The Toss of a Lemon (14 page)

Chinnarathnam leans forward. “You made a hole in each door.”

Cunjusamy answers through boo-hoos, “Yes.”

“You picked the lock. With a pin?” the policeman asks.

“Yes.”

“You went through three doors, then made a hole in the door to the main hall, then you didn’t go in and didn’t steal the money.”

“Yes. No! I mean, no. I mean...”

“What I said was right?” the officer says.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you steal the money?”

“I told them, it was the policemen. Four policemen, posed, like a picture, three standing, one kneeling, like, like...” Cunjusamy casts around. “Like that!” He points to the Ramar.

Muchami has backed up against the eastern wall of the house so that he alone can see both Sivakami and the interrogation. He looks at her; she wags her head: the house will be safe, not because of policemen or neighbours, but because her gods are protecting her.

Muchami clears his throat. “Sir, thank you, sir. Amma is satisfied that he won’t do it again.”

The police officer frowns. “Are you sure? This blackguard...”

Muchami looks to Sivakami again, and she wags her head more definitively.

“Sir, yes, that’s enough, sir.” Muchami, too, is wagging his head vigorously. “Please, sir, keep the notes, yes, everything, but that is enough, sir. The house will be safe.”

Murthy, too, wags his head as though satisfied. Chinnarathnam, too, concedes. It seems a bit abrupt, but he can’t dispute her judgment. He glances quizzically at the Ramar and, on their way back along the Brahmin quarter, asks Muchami what he thinks happened. The servant echoes Sivakami’s thought: the policemen’s appearance is a miracle.

The nephew, who had to suppress a cheer when the billy stick broke the bench, is disappointed that the interview is so brief. He points at Cunjusamy: “And don’t you forget it, fatso.”

Cunjusamy sneers and pulls back his hand as if to strike. The nephew insolently turns and saunters after the policeman. By the time they reach the main road into Kulithalai, he has asked three times to carry the billy stick.

WHEN THANGAM COMPLETES HER FIRST SEVEN YEARS, Sivakami’s family starts making noises on the subject of the girl’s marriage. Sivakami’s father begins and Kamu, her eldest sister-in-law, nods her lip-pursed agreement. Their strong opinion (stronger for being not at all original) is that it is high time. Kamu’s husband, Sambu, a roomy, sedentary man, is less enthusiastic than he should be—arranging a wedding is a lot of work and all that work is the brothers’. Their father, since his wife’s death, has largely withdrawn from family life and obligations. The middle son, Venketu, who is unnaturally energetic, annoys his elder brother with ambitious proclamations about the match they will make their niece.

With respectful comments on their brother-in-law’s renown as an astrologer, they request Thangam’s horoscope. Sivakami goes to her trunk, which now contains only the palm-leaf bundles and the carved sandalwood box. She had aired the clothes out on arrival, set them on their allotted shelf with her Ramayana and not opened the trunk since. Now she lifts out the long, slim box and sets it on the floor in front of her.

She bends to breathe the ancient scent—rich, antiseptic, vaguely obscene—of the sandal tree’s protected parts, the heartwood and roots. She is trembling a little with an old, familiar flush of resentment at her responsibilities: she has never opened the box, inside which are the leaves whose graven words have caused her loneliness. In the scent is every morning, when her husband ground a block of sandal against a dampened black stone to make a paste, to anoint the foreheads of their gods and each other and their children. It is the scent of her husband’s forehead when she bent over hi0.as he slept.

Sivakami exhales and straightens, and as she does so, her shoulder blades, which had spread slightly, lock back into place. The breath of good memory has steadied her to open the box. As she lifts the lid, she feels an icy breeze escape and curl around the back of her neck. Thangam’s horoscope is on top. Sivakami lifts it out and shuts the box without looking farther. She doesn’t think until later that Vairum’s would have logically been in that place, since he was born after Thangam. Hanumarathnam must have put Vairum’s beneath their daughter’s. He would have known that Thangam’s marriage would come before their son’s, and he must have realized that if Sivakami, not he, was opening the box, she would have reason not to want to see Vairum’s horoscope.

