The House of Blue Mangoes (3 page)

As Charity bustled about the great kitchen, tending to three of the five wood-burning stoves which had begun their daily contribution of ash to the layers that already blackened the walls, she was joined by her sister-in-law. Kamalambal, widowed these past two years, was a plump and even-tempered woman. Charity and she got on very well and between them they ran the household. Kamalambal went off to supervise the milking of the cows and Charity began issuing instructions to the two women who helped her in the kitchen. There was still no sign of her brother-in-law Abraham’s wife, but this didn’t surprise her for Kaveri was a frail and sickly woman who frequently took to her bed, especially when her husband beat her, a regular occurrence. Abraham was away visiting some of their properties so maybe she was just ill.

Charity was planning to make fish biryani, as she had done every festival day for twenty years. The grinding and mixing of the various masalas and spices had to begin early. But she could not ignore the morning meal either, puttu and stew; she had the puttu steamers, lengths of bamboo stem, cleaned and ensured that the huge iron vessel of stew was ready to be heated.

Charity Dorai was a beautiful woman. Fair in a land where the paleness of a woman’s complexion outweighed every other attribute, it was expected that she would make a good marriage and she did. Rumours of her beauty travelled to the ears of the Dorai family, who had broken with Andavar tradition that cross-cousins marry and instead reached across the mountains to Nagercoil where her father was headmaster of a school. They had even foregone a dowry and paid all the marriage expenses.

The fish biryani, her signature dish, had been unknown in the Big House when she had first arrived. Her husband and in-laws had taken to it. Indeed, they had come to like it so much that they had demanded it on every festive occasion. Only during the monsoon months, when the fishermen did not put out to sea, would they settle for the traditional biryani made with goat meat.

The great cast-iron vessels in which the biryani would cook had been cleaned and oiled by the servants and she began setting out the ingredients swiftly and surely. Thick seer fish cuts, fresh and glistening, a gleaming mound of rice that had been washed and drained, onions, green chillies, garlic, ginger, coriander, red chillies, turmeric, curd, mint leaves, cinnamon, cardamom, clove, nutmeg, aniseed, cumin seed, cake seed and mace (all to be ground to make the masala which gave the dish its unique taste), a pinch of saffron, ghee, thick and fragrant. She smiled to herself as she thought of the experimentation she had resorted to when she had first arrived, trying to come up with acceptable substitutes for some of the ingredients used by her father’s neighbour, a friendly Mappilai lady, who had treated the motherless girl like her own daughter, teaching her, feeding her, and imparting to her the secrets of the tasty cooking of northern Malabar.

As she worked, she kept an eye on the servants who were preparing the morning meal. In a corner of the kitchen one of the girls was filling the puttu steamers with rice flour, alternating it with layers of feathery coconut. In about an hour, Solomon would need to be fed. He would, as he always did when his brother Abraham was away, eat alone. After that there would be a dozen children clamouring for food. Charity would need to make haste. She had been doing this every morning for twenty years, but she still expected some disaster to strike and disrupt the smooth routine of the household. By now the vast kitchen had filled with sound and smell: rice was being pounded in the great stone quern in the corner, the deep bass thumps reverberating through the kitchen in sharp counterpoint to the ratcheting noise from the grindstone where spices and herbs were being ground. A sleepy child, a cousin’s son, wandered into the kitchen. Charity gave him a piece of cucumber to chew on and sent him off in search of his mother.

Ten minutes later, Charity and Kamalambal took their first break in nearly two hours. The cows had been milked, the servants instructed, the morning meal organized, and they had an hour to themselves, possibly a little longer, before the next rush. The sun was not yet hot, and the two women relaxed on a broad earthen platform at the back of the house. Charity’s older daughter, Rachel, sat at her feet. Her mother’s practised fingers probed and massaged the girl’s scalp, preparatory to oiling her long, black hair.

The girl would need to get married soon, Charity thought – nearly thirteen years old, and still unmarried. She herself had been five months short of her fourteenth birthday when she was married and she had been considered old. The times were changing, she understood that, but girls had to be married at the right age. What a pity her only brother Stephen had no sons. He had daughters, three of them. It would be perfect if Daniel and Aaron could each be betrothed to a sister. They could be married off as soon as a boy was found for Rachel, and the Dorais would have a month of weddings so grand the whole district would talk about it!

