Nectar in a Sieve (2 page)

"What for? I am glad she told me. Should I not be proud that you have built this house with your own hands?"

He considered. "You are not a child any more," he said at last. "You have grown fast since the day we were married, and that not so long ago."

While the sun shines on you and the fields are green and beautiful to the eye, and your husband sees beauty in you which no one has seen before, and you have a good store of grain laid away for hard times, a roof over you and a sweet stirring in your body, what more can a woman ask for? My heart sang and my feet were light as I went about my work, getting up at sunrise and going to sleep content. Peace and quiet were ours. How well I recall it, how grateful I am that not all the clamour which invaded our lives later could subdue the memory or still the longing for it. Rather, it has strengthened it: had there not been what has been, I might never have known how blessed we were. True, my husband did not own the land he tilled, as my father had done; yet the possibility was there that he might one day do so. We owned our own ploughing bullocks; we kept a milch goat. From each harvest we saved, and had gunny sacks full of the husked rice stored away in our small stone-lined granary. There was food in plenty for two people and we ate well: rice for morning and evening meals; dahl; sometimes a coconut grated fine and cooked in milk and sugar: sometimes a wheatcake, fried in butter and melting in the mouth.

Once or twice a week I would go to the village to buy sugar, ghee and vegetables, calling on the way home at Durgan the milkman's to get curds, for our goat was running dry and there was not always enough milk to make my own. I liked going to the village and meeting its people, for they were a friendly lot and most of them anxious to help if they could. I got to know them all very quickly: Old Granny, who lived on what she made by selling peanuts and guavas; Hanuman, the general merchant; Perumal, husband of Janaki, who kept the only shop; and Biswas, the moneylender. Sometimes Janaki or Kali would come to see how I was getting on, but not often, for they were kept busy looking after husband and children. As for Kunthi, very soon she was unable to do anything for herself, for she was a thin, slight girl, and we had to go in turns to buy her provisions and to help her with the work in the home. Kunthi was different from the other women, quieter, more reserved, and for all that we tried to be at ease with her there was a barrier which we could not surmount. Especially high against me it stood, strange and forbidding, although why this should be I could not think, finally putting it down to my imagination.

She had, everybody said, married beneath her. Perhaps they said that of me too, but I was plain and she was pretty, so it didn't make sense in her case. For myself, I am glad I married "beneath me," for a finer man no one could have had; but possibly she was not so lucky.

A man is indeed fortunate if he does not marry above him, for if he does he gets a wife who is no help to him whatsoever, only an ornament. I know, for I was ignorant of the simplest things, and no ornament either. Kali and Janaki between them had to show me how to milk the goat, how to plant seed, how to churn butter from milk, and how to hull rice. What patience indeed my husband must have had, to put up with me uncomplainingly during those early days of our married lives! Not one cross word or impatient look, and praise for whatever small success I achieved. I had planted, in the flat patch of ground behind the hut, a few pumpkin seeds. The soil here was rich, never having yielded before, and loose so that it did not require much digging. The seeds sprouted quickly, sending up delicate green shoots that I kept carefully watered, going several times to the well nearby for the purpose. Soon they were not delicate but sprawling vigorously over the earth, and pumpkins began to form, which, fattening on soil and sun and water, swelled daily larger and larger and ripened to yellow and red, until at last they were ready to eat, and I cut one and took it in. When Nathan saw it he was full of admiration, and made much of this one fruit -- he who was used to harvesting a field at a time.

"One would have thought you had never seen a pumpkin before," I said, though pleased with him and myself, keeping my eyes down.

"Not from our land," said Nathan. "Therefore it is precious, and you, Ruku, are indeed a clever woman."

I tried not to show my pride. I tried to be offhand. I put the pumpkin away. But pleasure was making my pulse beat; the blood, unbidden, came hot and surging to my face.

After that, ten times more zealous, I planted beans and sweet potatoes, brinjals and chillies, and they all grew well under my hand, so that we ate even better than we had done before.

CHAPTER II

KUNTHI'S child was born a few months before mine, a fine boy who nearly took his mother's life in exchange for his own. Janaki was ill and could not come, Kali was away, therefore I had to do what I could. Kunthi's husband went off to fetch the midwife, leaving me with the sweating girl. When she saw who I was -- not at once, for she was half-dazed with pain -- Kunthi cried out that she did not want me.

"You must go," she kept entreating.

"Why?" I said. "Do you dislike me so much, then?"

"No, no, but please go. I do not want you here."

"I cannot and will not. Besides, there is no one else."

"I shall be all right. The midwife will be here soon."

"And what will your husband say," I said, "if I leave you here alone?" and I took no more notice of her cries.

When she saw I would not go, she grew still and lay like a log, not a murmur from her, but the sweat forcing itself up in oily drops on her throat and temples.

Kunthi was lying in an exhausted sleep, with her baby beside her, before I went home. It was a whole day since I had left. Nathan was waiting for me and he said crossly: "You look like a corpse. Whatever possessed you to stay so long?"

"Blame the midwife," I said. "She could not be found. Or blame Kunthi's son. He took a long time."

I was tired and my voice was on edge.

"Well, so long as you don't forget you are pregnant," he said shortly and turned away. It was the first time I had seen him angry. Tears came pricking at my eyeballs. I sat down to stop my head from spinning, and after a while the pain went. He means well, I thought. He is anxious only about our child. Better that he should worry than that he should not.

