The Toss Of A Lemon Part 12

"How is it different?" she asks, happy to be having a conversation about their mutual interest, but curious about his silence.

"It's different because you kept count, money in, money out, revenues, expenses, salaries and taxes." He is impatient. "Counting is no challenge for me. Don't worry, everything and everyone will be looked after. But land is for growing, after all, and even if Brahmins are not farmers, I am going to make ours grow."

"Brahmins should not be acquisitive, either." She feels it's important to remind him, in his father's absence, that he has a responsibility to the traditions of their caste.

"I don't care about money!" he bleats, and she is cowed and impressed by his outrage. "I'm doing it for the challenge only." He sounds far away. "To prove I can."

Dreams of dominion? That's not what he said. As Sivakami serves him his breakfast, she looks at him closely. His eyes are as dark as ever, the future too far back in them to be seen.

The Arrival of Children 1915.

IF SIVAKAMI WERE TO BE ASKED-though who would ask her?-she might say she knows there's a war on in the world, but when is there not? She doesn't read the newspaper-she used to browse the headlines and advertis.e.m.e.nts, but she stopped the subscriptions after her husband died. She thought she would restart them if or when Vairum asked, but shortly after Vairum started making rounds of the fields, he also began stopping in on Minister daily, in late afternoon, where he reads the English and Tamil papers.

Gayatri tells Sivakami that Minister has told her that Vairum is indifferent to politics.

"Then what do they talk about?" Sivakami asks.

"Politics!"

When Gayatri carries gossip from her husband she almost always repeats it verbatim-she says she doesn't understand it well enough to paraphrase, but appears to get enough to take an interest.

"My husband is called to politics by his nature, that's what he says, but he says Vairum is calculating, neutral, that he never expresses a preference for one party over another, never seems to have an opinion about a political gain or loss, but still wants to know all the details. You know, on days when he doesn't have cla.s.ses, he comes in the mornings, when all the other men come. If he weren't in school, I'm sure he'd be a regular."

Minister hosts a daily salon where local men air and contest matters of power and political control. Only privileged men attend-the language of exchange, Minister insists, is English, even though all of the attendees are Tamil. Despite their wealth and power, Sivakami disapproves of the gathering because the majority are not Brahmin.

"But why would he go if he's not interested in politics?" Sivakami frowns, though more with curiosity than worry. She is still pleased Vairum is spending time in Chinnarathnam's house. "Isn't that what they... do, there? Or, talk about?"

"I suppose he is interested in the information, or the contacts, or... well, who knows, really?" Gayatri founders, and so goes on to tell in engaging if excessive detail about some mutual corruption charges between a developer and the Taluk Board on which Minister is a seat-holder ; and thence to ribbon-cuttings recent and forthcoming, while Sivakami mulls vaguely on her son's increasingly opaque facets, and what to make for tiffin and how the cowshed thatch needs replacing.

Vairum is ever laconic, about his school day, or the news, business or the war, which, for Sivakami, remains almost imaginary, much like those battles Vairum twirled through on twiggy horseback in the Samanthibakkam of a dimming childhood. Maybe mothers like Sivakami would take the far-off wars more seriously if they knew that the battles were so similar to battles they witness daily in their own villages, and that the issues fought over were so close to their own hearts: territory, status, gold.

Thangam returns home to wage a related battle in the back room where she pa.s.sed the days of her maturation and whose walls will now witness the appearance of her baby.

Thangam is no howler, and there is no sound from the room but grunting and the grinding of teeth, accompanied by the incessant tinkle of gla.s.s bangles, given to every expectant mother in her seventh month. Thangam didn't tell Sivakami she was in labour and was quite far along by the time Sivakami noticed. As soon as she did, she hustled Thangam into the back room and sent Muchami to find the old ladies who will help, as well as the astrologer. Before they arrive, though, the head has shown and Sivakami has no choice but to hold out her hands and pray. A little girl slips from the womb into Sivakami's shaking hands, as three old ladies appear at the door, their lips moving with mantras, their eyes large.

