The Faith of Ashish (15 page)

"Somewhere there is a village that needs a
chamar
to clean up its dead animals and dry their skins into leather and make sandals and drums for the upper castes," Latha said.

"Yes," said Virat. "But they are somewhere there and we are here."

For a long time, Virat and Latha lay next to each other in silence. Neither could sleep. Virat's mind stayed fixed on their plight, but Latha's mind drifted to the plight of the young girl in another hut.

"Poor little Devi. What can she do?" Latha asked, tears marring her voice. "To deny the landowner's son is to sin, because he is the son of her master. But not to deny him is also to sin. What can that child do?"

"We live in a time when nothing is right and all actions are sinful," Virat said. "What can any of us do?"

"The times. When will they change?"

Virat didn't answer. He had no answers.

"Please," Latha begged. "We must get away from here!"

Virat reached over to her with a reassuring touch. "You do not need to fear any of them."

"I do not fear them," Latha said. "I fear us. If we stay here, I fear what we will become."

B
andages, Miss Davidson!"

Had Dr. Moore looked up at her, he would have seen that Abigail already had the bandages in hand and ready for him.Yet another injury caused by the ancient plows local farmers used to prepare their rice paddies for planting. Abigail had assisted Dr. Moore in treating so many of these injuries at the clinic that she could easily have tended to this boy by herself.

"I will finish up with the patient," Dr. Moore stated. "You might as well start cleaning up."

Not that Abigail would ever get the chance to actually treat a patient. Dr. Moore was the doctor, of course. But she was the nurse, not simply a cleaning lady!

Like all the other injured men and boys, this one immediately got up off the cot, folded his hands together and bowed his head to murmur, "
Namaste."
Thank you. He should stay and rest, at least for the remainder of the day. But, of course, he would not. Tomorrow morning he would be back at the plow, working all day behind a bullock or water buffalo.

"That boy could not be more than ten or eleven years old," Dr. Moore muttered as the child left the clinic. "A country of fools, that's what India is."

"Truly, Sir, it is not an altogether unpleasant country," Abigail said. She could be as positively positive as Dr. Edward Moore could be pessimistically pessimistic. But Abigail was also honest, so she allowed, "It is extremely hot. But all the same, it is not altogether unpleasant."

"Hot?" Dr. Moore said. He laughed out loud. "Hot for England, perhaps, but this is India. We are still in the midst of the comfortable season. Wait a few months and you will learn the true meaning of hot."

Abigail pushed back a stray lock of strawberry blonde hair and tucked it under her cap. "However uncomfortable it becomes, I shall not complain of the heat," she announced. "We are here to make a difference in people's lives, and I shan't complain about whatever inconveniences I am called to encounter along the way."

"You will soon repent of your resolve not to complain," Dr.Moore muttered, half under his breath.

Abigail paid him no mind. "I want to see the country. I want to understand the people. That's what you have done, is it not, Doctor?"

"I have seen the country, all right, but I have absolutely no understanding of the people."

"I want to ride again on an elephant. Have you done that? Oh, and I want to wash in the river."

Dr. Moore's eyebrows shot up. "I say, Miss Davidson! Have you completely forgotten yourself?"

"Oh, I don't mean wash like the natives do!" Abigail blushed a deep crimson. "Of course, I would keep my clothes on! It's only that I long to splash around in the cool water, you see, and—"

"And get deathly ill for your trouble? So that I shall have to care for you in addition to all my other responsibilities?"

Abigail knew perfectly well that so much talk would do her no good. She realized her chatter had already begun to irritate Dr. Moore. Yet she couldn't stop herself.

"I want to walk around and explore the countryside, you see."

The doctor laid down his armload of medical supplies. He adjusted his glasses that perpetually slipped down on his long, thin nose and, glaring hard at Abigail, demanded, "Why ever would you wish to do such a thing?"

"So I can meet the people. So I can see how the men work in the fields. So I can sit beside the women and observe them as they cook their meals. So I can watch the children at play."

Dr. Moore said nothing.

"I want to
know
the Indian people! If I don't know them, Sir, what right do I have to talk to them of important things? How can I tell them of the God who loves them so?"

"You are a foolish schoolgirl. Yes, that is precisely what you are—a foolish schoolgirl!"

