Nectar in a Sieve (3 page)

Kali said: "Never mind. There will be many later on. You have plenty of time."

It is so easy to be comforting when your own wishes have come true. Kali had three sons already, she could afford to sympathise.

When I recall all the help Kali gave me with my first child, I am ashamed that I ever had such thoughts: my only excuse is that thoughts come of their own accord, although afterwards we can chase them away. As I had done for Kunthi, so Kali did for me -- but much more: sweeping and cleaning, washing and cooking. She even took pains to water the garden, and one morning I saw her tending the pumpkin vine, which was overladen with blossom. In that moment a cold horror came on me again: my hands grew clammy, and I could feel once more the serpent's touch. I shrieked at her then, and she came running, her face frightened at the wildness in my voice.

"Whatever is wrong?" she gasped, running to my side. The baby had awakened and was crying loudly, so that she had to yell. I was so pleased to see her whole, I could not speak for relief. At last I told her, shakily, about the cobra, and, rather ashamed by now of making such a fuss, I exaggerated a little, making the snake enormous of its kind, and the danger more deadly than it had been.

Women can sometimes be more soothing than men: so now Kali. "Poor thing," she said. "No wonder you are terrified. Anyone would be. But it is a pity your husband killed the snake, since cobras are sacred."

"She is a fool," Nathan said contemptuously when I told him. "What would she have me do -- worship it while it dug its fangs in my wife? Go now -- forget it."

I think I did, although once or twice when I saw the thickness of the pumpkin vines I wondered nervously what might lie concealed there; and then I would take up knife and shovel to clear away the tangle; but when I drew near and saw the broad glossy leaves and curling green tendrils I could not bring myself to do it; and now I am glad I did not, for that same vine yielded to me richly, pumpkin after pumpkin of a size and colour that I never saw elsewhere.

We called our daughter Irawaddy, after one of the great rivers of Asia, for of all things water was most precious to us; but it was too long a name for the tiny little thing she was, and soon she became Ira. Nathan at first paid scant attention to her: he had wanted a son to continue his line and walk beside him on the land, not a puling infant who would take with her a dowry and leave nothing but a memory behind; but soon she stopped being a puling infant, and when at the age of ten months she called him "Apa," which means father, he began to take a lively interest in her.

She was a fair child, lovely and dimpled, with soft, gleaming hair. I do not know where she got her looks: not from me, nor from Nathan, but there it was; and not only we but other people noticed and remarked on it. I myself did not know how I could have produced so beautiful a child, and I was proud of her and glad, even when people pretended to disbelieve that I could be her mother. "Here is a marvel indeed," they would say, and make comparisons with ordinary parents who sometimes bore a child of matchless brilliance; or with a devout couple who had brought forth a wretch. I preferred to think the plain have their rewards, and this was mine.

"She is like you," Nathan would say to me as he surveyed her, but he was the only one who thought so.

Before long she was crawling all over the place, following her father into the fields, trailing me as I went about my work, and very soon she began to walk.

"You must not allow it so early," Kali said to me ominously, "or her legs will bend like hoops." And at first I listened to her and whenever I saw Ira trying to stand up or walk, I would rush forward and pick her up; but soon there was no stopping her. I should have been at it the whole time otherwise, and I had other things to do. Sowing time was at hand, and I was out all day with Nathan planting the paddy in the drained fields. Corn had to be sown too, the land was ready. My husband ploughed it, steadying the plough behind the two bullocks while I came behind, strewing the seed to either side and sprinkling the earth over from the basket at my hip.

When that was done, it was time for our hut to be thatched. It had stood up well to sun and wind, but after the monsoon rains several small patches showed wear and it was as well to get things done in good time. Nathan cut fronds from the coconut palm that grew by our hut and dried them for me, together we twisted the fibre and bound the palms, shaping them to the roof and strengthening the whole with clay.

Ira was no trouble at all. She would sit happily playing by herself in the sun, chuckling at the birds or at anything else she could see, including her fond parents; or if it was hot and she grew fretful I would hang a cloth from a branch and put her in it, and she would go to sleep without any further bother. My mother, especially, grew very fond of her and came to see us often, although it meant travelling several hours in a bullock cart, which is very tiring when one is no longer young. Sometimes I would go to see my parents, but seldom, since there was so much to be done in my own home; and my mother, knowing this, did not reproach me for the long intervals between my visits.

CHAPTER III

"Do not worry," they said. "You will be putting lines in your face." They still say it, but the lines are already there and they are silent about that. Kali said it, and I knew she was thinking of her own brood. Kunthi said it, and in her eyes lay the knowledge of her own children. Janaki said, morosely, she wished it could happen to her; a child each year was no fun. Only Nathan did not say it to me, for he was worried too, and knew better. We did not talk about it, it was always with us: a chill fear that Ira was to be our only child.

My mother, whenever I paid her a visit, would make me accompany her to a temple, and together we would pray and pray before the deity, imploring for help until we were giddy. But the Gods have other things to do: they cannot attend to the pleas of every suppliant who dares to raise his cares to heaven. And so the years rolled by and still we had only one child, and that a daughter.

When Ira was nearing six, my mother was afflicted with consumption, and was soon so feeble that she could not rise from her bed. Yet in the midst of her pain she could still think of me, and one day she beckoned me near and placed in my hand a small stone lingam, symbol of fertility.

"Wear it," she said. "You will yet bear many sons. I see them, and what the dying see will come to pass . . . be assured, this is no illusion."

