Nectar in a Sieve (14 page)
Authors: Kamala Markandaya
Then I heard a thin, shrill scream. "Mother! Mother!" Hands were dragging we away. I felt myself pulled and thrown to one side. "Fiend! Madwoman!" Nathan was shrieking. "Accursed mother!" He was bending over the form, doing something to it. I saw he was quite naked and wondered at it, forgetting he had come straight from sleep. He turned to me.
"Are you out of your mind? Your own daughter, you have killed her. Murderess!"
He and Selvam carried her in. I slunk after them, disbelieving. It could not be Irawaddy. It was some monstrous mistake they had made, not I. I crept to her side and saw it was Irawaddy. Her face was puffed and bore horrible marks, one lip was bleeding where her tooth had bitten down. I closed my eyes. Red circles opened out before them, receding into an endless blackness. I shook myself clear of them and went to aid my husband. He had a pot of water beside him and was wiping the blood from her body. Her sari was stained with blood. I took the cloth from him.
"I will see to her."
He thrust me aside. "Get away; you have done enough harm. You are not fit."
"I thought it was Kunthi," I whispered.
He moved a little, making room for me, but remained near, not wholly trusting.
She had been badly cut. A long jagged gash showed in her left side, there was a similar one on her left wrist.
"These wounds," I said. "I did not make them." I did not expect him to believe me.
"I know. The bangles broke."
Bangles? How could she have bangles, who had not a pie of her own? I stared at him, not knowing amid these unreal happenings whether those were his words or only what I had heard. He pointed.
"Do you not see the glass -- there and there. She was wearing bangles."
They had broken against her body, which had protected me from injury. I began to swab. The cuts were full of glass, some of it in splinters, some of it in powder like shining sand. When I had cleaned them I bound the two largest gashes. For the rest there was nothing I could use, but these were smaller and mercifully soon stopped bleeding. The sari I had taken from her was soaked with blood and grimy where dust clung to the wet cloth. I took it down to the river intending to wash it, shook it clear of dust and broken glass. As I did so, something dropped from the folds, fell in the muddy water, sank and was lost; but not before I had seen that it was a rupee.
I went on with my work, scrubbing the bloodstains, rinsing the cloth, laying it on the grass to dry: then I came back, swept and cleaned the hut, cleared the courtyard, removed all signs of the struggle that had been. The sun was moving to midday by the time I had finished. Now that there was nothing more to do, the thoughts I had so far avoided came crowding in on me in agitated turmoil. Who had given her the money? Why? Had she stolen it, and if so how and who from?
Why did she have to walk by night wearing glass bangles? I kept very still, not to waken my sleeping daughter, while the thoughts went galloping through my head, and question after question, unanswered.
Kuti, lying in a corner of the hut, began to moan. Ira heard and opened her eyes, gesturing vaguely towards him. I went to her first.
"Lie still; the cut will open again."
She looked at me sombrely: "Feed him; he is hungry. Take the rupee you will find in my sari."
I knew then that it was she who had been responsible for the improvement in Kuti, not I, not my prayers.
Nathan was about to say something, to question her perhaps. I gripped his arm, forcing him to silence. Ira was struggling to rise. I went to her.
"Lie still," I said again, laying restraining hands on her. "I will see to him."
I picked up the moaning child and took him outside, trying to quieten him. It was useless. Ira had fed him and freed him from hunger, the taste was with him still and he would not be quietened. I walked away from the hut with him in my arms, and at length his sharp cries sank into soft whimpering and finally into silence.
The lips of her wounds had hardly drawn together when Ira was on her feet again.
"Where do you go?" I said to her. "Rest a little longer; the marks are still livid."
"Rest!" she said contemptuously. "How can I rest or anyone rest? Can you not hear the child?"
"Where do you go?" I repeated. "Tell me only where you go."
"Do not ask," she said. "It is better that you should not know."
She was combing her hair, letting it fall away from her neck, first one way, then another, until the whole, head and hair, was sleek and shining. She had not troubled so much since she was a bride.
I saw her go out in the dusk, sari tightly wrapped about her. Saw her walk to the town, along the narrow lane which ran past the tannery, following it to where it broadened with beedi shops along one side and tawdry stalls on the other, where men with bold eyes lounged smoking or drinking from frothing toddy pots. She moved jauntily, stepping with outrageous fastidiousness amid the litter of the street, the chewed sugar cane, the trampled sweetmeats, the red betel-nut spittle; jauntily, a half-smile on her lips answering the jeers and calls that were thrown at her, eyes darting quickly round searching, then retreating behind half-drawn lids. At each turning leading from the street -- and there were many of these, dim lanes and alleys -- she paused, and advanced a little along it, and waited, lost in the shadows.
"I must know," I said, imploring. "It is better that I should know than that I should imagine."
Ira gave me a sidelong glance: "Your imagination would not travel that far."
"You do not know me," I said, troubled. "And I no longer understand you."
"The truth is unpalatable," she replied.
I pondered awhile, searching my memory: then it came to me: the man who had called after Raja's death. He had said the same thing. The truth is unpalatable.
Nathan came in from the fields at sundown as Ira was setting forth. He had been clearing the irrigation channels and strengthening the dams, the fork he carried was caked with soil and water. He thrust it into the earth and leaned on it.
"Where do you go at this hour?"
"It is better not to speak."
"I will have an answer."
"I can give you none."
Nathan's brows drew together: she had never before spoken to him in this manner. Looking at her, it seemed to me that almost overnight she had changedi she had been tender and modest and obedient, now she had relinquished every one of these qualities; it was difficult to believe she had ever been their possessor.