He looked Abigail straight in the eye.

"You want to see how the men work in their fields, then? Well, I'll tell you. They work night and day in wretched conditions.You want to sit beside a woman as she cooks? Perhaps you have not noticed the protruding ribs on the bony bodies that come to us for help. Those women you want to watch have almost nothing to cook. They are not at home anyway, but are in the fields working alongside their husbands in the deep mud of the rice paddies. You want to watch the children at play, do you? Well, you shall have a right rotten time of it, Miss Davidson, for children here do not play. The fortunate ones work. The unfortunate ones lie down and die."

Lecture, lecture, lecture, Dr. Moore! Can you do nothing but lecture? Can you never once respect the opinions and thoughts of another?

Exactly that, Abigail determined, she would say to the good doctor. Sometime . . . at the right moment. When that time came, she would let the doctor know that healing hands did not make up for a stone-hard heart.

Yes, yes! She must remember those very words. She would say,
Dr. Moore, your healing hands do not make up for your hard heart of stone.

That afternoon, silence reigned in the clinic. Dr. Moore took his seat by the window, book in hand and spectacles perched on the end of his nose. Darshina left the clinic and went Abigail knew not where. Cook had left for home to be with her family until time to prepare the evening meal. At first Abigail paced restlessly from one window to the other. But when she saw the doctor nodding over his book, she hurried to her room and donned a straw hat. When she came back, Dr. Moore was fast asleep. Quietly, Abigail eased out the door.

Abigail had no idea where she was, nor did she know where she might wish to go. She stepped carefully onto the dirt road, and for no particular reason, chose to turn to the right. Fields and fields and more fields. That's all she saw. She stopped to watch a mud-splattered Indian man guide a dilapidated wooden contraption—precariously tied to a scrawny bullock—through a field of slogging mud. A woman and a passel of small children hurried back and forth across the field with buckets, pouring water out over the mud, then hurrying back for more.

Wretched conditions! The woman hard at work alongside her husband in the deep mud of a rice paddy. Emaciated children, who should have been at play, running back and forth toting heavy buckets of water.

Abigail was indeed a foolish schoolgirl. A foolish, foolish schoolgirl.

When Abigail arrived back at the clinic, the doctor was again reading his book. He didn't look up when she came in. She closed the door behind her and tiptoed to her room, which was off to the side.

"Everyone who comes to India wants to change it," Dr.Moore called after her. "But with time, you learn better."

N
o
!
No! No! No! No! No!" Saji Stephen screeched. "I want it! I want it to be my pet!"

"That animal has horrible claws, Saji Stephen," Parmar Ruth explained to her son. "And it isn't soft at all. Its shaggy hair is coarse and scratchy."

"I
. . . want . . . it!"
Saji Stephen yelled, stamping his little feet. "I want it and I will have it!"

"It" happened to be a toddy cat—a wild civet. The small creature—no more than seven pounds and not two feet long, unless one counted its equally long tail—had taken up an unwelcome residence in the trees surrounding Mammen Samuel Varghese's house. Small as it was, the toddy cat made enough of a racket to keep the entire household awake all night. It had actually made its home in the mango tree, but on occasion, such as the previous night, it raised an alarming ruckus fighting with its mate and clawing about on the roof. Babu had gone out to swat it away, and Saji Stephen followed. As soon as the boy saw the toddy cat's cute little face peeking out from among the mango leaves, its black markings making it look as though its eyes hid behind a mask, he determined he would have it as his pet.

"Talk to the boy," Parmar Ruth begged of her husband.

"He is your darling," Mammen Samuel replied. "You deal with him."

Mammen Samuel had more important concerns than the railings of a spoiled child. The rest of the household could comfort Saji Stephen. They always did. The cook plied him with figs stuffed with coconut. Parmar Ruth promised him a new toy . . . special treats . . . a tale of the gods. Babu tried to entice him with the promise of a ride on the elephant.

"Sunita Lois, play the sitar for your brother," Parmar Ruth instructed her daughter. "That always quiets his spirit."

Sunita Lois—older than Saji but younger than Boban Joseph—obediently lugged the unwieldy instrument from its place in the corner of the great room and sat on the floor, balancing the sitar between her left foot and right knee.

