The Toss of a Lemon (37 page)

The following Friday evening, nine days after Goli secluded his wife, Muchami hears a rumour in the bazaar that makes him go to Thangam and Goli’s house. It’s true: Goli is selling packets of Thangam’s dust in little printed paper packets. Muchami accosts one customer who has just left the line, having purchased three packets, and asks him to read what they say.

“‘Ash of Gold! Most powerful and holy cure from daughter of famous healer! Siddhic power alchemized with Brahmin wisdom! Use sparingly—only small amount needed.’”

Thangam is nowhere to be seen as Goli hawks the virtues of her dust from his veranda. “Once a week only, folks! Step up, step up! It’s exclusive, it’s rare, it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced.”

“We had heard of it,” says the man who so obligingly went over the packet’s text with Muchami. “Twice we came to Cholapatti to see if we could get some. But when we would come here sometimes, there were only traces on the veranda. We had to content ourselves with that. Now we will be first in line weekly, and buy also for our relatives!”

Muchami feels sick to his stomach during the whole journey to Sivakami’s but knows he has to tell Vairum, and immediately, not because Vairum would expect it, though he would, but for Thangam’s sake. Poor child, he repeats to himself with pity and dread as he nears Sivakami’s house. Poor child.

He would prefer to leave Sivakami entirely out of it but has to ask her to call Vairum, who is upstairs with Vani.

Out in the courtyard, Muchami tells Vairum in low tones what is happening. Sivakami stays in the kitchen, looking more frightened than curious.

Vairum explodes. “That no-good, exploitative lazy bum of a half-man...” and so on, exactly as Muchami predicted. The servant makes eye contact with Sivakami: she doesn’t need details; she knows who this is about. Within minutes, Muchami has hitched the cart again and he and Vairum depart.

They arrive along with a couple of hopeful customers, who clap at the still-open doorway and call out to Goli just as Muchami and Vairum dismount the cart. Goli comes to the entrance, looking tired and sounding cranky.

“Wish I could help you, folks, but supplies are limited. I ran out in ten minutes. Come back next...”

He trails off as Vairum bounds up the steps, making as if to close the door.

“Get in the house, you...” Vairum pushes his brother-in-law in the chest and into the gloom of the main hall.

Goli pushes Vairum back and the door shuts as he falls against it. Muchami decides against trying to listen and instead flicks his switch at the bullock’s rump, going to fetch a couple of Vairum’s friends, sons of a Kulithalai moneylender, who live just outside the government housing complex.

“You can get out of this house if you don’t know how to show respect,” Goli screams. “I have had more than enough of your—”

“Oh, it’s respect, is it?” As Vairum’s eyes adjust, he sees Thangam, the children huddled against her, sitting in a corner of the main hall as though trapped there by unseen forces. She doesn’t look up. “What kind of respect are you showing for my sister and our family by selling, you are selling her dust?”

Goli looks uncertain. “Thangam is part of my family now, and this is family business, Vairum. Butt out.”

“Let me tell you what happens now. One, you stop this venture. Two, you never try it again.” Vairum is a little surprised at the menace in his tone. He has never had to threaten someone and although he hopes he doesn’t have to again, it’s good to know he can.

“Oh, come, Vairum,” Goli wheedles. “Rumour has it you’re interested in business. Can you really see passing this up? You can have a part in it, as long as we can be clear on ...”

“Don’t you ever dare suggest I would make money by using my sister...”

“All right—I’m through negotiating with you. Get out of my house.” Goli opens the door and sees Muchami standing at the bottom of the front steps with Vairum’s friends and several of their neighbours: strapping, athletic youth, their arms crossed as they wait. Vairum sees them, too.

“This is the final word: stop, ” he says, standing a little too close to Goli, who looks away. “I’ll see you at home tomorrow, Akka,” he says to Thangam. “Good night.”

Vairum joins his friends, who pat him on the shoulder as he hears the door slam behind him.

Muchami assures him, in the weeks following, that Goli has made no more mention of that scheme. Thangam resumes her daily visits with the children. When Muchami drops her at their house the Friday after the confrontation, a puzzled crowd of would-be customers is milling outside. They raise a happy buzz at Thangam’s appearance, but she smiles at them vaguely and goes inside. Muchami lingers for nearly two hours in the neighbourhood, but when dark begins to fall and Goli has not returned, he leaves, along with the remnants of the crowd, who have wiped up on their index fingers any traces of Thangam’s dust from the veranda.