Nathan was groping for words, stumbling a little over them.
"I will not have it said -- I will not have you parading at night --"
"Tonight and tomorrow and every night, so long as there is need. I will not hunger any more."
"Like a harlot," he said. "A common strumpet."
The veins in his forehead were standing out, on each temple a pulse throbbed fiercely. Ira stood defiant before him, uttering no denial, fingers plucking at the fringe of her sari. I closed my eyes, I could not bear to see them thus.
"These are but words," she said at last. "There are others, kinder ones, which for decency's sake --"
"Decency!" he spat at her. "Do not speak of decency!"
She was quiet for a moment, and he said with deliberate cruelty, "No man will look at you, defaced as you are."
"The cuts will heal," she retorted. "Men do not seek my face."
I think he laid a restraining hand on her: for I heard her say, "Let me pass," and there was a slight rustling sound as she withdrew from his grasp.
Well, we let her go. We had tried everything in our power, there was nothing more we could do. She was no longer a child, to be cowed or forced into submission, but a grown woman with a definite purpose and an invincible determination. We had for so long accepted her obedience to our will that when it ceased to be given naturally, it came as a considerable shock; yet there was no option but to accept the change, strange and bewildering as it was, for obedience cannot be extorted. It was as simple as that: we forbade, she insisted, we lost. So we got used to her comings and goings, as we had got used to so much else.
With her earnings Irawaddy was able to buy rice and salt, and milk for the child, who was too weak for anything else. After the roots and leavings we had existed on, I was grateful enough for the food, but of what she bought Nathan would not touch a morsel. Day after day he went out as before, delving and scraping for food, as thin and dry as a hollow bamboo stick.
"What is done is done," I said, urging him to eat. "There is no stricture on you, for you have tried."
"I will not touch it," he said, eyeing me steadily. What bitterness was behind this I do not know, or what condemnation of his powerlessness to feed his children; but this I do know: his spirit was very strong, and he was an upright man.
For the first few days after Ira resumed feeding Kuti with milk, he seemed to grow better, but the improvement -- if improvement it had been: I do not know, for he ceased to cry and we took this for improvement -- did not continue. Soon it became clear that he was sinking. His eyes grew larger in his pinched face, there was a brightness in their soft brown as if all that was left of life was concentrated there; and indeed they seemed to be the only active part of him. From his corner, when he was no longer capable of any other movement, his eyes constantly followed us, seeming never to tire in their restless wandering. Otherwise he lay quiet like a bruised fledgling, with the dry, parched lips of exhaustion and a body which could struggle no more.
Only once I heard him call: a slight whisper that barely reached me.
"Ama?"
"Yes, dear?"
"I cannot see you -- I cannot see anything."
"I am here my son, very near you."
There was a feeble movement of his arms, and I knelt beside him and clasped them round my neck, holding them there, for he was too weak.
"Sleep, dearest. Soon you will be better, and then you will be able to see again. I promise you, you will see again."
He seemed contenti he accepted the lies I told him and sighed a little -- perhaps in relief, for who knows what fears tormented his child's mind? Soon I felt him relax and loosing his hands gently drew away from him. A little later I heard a slight sound and turning saw that he had opened his eyes and was gazing at Ira, staring at her unwinking. I went to him and saw that his eyes were sightless; already a thin film was overspreading them. I picked him up and held him to me; his limp, emaciated body, so light I might have been holding a handful of leaves, not a child, sagged lifeless against mine. I crooned to him, forgetting he was dead, until the cold came creeping through his limbs and he began to stiffen; then at last I laid him down, closing his eyes and pushing back the fronds of hair that clung damply to his brow. He looked tired but very calm, with the signs of suffering taken from his countenance. Nathan came and knelt beside him with harsh sorrowing face and bitter eyes. Our last child, conceived in happiness at a time when the river of our lives ran gently, had been taken from us; I knew too well what he felt. Yet, although I grieved, it was not for my son: for in my heart I could not have wished it otherwise. The strife had lasted too long and had been too painful for me to call him back to continue it.
CHAPTER XVII
WHEN Kuti was gone -- with a bland indifference that mocked our loss -- the abundant grain grew ripe. It was the second crop of the year, sown on ground which had not been allowed to lie fallow, and so we did not think it would be other than meagre; but contrary to our expectations it was a very good harvest. Every husk was filled, the paddy stood firm and healthy, showing no breaks in their ranks. We worked through the days and in the twilight getting in the rice, and then we worked three more days draining the fields and clearing them, and then three more nights sifting and winnowing. Even so, a heap of unhusked paddy lay in our granary, waiting until the marketing should be done.
"It is as I said," Nathan exclaimed. "Strength has been given to us. Else how could so much have been achieved by such as we are?" He looked round triumphantly, pointing to the neat white hills of rice and the husks in a rustling brown heap. We looked at each other, streaked with sweat, thin and bony like scarecrows and as ugly, and suddenly what he had said seemed very funnyi and first Selvam and then Ira began to laugh, helpless, speechless, with tears running down their cheeks, until we older people slowly joined them -- could not help but join in their laughter -- and the spectre of what had been tweaked at our memories in vain. There we were, the four of us, hysterical, released, rocking with laughter and gasping for breath which ran out as fast as we sucked it in. The hollow cheeks and bulging stomachs, the grotesque, jutting bones, became matter for laughter; already, though they were still with us, in our minds they belonged to the past -- to the painful past that we thrust from us with all our force; and the laughter was in some measure born of relief that we could do so.
