The Toss of a Lemon (35 page)

A person would have to be made of stone not to be interested by a promise extracted at the deathbed. Vairum’s rock-diamond eyes glitter. He is intrigued.

“Now, the time has come for me to fulfill my pledge. Do you want to know what it was?”

He nods, just a little.

“I will take them to court,” he responds, rising, even before Sivakami has proposed it. His eyes shine with ardour to be a tool for justice. “It is the only way, Amma, and you must not prevent me from fulfilling your pledge to your mother and getting my sister the money that is rightfully hers. Now you have told me, you must stand out of my way.”

Sivakami has not even told him about her worries on Thangam’s behalf, only that this was what her mother had wanted, a pledge she must fulfill and a point of justice. It appeals to Vairum’s sense of the noble, the romantic; he’s perhaps more than usually susceptible to things of this nature at the moment.

Sivakami is glad that she didn’t have to use Thangam’s neediness as a motivation. Vairum doesn’t, in her opinion, need any more reasons to despise Goli.

For his part, although Vairum says that Vani’s uncles will certainly represent the case, he doesn’t mention how he will relish being on their side, one of a team with them, his comparatively puny shoulder between their massive ones, breaking down his uncles’ door (in a legal sense) and demanding his sister’s due. Vairum knows he shouldn’t be so grateful to be part of his bride’s family, he knows he should have accepted her coolly into his household; she should be the grateful one. But that’s not how he feels.

He notices his niece, Saradha, observing him unsurely. She has come through the kitchen from the courtyard and is flushed with heat. Fair skin, shining black hair: a perfectly attractive child. Vairum beckons her.

“Come. You want to draw a picture? Come and draw a flower on my slate.”

She comes and sits and draws and smiles, as she will once a day until he leaves.

Vani’s immense uncles come the following morning, as they have made it a habit to do on this visit, to take their coffee upon the veranda. They peruse newspapers Minister has sent through Vairum as a welcome gesture. They take snuff. Occasionally, one grunts and points out an article or announcement to the other. They don’t appear to notice the children swarming the veranda’s periphery, watching them, perhaps because it is not unusual to find swarms of curious children around any visitor to a village, perhaps because the uncles know they are a curious sight, with their linen jackets and wobbling, shiny cheeks. They are the largest specimens of humanity these children have ever seen.

After three-quarters of an hour or so, they go inside, abandoning the untidily folded newspapers and leaving the tumblers and bowls with sugary traces that soon attract ants. Vairum is looking over the document his mother has given him, the yellowed parchment that confirms the legitimacy of her claim.

He scrambles to arrange bamboo mats for the uncles while they cluck absently, “Relax, son.” They beckon for the parchment and for him to open the second of the double garden doors to admit more light. Each carefully reads the text on the scroll. To Sivakami, out of sight in the kitchen, each sound—the sniff of an uncle, the low crackling of the scroll—is a word fate is writing on the taut parchment of her eardrum.

Then they begin to discuss:

Uncles: “Why is your mother pursuing the claim now?”

Vairum: “She promised her mother that she would.”

Uncles: “But why now?”

Vairum: “Because... she can, now. Because you can help her.”

Uncles: “No, we think it’s because she needs it, now.”

Vairum: “Why does she need it? I look after her.”

The uncles purse their brows.

Uncles: “Hasn’t your mother begun to care for your sister’s children? ”

Vairum: “Yes...
^»

Uncles: “How is she paying for them?”

Vairum: “My... well, the children’s parents, their grandparents...”

Uncles: “No, there must be some need, you understand, to convince the court. The grandparents have very little money, the father must maintain a household of his own. Your mother must need the money for the children.”

Vairum: “No. My sister’s children are not orphans. My mother is pursuing this because she promised her mother, a deathbed promise, that she would. Her dying mother. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

Uncles: “It is useful. It will give a good sentiment. But our argument is stronger. Your mother promised she would pursue this in case her daughter ever needed it. Now there is a need.”

Vairum: “But, but... I can‘t, be seen not to—not support my sister...”

Uncles: “Would your mother permit you to spend your fortune, your father’s fortune, on your sister’s children? That money belongs to your children. To Vani’s children. Think about it. We will meet again, in a few weeks, in Pandiyoor.”

Vairum is quiet. Sivakami sends the Brahmin woman she has hired for the festival shuttling forth with banana leaves to serve the mid-morning meal.

After the uncles have left to go visiting, Vairum is pensive. He steps moodily around the garden, pulling at leaves and flowers, holding them to his nose and then dropping them, staring up at the sky, until Sivakami is afraid he will get sunstroke, if he isn’t already sun-stricken.

He is not; he is guilt-stricken. He re-enters the main hall and squats with his back against the wall, his forehead against the heels of his palms, until Sivakami cries, “What, child? Tell me.”

She bends and peeps through his arms. He is muttering, “I am married. My sister is married.” He flings his bony arms out from the elbows. Sivakami jumps back, stumbling, narrowly avoiding his touch.

He looks like a marionette, waiting for a puppeteer to work his strings. “It won’t look good, will it, if Akka’s children are paid for with my money?”

He drags himself up the wall by the shoulders, arms rising, head finding its equilibrium. He holds his arms out to her in supplication, a rare open moment.

“I will cause resentment in my in-laws, won’t I? If I spend the money that should go to my children, Vani’s children, on Thangam’s.”

“I could never permit you to spend your own money on your sister’s children,” Sivakami agrees.

The defensiveness reappears. “You cannot forbid me to use my money for any purpose.”

“Correct, you are correct.” She is careful now. “I should have said it would trouble me.”

