The Toss Of A Lemon Part 31

Thangam's eyes slide away beneath papery blue eyelids. She draws in a quick breath and says, "You must go and enjoy. Vani plays beautiful music."

"Akka, why, Akka?" Janaki is plaintive. "Why won't you come?"

"You are a good girl." Thangam reaches out. Her hands, which long ago were warm and golden-hued, are cold and blue-veined, white at the tips. She reaches out to lay her hands on Janaki's head and then cracks her knuckles against her own temples.

"Chamutthu," she says, to accompany this touching, absurd gesture, the older person abasing herself before the perfection of the younger. "Good girl." she says, to accompany this touching, absurd gesture, the older person abasing herself before the perfection of the younger. "Good girl."

The gesture is commonplace-but not from Thangam. Janaki doesn't recall having ever received a sign of affection from her mother. She has wanted such a touch so badly, for so long, that her head burns where her mother's fingers stroked her. She feels small and close to tears.

In silence, Janaki prepares to go. Her mother plaits her hair tight and s.h.i.+ny, tying in the ribbons with gentle hands like dreams of alchemy and magic. In contrast, Sivakami's hands, the few times she has done Janaki's hair, felt rough, practical, rea.s.suring.

Freshly pressed and dressed, in a half-sari made up of a snuff-brown silk paavaadai with cream-coloured davani, Janaki climbs into the bus behind her father. He had asked nothing when Thangam failed to accompany them out the door. But had he even noticed Janaki was there? The instant he drops into his seat, he falls asleep. Janaki, sitting in the aisle seat, watches him, his handsome head leaning against the algae-green rexine of the seat back. In sleep, she thinks, he looks smaller and less dangerous than he does alive. he looks smaller and less dangerous than he does alive. Oops- Oops-awake, I mean. Why is he like he is? Why can't he just be nice?

Less than two b.u.mpy hours later, they arrive in Konam. Goli springs to his feet so that Janaki flies out of his way. Left behind in the queue to disembark, she gets down off the bus and looks frantically for her father. He is making a purchase, a few feet from the door of the bus-ugly, overpriced dolls. "Navaratri dolls!" the vendor is shouting while wrapping and making change. "Beautiful for your golu! Buy them all!"

"Look but don't buy," Janaki has been trained by Sivakami; her father clearly has not. His policy seems to be "Buy but don't look," she smirks to herself, then rebukes herself smartly.

They ramble toward their host's house, Goli buying sweets, flowers, magazines, generous with tips, generous with beggars. He keeps asking Janaki if she wants anything. She refuses mutely; he shrugs and buys more. He got paid the day before-Janaki had heard her parents arguing about whom he owes. The argument was short; Thangam fell silent as soon as he yelled.

Before they left the house, Thangam gave Janaki bus fare, which she tucked into the waist of her paavaadai.

They arrive at Goli's friends' house, a small bungalow set in a garden, a twenty-minute walk from the bus depot and market square, practically in the centre of town. Goli has not said how he knows these people.

They step over the threshold into the salon, a claustrophobic room crammed with several rattan-strung recliners, side tables with doilies, a mahogany display case full of dolls and the radio. While Gayatri and Minister's radio stands about two feet, on a table in Minister's upstairs salon, this one stands on the floor, almost four feet.

Janaki considers the radio the best invention ever. The gramophone she thinks a novelty item at best, though it brings music to those who are non-electrified and non-musical-because of course no machine can take the place of a veena and someone who knows how to play it. Tonight the radio will bring Vani herself, in all her mature genius. Oh, how Janaki has missed this music. Her fingertips throb, her forehead tingles, her heart is doing something akin to salivation as she waits to hear what she has heard so little in the two and a half years since Vani and Vairum moved to Madras. Before radio, only Vairum had the power to bring Vani and take her away.

Goli presents their hosts with dolls, sweets, flowers. The husband emits clucks of delight and dismissal. "Oh, you shouldn't have!" His wife raises her eyebrows as if smiling. She isn't. Janaki feels chilled. It has begun again to rain outside.

Goli and the husband sit in the chairs, Janaki in the little floor s.p.a.ce remaining, close by the radio. The wife stands behind her husband. Goli does not let slip a single opportunity to remind his hosts of how closely he is related to tonight's featured performer. The husband is impressed and excited. Janaki thinks maybe that little sneer mark to the right of her hostess's nose is just the way the poor woman's face is made. But when their daughter, who is about Janaki's age, comes in to say good night, the mark dissolves in a face suffused with pride and love.

