Nectar in a Sieve (16 page)

"What then will you do, my son?" I said, worried. "How will you live when we are gone?"

He did not reply at once, but sat down cross-legged, looking out absently beyond the small courtyard to the cool green of the paddy fields. But he was not thinking of them.

" Kenny is building a hospital," he said. "When it is ready he will need an assistant, and he has offered me the job."

"But what can you know of such work?"

"Nothing. He is going to train me, starting as soon as possible. He says it will not be too difficult for me, for I am not without learning."

It was true. Selvam had been cast in the same mould as his brothers. He had quickly learned what I had to teach and had progressed from there by his own efforts and enthusiasm. Study came to him naturally; he wrote and read as I had once done, avidly, with pleasure. He will learn, I thought. This is the chance he has been waiting for.

Selvam began to fidget.

"I have told my father," he said hesitantly. "He is very willing."

I smiled at him. "So am I. I wish you well."

He relaxed. "I am glad. I thought you might be -- were -- displeased."

"Not displeased. Perhaps disappointed, since all our sons have forsaken the land. But it is the best way for you."

"It is the best way," he repeated after me. "It will be a great venture. We have many plans and much hope."

We both relapsed into silence. I watched him covertly, wondering whether I should say, "You must be prepared: this new association will not be taken at face value, there will be vilifiers who will say it was done not for you, but for your mother, who will seek to destroy your peace"; but then I thought resolutely, I will not take the fire from his resolve or sow suspicion between them, and so I held my peace. But his steady eyes were on me, calm and level.

"I am not unaware," he said quietly. "But is it not sufficient that you have the strength and I have trust?"

"It is indeed," I said with relief. "I wanted only that you should know."

We smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

I sought out Kenny again.

"We are once more in your debt. My son is overjoyed. This is something he has waited for without knowing it."

"I am indebted to him as well. I need an assistant; he promises to be a good one and will I hope be the first of many. I could not carry on alone. The town has grown and is still growing, as you know.""It will be bigger than what went before?"

"It will be a hospital, not a dispensary," he said coldly. "Let me show you."

He pulled out several papers, drawings, and long sheets covered with calculations, which I could not understand even when he explained them, though this I did not confess. I gathered only that it would be a big affair.

"Where is the money to come from?" I said bewildered. "Such a construction will need I do not know how many hundreds of rupees."

"I have thousands," he replied.

"I did not realise. You have lived like us, the poor."

"The money is not mine. It has been given to me -- I have collected it while I have been away."

"In your country?" I said. "From your people?"

"Yes," he said impatiently. "Part of it came from my country and my people, part of it from yours. Why do you look puzzled?"

"I have little understanding," I replied humbly. "I do not know why people who have not seen us and who know us not should do this for us."

"Because they have the means," he said, "and because they have learnt of your need. Do not the sick die in the streets because there is no hospital for them? Are not children born in the gutters? I have told you before," he said. "I will repeat it again: you must cry out if you want help. It is no use whatsoever to suffer in silence. Who will succour the drowning man if he does not clamour for his life?"

"It is said --" I began.

"Never mind what is said or what you have been told. There is no grandeur in want -- or in endurance."

Privately I thought, Well, and what if we gave in to our troubles at every step! We would be pitiable creatures indeed to be so weak, for is not a man's spirit given to him to rise above his misfortunes? As for our wants, they are many and unfilled, for who is so rich or compassionate as to supply them? Want is our companion from birth to death, familiar as the seasons or the earth, varying only in degree. What profit to bewail that which has always been and cannot change?

His eyes narrowed: whether from our long association, or from many dealings with human beings, and

"Acquiescent imbeciles," he said scornfully, "do you think spiritual grace comes from being in want, or from suffering? What thoughts have you when your belly is empty or your body is sick? Tell me they are noble ones and I will call you a liar."

"Yet our priests fast, and inflict on themselves severe punishments, and we are taught to bear our sorrows in silence, and all this is so that the soul may be cleansed."

He struck his forehead. "My God!" he cried. "I do not understand you. I never will. Go, before I too am entangled in your philosophies."

CHAPTER XX

NOT in the town, where all that was natural had long been sacrificed, but on its outskirts, one could still see the passing of the seasons. For in the town there were the crowds, and streets battened down upon the earth, and the filth that men had put upon it; and one walked with care for what might lie beneath one's feet or threaten from before or behind; and in this preoccupation forgot to look at the sun or the stars, or even to observe they had changed their setting in the sky: and knew nothing of the passage of time save in dry frenzy, by looking at a clock. But for us, who lived by the green, quiet fields, perilously close though these were to the town, nature still gave its muted message. Each passing day, each week, each month, left its sign, clear and unmistakable.

The tender budding of our new year, the periwinkles and the jasmine, the soft, scented champak blossom, had yielded place to the fierce flowering jacaranda and gold mohur, before Ira's time came for giving birth. When my daughter was in labour I erected the bamboo paling outside to warn my husband and son, as is the custom for those who have only one room and one dwelling; and when I had scoured the hut and poured wet dung on it I brought out the pallet of plaited straw I myself had used, for Ira to lie on; and went and gathered the petals the trees had shaken about them and took them in to her, a vivid basket of layer upon layer of gold and red and mauve and purple.

"A child of summer," I said, "should be sturdy."

She smiled and laid her hands on the petals.

