The Toss of a Lemon (27 page)

Starting from the fourth week of Muchami’s convalescence, though, Vairum grows increasingly circumspect. One day, as Sivakami serves him his morning meal and he silently eats, she asks lightly, with no trace of resentment, “Why do you not tell me any longer, of the little wars between tenants, of daily variations in monthly projected income? You have not said a word about your work, not for days.”

He looks up, a little surprised. “Are you interested?”

“Of course. I studied all this, too.”

“Yes, but only because you had to.”

“Yes, the same reason as you.” She smiles.

“But it’s different for me.” He frowns.

“How is it different?” she asks, happy to be having a conversation about their mutual interest, but curious about his silence.

“It’s different because you kept count, money in, money out, revenues, expenses, salaries and taxes.” He is impatient. “Counting is no challenge for me. Don’t worry, everything and everyone will be looked after. But land is for growing, after all, and even if Brahmins are not farmers, I am going to make ours grow.”

“Brahmins should not be acquisitive, either.” She feels it’s important to remind him, in his father’s absence, that he has a responsibility to the traditions of their caste.

“I don’t care about money!” he bleats, and she is cowed and impressed by his outrage. “I’m doing it for the challenge only.” He sounds far away. “To prove I can.”

Dreams of dominion? That’s not what he said. As Sivakami serves him his breakfast, she looks at him closely. His eyes are as dark as ever, the future too far back in them to be seen.

IF SIVAKAMI WERE TO BE ASKED—though who would ask her?—she might say she knows there’s a war on in the world, but when is there not? She doesn’t read the newspaper—she used to browse the headlines and advertisements, but she stopped the subscriptions after her husband died. She thought she would restart them if or when Vairum asked, but shortly after Vairum started making rounds of the fields, he also began stopping in on Minister daily, in late afternoon, where he reads the English and Tamil papers.

Gayatri tells Sivakami that Minister has told her that Vairum is indifferent to politics.

“Then what do they talk about?” Sivakami asks.

“Politics!”

When Gayatri carries gossip from her husband she almost always repeats it verbatim—she says she doesn’t understand it well enough to paraphrase, but appears to get enough to take an interest.

“My husband is called to politics by his nature, that’s what he says, but he says Vairum is calculating, neutral, that he never expresses a preference for one party over another, never seems to have an opinion about a political gain or loss, but still wants to know all the details. You know, on days when he doesn’t have classes, he comes in the mornings, when all the other men come. If he weren’t in school, I’m sure he’d be a regular.”

Minister hosts a daily salon where local men air and contest matters of power and political control. Only privileged men attend—the language of exchange, Minister insists, is English, even though all of the attendees are Tamil. Despite their wealth and power, Sivakami disapproves of the gathering because the majority are not Brahmin.

“But why would he go if he’s not interested in politics?” Sivakami frowns, though more with curiosity than worry. She is still pleased Vairum is spending time in Chinnarathnam’s house. “Isn’t that what they... do, there? Or, talk about?”

“I suppose he is interested in the information, or the contacts, or... well, who knows, really?” Gayatri founders, and so goes on to tell in engaging if excessive detail about some mutual corruption charges between a developer and the Taluk Board on which Minister is a seat-holder ; and thence to ribbon-cuttings recent and forthcoming, while Sivakami mulls vaguely on her son’s increasingly opaque facets, and what to make for tiffin and how the cowshed thatch needs replacing.

Vairum is ever laconic, about his school day, or the news, business or the war, which, for Sivakami, remains almost imaginary, much like those battles Vairum twirled through on twiggy horseback in the Samanthibakkam of a dimming childhood. Maybe mothers like Sivakami would take the far-off wars more seriously if they knew that the battles were so similar to battles they witness daily in their own villages, and that the issues fought over were so close to their own hearts: territory, status, gold.

Thangam returns home to wage a related battle in the back room where she passed the days of her maturation and whose walls will now witness the appearance of her baby.

Thangam is no howler, and there is no sound from the room but grunting and the grinding of teeth, accompanied by the incessant tinkle of glass bangles, given to every expectant mother in her seventh month. Thangam didn’t tell Sivakami she was in labour and was quite far along by the time Sivakami noticed. As soon as she did, she hustled Thangam into the back room and sent Muchami to find the old ladies who will help, as well as the astrologer. Before they arrive, though, the head has shown and Sivakami has no choice but to hold out her hands and pray. A little girl slips from the womb into Sivakami’s shaking hands, as three old ladies appear at the door, their lips moving with mantras, their eyes large.

Sivakami, holding the baby up like a magician with a rabbit, shouts to Mari to alert the astrologer, who is squatting in the garden. She turns the little one upside down, then rights her, as though the child is an hourglass with a few final grains to dislodge before she can be restarted. The baby coughs up a little goo and begins to cry primly, not too loud, nor very long. Sivakami jiggles the child gingerly and makes clucking noises, then permits the ladies to take over while she staggers forth from the gloom into the courtyard sunshine. She collapses against a wall and listens to the cows moan from the shed beside her and recalls herself as a mother at fourteen.

When the placenta emerges, Thangam is covered, her brow daubed, water dribbled between her cracked lips. The baby is wiped and bundled. Thangam’s colostrum is expressed and discarded, according to custom; the baby is fed a little castor oil to get her meconium moving, a little sugar water to hold her until she is allowed the breast.