"Listen, Saji," she urged, "I'll play a special
raga
just for you." She plucked out a tune on the sitar's seven main strings and did her best to accompany it with the eleven sympathetic strings under the frets. But Sunita's hands were small and her interest in her lessons even smaller. So what came out was an incessantly ear-piercing twanged whine.

Even so, Saji Stephen stopped in mid-tantrum. "I want to ride the elephant," he said to Babu.

"Take the boy, Babu!" Mammen Samuel called in from the veranda. "Enough music, Daughter! Where is Boban Joseph?"

Harvest was almost over. The two good fields stood bare and the laborers had already moved on to the close field. Much less yield was expected there. But for Anup, finishing the harvest meant the time had come to prepare the fields for rice planting. Once the stubble had been cleared away, river trenches could be opened and the fields flooded.

Already the carpenter and blacksmith, who lived side by side at the settlement, worked to ready the plowshares and other paddy-planting tools. First the blacksmith sharpened the flattened blades on the two plowshares after which he made certain both were solidly connected to the sharpened pieces of wood used to support them.

The carpenter busied himself checking the long pole that ran from the top of the plowshare to the wooden yoke. He must make certain that yoke would hold fast when laid over the necks of a pair of bullocks, secured with ropes and bars of wood cinched beneath the animals' necks. Also, he replaced the cracked wooden handles attached at the rear of the plowshare. So many workers had grasped those handles, jerking them to the right to steer the plow in one direction and then to the left to steer it the opposite way, that three were cracked and two of those hung loose. The fourth handle was completely gone.

Though rich and lavish, Mammen Samuel's house was not large. Besides a simple bed chamber for him and his wife and a small inside kitchen that opened to the outside kitchen, it contained but a single great room. All three children slept on mats on the veranda, except in the monsoon season when they spread their mats in the large room.

"Outsized luxury" is the way Mammen Samuel described the great room. Its major piece of furniture consisted of a notso-comfortable couch with a pile of pillows stacked at each end. A perfectly white sheet covered it, and over the sheet, a deep green cover richly embroidered with elephants and river scenes and even a few Hindu gods. Across the room sat a second couch, this one small and brightly colored, firm and far more comfortable. A lotus-shaped bracket hung over the small couch, a painted picture of Jesus fitted inside. The copper bracket had been made to hold the portrait of a house deity, but since Mammen Samuel maintained a Christian household, it had been replaced with the Jesus picture.

Between the large couch and the small one stood a table and two straight-backed chairs. In the opposite corner, Sunita Lois's beautiful sitar rested—its round bowl on the floor and the beautiful neck of polished rosewood propped up against the wall. A drawing slab lay at the far side of the couch along with a pot of colors and brushes. These belonged to Parmar Ruth, though her daughter enjoyed painting too. A few books sat in a pile under the table, and a finely carved chess game— the white pieces from ivory and the black pieces from ebony— sat on top.

Four cages of pet birds hung from ivory tusks affixed into the wall. Mammen Samuel paid little attention to the small birds, though they chirped incessantly. But he did appreciate the great colored hornbill, too huge for its cage and always hungry for a mouse or lizard.

Normally, the family's women and children reserved the great room as their abode. The veranda was much more interesting and comfortable, and therefore the domain of the men. Not this particular day, however. For the veranda offered no privacy and Mammen Samuel wanted to talk to his son without the entire village pausing to listen.

"A fine harvest," Mammen Samuel began. "Even with the problems, an especially fine harvest. Thanks be to God for the bounty."

"Thanks be to God," Boban Joseph said.

"You supervised it well, my son." Boban Joseph did not miss the note of pride in his father's voice. "Now I will put you in charge of the rice planting. You must begin immediately, even though the wheat harvest is not yet complete. Tomorrow Anup should see that the two best fields are cleared of the wheat stubble. By early next week, I wish you to supervise the opening of the river trenches and begin swamping those fields before—"

"Wait!" Boban Joseph jumped up. "I am your son! Why must I work and work and work like one of your servants?" "You are not a child. It's time you learn what it means to be a landowner."

"What about Saji Stephen?" Boban Joseph insisted. "He is also your son, but you assign him no work at all. He whines and cries, and the whole world is handed to him."

Mammen Samuel leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. He stared hard into the face of his eldest son. "Sit down," Mammen Samuel said.