Sivakami, holding the baby up like a magician with a rabbit, shouts to Mari to alert the astrologer, who is squatting in the garden. She turns the little one upside down, then rights her, as though the child is an hourgla.s.s with a few final grains to dislodge before she can be restarted. The baby coughs up a little goo and begins to cry primly, not too loud, nor very long. Sivakami jiggles the child gingerly and makes clucking noises, then permits the ladies to take over while she staggers forth from the gloom into the courtyard suns.h.i.+ne. She collapses against a wall and listens to the cows moan from the shed beside her and recalls herself as a mother at fourteen.

When the placenta emerges, Thangam is covered, her brow daubed, water dribbled between her cracked lips. The baby is wiped and bundled. Thangam's colostrum is expressed and discarded, according to custom; the baby is fed a little castor oil to get her meconium moving, a little sugar water to hold her until she is allowed the breast.

Thangam rests for thirty-one days, confined to the back room, where she sits or lies on the cot. Sivakami leaves her food in the doorway, and while she eats, girlfriends and matrons and Gayatri, who is both and neither, sit in the doorway and chat. They bring Thangam betel-stuffed leaves smeared with calcium: wisdom has it that, in the weeks after a birth, the new mother should consume a quant.i.ty of calcium equal to the size of her child's head. "For every child born, you lose a tooth!" Thangam is advised by half a dozen neighbours and her mother as she tucks the spicy bundle into her cheek. The visitors chew too, mouths dyed red as they jaw.

Thangam's complexion is shockingly bright. She looks childlike and charming. She is exactly where she is supposed to be.

And all the village seems lighter of foot, knowing the golden girl is back in its midst. When she emerges from her seclusion, a horde seethes round the veranda from morning to night.

Sivakami smiles hidden smiles: she not only gained a granddaughter, she may be regaining her daughter. The birth of the child added years to Thangam's life. The astrologer said so, in response to the secret requests Sivakami sent along with birth time. He responded yes, the birth of this girl-child had altered the relations.h.i.+p of her parents' stars, that she had worked a lengthening of her mother's years on earth. That the child had done for her mother what poor Vairum failed to do for Hanumarathnam-the note says nothing of that.

Good fortune can become a burden in its own way, though, so Sivakami hugs this knowledge to herself.

SEVERAL MONTHS AFTER THANGAM'S SECLUSION ENDS, Sivakami asks her, "You know how happy we are to have you here, kanna, but did the son-in-law say he would be coming to fetch you? I just want to make sure we're ready."

Thangam looks back at her with wide, soft eyes.

Sivakami continues, "You know that if your father were alive, he and I would have taken you back, but of course Murthy and Rukmini can take you."

Thangam looks uncomfortable and non-committal.

"He didn't say, one way or another?"

Thangam shakes her head.

"Do you want me to ask your in-laws and arrange an escort?"

Thangam nods but looks miserable.

Thangam's in-laws write that Goli will come to get Thangam, and Sivakami writes back that they will wait for him. Another month pa.s.ses, then nearly two, and she writes again, very diplomatically asking if she has misunderstood and offering to send Thangam under escort if Goli's work prevents him from coming.

"Let her stay here, Amma," says Vairum, though Sivakami has a.s.siduously not raised the topic with him. They are all sparkling faintly with Thangam's dust: the shedding began again, as soon as Sivakami broached the subject of her return to her husband, and hasn't abated.

"Don't worry, Thangam," she says. "That won't happen. You'll be back where you belong in no time." She won't even acknowledge the suggestion: the shame! What is Vairum thinking?

"I don't care," he says. "She could stay and we would take care of her."

"She has a husband, Vairum," Sivakami says. "The topic is closed." Thangam's in-laws write accepting the offer. Murthy and Rukmini will escort Thangam to her home in the district where Goli is currently the revenue inspector in charge, some three hours away by train.

Sivakami talks to Muchami about the arrangements.

"You'll need to buy the train tickets."

"Of course, Amma."

"One would have thought he'd be curious to see his child," she says, and regrets having spoken it. It sounds like a curse on the baby.