The daughter sees the guests and asks, "What are they here for?"

In Tamil it is polite to refer to people in the third person, but the girl's tone is rude in any language. Her mother replies, "Their female relative is playing veena. On the radio."

The girl raises her eyebrows and scrunches her lips. She returns to the other room.

Goli says, "I'm sure your daughter would love to stay and listen! She can sit with my daughter. Vani, my own sister-in-law, would be honoured."

The sneer returns as their hostess explains, "We don't approve of Brahmin women playing in public. We would never permit our daughter to listen to such a display."

Her husband giggles as though in apology and leaps to switch on the radio, saying, "Not five minutes now! Best give it a chance to warm up!"

The radio's initial whine and crackle always make Janaki s.h.i.+ver with excitement. Even her hostess, whom she now hates, cannot dampen the electric thrill. The whine thins, the crackle settles like a good fire, and a sombre voice announces: V. Vani.

At the sound of tuning, Janaki closes her eyes to all those around her. The musician is unmistakably her aunt. The program mixes adventurous and conservative choices, though even the best-known songs are made unfamiliar by her aunt's rhythmic and stylistic innovations. Janaki keeps her eyes shut tight, listening for old favourites and for new songs she herself might learn.

Not bothering with an introductory varnam, Vani launches into an improvisational aalapanai in "Begada Raga," and then segues into the recital proper with "Vallabha Nayakasya," a meditative and richly emotional prayer to Lord Ganesha, G.o.d of new beginnings. Janaki recalls the little wooden Ganesha that Vairum used to keep in a lamp niche near the entrance of his and Vani's quarters. Janaki never entered their room but would see the statuette when she climbed the stairs to the roof. The roughly carved little figure was s.h.i.+ny with age, its back blackened with lamp smoke. Once, Janaki, curious, picked it up and was surprised at how light it was. The tiny statue went with her uncle and aunt to Madras when they moved, and Janaki felt that this signified more than anything the permanence of their leave-taking.

The second song in Vani's program is "Sakala Kala Vani," a melodious, feminine piece with tightly shaped verses, a tribute to the G.o.ddess Saraswati, one of the triumvirate of female deities whose festival they were celebrating. She wraps up the first part of the concert with a song Janaki has never heard. The announcer gives the t.i.tle, "Chinnan Cheeru Killiyai Kannama," by Subramania Bharatiyar, whose name, at least, Janaki recognizes. He's not one of the ancients, but rather a Tamil nationalist poet who died not long before Janaki was born-it was an accident, she thinks, involving an elephant, maybe? Janaki has heard of musicians, recently, setting Bharatiyar's poetry to music. Listening to Vani now, she is intrigued and frustrated: each time she thinks she starts to get the raga, it seems to change. If Vani only lived with them still, Janaki would have heard her practicing. She might even have been able to play this piece by now.

She opens her eyes slowly. Her host is sitting rapt and respectful. His wife's sneer has deepened. Possibly, to be kind to her, she is unable to appreciate what she has just heard. Goli is sticking to the line that he is related to a genius.

"Marvellous, wasn't it? What virtuosity! What excellence of technique ! To think, how many times have I heard her in the privacy of my mother-in-law's village home. And here she is playing for the whole of the presidency more or less. Isn't that something!" Then he stands, holding his palms together. "Well, we'd better make a move."

Janaki starts.

Their hostess looks at her and speaks to Goli, "Oh, must you?"

Janaki stammers, "We can't... the second half..." The announcer had told listeners to stay tuned through the interval-Vani would be playing "Jaggadodharana" on her return, one of her signature songs.

Goli turns on her. "Have some regard for your poor mother. She is home alone. If we stay, we will surely miss the last bus. Thangam will be worried to death." He turns to their hosts. "My wife is expecting, you know. And, of course, with the demands of my position, it really is not advisable."

The husband makes weak clucking noises to insist upon their staying, while his wife goes to fetch the vermilion to offer Janaki in farewell. Janaki tries something else.

"But... my grandmother will be very angry if we don't listen to the whole thing."