From then on, I began to take more care of myself, leaving more and more of the work to Nathan. Sowing time was at hand and there was plenty to be done in the fields: dams of clay to be built to ensure proper irrigation of the paddy terraces; the previous year's stubble to be lifted; rushes and weeds to be destroyed; then the transplanting. All this meant stooping, and Nathan would not hear of it.

With the leisure I now had I took up writing again. It was my father who taught me to read and write. People said he did it because he wanted his children to be one cut above the rest; perhaps so, but I am certain that he also knew that it would be a solace to me in affliction, a joy amid tranquillity. So he taught his six children, myself the youngest by ten years, with the patience he brought to all things. "Practise hard," he would say, watching me busy with slate and pencil. "For who knows what dowry there will be for you when you are ready!" And I, with only the thistledown of childish care upon me, would listen lightly and take up my pencil again.

"What use," my mother said, "that a girl should be learned! Much good will it do her when she has lusty sons and a husband to look after. Look at me, am I any worse that I cannot spell my name, so long as I know it? Is not my house clean and sweet, are not my children well fed and cared for?" My father laughed and said, "Indeed they are," and did not pursue the matter; nor did he give up his teaching.

When my child is ready, I thought now, I will teach him too; and I practised harder than ever lest my fingers should lose their skill. When Janaki, recovered from her sickness, came to see me, she marvelled that I could write; but Kali, who had come too, was scornful of the strange symbols which had no meaning for her and dismissed it as a foible of pregnancy.

"You will forget all about such nonsense when your child is born," she said. "Besides, there will be others and your hands will be full. Look at me, do I have one spare minute to myself?"

"How is it then," I asked, forgetting myself, "that you are here now -- yes, and I have seen you in the village too -- if you have so much to occupy you? As for my children, it is for them that I practise writing and reading, so that I can teach them when the time is ripe."

Kali sniffed, but she was good-natured and did not take offence.

Nathan used to come and sit beside me when I was writing. The first time he came to see what I was up to, he sat in silence with his brows drawn together and meeting; but after some watching he went away, and when he came back his face was clear.

"It is well," he said, stroking my hair. "You are clever, Ruku, as I have said before."

I think it cost him a good deal to say what he did, and he never varied his attitude once. That was typical of my husband: when he had worked things out for himself he would follow his conclusions at whatever cost to himself. I am sure it could not have been easy for him to see his wife more learned than he himself was, for Nathan alas could not even write his name; yet not once did he assert his rights and forbid me my pleasure, as lesser men might have done.

Now that I did not work in the fields I spent most of my time tending my small garden: the beans, the brinjals, the chillies and the pumpkin vine which had been the first to grow under my hand. And their growth to me was constant wonder -- from the time the seed split and the first green shoots broke through, to the time when the young buds and fruit began to form. I was young and fanciful then, and it seemed to me not that they grew as I did, unconsciously, but that each of the dry, hard pellets I held in my palm had within it the very secret of life itself, curled tightly within, under leaf after protective leaf for safekeeping, fragile, vanishing with the first touch or sight. With each tender seedling that unfurled its small green leaf to my eager gaze, my excitement would rise and mount; winged, wondrous.

"You will get used to it," Nathan said. "After many sowings and harvestings you will not notice these things." There have been many sowings and harvestings, but the wonder has not departed.

I was tying the bean tendrils to the wire fence I had built when I saw a quiver in the leaves of the pumpkins. The fruit is ripening, I thought, the birds are already here. Or perhaps mice. Leaving the beans I went to look, stooping to part the leaves with my hand.

Why did not the snake strike at once?

Was the cobra surprised into stillness that a human should dare to touch it? My hands recoiled from the coldness of serpent flesh, my nails clawed at my palms, the leaves I had parted moved back to cover it. For a moment my legs remained stiffly planted beside the pumpkins, then the blood came racing to my limbs again, and I ran from the spot screeching with fear and not looking behind me.

Nathan came rushing to me, almost knocking me over, caught and shook me.

"What is it, what is it?" he shouted roughly.

"A snake," I whispered, bereft of voice and breath. "A cobra. I touched it."

He looked at me as if I were mad.

"Go in and stay there," he said. I wanted only to fall at his feet in my terror, to beg him not to leave me alone, but he was staring at me unrelenting. At last I went, cowed, but with the waters of panic receding.

"The snake had not stirred," Nathan said as he came back. He had cut it to pieces with his scythe and buried the remains so that I should not be upset.

"Yet you have lived long enough to learn to disregard them," he said. "Are they not found everywhere -- tree snakes, water snakes and land snakes? You only need to be careful and they pass you by."

"True," I said, shamefaced yet rallying. "But it is one thing to see a snake and another to touch it. I have never touched one before."

"Nor again," Nathan said, grinning. "I have never seen you fly as fast as you did, child and all."

I lowered my eyes, abashed. I was getting very awkward in my movements. I reallsed I must have looked like a water buffalo, running in such a frenzy.

"Never mind," said Nathan gently. "It will soon be over now."

He was right. Whether from fright, or the running, my baby was born a few days later, a month too soon but healthy for all that. Kali came as soon as she knew, and the midwife some hours later but in good time to deliver the child. They placed it in my arms when I had recovered a little from the birth, in silence. I uncovered the small form, beautiful, strong, but quite plain, a girl's body.

I turned away and, despite myself, the tears came, tears of weakness and disappointment; for what woman wants a girl for her first-born? They took the child from me.