In the Convent of Little Flowers (13 page)

In the beginning, Nathan did not like this friendship between Parvati and Raja, mostly because Vikram was a sweeper. His wife told him to let the children be, they were young, they knew little of these class distinctions. But even his wife did not like it much, Nathan knew, for she would keep Parvati indoors when their relatives from the village came to visit and only let her out when they had left, so they could not see who she associated with.

When Raja finished his school, the Department of Mechanical Engineering hired him as a peon. Just like that, no trials as sweeper or gardener or watchman—he went directly to peon, albeit a junior peon. It galled Nathan, but what could he do about it, other than watch Vikram gloat with pride at his son’s position in life?

In these last years of Parvati’s working and Raja’s going to finish his schooling, a change had come over both of them. As was only right, Nathan decided. They were
growing up, children no longer, and it would not have been correct for them to play together as they once had. Parvati was suddenly shy of Raja, and Nathan watched with foreboding as her eyes would glance to the left, toward Vikram’s quarters, flushing when Raja came out whistling a film song. She had never learned to contain her emotions; in that she was still a child, presenting a naked face to the world, hiding nothing.

And then for the first time in almost all the years that they had been married, Nathan and his wife had a conversation. This was not just a command from Nathan to his wife, a comment from her to him—this was an exchanging of views. For in Nathan’s world, the rules were so simple an idiot could understand them. Men and women married for convenience; if a child were ill, they talked about doctors or medicines; when a child was to be married, the man’s opinion held sway on the rightness of alliances. And for his part, he never interfered in the cooking, although he had the authority to ask for specific dishes to be cooked, and to his liking. But now, with Parvati, Nathan was suddenly bereft, and wanted counsel even from his wife. Because there was no one else he could really turn to.

He and his wife talked at night, when they were sure Parvati was asleep. There could be no alliance between Parvati and Raja. It would simply not do. Not just for the class matter, but also they were of a different caste. For Nathan this was very important. It defined who he was, and stepping out of the caste was something only the rich and famous and
indifferent did. Something Mrs. Rao would have blithely done—if such an opportunity for riches through marriage had presented itself to her for either her daughter or her son—and have passed it off as being modern and living with the times.

Parvati and Raja seemed to keep away from each other, as though knowing what their parents wanted. But Nathan’s dislike of Raja grew to a loathing. He was an arrogant young man, and his mouth was constantly pursed in a whistle, until the sound frittered away Nathan’s nerves. Raja’s body was compact, his stomach flat with youth. His eyes were too hot, his childhood smile lingering in them when he looked at Parvati. And Nathan saw his daughter glance back, wistfully sometimes, when sweat drenched the back of Raja’s khaki polyester uniform and defined muscles along his spine. For one year, they looked at each other. Just that.

“Appa.” Parvati’s voice is barely audible over the sound of the crickets chirping in the tamarind tree.

“What is it?” Nathan asks grimly.

“Amma forgot to give you some
payasam.
Here.” She proffers a steel cup with the warm
payasam,
and then, when Nathan does not move, brings her arm around into his field of vision. That hand trembles suddenly, and the
payasam
slops around in its container. The glass bangles on her wrist meet in a tinkling sound.

In the beginning, Nathan would not even allow her to
call out to him with that word, Appa. Father. In the beginning, he would not talk with her, or acknowledge that she was there. He had held himself rigid with distaste when he heard her voice or saw her, frowned when she spoke, never met her gaze, never even looked at her. It was two years before Nathan could look upon his daughter Parvati again. And when he did, the roundness of her face surprised him. He had thought the immense tragedy that had befallen them, because of her, wretched girl, would have thinned her cheeks, laid hollows under her eyes, created the gauntness of guilt. But no, Parvati looked the same as she had, placid and content, the child Krishna in her lap, her smiles disappearing into her ears when she looked upon him.

