AHMM, December 2009 (2 page)

Remy's face collapsed, her facade of the sophisticated Indian woman crumbling in seconds. “It is not to be believed."

"Tell me anyway."

Remy studied Anita for a minute, and Anita knew what was going through the other woman's mind—the embarrassment at having to admit that such images had real power for some, and perhaps even for her, the confusion that such a thing should happen to her family, the helplessness, not knowing what to do.

"When did Bharat get this figure?” Anita asked.

"Perhaps three or four months ago,” Remy said.

Anita struggled with her next question. If it had been anyone else, or at least anyone not a relative, she would have simply blurted out the question, but relatives required a certain delicacy; whatever she did tended to take on a life of its own as it worked its way back to Auntie Meena. Anita could understand why her mother had moved to America with Anita's father at the earliest opportunity. “Have there been other, um, reversals?"

"Reversals? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, yes, I guess you can say this.” Remy stirred in her chair again. “Um, well, Bharat didn't get the promotion he was expecting, and a modest investment went sour. And the rent on the cottage has gone up just as they were saving money for a new house of their own."

And all of it, Anita knew, attributed by Sheela to the presence of this ugly block of wood.

"Why do you have the figure now?"

"Sheela won't have it in the house. She's very afraid of it, but Bharat doesn't dare give it away because now Karunkar is his boss at the plantation."

"So you keep it.” Anita couldn't miss the way Remy's shoulders stiffened and her hands clenched the chair arms. It was obvious her aunt didn't want it either, but probably felt she had no choice. Anita certainly wouldn't want it living in her own flat—even as an art object.

Anita stared past her aunt, working out the sequence of events in her mind. “What's Karunkar like?"

"Oh, a very nice man,” Remy said. “Very good man. We long considered him as a match for Sheela, but she had met Bharat a couple of years ago and they grew very fond of each other."

Late in the afternoon Anita went looking for Sheela, hoping to learn more about her views on the strange antique figure. She went from room to room to room, finally ending up in the first of the two cooking rooms.

"Not here,” the maidservant said as she looked up from chopping vegetables on the floor.

"I thought I would take a walk with her,” Anita said. “Do you know where she's gone?"

"Already gone walking.” She gave the onions a few deft slices and six perfect wedges rocked across the cutting board.

Since there weren't many places to go in this small village, Anita decided to set out and find Sheela. In the twenty-four hours since she had arrived, Anita had drastically changed her opinion of her cousin. Sheela had seemed fine, just a bit tired, on her first night, but now Anita could see the other woman was drifting dangerously close to serious emotional problems. She visited with friends, ate her meals, and the rest of the time retreated to her bedroom to sleep, with the door shut. Keeping the door shut was such an unusual step in an Indian household that Anita felt it was time to address Sheela directly on her peculiar and unhealthy behavior, and find out what was really troubling her.

Anita took the path into the village, skirting the occasional cardamom grove and hoping she wouldn't be hit by a bus careering down the road behind her. She reached the village center, which was a crossroads with a few shops at each corner, none more than two and a half stories tall, with storage being the main purpose of the top half story. The shops were those she expected—coffee, cooking equipment, fancy goods such as children's clothes, notebooks, sweets, toys, and the like, a newsagent no larger than a tea stall, and a garage for all sorts of repairs. The shops were separated by narrow lanes that ran off into small neighborhoods or the fringes of the surrounding jungle. Anita wandered down one, around the corner of a compound wall, and along a row of small houses with low sapling fences—probably all belonging to a single family, she thought. As she turned the next corner, heading back to the main road, she stopped at the sound of voices. Nearby a man and a woman were talking. She stepped into the shadows of a hibiscus tree and waited. A moment later Sheela hurried by. After waiting another minute or two, a tall man with a white shirt tucked into dark pants came down the same lane and turned left, away from Anita and onto another path leading away from the village center.

The family liked to sit out on the veranda in the evening, a way to endure the nightly loss of electrical power and still enjoy the evening. After a late meal and storytelling to entertain some visiting children, Anita at last found herself alone with Sheela.