But Boban Joseph, still belligerent, refused. He folded his arms across his chest, planted his feet, and stared back at his father.

"Come, my son," Mammen Samuel urged. "Let us talk like men."

For a good while Boban Joseph hesitated, but finally he lowered his eyes and sat on the floor at his father's feet.

"Saji Stephen is a pet for our family," Mammen Samuel said. "That's what he is, and that's what he will always be. After I have gone to join my ancestors in heaven, Saji Stephen will inherit the one poor field near the laborers' settlement. But you, my son, will be the new master of everything else. The best rooms of this house will be yours, the ones that face east and south. That includes this great room and both the kitchens. Saji gets whatever is left. You will own all the good lands, and all the animals—the horses, the cows and bull, the goats and chickens, the bullocks and the water buffalo. All those will be yours. You will also inherit the laborers listed in my leather book. They will be your slaves to do with as you wish."

Boban Joseph stared at his father.

"You will care for your mother, of course—should she still be alive. And you will watch out for your brother. But you will be master, and they will obey you."

"Most of the laborers will be gone by then," Boban Joseph said. "Their debts will be repaid and they will have departed from our land."

"I have much to teach you, my son." Mammen Samuel reached for his leather accounting book. "The poor castes are all alike. They get paid for building a wagon, or for collecting a dead cow, or for bringing in a boatload of fish. They feel so rich that they quickly spend everything they earned. But then something unexpected happens and they have nothing left to pay the bills. So they must sell their few trinkets. If a second thing should happen—even something small—they have nothing left to sell. That's when they come to us begging for a loan."

Mammen Samuel opened his book and pointed to a row of names. "Whenever I make a loan, I require the family to move to the laborers' settlement until they work off enough to pay me back. What they do not realize is that I charge them fifty percent interest every month. I also charge them rent for their hut. Also, I add on a goodly sum for the food I distribute to them. Every
anna
and every
rupee
of that is added to their debt and more to reimburse me for my trouble."

"Don't they complain?" Boban Joseph asked.

"They don't know. They can't read the contract. But they sign it because I say they must before they can get the loan, and so it is law. These people are so desperate they will willingly affix their official thumbprint to anything I put before them."

"Are you saying it is impossible for them to ever pay off their debts?"

"That's right," his father said. "For a loan of thirty rupees . . . or twenty . . . or even ten, they sign away their lives. And the lives of their children and their grandchildren who are yet to be born. The arrangement is hard for them, but for us it is very good."

"But what if they fight us? Or run away?"

"Untouchables do not fight. To them, it is all
karma.
What they get is what they deserve. If they run away, we will send villagers and the authorities after them. They are low caste— or no caste—and they have no right to disrespect us." Mammen Samuel chuckled. "The Hindu religion is a very good thing for our purses."

Although Boban Joseph's face remained passive, inside him, his heart jumped for joy. When he ran from Devi's hut, he knew what he had done. He had brought ridicule down on his father's name. To get away with a sound scolding was the best he could hope for. More likely, he would face much harsher punishment. Yet here his father sat praising and rewarding him. Could it be possible that his father didn't know about Devi?

Mammen Samuel stopped talking. Once again, he folded his hands across his middle, but this time he fixed his eyes on his son and stared hard. Boban Joseph began to sweat.

"Anup's daughter is still a child, yet I did not complain about your behavior toward her," Mammen Samuel said. "I understand that she is but a toy for your indulgent pleasure. But you are not a child who needs a plaything. You are a man."

"Father, I don't know what you may have heard or what you think, but I—"

"I think you have acted as a fool. A very dangerous fool. Do you want to incite the entire settlement against you? Against all of us?"

"No, Father, I didn't do anything to that untouchable girl. I . . . I—"

"If you desire the girl, ply her with milk curd and
ghee,
enough for her and her family. Give her a bangle, if that would please you. But do not ever again step your foot into her father's hut."

"You don't understand, Father. All I wanted to do was—"

"Stop your blathering excuses and listen to me!" Mammen Samuel roared in a sudden rage. "I have worked hard to make the name of Varghese great in this village and in the surrounding villages as well. It is your responsibility to take that name up and make it greater still. You will not behave like a dog.You will not drag our respected name through the mud!"