There was something endearing about that smile to Nathan, much as he tried to argue himself out of it. And so little by little, he had begun to talk to her again. In commands mostly. Heat water for my bath. Or, Go call your mother. Or, Take that bawling child away. She blossomed under even so little an affection from him, and his heart filled to choking with grief again. Why, he had thought. Why.

“Appa.” This time Parvati’s voice is bold. “I heated the
payasam
again. Drink it soon, or it will cool and you will not like it.”

Nathan eyes the cup, held in front of him with a hand that shakes no longer. The bangles are stilled of their clinking music, the forearm is steady, muscled. Parvati has thick hands and stubby fingers and a layer of grit decorates the edges of her short fingernails. She wears a cheap imitation
gold ring on the little finger of her right hand. Nathan never bought her gold jewelry as he did for his other daughters when they got married; he never even gave her new clothes when Krishna was born.

He accepts the cup with a grunt and drinks the
payasam
through the left side of his mouth, away from the
vetalaipaak
stewing on the right side, tucked over his gums. The sweetness of jaggery, mashed
dal,
cardamom, and boiled milk soars over his tongue, and he thinks suddenly that the
payasam
has never tasted so good before.

“Where is he?” he asks, as he returns the cup to Parvati.

She takes a long time to answer, and what her expression is, Nathan cannot tell, for he still sits facing out into the yard, with his back to her. But it is the first time he has asked after the child; the very first time he has admitted to the boy’s presence.

“Asleep,” she says. “He has eaten well for his night’s meal. Now he sleeps, my Krishna.”

“Go,” Nathan says, as an immense fatigue comes over him. He lights a
beedi
and smokes it in silence, waiting for Parvati to leave. She does walk away eventually, the long pleats of her sari whispering on the concrete floor. The sound scratches on Nathan’s eardrums. She is too young, he thinks, to have graduated already to a sari, because of that child Krishna—because he made her a mother.

While it has been somewhat easy to ignore Parvati in the last two years, the child has infringed upon Nathan with his singing voice, his howls of imagined pain, his concentrated
reciting of the nursery rhymes that Parvati has taught him. And then there were those unguarded moments when Nathan would feel a tiny hand tugging at the border of his
veshti,
or look up when the boy clasped his arms around Nathan’s knees as he laboriously read the Tamil newspaper. Then all he could do was to shout for his wife, or more lately for Parvati, and say, “Remove him. Now.”

When Parvati has gone back to the kitchen to wash and put away his
payasam
cup, Nathan begins to breathe again, until the ache blankets and smothers him. He rubs a hand over his chest, hoping to ease the pain. For three years this despair has persisted within him. When will it finally leave? When will he be free? Why had he not been more aware of what was happening with his daughter? But all Raja and Parvati had done was to glance at each other with an immense yearning.

Nathan went to speak with Vikram. This must not go on, he said of the atmosphere of longing. Vikram knew, and he knew that no marriage could come of this.

“But what to do, sir?” Vikram asked, his tone respectful, though laid under with a lightly mocking mirth. He did not have to worry too much, he had a son. A male child could do no wrong. If anyone had to be protected, it was Nathan’s daughter, and that was not Vikram’s problem. They smoked a
beedi
together, sitting outside the barracks on their haunches. This was the first and only time Nathan talked publicly with
Vikram. “Get your Parvati married, sir,” Vikram said. Nathan nodded and went away, thinking about what the sweeper had said.

For the next few months, his wife and he cast around for alliances—from the village, from the neighboring barracks, and even from the Tamil newspaper’s matrimonial advertisements section. But nothing came through, mostly because they did this desultorily, without too much enthusiasm. The reasons were myriad. Suddenly, they were both afraid of a house without a child, so used were they to having a third person around. And Parvati brought in some money from her maid’s work. And the older daughters (and these were expected events) had children from their marriages. With each child, they came back to the barracks for their confinements and so there were hospital bills, doctor fees, new clothes for each birth, gold bangles for the babies, amulets of gold to be strung on black rope around the babies’ waists to ward off the evil eye. It was, Nathan thought, an unending penance for having had daughters.