From where the women sat, the ground sloped gently down to the mud wall that enclosed the courtyard of the house on three sides. The Big House was the largest in the village, and had been so ever since Solomon’s great-grandfather built it over a hundred years ago. Little of the original mud-and-thatch house now survived. Successive generations had enlarged the house according to their own needs and whims, and now it had over a dozen rooms, some of which were never used. When Charity had first arrived she had been appalled to find that the larger livestock shared their living space. Now a cattle shed sprouted from the western side. Until Vakeel Perumal had built his house two years ago, this was the only house on two levels in the village. Charity smiled as she recalled her husband’s grumbling about Vakeel Perumal’s ambition. For all his distinction and wealth, he could sometimes display an almost childlike sense of outrage and disappointment.

The morning routine continued to unfurl at a measured pace in the backyard of the Big House. A servant girl was stripping a few glossy green leaves from the karuvapillai bush that grew next to a row of drumstick trees, their long green fruit swaying in the breeze like gypsy earrings. A rooster strutted along at the head of a small group of chickens, pausing every few moments to strop the earth and peer in its foolish squint-eyed way at any food it might have uncovered. The sound of the shotgun being fired carried back to them, but Charity was unperturbed. Solomon and Aaron, her younger son, were known to try and bag doves or other game birds when the fancy took them. She did feel a slight twinge of anxiety – the reports had sounded alarmingly close to the house. ‘Wonder what we’ll have to cook this evening,’ she laughed. Over by the well, another servant girl was drawing water, the squeak-squeak of the windlass clear and strong in the morning calm. A black goat with white points, which had ambled up, lowered its head and charged the girl. With a shriek, she let go of the rope and took off, the goat at her heels.

‘That shaniyan, I’ll cut his throat and put him in a biryani if he doesn’t learn how to behave,’ Charity said. ‘He’s been impossible to control ever since he was a kid. Ratnam, where are you, Ratnam?’ she yelled. A man with a pockmarked face looked out of the cowshed and Charity told him to find the goat and tie it up. A couple of the dogs woke up and their barking added to the confusion.

Just then Charity noticed an old woman with steel-grey hair squeezing through a gap in the back wall. ‘Never seen Selvi here so early, she must be bursting with gossip,’ Charity said idly, giving her daughter an affectionate little push to indicate that she was done with her. As Rachel disappeared into the house, Selvi came panting up and sank with great relief on to one of the lower steps. ‘Aiyo amma, you will never believe what has just happened . . .’

Twenty men had attacked the Andavar tenant farmers’ houses (the old woman said forty and Charity prudently divided that figure in half), killed three of them and raped five girls. When pressed, the old woman had no further details; all she could do was further embroider whatever facts there had been.

4

When Solomon returned to the house after his bath, he was surprised to see his wife waiting for him on the veranda. Usually he did not set eyes on her until she served him his morning meal. Charity could see that Solomon was in a bad mood and she wondered whether the shots she’d heard had anything to do with it. She hesitated, not wanting to add to what was troubling him, then told him anyway, omitting much of the detail and scaling down the events.

‘These girls, one of them was about to be married, you say?’ Solomon asked, interrupting his wife’s narrative.

‘Yes, Valli.’

‘Could it have been a dowry matter?’

‘Selvi says it wasn’t. She insists that the girls were attacked by strange men from outside the village!’

Could this be the source of the unease he’d felt all morning, Solomon wondered. But it was best not to jump to conclusions. Selvi was such an unreliable informant, he should probably wait for more news. Nevertheless, he interrogated his wife further.

‘Where are the injured girls now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Charity replied. ‘Selvi wasn’t very clear . . .’

‘It’s best not to believe everything Selvi says. Do you know where that illegitimate son of a donkey is?’

Guessing that her husband was referring to his barber, Charity said she would send someone to fetch him immediately.

‘Don’t bother, I’ve already bathed,’ Solomon said wearily and went to his room.