"He's not an ordinary sort of man, Amma," Muchami says and purses his lips as if he, too, wants to prevent himself from speaking further.

"No, he's not," she agrees, but it is an acknowledgment that Muchami knows more than he is telling. She doesn't want to know.

Two weeks later, Muchami drives Thangam, the baby, Murthy and Rukmini to the station.

"Goodbye! Goodbye!" shout the teary villagers, an expression whose literal translation is "Go and come back! Come! Come!" Children run after the bullock cart, trying to touch its sides.

The next morning, returning at four from Sivakami's bath in the Kaveri, Sivakami and Mari are startled by someone asleep on the veranda. It is Goli. Sivakami invites him in, gives him coffee and explains that his wife has already departed for their home.

"What's that?" he says, sounding irritable. "My parents said to come and get her, so here I am."

"I'm very sorry." Sivakami is full of questions she cannot ask: who will greet Thangam on her arrival at their home? Has he made any provisions at all?

Vairum descends the stairs with a towel, scratching his head sleepily, and pulls up short at the sight of his brother-in-law. "Oh, priceless. You know she waited for you for months?"

"Vairum!" Sivakami indicates the back of the house with her chin. "Go take your bath."

Vairum gives an exaggerated sigh of disgust and turns to go as Goli replies in an ugly tone, "I'll look after my family, imp, and you take care of yours."

"You see that you do that," Vairum tosses back.

"I will."

It's a thoroughly adolescent exchange. At least Vairum is an adolescent ; Sivakami wonders if Goli is much more.

PART FOUR.

Keeping Faith in Kulithalai 1917.

IN THE YEARS THAT FOLLOW, Sivakami continues giving arm's-length advice on agricultural business, though she more often shares her opinions with Muchami than with her son. The servant faithfully reports all matters in which he feels he needs her approval, as well as discussing with her issues in which different approaches might be entertained. Vairum tells her nothing of what he sees or learns on his rounds, but he does discuss these in detail with Muchami, either at the end of the day or when they make rounds together, and so Sivakami knows her feelings are being communicated, though in the guise of Muchami's own opinions. In this way, then, Muchami functions as her proxy, even with her son, when it comes to matters from which the world-and Vairum in particular-thinks her better excluded. She's not sure why Vairum doesn't discuss these matters with her: he seems to consider it a waste of time since she has no direct involvement. Nor has he ever indulged her basic curiosity about his life and interests, or about the world that has been, for so long, beyond her witness. It never seems to occur to him that she might have a perspective of value, and in this arena, where he has the right and confidence to do well on his own, she doesn't want to press.

Thangam returns for the birth of her second child, bringing her first. When the time comes, Sivakami births this child, as she did Thangam's first. Why? Because she attended the first, and both children have lived. One of the principles of a superst.i.tious society is: don't fool with working formulas. If once a practice has a good result, it becomes a tradition; to change it would be arrogance against fate.

One day, at her usual time, Gayatri comes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with news and sits in the courtyard, within earshot of Thangam in the birth room, Muchami and Mari weaving thatch and sorting rice at their posts and Sivakami in the kitchen.

"I don't know if you heard," she says. "It's too terrible. That woman, Madam Besant, who has been agitating for independence, was interned a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, it has made her more popular than ever!" She holds a rolled-up newspaper in her lap.

"Jail?" Muchami asks doubtfully.

"Oh, yes! Do you remember who she is, Sivakamikka? She's the English lady, head of that theosophical society, the crackpot."

"She's a great friend to Brahmins," Mari contributes without raising her eyes from the rice grains she is sorting, tossing them in a shallow three-sided basket. "One of my relatives said she thinks we should return to Manu's laws."