His generous nature is perturbed, but adulthood is compromise. “There is a high probability that my brother-in-law will not provide for the children,” he explains to his mother. A sense of outrage begins to flood him, curiously like relief. “There is every possibility of this. I will make sure my sister gets that property from my uncles. They, who arranged my sister’s marriage to that... that... stingy deadbeat, they had better make sure she is provided for.”

“They have been purchasing land from her in-laws and managing it,” Sivakami reminds him.

“Yes, yes, I have seen how they ‘manage.’ It is good that they know enough not to put it in my brother-in-law’s feeble hands, but it will never improve in their own. They won’t lose it, that’s the best one can say about that.” He is a fury of indignation now. “I will win the manjakkani, and I will manage it, and it will grow, so my sister’s children will never want.”

Emotional now, he runs up the stairs into the refuge of the attic. It is the result Sivakami wished for, though she wishes it weren’t balanced on Vairum’s hard feelings.

ALTHOUGH THE SUIT TAKES NEARLY TWO YEARS to work its way up a backlogged roster, it takes barely an hour to fight. If this were covered by The Hindu or another newspaper—which it won’t be, but if it were—it would be headlined “Battle of the Uncles,” Vairum thinks, as he emerges from the courtroom, flushed with victory, amid the barristers and other concerned parties. His maternal uncles trail behind, looking grey, stricken, disapproving and shrunken, especially in contrast with Vani’s hale and corpulent ones.

Vairum has never thought of becoming a lawyer and still would never consider it, unsuited as he is to semantic niggling and logical stratagems. But he wouldn’t mind being embroiled in a few more legal battles. Ayoh, it was fun! For him, the extended lead-up only added to the excitement. Then the bureaucratic elegance of the courthouse, the stuffiness of suppressed desire filling the courtroom, the judge’s wig, like a kudumi out of control—each beat drama’s drum in his young heart, athrum with blood and power.

It wasn’t only the victory, though he wouldn’t have enjoyed losing. It was the sense that he was on the side of fairness, of modernity. He had read much of the controversies of women’s rights in the papers, and feels he has entered the fray on the progressive side. He knows his mother would have a horror of any such characterization of her case. Manjakkani is a long tradition and she was fulfilling a promise to her mother—there is nothing whatsoever modern or progressive in what she is doing, she would protest when he bragged to her of his pleasure in her win. But he will insist, to her and others, on his version. He is finding his philosophical alignments, and they are far, far different from hers.

IN 1923, ANOTHER GIRL IS BORN TO THANGAM. She is named Sita, at Sivakami’s request, for Rama’s wife—that most virtuous of women, who, in Sivakami’s opinion, is as much the guardian of their home as her husband. Sivakami admits Sita would be nothing without her husband, but Sivakami’s greatest challenge now is to protect the virtue and reputation of her granddaughters. In this, the goddess alone can guide her.

At her daughter Sita’s birth, Thangam’s second daughter, Visalam, comes to stay with Sivakami. The first one, Saradha, incorporates her younger sister into her schedule. She appears equally pleased with the company and with having someone to boss, demonstrating an officious side that she has not previously had the chance to express.

In this time, Vairum finishes college with high honours. He takes a job in Thiruchi as an accounting supervisor in a paper plant but decides, when Vani comes of age, to quit and live with her in Cholapatti. Sivakami is distressed: she had sent him to school and college precisely so that he would be more than a village Brahmin. Vairum brusquely assures her that his plans encompass much more than she could understand.

“It has been an informative year, Amma, but I’m destined to be more than a wage slave.”

Sivakami has no idea what this means. She asks Muchami, “Where is the slavery in a dependable salary?”

Muchami has no idea either, but Vairum will listen to nothing more from her, so she waits and observes.

The biggest change in the household, though, owes to Vani’s arrival. Her music practice transforms their home. She plays for several hours each morning and afternoon, and sometimes deep into the night. When the moon is full, she rises before the sun, fresh and energetic. If the moon is dark, she drags herself sleepily downstairs after the sun has fully risen. In either case, she bathes immediately, does a brief puja to her veena, and does namaskaram for Sivakami. Sivakami was very pleased to see that a girl raised in so modern a household would perform a daily prostration for her mother-in-law. Perhaps Vani understands that almost no other mother-in-law would be so indulgent: Sivakami expects nothing from her in the way of household assistance. For her part, Vani seems to thrive in the piety and order of the house her mother-in-law runs, and shows her respect and affection, albeit in her own, oddly detached way.

Pervasive as Thangam’s dust, Vani’s music is everywhere there is air, in the house and spilling out onto the street: between two people in a conversation, in all the cooking pots, travelling in through nostrils and out in snores. Sivakami has become accustomed to it, and now, when Vani is not playing, there is silence in all those places where before there was nothing.

One morning, Muchami finishes his milking just as Vani starts her playing, and stands in the courtyard shifting from foot to foot as Sivakami mixes yogourt rice for the little girls’ breakfast. They attend the village school together and need a substantial meal before they go, though the rest of the household adheres to traditional timings: rice meals at 10:30 and 8:00, tiffin at 3:00.

Sivakami takes the milk, the third pot he has given her, and starts skimming it. “Do you need a cup of
kanji
or milk before you go?”

“Oh, no. Well, all right, yes, but... I need to talk to you.” He squats against a post.

“What is it? Kanji or milk?”

“A mix?

She puts sugar in a cup, pours him some of the water strained from cooked rice, adds milk from the pot already boiling on the stove and puts the third pot on to boil. The second is cooling and almost ready for her to add the yogourt culture.

“Well?”

“It’s good news,” he says, pouring his drink from tumbler to bowl, either to mix in the sugar and cool the milk, or to avoid Sivakami’s eye. “The son-in-law’s next posting will be in Kulithalai. He arrived yesterday to inspect the quarters and meet with his supervisor. I saw him last night in the bazaar.”