Tiger Hills (17 page)

“Cheh, Devi!” he began, but Machu intervened.

“I am Machaiah, of the Kambeymada family,” he had said, bending to touch Thimmaya's feet. “Your daughter wished to see the views from the peak. Please do not worry, I escorted her all the way there and back.”

They had walked down the mountain, the four of them, Machaiah
deep in conversation with Thimmaya as Devi and Devanna followed closely behind. Devanna put Devi's silence down to one of her moods, blissfully oblivious to the way she kept staring at Machu's back the whole way.

When they had reached the paddock where the oxen were tethered, Machu had taken his leave. “I shall see you soon,” he said politely to Thimmaya, but his eyes flickered toward Devi. Just a brief glance, but Devi had immediately understood. The message was meant for her, she realized, casting her eyes modestly down even as her heart soared.

He had visited soon after, ostensibly to see Devanna before the school holidays were over. Devi had been in the fields, squelching in the mud as she transplanted the paddy seedlings, when Tukra came galloping from the house. “Coo! Devi akka! Coo, Devi akka, where are you? They're calling you inside, come quickly.”

She straightened her back, squinting against the sun. “Ayy, Tukra! Over here. What's the matter, why all the excitement? Has your sardine-seller sweetheart left you and run away with the crab monger instead?”

“Aiyo!! What, Devi akka, why do you trouble me all the time?” Tukra asked in a whisper, glancing worriedly about to see who might have overheard her. “Someone has come to see you,” he added sulkily.

“Who?” asked Devi, puzzled.

“Devanna anna. And there is some man with him; Tayi says you are to come immediately.”

He had come, just as he had promised! Devi raced back to the house, washing her feet hurriedly by the kitchen door and plucking a red shoe flower for her plait. Chengappa's wife thrust a platter of hot banana fritters into her hands. “Where have you been?” she said. “Here, go serve these.”

He was seated on the verandah with Thimmaya and Chengappa. He had looked up as she appeared, his eyes locking with hers in an intent, searching gaze. Her lips parted at once, as if by their own volition. His eyes dropped to her mouth, a brief caress that left her insides molten, and then he had turned away. She
served the fritters, and after setting the plate down on the ledge, she had sat demurely next to Thimmaya. To her shock and to all their confusion, however, Machu had almost immediately got up to leave. It would be dark soon, he had insisted, shouldering his gun. It was a long way to the Kambeymada village. He did not even look at her as he left.

After that, there had been nothing, not for the past five months. Had she imagined it all? Devi sometimes wondered despairingly. The way they had stood laughing together on the peak, the fleeting vulnerability she had caught in his face before it had turned unreadable again. All these years she had been so sure. She had waited, steadfast in her conviction that all they had to do was meet. One look at her, and he would know. He would
know,
just as she had known, from the time of the tiger wedding all those years ago.

How foolish, how vain, how
stupid
she had been that not once had it occurred to her that it might be otherwise. She grew listless and dull, withdrawing into herself as Tayi and her friends glanced anxiously at her. A good proposal had come, the boy was apprenticed at the commissioner's office in Mercara, and this time Devi had thought for a while before turning it down.

It was good to see Devanna today,
Devi thought to herself now, as she fed her nephew. In the weeks following the Kaveri festival, it had seemed as if she could take barely a step without tripping over him. He had clung to her side like he had done when they were little, following her everywhere. “Devanna!” she had shouted, exasperated. “I don't want to hear about your plants anymore, I don't! Just leave me alone, why can't you?” She had been relieved, and immediately felt guilty about her relief when the school term had recommenced. Of course she had then perversely missed him as soon as he was gone …

She smiled to herself as she wiped the baby's chin. A doctor! He had always been brilliant, but this—Pallada Nayak would be thrilled beyond measure.

He was, and so was Kambeymada Nayak, each old man vying energetically with the other to claim the honor that this prodigal
grandson had brought the family. Finally, a compromise was reached. It would be from the Kambeymada home that Devanna would leave for Bangalore. However, Pallada Nayak would throw a grand feast to felicitate Devanna, with all of the Kambeymadas in attendance.