"Rest easy," I said. "You will recover."

She did not -- no one expected she would -- but she lingered for a long time. In her last months my father sent for the new doctor who had settled in the village. Nobody knew where he came from or who paid him, but there he was, and people spoke well of him, though he was a foreigner. As for my father, he would have called in the Devil himself to spare my mother any suffering. So it was in a house of sorrow that I first met Kennington, whom people called Kenny. He was tall and gaunt, with a pale skin and sunken eyes the colour of a kingfisher's wing, neither blue nor green. I had never seen a white man so close before, and so I looked my fill.

"When you have done with staring," he said coldly, "perhaps you will take me to your mother."

I started, for I had not realised I was goggling at him. Startled, too, that he should have spoken in our tongue.

"I will show you," I said, stumbling in my confusion.

My mother knew no man could save her and she did not expect miracles. Between her and this man, young though he was, lay mutual understanding and respect, one for the other. He told her no lies, and she trusted him. He came often, sometimes even when he was not summoned; and his presence, as much as the powders and pills he made her take, gave my mother her ease. When she died it was in the same way, without a struggle, so that although we grieved for her our hearts were not torn by her suffering.

Before I left for my village, I told him that for what he had done there could be no repayment. "Remember only," I said, "that my home is yours, and all in it."

He thanked me gravely, and as I turned to go he raised a hand to stop me.

"There is a look about you," he said. "It lies in your eyes and the mark is on your face. What is it?"

"Would you not grieve too," I said, "if the woman who gave you birth was no more than a handful of dust?"

"It is not that alone. The hurt is of longer standing. Why do you lie?"

I looked up and his eyes were on me. Surely, I thought, my mother has told him, for he knows; but as if he guessed my thoughts he shook his head. "No, I do not know. Tell me."

I held back. He was a foreigner, and although I no longer stood in awe of him, still the secret had been long locked up in my breast and would not come out easily.

"I have no sons," I said at last, heavily. "Only one child, a girl."

Once I had started the words flowed, I could not stop myself. "Why should it be?" I cried. "What have we done that we must be punished? Am I not clean and healthy? Have I not borne a girl so fair, people turn to gaze when she passes?"

"That does not seem to help you much," he said shortly. I waited. If he wishes to help me he can, I thought, so much faith had I in him. My heart was thumping out a prayer.

"Come and see me," he said at last. "It is possible I may be able to do something. . . . Remember, I do not promise."

My fears came crowding upon me again. I had never been to this kind of doctor; he suddenly became terrifying.

"You are an ignorant fool," he said roughly. "I will not harm you."

I slunk away, frightened of I know not what. I placed even more faith in the charm my mother had given me, wearing it constantly between my breasts. Nothing happened. At last I went again to him, begging him to do what he could. He did not even remind me of the past.

Ira was seven when my first son was born, and she took a great interest in the newcomer. Poor child, it must have been lonely for her all those years. Kali's and Janaki's children were much older, and as for Kunthi, she preferred to keep aloof. Her son was a sturdy youngster and would have been a good playmate for my child; but, as the years went by, her visits to our house grew less and less frequent until at last we were meeting as strangers.

My husband was overjoyed at the arrival of a son; not less so, my father. He came, an old man, all those miles by cart from our village, to hold his grandson.

"Your mother would have been glad," he said. "She was always praying for you."

"She knew," I told him. "She said I would have many sons."

As for Nathan, nothing would do but that the whole village should know -- as if they didn't already. On the tenth day from the birth he invited everybody to feast and rejoice with us in our good fortune. Kali and Janaki both came to help me prepare the food, and even Kunthi's reserve crumbled a little as she held up my son to show him to our visitors. Between us we prepared mounds of rice, tinting it with saffron and frying it in butter; made hot curries from chillies and dhal; mixed sweet, spicy dishes of jaggery and fruit; broiled fish; roasted nuts over the fire; filled ten gourds with coconut milk; and cut plantain leaves on which to serve the food. When all was ready we spread the leaves under the gaudy marriage panda! Nathan had borrowed for the occasion and ate and drank for long, merry hours. Afterwards Kunthi was persuaded to play for us on her bulbul tara, which she did skilfully, plucking at the strings with her slender fingers and singing in a low, clear voice which people strained to hear, so that it was very quiet.

The baby, who had slept through all the clamour, woke up now in the sudden hush and began squalling. Kunthi stopped her thrumming. People crowded round me, trying to pat the baby who had caused all this excitement -- although he was no beauty, with puckered face and mouth opened wide to emit shriek after shriek.

"Such a furore," Kali said. "One would think the child had wings, at the very least."

"Seven years we have waited," said Nathan, his eyes glinting, "wings or no wings."

The one person I had wanted most to see at our feast was not there. I had gone to seek him, but he was not to be found. "He goes and comes," they told me. "Nobody knows where or why." So I had to be content without him; but contentment cannot be forced, and Nathan noticed my preoccupation.

"What now?" he said. "Are you not happy? Would you have the moon too, as Kali would have wings?"

"Indeed no," I said, "it is just that I would have liked to see Kenny under our roof. He did so much for my mother." And for us, I thought, but could not say it; for at the beginning I had not wished my husband to know that I was putting myself in the hands of a foreigner, for I knew not what his reaction would be. I had consoled myself that it would be time enough to tell him if a child was born; and now I found I could not do it, because he would surely ask why I had not told him before. . . . What harm, I thought, if he does not know; I have not lied to him, there has just been this silence.