The Toss of a Lemon (12 page)

It sounds like her heart popping open. She feels her shoulder blades locking across her back. From the safe’s inner sanctum drifts the scent of sandalwood.

She takes out the bundles of ancient palm leaves on which were recorded mysteries of the universe: her husband’s treasures. She pushes their clothes aside and puts the palm-leaf bundles in the bottom of the trunk even though he didn’t give her the keys to unlock these mysteries. Now she takes out a slim sandalwood box. It contains the leaves on which the children’s astral portraits are scratched. She doesn’t open the box, just lifts it quickly from the safe and drops it in the trunk, among the children’s clothes. She shuts up the safe and the memories and the scent. She shuts the trunk lid on the little clothes, and her spare sari, and the scent. She lifts her hand to her nose. The smell of the soft, golden wood is upon her fingers.

The children play in the sun on the veranda. A familiar shadow darkens the light from the front door. Her hand falls from her face and resentment and fear rise in her throat: it is them again, the siddhas. She wonders if they know that her husband is dead. She has not allowed herself to be seen.

Before she decides whether to move to the door, the siddhas begin to sing, accompanied by a little
dholak
drum, finger cymbals and a rough lute. Their voices are more strident than melodic, yet everyone on the Brahmin quarter will hum this tune, without admitting it, for weeks.

The song’s undertow pulls Sivakami to the open door, but the siddhas have already begun to move off. They travel the length of the Brahmin quarter, singing.

At the end of the street, they keep walking, but one of them—which?—calls out mockingly, “Here is a body, feed it!”

AT HER FATHER’ S HOUSE in Samanthibakkam, where her brothers live with their families, Sivakami takes on the lion’s share of household work. The cotton of her saris grows thick and soft with washing. She draws the end over her head, sheltering her scalp from the sun or stray looks: white reflects all sunlight, any incidental looks glance off her. Bad omen. Her narrow shoulder blades protect her heart from the back and her sari now protects it from the front.

Others might have dwelled or moped or made life difficult for themselves and others, but Sivakami has tucked her grief away. No one expects her to chit-chat. As part of her extra-pure madi state, she has also resolved never to eat food cooked by any other person, so she volunteers to cook for all of them. Since she cooks very well, her sisters-in-law are only too happy to give the kitchen responsibilities to her.

Kamu, her eldest brother’s wife, had childhood polio that left her with one foot shrivelled and bent so that she walks, rolling, on its callused “top.” She is a bit loud and demonstrative for Sivakami’s taste, but also very kind. Sivakami likes her a lot, and wonders if it is, in part, their temperamental differences that make Kamu so appealing. Sivakami also admires Meenu, married to her second brother, who is brisk and busy, as industrious as her husband, at least in non-domestic matters. Their considerable energy is focused at present on their burgeoning traffic in Ayurvedic remedies for new mothers. They are packaging a gripe water brewed with fennel seeds, and “Cure-All Concentrate,” garlic and sweet herbs reduced in ghee to a medicinal paste, said to shrink the womb and enhance milk production.

Sivakami is as fond of Kamu and Meenu as she is suspicious of Ecchu, Subbu’s wife. Her youngest brother is also the sweetest, a gentle and incorruptible soul who always gives in to the children’s clamouring for candy or soda pop. Ecchu is stingy, but too insecure to tell Subbu to cease his indulgences. Instead, she mutters reprimands she refuses to clarify or repeat. For Kamu, housework is strenuous; for Meenu and Ecchu, it is an inconvenient distraction. Sivakami is given full rein.

Sivakami’s concerns for her children in the aftermath of their father’s death are soon allayed. Vairum’s cousins accept and include him as the Cholapatti children never did. Vairum is thrilled and opens himself entirely to the clique. He is out of the house every day, running and playing, coming in for lunch and a nap, too hungry and tired to think of anything else, and then only returning after sunset, so he and Sivakami no longer clash over her madi state. By the time she calls him home, she is able and glad to enfold him in her embrace. Thangam seems little affected by her surroundings and indeed keeps much the same routine as she did in Cholapatti, sitting on the veranda with admirers clustered round.

One of the children’s favourite pastimes is trade. Cowries are coveted items, and the rarity of a glass soda bottle stopper with the wax rubbed off makes it valuable, though a marble is more easily utilized. Girls tend to go for long and colourful feathers, boys for unidentified metal objects. Once in a long while, the skull of a bird or mouse makes the rounds, and bidding is fierce. Vairum lets his small treasures go at bargain prices, gaining the reputation of a sucker... but everyone likes a sucker.

Most coveted of all is money, because it is the only item of currency with equal value in a child’s and an adult’s realm. Money breaks barriers, and Vairum puts this principle into effect as soon as he figures it out. When he is the one his uncle Subbu favours with a coin, Vairum runs immediately to his companions and asks how they would like him to spend it. Suggestions usually centre on a round of candy.

Vairum has also discovered a talent: he has an instinct for elementary arithmetic. He amuses himself and the other children by doing long calculations and reciting litanies of large numbers. Unlike in Cholapatti, here he is appreciated for who he is, so as he discovers his gifts, they blossom. He is becoming, in small increments, who he was born to be.