Goli's eyes, which always s.h.i.+ne unfathomably, flash.

Janaki heedlessly continues, "Akka will be okay. She's not expecting us until morning..."

"Stop calling her Akka. She's your mother." Chop, chop, chop, hand against palm. "Don't you care for her at all? Why are you telling me what your grandmother wants? Am I not your father?" He flashes his eyes at their motionless hosts and his voice modulates into a soothing tone, somehow more frightening even than his explosion. "I know I told her we would be home in the morning." He smiles at Janaki as she shrinks from him. "We'll surprise her."

The lady of the house holds the silver plate of hospitality out to Janaki. Janaki, fuming, applies a vermilion smudge to her forehead and accepts the betel leaf.

It is better that they return that night, and Janaki knows it but doesn't know why he had earlier insisted they would not. This move to return the same night is not out of character: the only rule to Goli's behaviour appears to be that he does not keep his word.

Janaki dozes on the way home, the betel leaf crunched in her fist. Vani's music steams in her dreams and when she lifts her lids and looks through the metal shutters half-closed against the rain, she glimpses the silver moon, full and bright beyond thick clouds. The rains beat on the bus roof and become the mridangam in her dreams.

Soon enough, they arrive in Munnur and duck and dodge from tree to eave toward the tiny house. Lamps flicker in the windows. Goli says, "See? I told you she'd be waiting up for us. Good thing we...

But Janaki knows Thangam wasn't expecting them until morning, and quickens her pace against the flutter of anxiety in her chest.

They bang on the door and look through the window. Thangam lies on a cot and one of the neighbours, who is with her, comes to open the locks. She tells us she was called by another neighbour when Thangam started vomiting early in the evening.

The lamps' golden glow cools and condenses as it reaches Thangam. Her brow is dewy. Father and daughter step across the threshold. Thangam opens her blue marble eyes, and Janaki's fast-beating heart is in her mouth when her mother's blue lips part: "If you had come in the morning, you would have beheld my dead body."

If you had come in the morning, you would have beheld my dead body.

"I can't hold on any longer. I'm too tired." She convulses, lips slack, eyelids small knots, nostrils flaring and closing.

Janaki runs to her side, calling out to her. "Akka, come back, Akka, my mother." Janaki tries to smooth her brow, but life pulsates under Thangam's skin, weighed down by lumps and bricks and dreams of gold, life held under the cold blue surface.

Goli pulls Janaki away and lays a finger on Thangam's shoulder. Immediately Thangam is still, as though the impulses have withdrawn, the way the touch-me-not plant closes its leaves on contact. She is still, except for a decorous, defiant throb at wrist and neck, and another life, in her belly, which kicks to be free of her.

Goli demands, diagnostically, "Too tired? Too tired how?"

No response. Raghavan sleeps on a blanket, snug and dry between three spots where rain drips through the roof. Goli swivels toward the two neighbours and begins shouting at them.

"What's going on? How long has she been sick like this?"

One tries to say what she knows, what she has seen, but Goli is pacing and muttering, every now and again returning to Thangam's p.r.o.ne form to say her name, "Thangam! Thangam. Thangam?" until he begins to wind down, like a gramophone record. Finally, he, too, is still. Above and around them is the chaos of the cras.h.i.+ng rain. Janaki watches her father. For the first time that she can recall, he is still and present.

He looks at Thangam, a long time, and then he begins to speak. "Thangam? You look so different, Thangam. When did you change? You were once so beautiful. This small house, it's a mistake. My small salary, it is all the government b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would give me. That's why I was always trying to do more, Thangam, to get more money, so you could have a big house. A comfortable life. This is ... this is a mistake."

He backs away from her, toward a far corner where he unrolls a mat, lies down and soon falls asleep.

One tear draws down from each of Thangam's closed eyes. The rain begins to leak through the roof in a fourth place.

Janaki turns to one of the neighbours. "Mami, you must tell my grandmother. Please, my grandmother. She must come."

Ifyou had come in the morning, you would you would have beheld my dead body. have beheld my dead body.

Oh no.

"I need my grandmother, please." Janaki gets the cash her grandmother gave her and holds it out. "Can someone go?"

The kind neighbours a.s.sure her, yes; one says she will send her grown son.