"I took a walk into the village this afternoon,” Anita said.

"Hmm.” Sheela leaned back in her chair and might have been asleep except for the dreamy look on her face as she stared up at the stars blinking through the trees. “Sometimes the stars are so thick and bright the night sky looks like a piece of lace.” She tilted her head a bit more and continued to stare upward.

"Do you walk into the village every day?"

"Me? No, sometimes.” Sheela didn't take her eyes off the stars.

"Bharat is a nice man,” Anita said. “I'm glad of a chance to get to know him better."

This seemed to get her attention, and she rolled her head until she could look directly at Anita. “Yes, a nice man."

"Do I have a smear of something on my face?” Anita said.

"Huh?"

"I thought perhaps I had some dirt smeared on my face, the way you are staring at me."

Sheela managed a little giggle and looked away. “So sorry, no. I am not myself these days."

"So your mother has told me."

Sheela sat up in her chair and this time gave Anita a terrified look. “You have been talking to my mother about me? But you are my sister cousin. You are my friend. Why are you doing this?"

Interesting, thought Anita. If I found someone had been talking to my mother about me, I might be amused, Auntie Meena's daughter, Asmita, would certainly be annoyed, but frightened?

At breakfast the following morning, Anita tried to make up to Sheela because it was easier to visit with someone she was on speaking terms with than with someone who sulked and gave her the cold shoulder.

"Anything interesting in the newspaper?” Anita said, even though she knew Sheela wasn't one to pay any attention to political life.

"That's not the news,” the maidservant said as she put another bowl of idlies on the table. Anita loved the steamed cakes, like little flying saucers, and drew the bowl toward her. “A man has been murdered."

"What?” Both Sheela and Anita spoke at once.

The maidservant smiled, pleased with the effect her secret was having on her employers. “Down by the tank for the Devi temple."

Anita hated to do it, but she pushed her chair away from the table, left the idlies on her plate, and raced down to the tank.

"I just want to look,” Anita said to the constable as she swerved past him.

He reached out to grab her, but Anita was too quick for him and leapt to the side of the corpse, just as the assistant was about to wrap a woven mat around the body.
Shiva ayoo,
Anita thought when she saw the body. A man perhaps in his fifties sprawled on the grassy verge, his white shirt caked with drying mud. His face was contorted, his eyes staring upward in horror, as though helpless to stop what was happening to him. But it was his mouth that held Anita's attention—his front teeth were shattered, but there was no blood on his lips and teeth. As the assistant waved her back, Anita knelt for a closer look. His throat was covered with mud, and his mouth seemed stuffed with it.

"Who is he?” she asked the constable when they pushed her away.

"A local man. His name is Champe,” the constable replied. “Just one of the sorcerers around here."

"Who owns this tank?” Anita said, stepping carefully along the muddy bank. The tank seemed to be an old paddy field fallen into disuse, and now used as a local bathing place.

"You have a reason for wanting to know this?” the constable asked.

"Just curious,” Anita said, looking around, trying to get a fix on the landscape. To the north was Remy's house; to the south was Sheela's house. And to the west? “Who lives over there. See? In that large pink house?"

The constable peered in the direction Anita was pointing. “That's Karunkar Menon's house. He's the new overseer at the plantation. Fine home he has.” The constable straightened up as he spoke, as though Karunkar was about to pass by inspecting the troops.

Anita meandered back to her cousin's house, lost in her own thoughts. It was a very odd death—the victim looked like he'd been drowned, but he was still dry below the waist, like he'd been slogging through a swamp, though there wasn't one nearby. And it looked like he'd been in a brawl, but his hands were unscathed. The constable had dismissed the dead man as an insignificant sorcerer.

Anita turned off the lane going to Sheela's house and instead walked through the village. When she heard the painful sound of wailing, she followed it to an alley. The narrow lane was paved with cement and ran between two large homes. Anita stepped into the shade of the overhanging trees and entered the small cluster of close-set homes sharing walls, spigots, front walks. A songbird hung in a cage outside a door, cooing to passersby. The front of one home was lined with small potted plants. At the next corner the wailing grew louder.

