red Fort. Soldiers push the refugees out of Delhi as fast as they can and onto trains headed for Pakistan."

Stunned, Nihal Amos stared at Mani.

"If your brother is fool enough to impose himself uninvited on the government in Delhi, would he not also be fool enough to trek among the refugee camps?"

"It is a vicious business," Nihal Amos said shaking his head.

"Especially for your brother. Angry Muslims target Hindu moneylenders."

"My brother is not a Hindu! He is a Christian, descended from a long line of Christians."

"Still today? When it no longer suits his purposes?" Mani shook his head. "Your brother boasts of the wealth of his landholding family. And he bears the name of a Hindu moneylender . . . should he live long enough to identify himself."

Nihal Amos hesitated. "Do you threaten my family, Mani Rao? Is that the way of the Party now? Robbery and . . . and—"

"Perhaps you do not know as much about us as you think you do," Mani said. "Could it be that you are nothing but a Varghese landowner after all?"

Then Mani was gone. Slipped down to the road already filled with villagers eager to get their work under way before the heat of the day. Nihal Amos turned back to his father's house. He never knew that the entire time, Hari hunkered in the shadows, listening to every word he said.

"The man who will be my husband came to see Saji Stephen," Glory Anna bubbled to Shridula. "I was not allowed to see him, of course, but Sheeba Esther did. She said he is very handsome."

Shridula pulled the brush through Glory Anna's hair. "Do you suppose he stomps his feet when someone displeases him?"

"Certainly not! He is a fine man, patient and kind and extremely generous."

"Is that what Sheeba Esther told you, or is that what you hope?" Shridula gave the brush a bit of a yank.

"Ow! Be careful!" Glory Anna scolded. "Sheeba Esther did not have to say so because I already knew it to be true. My grandmother would not have approved a man to be my husband unless he was like that."

"Maybe she only knew him as a boy, before he grew into a man."

Glory Anna pulled away from Shridula's rough brush strokes. "What is wrong with you today? You pull my hair, you criticize my handsome almost-husband, and now you try to stir up an argument with me."

Shridula slammed the brush down on the table. She grabbed up her sleeping mat and tossed it into the corner.

"I have been thinking about asking Saji Stephen to give you to me as a wedding gift," Glory Anna stated. "Then you will have to come to my new house and be my servant forever. And if you act like this to me, I will punish you, and then I will . . . I will . . ."

Shridula turned away. She refused to let Glory Anna see the tears that welled up in her eyes. She jerked the door of the wardrobe open and sifted through the carefully folded stacks of beautiful silk
saris.

". . . and then I will never let you see your father again!"

Tears spilled down Shridula's cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand before she turned around to face Glory Anna. "Would you really do that?" she asked softly. "Really?"

Glory Anna shook her head. "No," she said. "When I marry, you can go back to your father."

"Back to my father and the fields and the rice paddies," Shridula said. "Why does the whole country go free, but not us? Why not Untouchables?"

"I do not know," Glory Anna said. "It is not fair. It is not right. But that is our way."

"Because I know nothing about growing rice and even less about keeping a book of accounts," Nihal Amos said to Saji Stephen. "Because I care nothing about the harvest and I do not approve of owning other people. Because, despite India's independence, I am still a Communist in my heart. That is why I will never work alongside you, Father."

"We are landlords," Saji Stephen insisted. "We are moneylenders. That is what our family has been for countless generations. It is what we are."

"Not Rajeev. He is a politician. And not me. I am a fighter for freedom."

"Rajeev is gone," Saji Stephen said. "His sons are gone. One day this land will belong to you. But I confess, my son, until that day comes, I do not know how to be a good landlord. I need your help."

Nihal Amos shook his head in frustration.

"Come, sit beside me on my fine Persian carpet. I will teach you all about my book of accounts.
Our
book of accounts." Saji Stephen's voice had drifted off into a pleading whine. "Come with me to see the harvest. Come and see all the good you can do for our own laborers. You can talk to the overseers."

"Overseers. Right there is a major problem. How can two men be in charge at the same time? When the laborers fail to do their job, which overseer should be punished? When the laborers succeed, which one of the two should receive a reward?"

"Yes! Of course you are right!" Saji Stephen exclaimed. "See how naturally the responsibility of landowner comes to you?"

But Nihal Amos was just getting started. "Even now, as the laborers go out to the harvest fields, we could be speaking to them of the rewards that await them when they finish. The feast should be especially lavish this year, a celebration of India's independence. Bonuses of extra rice and wheat and spices for all, of course, but additional gifts as well. New clothing, perhaps?"

"Wait, wait!" Saji Stephen protested. "I have seen the paddies. The rice is stunted and sparse. This harvest will not be a plentiful one. Why should I hand out such generous rewards?"

"To buy the allegiance of the workers, of course," Nihal Amos said. "An extra measure of rice and a set of cheap clothes is a small price to pay for loyalty among your bonded laborers. Anyway, what good are profits this year? If you do not spend the money on the workers, it will go to pay for Glory Anna's wedding."

Saji Stephen's face broke into a grin. "Yes, I see, I see! Ha, ha!"

"Glory Anna's wedding would be especially lavish, but what good would that do you? You still might well have little cooperation from the workers."

"Yes!" Saji Stephen said. "We shall do this together, Nijal Amos. Two landlords today, then when I lie in my grave, the land will all be yours."

Nihal Amos stared out toward the road. "I do believe a rain cloud has begun to form over the mountains, Father. The hard season is almost behind us."