The Hope of Shridula (31 page)

On the Untouchable side of the river, on the far side of the pond—although the pond was now nothing but a large pool of slimy mud—the roadside had been chopped bare of brush and trees. A woman passed by them with a basket of custard apples balanced on her head.

"See,
Appa?"
Shridula said eagerly. "That women must be taking those custard apples to the market on the other side of the river. We could do that. Custard apples grow on the trees between the landlord's fields."

"Those trees belong to the landlord!" Ashish said. "We could not take fruit from them."

"Other trees, then. We can go far down this road and find other trees. And the reeds along the river. You can gather them, and I can weave them into mats. I saw another woman selling reed mats at the market."

"My father was a
chamar,"
Ashish said thoughtfully. "He gathered up the animals that died and made fine leather from their skins. But I do not know that skill."

A boy passed by leading two goats along the road.

"Maybe we can get a goat," Shridula said. "We could sell milk."

"We are not of the milking caste," Ashish said. "Anyway, goats cost money. And they need food and a roof over their heads."

Up ahead stood the first shelters in a settlement of thatched roof huts. Ashish stopped and stared at them.

"What is it?" Shridula asked.

"When I was very small, we used to live in a hut, but it was made of mud. My mother told me about it."

"Here? Is this where you lived?"

"I do not know," Ashish said. "I cannot remember." As they walked beside the settlement, three girls who hurried along together passed by them. All three carried water pots on their heads. In front of one hut after the other, women hunkered down over kitchen fires, thin lines of smoke rising up into the air. A tiny child chased after a chicken that flapped its wings wildly and squawked in protest. A boy kicked a rock over toward the road. He started to run after it, but when he saw Shridula and Ashish, he stopped and stared at them until they passed on out of sight.

"Go past the last of the huts, then on a bit farther still," Ashish told Shridula. "We must not upset the people of this settlement with our presence. We will make a place for ourselves apart from them."

In the gathering twilight, Saji Stephen looked up from his place on the veranda and surveyed the smattering of clouds that had begun to gather over the mountains. "It will be a good harvest," he said to Nihal Amos. "Dinkar will see to that. You made the right choice for overseer."

"Tomorrow, we shall go to the settlement at dawn," Nihal Amos said. "Before the workers go to the paddy, we will tell them of the great feast we have planned, and the gifts with which we will reward them after the harvest."

Saji Stephen hesitated, but only for a moment. "Yes, yes," he agreed. "We will go at dawn. Before dawn, if you like!"

For a long time, the two sat together watching the sun set and the stars come out.

"Nihal Amos," Saji Stephen finally said. "About Ashish . . ."

Nihal cleared his throat.

"You did the right thing," Saji Stephen said. "He was not a good overseer. I trusted him, but he only made trouble for me. You did the right thing."

Beyond the last of the huts, past the place where the village scavengers made their home, Ashish and Shridula moved off the road and pushed their way back into the bushes. As Ashish gathered sticks and palm fronds, Shridula collected stones for a cooking pit. By the time Ashish finished erecting a simple lean-to shelter, Shridula handed him a bowl of boiled rice flavored with dried chili peppers.

"I used almost all our water," Shridula said to her father. "Tomorrow morning I will have to walk to the river to get more."

"No!"

Shridula stared at Ashish.

"I do not want you to go to the river alone, Daughter. You and I will go together."

"Getting water is the work of women," Shridula protested. But Ashish was adamant. "Tomorrow we will go to the river together."

They had no sleeping mats, so Ashish took the
chaddar
off his head and spread it on the ground for Shridula to lie on. By the light of the moon, she watched her father walk toward the road and back again, around the lean-to and back to where she lay. She watched him sit, then get up, then sit again.

"Do you fear evil spirits,
Appa?"
Shridula asked.

"Hush," Ashish said. "Sleep now."

"Because of the dreams that haunt you?"

Ashish said nothing.

"I do not believe in the evil spirits," Shridula said. "Remember the song you sang to me . . .
Jesus loves me, this I know . . ."

"That was a long time ago."

"We are free,
Appa.
No one owns us anymore."

"It took us only one day to walk here and find this place," Ashish said. "The landlord, in his bullock cart, could be here much faster."

"The Holy Book says:
When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,"
Shridula said. "Perhaps it will please the Christian Lord to let us live our lives in peace."

"I do not know." Ashish slumped down and clutched his head in his hands. "I am too old to understand. But maybe you can, my daughter. Maybe you can understand."