The brothers take the palm leaves to the corner astrologer. He quacks over them briefly, threads a silver stylus through the hole in his index fingernail and doodles out his pronouncements on a supplementary leaf. He slips this appendix onto a couple of pegs and stacks the original four leaves on top of it. The holes line up, but he seems to cut his leaves slightly larger than the standard two-by-eight-inches, or Hanumarathnam cut his smaller: the edge of the update leaf protrudes as though the little-known local garnished and trimmed Hanumarathnam’s predictions, readied them to be served.

The brothers return with long faces. Sivakami, scooping rice onto a plate in the kitchen, hears her eldest brother, Sambu, telling his wife, “She’s got a tough one.”

The wives are not ill-intentioned, but the eagerness of their concern is evident as they ask, “What—what does it say?”

Sivakami pauses to listen to Sambu’s reply.

“It says... whoever she marries, he’s going to die young.”

“Ayoh!” The exclamation comes from Kamu, Sambu’s wife.

Meenu, the second, echoes her, muttering, “Ayoh, ayoh.” She shakes her head and whispers, “Young widow.”

Sivakami comes out to serve lunch and they fall quiet. Ecchu raises her hands to her lips, seemingly to hide a nervous grimace. Sivakami goes back into the kitchen to fetch other items and thinks,
This is also the fate that awaits my daughter?

While the men have their afternoon rest, the women discuss marriage even more than usual—and this is a much-discussed subject. With the subversiveness that compensates for but never threatens the domestic hierarchy, Sivakami’s sisters-in-law talk to her of the inaccuracy of horoscopes.

Ecchu overcomes her customary remove to tell of a boy in her family who wanted to marry his cousin. “She was a nice girl, beautiful girl, suited to him in every way except that her horoscope said her husband’s brother would die. So the boy’s elder brother’s wife objected, ‘No. If this marriage is conducted, I will be a widow!’ But the boy insisted, ‘If I do not marry this girl, I will not marry. At all.’ What could the family do? They could not leave their son unmarried. The older brother had already had children. So the cousins married, and guess what? No one died, not the brother, nobody. Thirty happy years later, the boy himself, the groom, died. Just last year. The older brother still lives, even today.”

The sisters-in-law nod and pat their babies. Meenu chips in spunkily with another story. “Yes, my sister, she had a horoscope that said her mother-in-law would die. My brothers showed it around, but no one would accept. Then they heard of a widow lady and thought she might consent, but when she saw the horoscope, she chased them out of the house with a big stick!”

The women laugh hard, startling toddlers silent and babies awake. A smile even breaks through the anxiety cobwebbing Sivakami’s face. Meenu laughs hardest of all. “They had to run pretty fast, or they would have got a nice whack. They came home crying and yelling, ‘What’s her problem? She’s a widow anyway, what does she care if she lives or dies? We’re not going to arrange this marriage any more!’ ”

“What happened?”

“Another widow. She had been a second wife, she didn’t mind.

The marriage was for her youngest son, the last of her responsibilities.

“The marriage took place, oh, twenty, twenty-five years ago, and the old lady is still going strong. Sweet, mild-mannered lady, but strong as a plow-ox.”

The women wipe the laughing tears from the corners of their eyes—imagine their husbands being chased by widows with big sticks! They go back to absentmindedly joggling babies and mending clothes. “Marriages are made in heaven, that’s what. No one can say how one will turn out.”

Their chatter is cut off by the tiffin hour. Sivakami’s father wanders past in a cloud of his musings, moving toward the dining area. Sivakami and Ecchu rise to serve him his meal.

+9 The stories of wrong horoscopes serve as distraction but certainly not as consolation. Her husband’s own horoscope was accurate, and he did Thangam’s horoscope himself. Sivakami feels sick but all too confident that he got it right.

The brothers return from a day of searching with an unexpected proposition.

They have called on three families—enough, in their opinion, to take a decision. This is the report, which Sambu, the eldest brother, delivers in a slow, sonorous monologue, regularly interrupted by the impatient Venketu. Subbu, the youngest, doesn’t try to contribute but smiles comfortingly at his little sister. She smiles warily back.