Janaki sits beside her mother through the night. She presses Thangam's legs and arms, rubs warmth into them, until the chill breaks and fever burns through her brightly. Janaki soaks a cloth with rainwater and lays it across Thangam's forehead, but the chill soon returns and Janaki resumes the rubbing. All the while, she speaks encouraging words. "Akka, you must hang on. Amma is coming. Amma is coming and everything will be fine, but you must hang on and see her."

A leak springs above the dough village but Janaki makes no attempt to move her creatures, and from top to bottom they melt, sometimes in a slow bending, sometimes in a sudden collapse, until, as morning nears, the seven shelves are coated in a cold lava strung with puddlings of colour that were once red lips and emerald earrings, dark hair and cheery skirts.

An hour before dawn, the young man returns. He had gone to the next village and had a telegram sent-as quick as going himself, and less costly. Janaki knows her grandmother forbids telegrams for any but the worst news. She had forgotten to tell the young man. Anyway, this may not be the worst news, but it is close. He gives her the change.

In the morning, when her father rises, Janaki prepares coffee. She is a terrible cook, and her father makes a face as he swallows. Oh, well. She takes the second steaming tumbler, holds it beside her mother and blows the vapours toward her, hoping that miraculous scent of richness, vigour and future unexceptional mornings will rouse her. It doesn't. Maybe the coffee is too weak; maybe Thangam is. Janaki keeps whispering in her mother's ear, as she has all night, "Amma is coming, Akka. Amma is coming, just hold on." She takes heart from the fact that Thangam has hung on, so far. Goli, saying nothing, goes to work.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, girls have oil baths. Today Janaki must administer her own, for the first time ever. She sniffs a little with self-pity as she works the oil through her hair as best she can, and goes to rub it out with soap-nut powder in the bath, leaving Raghavan and her mother under a neighbour's watch.

She comes back into the main hall, holding both ends of the thin cotton towel and snapping it against her hair, from neck to waist, then binding the hair into the towel so that it makes a knot the size of three hearts at the nape of her neck. She and her sisters certainly have been blessed with hair, she most of all.

Thangam is lying waxen and small on her cot, burning again with the fever.

Raghavan awakens and wants his mother. Janaki consoles him, giving him sweet milk, bathing him and singing "Jaggadodharana," with its lyrics about Lord Krishna: His motherplays with him, as though he is no more than her precious child His motherplays with him, as though he is no more than her precious child. It is raining too hard to go outside. They play with pots and pans and two of the dolls their father bought. Janaki makes as much noise as he does. She wants their mother to hear them playing.

The servant comes to sweep and mop, quiet and fearful. When she leaves, Janaki breathes, relief: morning is past and Thangam is still alive. If she can just hold on until evening-they're only five hours from Cholapatti, so Sivakami should be here by what, five or six?

She removes the towel and mechanically binds just the ends of her hair, which is now so little damp it feels not so much wet as heavy. The small knot hits the back of her thighs, the hair loose enough to finish drying, but not unbound, since a woman's hair should never be unbound except when she performs her parents' funeral rites. "The sight of a woman with unbound hair strikes sadness into all hearts," Sivakami, very strict in this regard, would say.

Janaki sc.r.a.pes the doughy ma.s.s that was the golu into some newspapers and tosses it out behind the house. The neighbour comes, brings food and plays with Raghavan. Janaki again makes sure they do it close to Thangam. They unshroud the gramophone and play each record three times. The laughing one sounds stranger each time: at first it sounds eerie, the second time as if it's mocking them. By the third playing, it doesn't even sound like laughter any more.

The neighbour leaves to prepare her family's tiffin. Janaki isn't hungry but feeds Raghavan. She sits by her mother and sings the first two songs from last night's concert, which feels so long ago. She tries to hum "Chinnan Cheeru Killiyai Kannama" but can't remember how it goes. The baby inside Thangam seems to wake, kicking and swimming.

Five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock... the cuckoo, which Janaki is coming to hate, pops out each hour to announce to her that her grandmother still has not come.

Thangam is breathing but not moving. She looks bluer and bluer, or is that the fallen night? Janaki lights a lamp for warmth.

There is a knock. She leaps and unbolts the door, but it's her father. He thrusts a paper packet into her hand. "Here."