Excitement built steadily in the village over the celebrations, until at last, after weeks of waiting, the afternoon of the feast was upon them. Devi feigned indifference, but she dressed with special care that afternoon. Her sari was emerald silk, setting off the paleness of her skin. There were faint smudges under her eyes and beneath her cheekbones, but the weight she had lost only drew attention to the delicacy of her bones, the narrowness of her shoulders and wrists. She pressed the top of a finger into the little tin box of vermilion and painted a perfectly round dot on her forehead. He would be there along with the rest of the Kambeymada clan, she supposed, the great tiger killer. She lifted her head high. Well, she would give him something to look at. Unwrapping the plantain leaf bundle that Chengappa had brought that morning from the shanty, she wound the long strings of jasmine it contained around her plait, all the way down to her hips.

Thimmaya paused mid-conversation as she emerged from her room, and even Chengappa was at a loss for words. Devi looked ethereal, like the last wisp of a dream. Tayi dabbed a smear of lampblack behind Devi's ear. “To ward off the evil eye,” she muttered. “People will be jealous.”

All that afternoon, people stared openly. Devi seemed aglow, her doe eyes aflame. Women sniffed as she went past—there she was, that Nachimanda girl who thought no end of herself, while their sons and brothers tugged at their saris like little boys, beseeching them to approach Thimmaya on their behalf. Devanna seemed dazed when he saw her, as if someone had planted a fist in the pit of his stomach. “You look … very nice,” he managed, and Devi swung her jasmine-laden plait and laughed.

She felt Machu's presence even before she saw him. He came
over to touch Thimmaya's feet; he said nothing to her, however, barely even glancing at her as he exchanged a few pleasantries with the deliberately offhand Thimmaya. Through the afternoon, he ignored her. Devi grew angrier and angrier as the hours wore on, the intensity of her allure increasing until she seemed to be scorching, dazzling, blinding her way through the gathering. Still, while all the other men could scarcely do more than gawk at her, Machu remained blithely unaware of her charms. Time and again, she thought she sensed his eyes upon her but when she turned toward him, he was always deep in conversation with someone or other, completely at ease and unheeding of her.

Lunch was announced, and Devi served him a scant spoonful of the cardamom, clove, and cashew-studded rice while she heaped the banana leaves of the men seated on either side of him. He accepted the insult without so much as looking at her. Course after course of vegetables and meats followed, and when even the most redoubtable belly was sated, out came vats of jaggery-sweetened milk payasam clotted thick with raisins, orange jaangirs dripping syrup, and coconut barfis ordered especially from Mysore, colored a blushing pink and sheathed in hammered silver. Betel leaves and areca nuts were shown around and, finally, pots of steaming coffee. Shadows lengthened into late afternoon and the guests began to depart. The fire slowly dulled within Devi. There was nothing here. The Bhagamandala mountain, the hidden messages in the way he had looked at her and the things he had said.

She had imagined it all.

She watched with a sinking heart as Machu, too, took his leave of Pallada Nayak. Clapping Devanna on his back—“Do the family proud, you hear?”—he walked briskly from the courtyard and, without so much as a backward glance, headed down the lane.

She watched him leave, the tall bulk of his frame silhouetted against the trees.
He was leaving.
She stood on the verandah, oblivious to the crowd of guests, the breath snagging in her chest. She sank against the carved rosewood pillar, staring wretchedly after him.
Once again, he would be lost to her.
A wave of despair rose within her, so bleak, so abject, that for an instant, her vision seemed to blur.

And then, possessed of a conviction she would never truly understand, her feet moving even before the thought was fully formed in her head, she raced inside the house. The rooms were empty, the kitchen deserted, the hustle and bustle of the afternoon ending at last. There was no one to stay her, nobody to call, “Here, Devi, where are you going?” as she slipped out of the kitchen and headed determinedly down the path that lay to the side of the house. It skirted the kitchen, cutting unseen through the adjoining banana groves to finally intersect the lane that led from the house, where Machu was even now headed down.