Several more months pass before they hear again of Goli advertising one of his ideas. This time, he has persuaded a local importer to loan him one of two vitrines, where he has arranged a display of three stuffed deer’s heads, a blackbuck antelope in the centre, its ringed and undulating horns crossing the ramified tines of two barasinghas’ antlers. Before long, Vairum sees these heads appear above the doorways to the homes of a local lawyer and a prosperous compounder, as well as over the entryway to the import shop itself. Goli replaces them, adding an axis deer with magnificent horns. These, too, sell as soon as they arrive.

“He’s hit on a trend,” Vairum remarks, when Muchami tells him Goli has bragged he can’t keep up with demand. “Or created one.”

“Yes, if anyone can do that, he can. He says he mounted one of the heads above his own doorway, but was convinced to sell it, too!”

The next shipment comes in three weeks later, nine heads; the next, three weeks after, is twelve. Goli no longer bothers to display them in the import-shop window but just sells them out of his main hall. They never remain longer than a day, so his higher-ups do not appear to catch wind of it.

Thangam shows up for her visit to Sivakami’s one day in a rich-looking cotton-silk sari in coral, orange and pink. Her daughters finger it admiringly, and Sivakami asks, “New?”

Thangam nods, looking down and smiling. A couple of days later, wearing yet another new sari, she gives each of the little girls a small carved ivory box and presents Sivakami with a large, sandalwood representation of Rama for her puja corner.

“What is all this?” Sivakami asks.

“Gifts,” Thangam replies shyly. “From my husband.”

Sivakami is surprised, but when Gayatri comes for her daily coffee, she hears about the source of the riches.

“We finally came up on the waiting list for one of your son-in-law’s heads, Sivakamikka!” Gayatri sighs as she seats herself against a pillar in the main hall, smiling at Thangam, who smiles back before looking away and swallowing.

Sivakami is staring at Thangam’s sari, as opulent as the last one, if less gaudy, checked in three tones of violet. She can’t tell why it looks strange, apart from the fact that she has so rarely seen Thangam in new clothes since she left home, and suddenly realizes: the only gold she sees on the sari is in the jeri-work threads outlining the checks. Thangam’s shedding has significantly abated in the last month. That can only be good, she thinks, and then realizes what Gayatri has said.

“One of his heads?”

“We just had it mounted! A blackbuck, I guess it’s called.”

“I’m sorry.” She gives Gayatri her coffee, the tumbler inverted in the bowl. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Has no one told you about your son-in-law’s runaway success?” Gayatri asks.

Sivakami, feeling slightly humiliated, says nothing.

“Well, it’s very fashionable,” Gayatri tells her cautiously. “Deer heads, wall decorations.”

A Brahmin selling the heads of dead animals?
Sivakami returns to the kitchen. It sounds barbaric, but she can’t very well say that to Gayatri if she and her husband bought one.

“My parents have, you know, just the horns,” Gayatri goes on, chattering a little to cover Sivakami’s obvious silence, “but Goli says this is a new thing, with this advanced science, taxi-something.”

Sivakami smiles at her and helps her to change the subject.

“All the best homes have to have them,” Muchami tells Vairum. “He has taken advance orders from some thirty more people. I think his supply has maybe slowed a little, though: he has said for the last few weeks that he’ll be getting more in, but they haven’t shown up yet.”

They are in the bullock cart, returning from looking at a rice mill that Vairum is considering buying, on the far side of Kulithalai.

“What do people love so much about them?” Vairum snorts, and Muchami shrugs, but then realizes Vairum was not asking him. “Fascinating thing, fashion. He sold so many so fast, and they have to be hunted, stuffed, sent. I’m not sure the trend will persist, but if it settles down and becomes a fixture, maybe someone should consider domesticating, starting a farm or something.”

“Now there’s an idea.” Muchami guides the bullock around a pothole.

“So what’s he doing with his winnings? Putting them into some other crazy scheme?”

“Um, no.” Muchami is quiet.

“What?” Vairum asks eventually.