WHILE SIVAKAMIIS SETTLING HER CHILDREN at her father’s house, Muchami, in Cholapatti, tends to business alone. This is the role for which he was intended—Sivakami’s right-hand man.

Every few days, he collects the rent of some tenant or other. Someone is always late, or needing to make a partial payment; schedules are flexible. He makes rounds every day and has no difficulty keeping track. The tenants pay in paddy, when they harvest paddy, and silver the rest of the time. If Muchami receives paddy, he converts it to silver, as agreed. Hanumarathnam required all his tenants to plant a variety of crops, so they would have steady incomes and continually rich soil. Some landlords encourage the planting of entire fields with single crops they consider up-and-comers, convincing tenants with promises of jackpots. Always, the tenant goes into debt within five years, and the landlord ends up profiting from a protracted legal battle. When Muchami had asked Hanumarathnam if he was interested in this, he was relieved to hear that his employer disapproved.

As he and Sivakami agreed, he bundles the collected coins in paper and tosses the packet through one of the high windows of the main hall, which are barred and shuttered, except for one. Sometimes it lands with a thud and sometimes with a ring and spinny clatter, depending on how well he has folded the packet and how strong the scrap of paper he used. Either way, all the silver morsels are safe inside the stronghold.

He makes a deposit whenever the pile of collected coins becomes too great for him to carry in the waist-roll of his dhoti, about twice a week. Before doing so, he goes to the courthouse veranda to locate the scribe Hanumarathnam retained before his death. There are men on the Brahmin quarter whom Hanumarathnam could have recruited as volunteers, friends who would have been happy to help Sivakami with business matters, but he had thought it best not to give them responsibility or information.

Though Muchami cannot read, he’s no slouch in the math department, at least for the purposes of business. Still, he has the squatting-squinting scribe double-check his tally sheet and record it in longhand, next to the place where he himself recorded it in numerals. When the sheet starts to get worn and torn, Muchami has the scribe write at the bottom, “All fine. R. Muthuswami,” and address an envelope. Muchami inks his thumbprint above his name, the paper practically refolds itself and Sivakami receives it regular as trains out of Madras station.

In the fourth week after Sivakami leaves, Muchami is rising from doing his business with the scribe and notices the customer behind him giving him an odd smile. He nods; Gopalan is from his own caste community, and they meet most evenings in the market, along with everyone else interested in the news of the day.

“Rent, is it?” Gopalan remarks casually.

Muchami gives him a vague and uncomprehending smile. After Muchami leaves, Gopalan confirms with the scribe, whose code of professional ethics includes nothing about confidentiality, that he had been writing the names of Sivakami’s tenants next to numbers that could plausibly be plot rents.

That evening, Muchami and Gopalan are both among the men clustered around the circular stone bench in the centre of the Kulithalai market.

Gopalan asks loudly, “What do you do with the silver, Muchami?”

Muchami waves at him in friendly acknowledgement and continues paying careful attention to a vendetta story being related by a man beside him.

“Hoy, Muchami! Muchami-o!” Gopalan is not to be put off, and his cronies are also intrigued, since he has, of course, told them as much as he knows, on which information they have speculated as extensively as they are able. They move over to engulf Muchami. “Where do you keep the coins? Are you putting them in one of your mother’s pots?”

It would be no good to have word get around that he is storing Sivakami’s silver in his mother’s house. It doesn’t occur to Muchami to suggest he is depositing the money with a bank or moneylender. He must decide rapidly, and so, since he thinks their system is a good one, he opts against his better instincts to tell the curious men the truth.

“No, all the money goes back in the house. It couldn’t be more secure, no one in the village has keys to the padlocks, and you know there are several doors on each side. It’s as good as a safe. Anyway, Sivakami Amma will come back from time to time and put it all in the real safe inside. A Dindigul safe. The whole thing is impenetrable.”

The men are nodding evaluatively.

“But how do you put the money in the house?”

“Oh, there is a way.” Muchami makes as if to go.

“Where there’s a way in, there’s a way out.” Gopalan prods.

“No, no, this is a way only to put the money in,” Muchami says, trying to turn away. “It can’t be taken out the same way, no.”

“A hole in the wall?”

“A chute?”

The men sound as though they are trying to offer suggestions.

“No, please, nothing so complicated. But tell me”—Muchami turns to the man whose tale of a sordid family feud had been interrupted—“ how the sisters of the dead boy took revenge.”

“An open window.” It’s Gopalan who hits on this. “There are bars—you throw the bundle in, yes, Muchami? You never said you didn’t have keys to the courtyard, right, and from there you go to the garden...”

The men need no further contribution from Muchami; they can continue debating the merits and drawbacks of the house safe system on their own.

In this discussion, one of their number thinks he recognizes an opportunity.

Cunjusamy’s father had been a ruthless usurer and had accumulated a substantial fortune. Cunjusamy inherited his father’s values but none of his skill. His debtors take advantage: they don’t pay interest; they claim early to have paid off their pawns; they carry home collateral that is not their own. His once-considerable inheritance is dwindling.

He waits a month, long after everyone in the marketplace has ceased even to think about the house safe. Then he waits for a night when the moon is half full—half light so he can see, half dark so he cannot be easily seen—and walks along the canal behind the Brahmin quarter until he reaches Sivakami’s house.