“The first family asked us if we were kidding,” Sambu relates. “They have only one son, they have waited so long to marry him, until their duty was done by all his sisters. Will they marry him to a woman who is just going to kill him off? No. The second family: they hesitated because they have been searching for a long time for a bride. Their son is an ascetic, a renunciant. He has been so since a very early age and has said he can only marry a woman who accepts this lifestyle. Since he wants nothing so much as to be taken to the next world, his family thought he might take our option, but after some discussion, they finally said no, they could not be party to this union. Although any wife of his would have a more austere life during marriage than during widowhood, they need to find a girl who is already inclined to a spiritual life. We said Thangam is a very undemanding girl, but they were not sure. So we went to a third house. They were recommended to us as a great landowning family, but it was clear when we arrived that they are very much in debt. I’m sure that’s why they are having trouble finding a match for their son. We saw him—extraordinarily handsome, talkative, smiling face.”

Here Sambu pauses for even longer than usual. He normally speaks so slowly as to make it seem he is choosing each sentence from a dwindling supply. Sivakami’s face, which had been frowning in concentration, now smoothes into wariness. She looks around at her sisters-in-law, who look back inquiringly to their husbands. Their husbands look down at their food, and Sambu continues. “This is the best option. There is a catch, but this is still the best option.”

They each eat a mouthful.

“The catch is,” Sambu drones, “that the son has something in his horoscope that suggests...”

Venketu breaks in, “Well, suggests strongly...”

“Yes,” Sambu reasserts. “Strongly suggests his wife will... die married.” Here he takes one of his customary pauses, permitting Sivakami’s shock to jell. “Far preferable to being a widow, certainly.”

“Of course,” Venketu yelps, “it suggests this will happen after many, many years.”

“Yes, many years,” Sambu eventually adds.

“Yes, many,” Subbu chimes in at the last.

Sivakami waits a long time, but Sambu has nothing else to say. They resume eating, nervously.

This is a choice between frying pan and fire—and the women know, as men do not, the consequences of such choices. Sivakami’s mouth is dry and she feels a bit dizzy with tension but decides to plunge forward.

“How old a married woman?” she asks her eldest brother. “How many years will she have?”

“Many years, many years,” Sambu replies without looking up.

“How many?” Sivakami insists, feeling close to tears while knowing she will not cry.

“Well, let’s see...” Sambu frowns.

Venketu helps him. “She’s seven now, so that would make thirty-three more years. Practically a lifetime.”

“And ‘strongly suggests,’” Sivakami presses them, surprised that her voice is not shaking. “What does that mean? How ‘strongly’ does it ‘suggest’ his wife will die married?” She can’t bring herself to use “Thangam” and “die” in the same sentences.

“Hm. Well,” Sambu begins, and Venketu finishes, “More strongly than Thangam’s suggests its opposite.”

Sambu glares.

There is silence as each woman in the room compares her own lifespan with the one Thangam’s uncles want her to accept. It is a little less than twice Sivakami’s current age. More time than she wants but not nearly enough for her daughter. Venketu offers Sivakami the courtesy of a little consolation, and she sees that, despite his early proclamations, he has put all the effort he intends to into this match. “Anyway, when she has children, remember, chances are very good that their horoscopes will change all this. Children give all women a new lease on life, isn’t that right, ladies?”

The ladies pretend they haven’t heard. Sivakami does not let herself reflect on whether children are a reliable method of altering one’s destiny. She thinks instead that her brothers will not be so hasty in selecting mates for their own children: good children, but ordinary. Plain, some of them very plain, and not exactly brilliant either. Her brothers will have to work double-time to pair them off and they will too. Without looking up from his slurping-burping, Sambu concludes, “They want a girl-seeing next week.”

Sivakami retreats to the kitchen in disgust. It will be concluded at the girl-seeing. No one has ever laid eyes on Thangam without tumbling headfirst into the well of love where she dwells, a little golden frog. She is a delicacy not to be resisted, the sweetest of sweets laid over with pure, pounded gold. Thangam melts on the tongue.

She hears her father calling from the far end of the house for his bedroll. He has concerned himself with nothing about the marriage since making the demand that his sons do their duty by their niece. That was his duty, to make the demand.