Thangam rests for thirty-one days, confined to the back room, where she sits or lies on the cot. Sivakami leaves her food in the doorway, and while she eats, girlfriends and matrons and Gayatri, who is both and neither, sit in the doorway and chat. They bring Thangam betel-stuffed leaves smeared with calcium: wisdom has it that, in the weeks after a birth, the new mother should consume a quantity of calcium equal to the size of her child’s head. “For every child born, you lose a tooth!” Thangam is advised by half a dozen neighbours and her mother as she tucks the spicy bundle into her cheek. The visitors chew too, mouths dyed red as they jaw.

Thangam’s complexion is shockingly bright. She looks childlike and charming. She is exactly where she is supposed to be.

And all the village seems lighter of foot, knowing the golden girl is back in its midst. When she emerges from her seclusion, a horde seethes round the veranda from morning to night.

Sivakami smiles hidden smiles: she not only gained a granddaughter, she may be regaining her daughter. The birth of the child added years to Thangam’s life. The astrologer said so, in response to the secret requests Sivakami sent along with birth time. He responded yes, the birth of this girl-child had altered the relationship of her parents’ stars, that she had worked a lengthening of her mother’s years on earth. That the child had done for her mother what poor Vairum failed to do for Hanumarathnam—the note says nothing of that.

Good fortune can become a burden in its own way, though, so Sivakami hugs this knowledge to herself.

SEVERAL MONTHS AFTER THANGAM’S SECLUSION ENDS, Sivakami asks her, “You know how happy we are to have you here, kanna, but did the son-in-law say he would be coming to fetch you? I just want to make sure we’re ready.”

Thangam looks back at her with wide, soft eyes.

Sivakami continues, “You know that if your father were alive, he and I would have taken you back, but of course Murthy and Rukmini can take you.”

Thangam looks uncomfortable and non-committal.

“He didn’t say, one way or another?”

Thangam shakes her head.

“Do you want me to ask your in-laws and arrange an escort?”

Thangam nods but looks miserable.

Thangam’s in-laws write that Goli will come to get Thangam, and Sivakami writes back that they will wait for him. Another month passes, then nearly two, and she writes again, very diplomatically asking if she has misunderstood and offering to send Thangam under escort if Goli’s work prevents him from coming.

“Let her stay here, Amma,” says Vairum, though Sivakami has assiduously not raised the topic with him. They are all sparkling faintly with Thangam’s dust: the shedding began again, as soon as Sivakami broached the subject of her return to her husband, and hasn’t abated.

“Don’t worry, Thangam,” she says. “That won’t happen. You’ll be back where you belong in no time.” She won’t even acknowledge the suggestion: the shame! What is Vairum thinking?

“I don’t care,” he says. “She could stay and we would take care of her.”

“She has a husband, Vairum,” Sivakami says. “The topic is closed.” Thangam’s in-laws write accepting the offer. Murthy and Rukmini will escort Thangam to her home in the district where Goli is currently the revenue inspector in charge, some three hours away by train.

Sivakami talks to Muchami about the arrangements.

“You’ll need to buy the train tickets.”

“Of course, Amma.”

“One would have thought he’d be curious to see his child,” she says, and regrets having spoken it. It sounds like a curse on the baby.

“He’s not an ordinary sort of man, Amma,” Muchami says and purses his lips as if he, too, wants to prevent himself from speaking further.

“No, he’s not,” she agrees, but it is an acknowledgment that Muchami knows more than he is telling. She doesn’t want to know.

Two weeks later, Muchami drives Thangam, the baby, Murthy and Rukmini to the station.

“Goodbye! Goodbye!” shout the teary villagers, an expression whose literal translation is “Go and come back! Come! Come!” Children run after the bullock cart, trying to touch its sides.

The next morning, returning at four from Sivakami’s bath in the Kaveri, Sivakami and Mari are startled by someone asleep on the veranda. It is Goli. Sivakami invites him in, gives him coffee and explains that his wife has already departed for their home.

“What’s that?” he says, sounding irritable. “My parents said to come and get her, so here I am.”

“I’m very sorry.” Sivakami is full of questions she cannot ask: who will greet Thangam on her arrival at their home? Has he made any provisions at all?

Vairum descends the stairs with a towel, scratching his head sleepily, and pulls up short at the sight of his brother-in-law. “Oh, priceless. You know she waited for you for months?”

“Vairum!” Sivakami indicates the back of the house with her chin. “Go take your bath.”

Vairum gives an exaggerated sigh of disgust and turns to go as Goli replies in an ugly tone, “I’ll look after my family, imp, and you take care of yours.”

“You see that you do that,” Vairum tosses back.

“I will.”

It’s a thoroughly adolescent exchange. At least Vairum is an adolescent ; Sivakami wonders if Goli is much more.

IN THE YEARS THAT FOLLOW, Sivakami continues giving arm’s-length advice on agricultural business, though she more often shares her opinions with Muchami than with her son. The servant faithfully reports all matters in which he feels he needs her approval, as well as discussing with her issues in which different approaches might be entertained. Vairum tells her nothing of what he sees or learns on his rounds, but he does discuss these in detail with Muchami, either at the end of the day or when they make rounds together, and so Sivakami knows her feelings are being communicated, though in the guise of Muchami’s own opinions. In this way, then, Muchami functions as her proxy, even with her son, when it comes to matters from which the world—and Vairum in particular—thinks her better excluded. She’s not sure why Vairum doesn’t discuss these matters with her: he seems to consider it a waste of time since she has no direct involvement. Nor has he ever indulged her basic curiosity about his life and interests, or about the world that has been, for so long, beyond her witness. It never seems to occur to him that she might have a perspective of value, and in this arena, where he has the right and confidence to do well on his own, she doesn’t want to press.