Then Raja got a new job—the job Nathan had coveted for his ghost son—as a peon for the managing director of a local foundry. He left the barracks and went to live in his own quarters in the city. A sudden space formed around them all and Nathan breathed more easily, did not dread returning home after a day’s work, did not have to anticipate trouble. Parvati moped. Her eyes grew heavy with almost constant tears, and she took to refusing food, eating only sparingly, until she grew thin and wasted. Nathan’s wife worried about
her, retreating into an unnatural silence. But Nathan did not see the gloom over their quarters. He did not see, although he should have, that Parvati wore her thick-skirted
pavadai
higher and higher on her waist, covering something. Six months passed and one day, Nathan saw Parvati put a hand to her aching back as she squatted on the floor chopping up a cauliflower for curry. It was such a simple gesture, that massaging touch to the back, but one thronging with meaning.

His heart stopped and then flooded back into action. How? Where? When? Why did this have to happen to him? He ran to Parvati and grabbed a handful of her hair. Lifting her by her hair until the skin peeled away from her skull, he slapped her. Over and over again. Witch. Bitch. How could she? Nathan’s wife came running out of the other room and shoved him against the wall. Please. Let her be. She did not know what she was doing. How could she have known?

He turned on her, enraged. She knew. She had known and not told him. He slapped his wife, knocked Parvati down, rained blows on her. Nathan’s wife heaved herself up and covered her daughter. Don’t, she yelled. You cannot hit her when she is in this condition. Think of the child. Think of her, think of
your
child.

“She is no longer my child.” Nathan kicked at his daughter’s legs, pulled his wife away, and dragged his daughter out to the verandah and to the gate near the tamarind tree. “Get out! I don’t ever want to see you again. Get out and stay out.”

By this time, the barracks were full of the others, leaning out of their windows, filling the verandah, watching goggle-eyed.
Someone ran to Mrs. Rao, who left her dinner and came in a hurry. “Nathan, stop this!” she shouted.

Nathan was so saturated with rage that his limbs shook violently, and when he could not hit Parvati, he began to bang his fist into the bark of the tamarind tree’s trunk until his fingers were bloody. And then, finally, his anger abated, his hands began to flare with pain, and the shivering stopped.

With one hand, Mrs. Rao waved the others back to their quarters and took a weeping Parvati indoors. The girl was bleeding from her head where her father had kicked her; Nathan’s wife had a scraped elbow. Nathan sat outside, smoking
beedi
after
beedi
into the night, lifting a blood-caked hand to his mouth. Mrs. Rao came out and without a word went back to her house. She did not even look at him.

He sat there all night, weighted down by all that had happened, even his anger. He had never struck any of his children before. The lights stayed on in his quarters, and from time to time he saw his wife and Parvati look out of the window at him. As the sun glowed in the eastern sky, Nathan cried. At first he sobbed softly, tears running down his face, drenching the
beedi
end. Then out loud, hopelessness racking his body. Then he was enraged at Raja, at Vikram, a tough, surging anger that swamped through him. He rose and went to Vikram’s door, demanded that Raja come from the city to marry his daughter. It was the right thing to do.

Suddenly, Vikram was no longer respectful. All night he had waited for this conversation, from the time he had
watched Nathan beat Parvati. He said little, only this: “Is it really Raja’s, Nathan? How do we know? How do we know anymore of anything? Is it really Raja’s?”

After that day, Nathan grew densely quiet within himself. Mrs. Rao finally talked to him and told him he must look after Parvati. Somewhere within his heart, Nathan agreed with her. But how did she know how he felt, how could she even begin to see his pain? Of Raja, there was no news, no indication even that he had once lived in their barracks. He was gone, had disappeared into the city of ten million, not to be seen again. Nathan sent Parvati to the village to have the child. A few months after it was born, she came back to them. For there was nowhere else she could go, no one else whose name she bore, but Nathan’s.