"True, but she doesn't even know what she's saying." Gayatri might sound as though she's questioning non-Brahmins who admire Brahmin principles too intensely, but in fact it's simply that it spoils her pleasure to tell a story to anyone who disagrees with her, even by a shade. "She doesn't know any Sanskrit, or any other Indian language, and she advocates breaking down caste and giving full voting representation to everyone." Gayatri knows Mari can't approve of this. She continues. "It's of real importance that she be brought down. The talk is that she is heading for Congress leaders.h.i.+p. She says everything those independence types want her to." Gayatri reflexively lowers her voice as though she doesn't want to be overheard. "There has been a rash of articles lately, mostly written by one very interesting doctor, a Nair. He started the Justice Party-you know, they are firmly against this independence nonsense. So this week, he wrote a column about the behaviour of Madam Besant's theosophical colleague, that Mr. Charles Leadbeater. You don't want to know the details, but he behaved very improperly, with young boys, and it's not good for voters-well, for anyone, to forget that kind of a.s.sociation. And so my husband added his voice to the chorus. Look!"

She opens the paper that she has been clutching, the Madras Mail, an English-language daily aimed at the Madras Presidency's British business cla.s.s. She folds it back to the letters page and points at one item, a few paragraphs long, circled in ink. "My husband wrote it." She holds it longer than necessary under each eager nose: Sivakami is only functionally literate in Tamil, and Mari and Muchami not even that; none of them could pick English out of a lineup. Even Gayatri knows only from the position of the masthead whether she's holding the paper upside down.

"He signed it 'Keeping the Faith.' It's mostly about the need to preserve the empire, you know, continuity, India's rightful place in the world."

Vairum arrives at the salon as Minister is arranging the papers on a settee: the Madras Mail is on the top of the pile, folded to display the letters page. One letter is circled in red ink, and Vairum picks the paper up to have a closer look at it. Minister winks at him.

One reason Vairum attends the salon whenever he can is to work on his English, which is still rudimentary, though quickly improving. While some of the conversation eludes him, he finds phrases echoing in his head later and tries them on his English tutor, or on Minister himself, who has agreed, at Vairum's request, to speak to him only in that language.

Vairum runs his eyes along the lines of print with controlled desperation.

Sir-(At least he knows that word, commonly used in Tamil for "teacher.")I am pleased to add my voice to the welcome cacophony which has greeted Mrs. Besant's internment. Nothing is resolved without discussion, and I am certain this tempest will be confined in an appropriate teapot before long. I want to register my displeasure with Madam Besant's reported increased popularity of which we, even so far away as Kulithalai Taluk, Thiruchinapalli District, have heard. Be a.s.sured that there are many in the provinces dedicated to the progressive aims of the Empire, Brahmins and non-Brahmins alike, and who understand that members.h.i.+p in the British family offers our motherland, India, her best chance for continuing her advance into the ranks of the world's great nations. If there are those who now know nothing more than Madam Besant's name and fame, and think, on that basis, to be led by her, this is but mere fad-which always shortly changes to "fade."Respectful regards, Keeping Faith in Kulithalai.

"Kulithalai!" Vairum exclaims. "Was it written by one of your, um, friends?" He's not sure what to call them, since they seem held together by something other than friendliness, a feeling he doesn't quite understand but intends to: another reason he comes whenever he can.

"Better than that, son," Minister says, going into his library, an adjoining room through a set of double doors. "It was written by yours truly."

Who is mine truly? Vairum wonders, vaguely embarra.s.sed. It sounds romantic.

Minister looks back when he doesn't respond, and laughs. "Me! I wrote it. It's about time they knew what we're thinking out here about all that nonsense."

"Oh! Quite," Vairum says, one of his favourite English expressions of a.s.sent. "Quite." He perches on the settee to read the papers and wait for the regulars to arrive, while Minister unwraps some new books, a package from Higginbotham's in Madras, and another from Penguin of London, and sorts them into his already substantial collection.