Picking up the ends of her sari, Devi flew down the trail like a flash of emerald fire. The jasmines in her hair loosened, their petals spiraling to the earth as she bolted forward, oblivious to the mud splattering her anklets and the blossom-studded wake of her passage.

“Machu!” she called, as at last he came in sight. “Machaiah!!”

He turned, the flare of surprise in his eyes quickly extinguished, his lips tightening.

She drew abreast of him, trying to catch her breath. He looked at her, his expression shuttered, and when he spoke, his voice was cold.

“What do you think you're doing? Have you no thought of your reputation? If someone were to see you, don't you realize how they would talk?”

She tossed her head, the movement letting loose a fresh shower of jasmines. She pressed a hand to the stitch in her side. “I don't care.”

“
You don't care?
Have you no shame whatsoever? Or do all the women of your household behave in this wanton manner?”

“And what of the women in your family?” she retorted, taken aback. “Are they of the lowest breeding, then, to have brought forth such boorish sons?”

He advanced upon her, his face, to her consternation, taut with rage. “The women I know do not make cow-eyes at every man they meet, do not giggle for hours on end with them, like common sluts.”

Devi blanched. “
What
did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“How dare you?” she cried, equally furious. “What gives you the right to speak to me like this?”

He bent his face so close to hers, she could see the dark rings around his irises, smell the toddy on his breath. “I will talk with you any way I want,” he snarled. “Any way I please.”

Devi slapped him across the face with all her strength.

For a second she thought he was going to hit her. She glared defiantly at him, and then inexplicably his shoulders began to heave with laughter. The dimple cut a deep groove in his cheek as he ruefully stroked his chin. “Tigress.”

“Village imbecile,” she spat, her eyes blazing.

“If I am an imbecile, then why did you bore holes in my back with your eyes all afternoon?”

Devi opened her mouth to protest, but suddenly she couldn't think of a word to say.

They stood staring at one another as the sun slipped further and cuckoos called from the trees. The anger left her with a rush, leaving her limp.

“Why didn't you come?” she asked then, helplessly. “Why didn't you come back all these months?”

“I … Devi … ,” he began wearily. Abruptly he turned his head, listening. People were approaching. “You must go back.”

“No. Not until you tell me why you never returned.”

“There is nothing to tell. Stop behaving like a child,” he said, and began walking away.

“That's the second time you've called me that.”

He paused, puzzled.

“The tiger wedding.” Her voice trembled. “Nine years ago. I was there. You … you called me a child. I told myself then that one day you would see that I was anything but.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. The voices were coming closer, a gaggle of guests departing the feast. “Leave. If they see you here, alone—”

“Not until you tell me.”

“Fine,” he said, almost angrily. “We need to speak. Meet me tonight at nine, in the lane that leads to your home. Now go!”

“At night? How, wait … Machu … ” But he was gone.

The evening passed in a muddle of excitement; Devi complained alternately about it being too cold (“
Look
at the gooseflesh on my arms!”) or too hot (“Has someone shut all the windows? I can hardly breathe … ”). She nearly dropped a platter of ottis on Tayi's foot, and had to be told thrice to stir the curry before she heard. Tayi became quite worried and placed a hand on her granddaughter's flushed forehead. “It doesn't seem like you have a fever,” she said, puzzled.

It was quite late by the time dinner was over and the house finally dark and resting, nearly a full hour past the time Machu had asked her to meet him. Devi slipped down the lane, her pulse racing. Such a familiar route, one she had taken a thousand times before, and yet everything about it was changed. The moon, sheathing every twig, branch, and leaf in silver, drawing pools of liquid shadow from under the stones. She hurried down the shimmering road as if in a dream. A bat looped noiselessly through the air, then another.

And there he was, waiting.

She lifted her chin truculently, but instead of chiding her for being late, he looked at her, an expression almost of pain on his face. “I didn't know if you would come.”

All the pithy responses Devi had prepared flew out of her head. “How could I not?” They stared hungrily at one another.
Five
months it had been, five long, empty months. When Devi spoke, her voice was husky. “So why did you ask me to meet you here?”