"He is. I feel it."

While I waited I thought of the other births this very hut had seen. First Ira herself, then the long, long interval and after that almost every passing year I bore a son. There had been hope and expectation, perhaps some anxiety, before each birth; they were natural feelings. But now fears came swarming about my head like the black flying ants after a storm, and I cowered from the beat of their wings. A child conceived in an encounter fares no worse than a child born in wedlock. . . so Kenny had said; but could one be sure? A man takes his wife with passion, as is his nature, yet he is gentle with her: amid the fire of breast on breast and bared thigh on thigh he still can hold himself, and give as much as he takes, leaving the exultant flesh unbruised. The woman is his, his wife, not only now for this surging experience, but tomorrow and next year. She will carry his seed and he will see her fruitful, watch while day by day his child grows within her. And so he is tender and careful, and comes to her clean that their fulfilment may be rich and blessed.

But the man who finds a woman in the street, raises an eyebrow and snaps his fingers so that she follows him, throws her a few coins that he may possess her, holds her unresisting whatever he does to her, for this is what he has paid for -- what cares such a man for the woman who is his for a brief moment? He has gained his relief, she her payment, he merges carelessly into the human throng, consigning her back into the shadows where she worked or to the gaudy streets where she loitered.

Of the thousands of men in the village, in the town, perhaps another village, another town, one man unknown is the father: of the vast range of manhood, who is to say he was not of the unsound, the unclean? What care or safeguard is there when the consequences of one's act are hidden from one's thankful eyes, and the woman is one of many, soft, desired, lost, forgotten!

If Ira had any fears she did not show them: perhaps she had fought her battles out alone when I was not there to see and when her face could not betray her; or perhaps her love for children swamped every other feeling. She was meant to have children: I had always known that. It was a cruel twist of Fate that gave them to her this way.

Then at last the birth began, and while I was ministering to her all these thoughts coiled back into my brain, leaving only the present and the immediate future which every passing second converted instantly into the past. Then there was no past or future, only now, the present, as I received the child and held him, while the fears that were nameless descended on me and shrieked their message and were no more nameless. I held him, this child begotten in the street of an unknown man in a moment of easy desire, while the brightness of the future broke and fell about me like so many pieces of coloured glass.

I did not want his mother to see: I washed him slowly, and massaged oil into his body, hoping to mitigate the whiteness of it, hoping to give colour to his skin, while he cried lustily, for he was a healthy child: and finally his mother called for him. I swaddled him carefully before I gave him to her hoping -- still hoping -- that she would not notice.

"Your son," I said, handing her the bundle, hovering near in my anxiety. She took it, smiling and relaxed.

"A lovely child," she said, gazing at the small face fondly. "Fair as a blossom."

Fair! He was too fair. Only his mother failed to see how unnatural his fairness was, or to notice that the hair which grew slow and unwilling from his pate was the colour of moonlight, or that his eyes were pink. Sometimes I wondered whether her mind was gone, since she could not see what was so plain to others; or whether it was a ghastly pretence fashioned from her mother's pride and sustained through who knows what superhuman effort. However, if she dissembled she dissembled well; no sign of strain or fear crossed her face, she was as happy as a bird with her son, singing to him, playing with him, clucking and chuckling as if he were the most beautiful baby any woman could have. Perhaps he was to her. Such heaviness of spirit as there was, pressed not on her but on us, her parents, and of us Nathan was the most burdened.

"She has lost her reason," he said. "She does not see her child as he is, but as she would have him be. To her he is only fair, whereas it is clear he resembles nothing so much as a white mouse. She has done great wrong to herself and the child, and has given up her sanity rather than face the truth. My fault," he said, rocking slowly on his heels. "I might have prevented this."

"Hush," I said. "Do not torment yourself. You could not have stopped her, for she was determined."

"It is a cruel thing in the evening of our lives."

"Cruel, but not unbearable. The girl is happy and the child is doing well."

"I have seen him in the sun," Nathan said sadly. "He turns from the light, groping instead for the darkness which is kinder to him. Already he is beginning to be aware of his difference, baby though he is."

"Foolish talk," I said. "He turns from the light because his eyes are weak. Kenny has told me it is always so with such children."

"It may be the one or the other," he replied. "Who can be sure? But whatever the cause, the result is terrible. Sunshine is meant for men, darkness for bats and snakes and jackals and other such creatures."

In his pain he was exaggerating, for the child flinched only from direct sunlight; within the hut, or in the shade of a tree, he was perfectly content, and would lie on the ground or slung from a branch, sucking his toes and gurgling like any other baby. And I myself preferred not to see him in strong sunshine, for his pale, membranic skin was no barrier to the light, which pierced deep into the flesh and illumined it to a hideous translucency. Apart from this he burnt easily, even an hour or so in the sun would bring up red, scaly patches about the neck and forehead and make him fretful, whereas my children had grown up in the open and thrived on it.

The news travelled far and fast. People came to see the child, and I do not know what tales they told but more people came, their faces avid with curiosity to see him -- a curiosity which was never sated although they stared and stared with bulging eyes; and they went away with appropriate comments on their lips and mouths bursting to describe the poor little albino mite they had seen. Some who came were kindly, most had a ready, sterile sympathy, and all went away with the unmaskable relief that men experience when they see others who have fared worse than themselves.