Vairum regularly borrows from him, things he finds and things Minister recommends, from Sir Wm. Wedderburn's book A A. O O. Hume: Father of the Indian National Congress Hume: Father of the Indian National Congress to cla.s.sical Tamil dramas, a.n.a.lyses of the to cla.s.sical Tamil dramas, a.n.a.lyses of the Periya Periya Puranam as well as Sarma's Toward Puranam as well as Sarma's Toward Swaraj. Swaraj. Minister reads all the tracts published by the Indo-British a.s.sociation, such as Indian Problems: Caste in Relation to Democracy, or Indian Opposition to Home Rule: Minister reads all the tracts published by the Indo-British a.s.sociation, such as Indian Problems: Caste in Relation to Democracy, or Indian Opposition to Home Rule: What What the British Public Ought to Know, and Vairum struggles through these also, still unsure of what will be important to him as he makes his own way. Minister also takes newspapers of every political stripe, and Vairum browses the political and social pages but finds he pays most attention to business and finance. Sometimes, the same stories are covered in Tamil and English, a great help to his comprehension. the British Public Ought to Know, and Vairum struggles through these also, still unsure of what will be important to him as he makes his own way. Minister also takes newspapers of every political stripe, and Vairum browses the political and social pages but finds he pays most attention to business and finance. Sometimes, the same stories are covered in Tamil and English, a great help to his comprehension.

Minister doesn't even keep track of which books Vairum borrows, trusting him to come and go as he likes, so Vairum has also groped his way through such reference works as Kissing in Theory and Practice Kissing in Theory and Practice, Pandora's Letter Box: Being a a Discourse on Fas.h.i.+onable Life by the Author of the Technique of the Love Affair and Marie Stopes's Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of s.e.x Difficulties, which he found at least as informative as The Indian Const.i.tution: An Introductory Discourse on Fas.h.i.+onable Life by the Author of the Technique of the Love Affair and Marie Stopes's Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of s.e.x Difficulties, which he found at least as informative as The Indian Const.i.tution: An Introductory Study, Study, though, again, to what end he is not sure. though, again, to what end he is not sure.

He hears the first of Minister's cronies coming up the stairwell off the veranda. Minister exits his library onto the bal.u.s.traded corridor that connects all the upstairs rooms. He leans over the rail to shout through a skylight into the main hall below, "Gayatri! Snacks!" and then turns right to open another set of double doors into the salon, sliding bolts into the floor to hold them open. He checks the soil in two pots of ragged posies and adjusts the position of an occasional table as his cronies enter.

The two men arrive already arguing. They are close acquaintances and colleagues. One, whom Vairum has never heard speak below shouting volume, is N. Ranga, a Chettiar by caste, moneylender and compounder by trade, who now has several storefronts. His successes interest Vairum keenly. Ranga opened a Thiruchi branch, Ranga and Sons, some eight years back, where he stocks patent medicines and toilet products that he has test-marketed at his original location. The other is a Brahmin, Dr. C. P. Kittu Iyer, an undistinguished and lead-fingered pract.i.tioner (Vairum gathers) of the medical arts, who never ceases to criticize the compounder for pimping quack medicines. Kittu Iyer still sends his patients to Ranga to have prescriptions filled, though, because, as a medicine-maker, Ranga is skilled and honest, the best in the district. His dealings in skin-lightening lotions and tuberculosis tonics haven't hurt his professional reputation, either because people don't distinguish these from his legitimate trade, or because they understand the nostrums are purely a business concern.

"The man is a traitor!" Ranga hoots as though through a venom-filled whistle. "To us, and to his own people!"

"It is a victory for the right and might, but we must remain vigilant. There is no guarantee this is not a trick," Kittu rejoins as though addressing a much larger audience.

"Do you get what they're on about?" Minister asks Vairum, as he takes a seat beside his protege.

Vairum shakes his head.

"Look again at the headlines. Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, made an announcement to the House of Commons, of Britain's intent to increase Indian representation in administration-see ? ?" He points to one article, and then to another: "'... with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.' There was no warning. Stunning." He rearranges the papers so that the Madras Mail with his letter is once more on the top.

Vairum has heard enough about these matters in the salon, and from Minister, to have a sense of how its members will divide. Non-Brahmins such as Ranga, a Chettiar, will restate fears that granting India independence at this juncture would mean handing the country over to an elite coterie of northern Brahmins. Brahmins such as Kittu, an Iyer, believe this seems like a good idea. Minister will be the only Brahmin to oppose the move toward independence, and the one who will take the move most personally. His salon is decorated with drawings of Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament he made as a child, hung on the western wall above a row of fragile potted flowers; in one corner of the library is a stack of empty Peek Freans biscuit tins; on a shelf, his bottle of No. i McDowell's brandy, proudly displayed. He drinks a carefully measured inch each night after supper. "I live with my mother and father," he once told Vairum. "Loyalty. Habit. My country is a partic.i.p.ant in-not victim of-a grand and n.o.ble scheme. The British do things better. Nothing wrong with the Indian way, but nothing to lose, wot?"