Later that morning a deputation of villagers arrived at the Big House and Solomon received a more coherent version of the day’s events. Kuppan, Valli’s father, was one of his most dependable tenants, farming five acres of double-crop rice and three acres of coconut. He paid his rent on time, and was one of the most hard-working men in the village. Now, as he watched tears mingle with sweat on the man’s lean face, Solomon’s own impassive face softened with concern. As thalaivar, he had to listen to a daily litany of complaint and plea but Kuppan’s story moved him. He felt sympathy and concern, but also anger. He did not let it show but it scorched him from within.

Alerted by her distraught cousin, it seemed that a search party had gone looking for the girl and had found her deep in the acacia forest. Like a wounded animal, she had sought out the most inaccessible place to take refuge in. Her sari was torn and her blouse shredded and she had not been able to utter a single intelligible word.

‘How is your girl now?’ Solomon asked.

The anguished father seemed not to have heard the question and he repeated it.

‘Your daughter – how is she?’

‘Aiyah, what am I to say? She does not eat or speak, thrashes around like a goat whose head has been cut off, and her eyes, in her eyes there is something that I have never seen in all my life. After this, it would be better if she was dead, perhaps that way she will be able to cope with it . . .’

‘Come now, things will be taken care of . . . Show me where it happened.’

Solomon was careful to keep his voice free of anger; it wouldn’t do to further upset the near-hysterical man. He took Kuppan by the arm, his mind all the while flickering over the likely list of culprits. Muthu Vedhar was quite capable of it, but would he be so obvious? An outsider? But if there had been any strangers lurking around bent on mischief, he would have known. The village had no secrets.

Parvathi, the younger of the girls, was part of the deputation and Solomon interrogated her as they walked towards Anaikal.

‘So you didn’t recognize anyone?’

‘No, aiyah,’ she replied.

Outsiders, he thought. Scum who had floated into the village on the new road. What a pity that he hadn’t followed up on the disquiet he had felt early that morning and investigated the area surrounding Anaikal instead of going down to the river! He might have been able to apprehend the culprits or at the very least have identified them. Solomon told the village watchman to inform the deputy tahsildar in town of the incident and said that he would be along shortly with a full report.

Near their destination, the road was tiger-striped with brightness and shade, the sunlight filtering through the branches of the giant banyan trees that lined it. Its beauty made no impression on Solomon. Plenty of hiding-places here, he mused, the men could have taken cover among the banyan trees. He looked up and was dismayed to see Vakeel Perumal standing in the courtyard of his house, which overlooked the spot where the girls had been attacked.

Solomon disliked Vakeel Perumal. The man never failed to remind the headman of the success he had enjoyed as a lawyer in Salem before he had come to this dismal place three years ago. And never missed an opportunity to criticize the headman’s decisions. In my great-grandfather’s time, perhaps even in my father’s, a nuisance like Vakeel Perumal would simply have been banished from the village, never to be seen again, he thought, as the lawyer descended on him.

‘This is an outrage. A slur on all Andavars,’ Vakeel Perumal began ponderously. ‘A blemish on the fair face of the village, and a challenge to your leadership.’ He was a thin man with a fat man’s face. His peculiar looks made him even easier to dislike.

‘I know. That is why I’m investigating the matter personally.’

‘Do you know what they are trying to do?’

Solomon wasn’t quite sure what the lawyer was getting at, so to be safe he said, ‘Who?’

‘Trying to make us ashamed of our birthright, that’s what they are trying to do, don’t you see?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Solomon said shortly. ‘Two girls were attacked near here. I don’t see how that relates . . .’

Vakeel Perumal did not let him complete his sentence. Loose flesh heaving like the dewlaps of a cow, he pointed dramatically to the smooth face of Anaikal and said, ‘We should not be wilfully blind to what they are trying to do.’

Solomon looked to where the lawyer was pointing. On the granite outcrop someone had scrawled in lime:

REMEMBER THE 1859 BREAST WARS. IF LOW-CASTE DOGS DO NOT KNOW THEIR PLACE, THEIR WIVES AND SISTERS WILL SOON REMIND THEM OF IT
.