Veeboothi-he must have pa.s.sed a temple on his rounds. Janaki carries it to Thangam, smears it on her forehead, throat and belly, and puts a pinch between her lips. Previously, it would have shown grey against gold; now it merely dulls the waxy blue surface of Thangam's skin. Janaki rubs it in but the ash resolves into nubbins and disperses into flakes, refusing to absorb.

Janaki serves her father the food the neighbour has brought. For a second unending, undying night, Janaki sits beside her mother. She prays without ceasing, saying Shakti Mata, Durga Mata, Saraswati whose names are Uma, Vani, Saradha and nine hundred and ninety-eight more. Bring me my grandmother, oh don't let my mother die. She looks at the Saraswati calendar she hung on the wall, the face of the G.o.ddess sweet and impartial.

She presses her mother's legs, holds her hand and strokes her forehead while her father sleeps. Her little brother sleeps, his golden eyes shut tight. She doesn't know why Amma has not come. She fears she has been abandoned. She fears the rain rain rain has washed the world away, washed the universe clean, s.h.i.+ning, empty. All the people she loves, all those she doesn't love, all washed away. Are they all alone, too, waiting for one another? Are they all together, waiting for her? Is she late and are they wondering what is keeping her? Has the rain washed her away, too, clean and empty, no guilt no ambition no short history of minor transgressions no unwanted wisdom left to pollute her and tear her gently limb from limb?

They are nine who issued from this womb that is even now still pulsing, poking and b.u.mping, though not as much as before-the stubbornness, the wilfulness, perhaps diminis.h.i.+ng. They are nine, and those kicks are of the tenth, but Janaki is sitting alone with only the soft whistle of her brother's nose to remind her that there are others too who will be orphaned to the world in the swirling raining dark.

But dark always turns to light and it does this time, too. The rain stops; morning breaks grey and awful. Janaki does not move. Her mother is still; her father is still sleeping.

SIVAKAMI DIDN'T GO TO HEAR VANI'S RADIO CONCERT, but the children did, at Gayatri and Minister's house. That night, though, the sixth of the Navaratri festival, Sivakami didn't sleep at all. She rarely sleeps much, but the first couple of nights of the festival had been good and tired her out. From the third night, though, she had been waking with feelings of dread and finally, this night, couldn't muster the will to sleep. For the first time ever, she made mistakes in her beading, giving a poor cow five eyes before she realized what she had done.

Muchami arrived at 3:45, as every morning, and they walked to the Kaveri, where, as always, she bathed in the dark while he stood guard. This morning, as happens sometimes, she was accompanied at the river by a slim figure in diaphanous white, not unlike her own. It floated above the opposite bank, bobbing a bit like a current or breeze. The first time it happened, thirty years ago, she had asked Muchami who it was. "Probably Mariamman," he had shrugged. Sivakami normally takes comfort in the village G.o.ddess's presence, though she thinks she shouldn't, since these Dravidian deities are generally malicious. The G.o.ddess had, however, meant no harm before this-or not succeeded in causing any. Why was Sivakami unsettled by her on this day?

At the house, she hung up her wet garment and readied her bra.s.s pot and travelling bundle in dread certainty.

This is the thirty-fourth year since the marriage of the girl of gold, the year the astrologers foretold for her death, and when the telegram came, Sivakami didn't wail or gnash.

THANGAM MAMI SERIOUS STOP COME AT ONCE STOP.

The first births added years to Thangam's life, the astrologers had told Sivakami. The last births took them off again.

Sivakami took the telegram and walked the half-furlong to Gayatri's house. It must have been more than thirty years since she had walked on the street of the Brahmin quarter in daylight. Her feet felt detached, her body bobbing lightly above them, floating diaphanous white.

Minister read the telegram, set about replying, organized the journey. Muchami a.s.sisted. Sivakami returned home to awaken Laddu, Kamalam, Radhai, Krishnan and Sita, who was seven months pregnant and home for her bangle ceremony, to what might be the worst day of their young lives. On the way home, she encountered Rukmini, doing her kolam, and told her to prepare to travel.

By mid-morning, the party boarded the train. Muchami was made to stay behind for the sake of matters quotidian. On the platform, as the train gathered speed, he raised his face and, with the force of his eyes, gazed them safely out of the station.

They rocked silently in the carriage, all faintly nauseated. The atmosphere was so moist they felt they could chew it to slake their throats. Ten minutes out of Salem, the turgid air exploded into drops, stinging their warm faces like forgiveness as they shut the windows against the storm.