Vairum watches Minister now, one leg crossed over the other, bouncing nervously as the sportif Muthu, of the Reddiar caste, rounds the stairs. "The wires are buzzing-what a to-do!" Muthu says, puffing.

He mops his expansive brow and grins at the two first arrivals, who have taken seats as far as possible from one another, and at Minister, who smiles back paternalistically and responds, "But who are 'they,' dear chap?"

Vairum thinks, dear chap, dear chap, savouring the unfamiliar syllables as Minister goes on. "My impression is that much of the Commons was taken as off guard by this announcement as we. For whom does Montagu speak?"

Slim, chic K.T. Rama Sastri, another Brahmin-lawyer by training, lounger by inclination-recites from the doorway, "'Now is G.o.d's purpose in us perfected / Complete the work of Clive and Nicholson / When in this Empire that their swordblades won / Authority is mocked and buffeted / And England's voice, no more the lion's they knew / Becomes the whisper of this Wandering Jew.' Nothing like a bit of doggerel to start the day off right."

"Har-har!" Muthu Reddiar slaps his knee. "That was this morning's Madras Mail, isn't it?"

"Yes, by the editor," says Rama, pointing a pinky out as he accepts a china teacup from a tray the cook's daughter is bearing self-consciously around the room. "He could hold his tongue no longer."

Vairum tries pointing a pinky out, too, but can't keep it there as he takes the teacup. He forces himself to put his mouth to the edge and slurp. The thought that his mother would be scandalized to see him drink this way is some motivation: in his house, they hold a silver tumbler above their mouths and pour, to avoid pollution from any saliva that has ever touched the cup. Mostly, though, Vairum does it because it seems an important, cosmopolitan skill, though he overcomes a little revulsion to do so.

"It is a serious question, however," R. V. Mani Iyer is saying. He is the salon's most recent Brahmin addition and is politically committed-to Congress and independence, as is usual for Brahmins. Several years behind Minister at school, he did a B.A. at St. Joseph's College in Thiruchi, where Vairum has also decided he wants to go. "Montagu seems a man of real disinterest and integrity..." He ignores a "Pshaw!" from Ranga Chettiar, punctuated by a soaring morsel of onion budji. budji. "But he is a Jew, and we know how deep communal loyalties run. How can we with all our hearts accept this promise from someone the English cannot truly claim as their own?" "But he is a Jew, and we know how deep communal loyalties run. How can we with all our hearts accept this promise from someone the English cannot truly claim as their own?"

The last of the salon regulars slinks in-S. Gopi, another Chettiar, a grain and dry goods dealer. He has a couple of rice mills and has also recently started vending "Modern Pots" in new shapes and alloys, yet his tone around Ranga, his Chettiar castemate, bespeaks a defensive sense of inferiority. Gopi has no sons, and no shop in Thiruchi. Though he employs several of his sons-in-law in his concerns, his failure to expand beyond Kulithalai district is seen by some as a reluctance to build a fortune that will simply pa.s.s out of the family line. He has been heard proclaiming that small business is good business, but his customarily sarcastic tone makes it tough for Vairum to tell when he is sincere.

"High time to organize, man!" Ranga Chettiar exhorts Gopi by way of a greeting, as though they are in the middle of a conversation. Ranga's youngest son has initiated a Chettiar Uplift and Cultural Preservation Society in Kulithalai and Ranga appears to have made it a project to needle Gopi-either pressing him for more support, financial and otherwise, than he is inclined to give, or suggesting backhandedly that he is a potential beneficiary. Vairum thinks often about this pair: same caste background, but such different fortunes. What has caused one to succeed and the other to fail, apart from dumb luck?