October 1947

S
hridula turned over on her father's
chaddar.
At night it was her bed, in the morning he wrapped it around his head. Rain had fallen during the night—gentle rain, but enough to leave Shridula feeling clammy and uncomfortable. Her father's
chaddar
stuck to her back and clung to her arms. The uneven ground—and every clump of dirt, every little stone—dug into her aching body. Still, she refused to think back kindly on her sleeping mat spread out on Glory Anna's floor. She was a slave then. Now, though her body may ache, she was free.

Stretching her legs and arms, Shridula blinked into the fading darkness. The ground next to her was empty. Where was her father?

The lean-to rattled, stopped, then shook hard. Shridula jerked upright. "
Appa?"
she breathed.

"I am out here," her father answered. "Patching palms over holes left by the wind." Shridula knew her father too well to be fooled by the lightness of his voice. She could hear his worry. A small rain last night, and today everything inside the shelter dripped. What would happen once the monsoons began to pour down? Their little lean-to would quickly wash away. What would they do then?

Shridula stepped out of the shelter. "I will go to the river to fetch water," she said.

"No!"

Shridula was taken back by her father's harshness.

Ashish took a deep breath and, in his artificially light voice said, "I will go with you, Daughter. I want to gather custard apples."

"Custard apple trees grow farther down the road, not up toward the river."

"In that case, I will gather firewood. I will walk along with you and gather something."

Shridula sighed.

Ashish went along with her to collect water. He followed when she searched for firewood. At the market, he stayed close beside her, and if she did more than exchange the most basic pleasantries with anyone, he intervened and cut the conversation short.

"I know this does not please you, Daughter," Ashish said gently. "But you are young, and I am old. I understand much more than you do. You and I, we do not know the rules of the village, and so we must be ever so careful. Because we do not know whose eyes are on us, we must constantly be wary."

"What good is freedom if I must live my life in a new kind of cage?" Shridula demanded.

"For our kind, someone will always be watching," Ashish said. "A cage will always await us."

"Tea leaves, of course," Miss Abigail Davidson said to Krishna. "And kidney pie, I should think. Perhaps with a nice Yorkshire pudding."

Krishna waited patiently. The expression on his scarred face never changed.

"Would you fancy that?" Miss Abigail asked. "Would you fancy a kidney pie and Yorkshire pudding for supper this evening?"

"Yes,
mem,"
Krishna said. "Certainly,
mem."

"Be off with you, then," Miss Abigail said. "I do believe I shall take advantage of the quiet to catch up on my reading."

Of course, she would not. Krishna knew she would be asleep before he left, and however long he was away, she would still be snoring softly in her chair when he returned. Good. That would be for the best.

"And strawberries, dear boy," Miss Abigail called after him. "Wouldn't that be lovely? Perhaps you would be good enough to choose especially ripe berries. And do remember the cream. Oh, to have a bowl of strawberries and cream just now!"

"Yes, Miss Abigail," Krishna said. He had no more idea what a strawberry was than Yorkshire pudding or kidney pie. He would purchase what he always purchased—a bag of rice, a wrapper of tea leaves, and a measure of curry. Whatever Miss Abigail called the meal, he always prepared the same thing: boiled rice, with chili peppers from the garden and a hefty pinch of curry thrown in. He knew how to cook nothing else. Every morning and every afternoon he brewed a pot of tea and served it to Miss Abigail, and every morning and every afternoon she drank her tea and thanked him for the biscuits.

"Never mind!" Miss Abigail suddenly exclaimed. "You will botch the entire project. I shall have to go to the marketplace with you and select the strawberries myself."

It would be a long, dirty ride, Krishna explained. Clouds were gathering in the sky and it looked like rain. And what of the reading she had planned for the afternoon?

But Miss Abigail would not hear his excuses. She did not mind dirt one bit, she insisted. As for rain, she could think of nothing more refreshing than a cleansing downpour. And her reading would easily wait for another day. "I'll just change into fresh clothes," she said. "I shan't be but a moment."

Krishna waited, pacing back and forth, and growing more and more impatient with each turn. It was not his place to hurry Miss Abigail, but she often fell these days. And she became so easily confused. What if something had happened to her? Krishna was ready to call out when the door to Miss Abigail's bedchamber opened.

All Krishna could do was stare. For many years, since he was a boy, he had seen Miss Abigail in nothing but Indian
saris.
But now she stood before him in a long blue skirt with matching top, its sleeves full at the top, and all trimmed in fading eyelet. Around her gray hair she had tied a navy blue straw hat, now brittle and broken with age.