The closer they got to Munnur, the stronger the rain. Dismounting in the little station, they found the earth around the unsheltered platform eroded into sharp cliffs descending to choppy brown seas. They waited while Minister inquired of the station master, a droopy little man in a cubicle, where they might find the revenue inspector's home. He seemed at first reluctant to divulge directions, and Minister suspected him of being involved in one of Goli's schemes, holding a grudge or wanting to protect him. Then he realized that the station master was simply worried about their ability to negotiate the pa.s.sage, which would involve walking about four furlongs, crossing the river and walking another furlong on the other side. With some relief, Minister dismissed the man's worries and set out, lifting the smaller children down from the platform and hurrying everyone up the flooded roadway, all the children's hands grasped tight. It was soon clear that the man's fears were justified, but, by a hundred yards, the rain descending like screens, the water filling their eyes, they could barely make out the station behind them and so pressed forward to the river, where they paused on her banks in respect and dismay.

The Kaveri was swollen and rough and in a lethal mood. It was mid-afternoon but even with the light at its highest, the streaming rain obscured the opposite bank. Minister, feeling valiant, made as though he would swim across, but Sivakami forbade it. Even in calm moods, this river made sport of men in the prime of their lives. Sivakami herded them into some bankside groves to shelter.

Curious villagers ventured forth and expressed sorrow when they learned of the circ.u.mstances. They were not so irreverent as to offer the travellers their homes-this was the non-Brahmin side of the village-but they brought sheets of thatch to shelter them and fruits Brahmins may eat without fear of pollution. The villagers told the party that the rain would clear by morning, when they would be able to cross by parasal, parasal, a round boat towed by swimmers. a round boat towed by swimmers.

Within an hour, Visalam arrived from Karoor with her baby and husband. The sympathetic villagers clucked and cooed and set up a baby hammock between some bamboo stalks, with a waterproof crosshatch of thatch to protect the child from the elements.

Just before dark, Saradha came from Thiruchinapalli. After midnight, the rain ceased and the sky began to thin. The moon, thought Sivakami, was weak from crying. She shook the thought off disdainfully. She alone was awake in the party to recognize the stooped and purposeful gait of her son approaching on the riverlike road, Vani glowing beside him. Now Sivakami's tears began to fall, hard as the rain, from both eyes. Vairum and Vani approached, and Vani fell to embrace Sivakami's feet. Sivakami put her hands on Vani's shoulders and raised her into an embrace. Vairum said nothing but waited to speak until his mother's eyes were dry, the tears wiped away by Vani.

"I have spoken to several villagers," he said then, soft and brusque. "I believe we must wait until morning to cross."

Vani pressed Sivakami's hands and Sivakami leaned her forehead against that of her son's wife. They waited for the dawn.

Before dawn, all did their ablutions, the men saying the daily prayer for illumination, and then light broke saffron in the east. Six village men appeared, carrying a round, shallow boat of woven reeds, which they held at the river's edge. Sivakami, Minister and Laddu got in. Laddu tried to insist he would swim, but Vairum forbade it. When the village men tied gourds around their waists as life preservers, though, Vairum and Sita's husband did the same, and took places at the boat's side as they began towing the boat across. By the time the sun laid its palms on the water's surface, the first party was halfway across.

Through her fear, Sivakami wondered where Vairum learned to swim so well. She had made him pledge, when he left for college, that he would never swim in the Kaveri. She didn't need to ask him to study, to be frugal, to eschew bad habits. Vairum rose on the other bank, braced his hands on his knees and coughed. He turned toward Thangam's house. At least there are no predictions against his life, At least there are no predictions against his life, Sivakami thought. Sivakami thought. None that I know of. None that I know of.

Yesterday, Janaki had not felt the day on her face except in the hour before dawn when she did the kolam that the rain washed away even as the powder descended from her fist. Today she does not do kolam but opens the door only after the light is full. And opens her eyes wide because Laddu is running toward her up the road. He pants the news out hoa.r.s.ely: "We are here, we are all here, we couldn't cross the river yesterday evening, too flooded, we had to wait for light..." His hands are on his knees as he stoops to catch his breath. "Parasals-they are bringing the others across."