"No troubling, Missi,” a woman said to Anita as she paused at the corner. “This crying is a new widow. It is Champe's wife—she has just learned her husband is dead. The constable has come to tell her they have found his body by the tank.” The woman nodded to the house at the end of a short side lane. “Now she is a widow, poor and alone. It is well that she cries out."

"Does she know how it happened?” Anita hoped that the constable might have said something to the widow. The other woman shook her head. “Not even how he died?” Again the other woman shook her head.

Anita made her way back to the main road, turned right, and soon found herself at the lane she had taken the day before. She followed it through a well-tended neighborhood of small homes, turning right and left, and ending once again at the corner where she saw Sheela and Karunkar separating and going in different directions. It was the only time since Anita had arrived that she had seen Sheela animated, enjoying life.

The meeting could have been a coincidence, Anita reminded herself, but she didn't believe in coincidences. No, the two had met on purpose. Anita walked on past the last house, until she came to a small temple that seemed abandoned. She walked around the small building. In the back was a tiny shed for storing gear for a festival, but this too had fallen into disrepair. Anita stepped inside and looked around. A broken plastic chair leaned against a small wooden stool in one corner, a rotting coconut husk lay nearby. Beneath a rickety table lay two more coconuts, but these were relatively fresh, chopped open the day before, for their sweet milk. Two plastic straws were stuck in the woven mat walls, awaiting use on another day.

Anita pulled out the stool and sat down. To her, it was obvious what all this meant, but she didn't like it and part of her even felt resentful. Sheela was turning her family upside down with her behavior. But was there anything Anita could do about it? This was a dilemma, all right. After being casually promised to Karunkar since childhood, Sheela had married a man of her heart. Bharat had taken up his career in a plantation, but his fortunes had declined almost at once, with the loss of promotion, pay raises, and then a child. His troubles seemed to begin with the gift of the wooden figure, and now a sorcerer was dead.

Karunkar and Parvati lived in a house that seemed to grow pinker the closer Anita got to it. She took the final turn in the lane and arrived at the front gate, which consisted of two large metal swinging doors with bright green curlicues on top. Anita rattled the latch, which was chained on the inside. A maidservant appeared in the doorway, then retreated, presumably to report Anita's presence to the owners.

"Ah, how wonderful of you to come to us!” Parvati sauntered down the stairs with a key in her hand, unlocked the gate, and pulled it open. “Please, come, come. Karunkar will come shortly, after his morning puja."

The home was recently built, with marble floors, high ceilings, and several built-in display cabinets throughout, showcasing small collections of brightly painted figures of the gods and goddesses, teacups, and photographs. Parvati led her into the dining room, called for tea, and ushered her to a chair. It was still quite early, but not too early for visiting.

Parvati concentrated on her hostess duties and began chatting about the neighborhood, who lived where, what they did, where they came from if not from here, the next trip they might take to Chennai or perhaps Mumbai. “I do love Mumbai—so many interesting shops, don't you think?"

Actually, Anita didn't think so—she thought Mumbai was insane, crazy with traffic, dirt, pushy millionaires and wannabes, and worse—but instead of saying that, she politely agreed, and Parvati went on to talk about her visits to Philips Antiques, which Anita knew to be somewhat pricey.

"Ah, talking about shopping, isn't it?” Karunkar strolled into the room, dropped the newspaper onto the table, and called out an order to the maidservant. He smiled down on both Parvati and Anita with a certain patronizing air that might have been no more than well-earned self-confidence, but it caught Anita's attention.

"Back for lunch, Parvati,” he said.

"I'm glad to have a chance to meet you again,” Anita said, extending her hand. He took it and they shook. “We've certainly changed since we were children, and I'm always curious about how my old friends turned out."

Karunkar gave a good-natured laugh. “Good to see you here, Anita."

When he was gone, Anita said, “Is Mumbai where you got that figure, the one studded with nails?” She wasn't surprised to see Parvati blanch.