Muchami would really rather not have to tell him, though there is no saying how Vairum will react. “He seems to be interested in acquiring ... trophies, of a sort.” What Goli is doing is not technically wrong, but Muchami has a feeling that Vairum will not like it.

“What sort?”

If Muchami doesn’t tell him, someone else will. “He seems to have his eye on Chellamma. You know who she is?”

Vairum shakes his head.

Muchami keeps his eyes on the road.
“Devadasi.”

A temple dancer—“servant of the gods”—a courtesan. Women of this caste are trained in the finer arts, given to a god in a ceremonial marriage but dependent on liaisons with wealthy men, preferably in an exclusive relationship. It’s a man of rare refinements who keeps a devadasi: he may father a line of dancers, a great contribution to the native arts.

“A devadasi?” Vairum asks. “I didn’t even know there were any around here.”

“Just one, in fact. Long story. Her mother was brought here from Madurai-side, by her patron, Chellamma’s father. She came of age some five years ago but has only had one patron, for a couple of years. No one is supporting her now, and there was no issue from the previous union.”

“He is such a fool,” Vairum says.

“Yes,” Muchami agrees.

Vairum sighs. “He can barely support his own family, and now he wants to take on another one? Besides which, he leaves in less than a year. Thank God.”

“Status,” Muchami says simply. “He’s been buying gifts for Thangam and the babies, and new furniture.”

“He’ll go into debt,” Vairum says. “Big trouble ahead.”

“Yes.” Muchami looks over. “Don’t get involved.”

“I don’t need your advice.”

Muchami, stung even though he should have expected this, falls silent.

The next morning, Sivakami draws him aside. “What’s this about the son-in-law’s business venture?”

“Yes, Amma. I didn’t think you’d like it, and haven’t told you about most of his business dealings since he arrived in Kulithalai. He has had a new one every few months. Who knew this one would be so successful?”

“Animal heads?”

Muchami shrugs, grinning a little.

Sivakami is quiet a moment. “I suppose there’s nothing wrong with him trying to supplement his income, though I wish he would live more quietly. All this flash!”

“Yes, Amma,” Muchami says.

Sivakami looks at him suspiciously and waits, but he says nothing more and she doesn’t ask.

It is two weeks before Navaratri, and Thangam comes in glowing. “Amma,” she tells her mother. “Look.”

Muchami is unloading boxes from the bullock cart, and Thangam opens them to show her mother: dolls, every size and style, perhaps two dozen of them.

“He brought them from Thiruchi!” Thangam picks each one up in turn, caressing it and setting it back in its wrapper.

Sivakami turns away from her, feeling discomfited. It is very strange. She knows Thangam loves dolls, but she’s looking at them as Sivakami feels she should her own babies.

Vairum comes in and sees the boxes. “What’s all this?”

“Dolls,” Thangam whispers. “For Navaratri.”

“You deserve to be spoiled, Akka, but surely he would be better off saving his money? Investing it in something safe?”

Thangam looks away.

“I can’t talk to him,” Vairum sighs. “Don’t know if anyone can. Can you?”

Thangam keeps her silence.

“I didn’t think so,” he says. “All this is going to blow up in his face.”

The end to Goli’s fast fortune arrives in a near-literal fulfillment of Vairum’s prediction. A rush shipment of four deer heads arrives within a month, but as he is taking the last out of its crate to hand it over to a customer, the animal’s forehead ruptures, one glass eye pops out, and maggots spill forth all over Goli, the customer and Goli’s veranda. The customer runs out screaming, and that’s the end of trade.

The customers from whom Goli accepted advance payment cancel their orders and demand refunds, and a number of people even try to return heads they had already bought and taken home, even though Goli assures them the maggot incident was an unfortunate but isolated chemical slip-up.

“I’ve been pushing the supplier too hard. They got hasty. If you will only be patient...”

He permits the others to cancel their orders but tells them that it may be some time before he receives a refund from the supplier.

Muchami believes Goli only ever paid on receipt of shipments, spending all the advance cash on frivolities and counting on future orders to pay for those already in. Vairum believes the same, but Muchami has been more laconic with him since the conversation about the devadasi and, apart from brief reports, has confined conversation to their own immediate business concerns.