"Well?" Miss Abigail said. "Do you plan to spend the day gawking or may we be off?"

With the harvest consuming all their energy and attention, neither Saji Stephen nor Nihal Amos realized Shridula was gone from the house. Glory Anna stayed in her room, out of their way. That was enough. But Sheeba Esther knew at once that something was amiss.

"She went to visit her father," Glory Anna explained.

"During the harvest?" Sheeba Esther asked. "When everyone works from the break of dawn until dusk? When the labor ers are too weary to do anything at night but fall onto their sleeping mats?"

"She loves her father," Glory Anna answered with a shrug.

"Yes," Sheeba Esther said. "Of course she does. I know for a certainty that she loves him very much."

When Sheeba Esther asked Nihal Amos about the overseer difficulty, he said, "I worked it out. Dinkar is the only overseer now. Ashish crept away into the shadows and is hardly visible in the fields."

"How very clever of you," Sheeba Esther said to her husband. But she knew.

When the harvest ended, everyone in the landlord's household turned all their efforts toward the great feast, and after that, to Glory Anna's wedding.

One morning, when the house was finally quiet again, Glory Anna said to Sheeba Esther, "I shall miss the sitar."

"Take it with you," Sheeba Esther said. "If you ask Saji Stephen, he will say no. But if we load it on the cart among your other belongings, he will never miss it."

Glory Anna laughed. "Sometimes to be forgettable is not a bad thing."

"No," Sheeba Esther answered. "Not a bad thing at all."

The only animal left at the mission was a worn-out donkey. Krishna fastened it to the cart and urged it up the road toward the village.

"The day is to be pleasant," Krishna said. "Please, you are to be waiting in the wagon until I return. I will not be away for long."

"Find some good haddock for tonight's supper," Miss Abigail called after him. "And root vegetables, too. That would be quite nice, I should think."

Krishna hurried over toward the Sudra rice seller's stall. He didn't see the silk scarf spread out on the ground with its small pile of custard apples and unevenly woven mats. But Shridula saw him. "Look,
Appa,"
she gasped. "Do you see that man?"

The twisted face. The mouth scarred into a perpetual O. Ashish caught his breath and stared. Something stirred in the back of his mind. Something about the river . . . About the bridge . . .

"I think he must be a leper," Shridula said.

"Then we must not allow him to approach us," Ashish warned. "Leprosy is a terrible curse."

But already the man was gone, folded into the crowd of villagers. Shridula turned back to her wares. Ashish, however, could not take his eyes from the crowd.

"Strawberries? Strawberries?" Miss Abigail tapped her walking stick on the ground in front of Shridula. "I say, young lady, have you any strawberries today?"

Shridula was too taken aback to say anything. It didn't matter, though, for Ashish had already caught sight of the pale English lady in the old-fashioned blue dress. He shook his head slowly, as if attempting to rouse himself from a dream. His mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

"Miss Abigail!" Krishna cried as he ran up behind her. "You were to be waiting in the cart!"

Ashish's eyes turned to the scarred face. "Krishna," he whispered. Then he turned back to stare again at the woman in blue.

"Listen," Glory Anna said to Sheeba Esther. "The rain has started." A light patter, patter sounded on the roof. Glory Anna wrung her hands anxiously. "It is falling softly now, but soon it will pour down in torrents."

"Shelter can be found in many places," Sheeba Esther said gently. "Even for Untouchables."

Glory Anna started. "I only meant . . . maybe the harvest . . . because if . . . if . . ."

"They will be all right," Sheeba Esther said gently. She sat down beside the girl and clasped hold of her hands. "No one will go after them."

Glory Anna stared at Sheeba Esther. "How can you be certain?"

"I asked Nihal Amos to pass along to Saji Stephen your gratitude for his wedding gift of two servants."

"Shridula and her father?"

"Yes. I told him they were already on their way to the house where you will live with the family of your new husband. I told him they must prepare for your arrival next month."

"He did not argue with you?"

"Not when I said you would require no other gifts from him. That is true, is it not? You will not require any other gifts from him?"

"No!" Glory Anna said. She laughed out loud. "No, no, no!"

"
Mem
is like my mother to me," Krishna said to Ashish as the two men sat together on the floor in Miss Abigail's cottage. "But I am worried for her. I cannot do for her all she needs."