The Toss of a Lemon (17 page)

In the grey morning, the family bids them farewell at the veranda. Subbu will see them to the station. Sambu has wafted, for several days, an air of puzzlement, as though more concerned for Sivakami than for his own pride, though the opposite is transparently the case.

“I wish you success, little sister.” His gaze rests on her heavily, like the burden he thinks she is shouldering. “I hope, should you need help, that you will come to your brothers.”

Sivakami can see he is sincere, regardless of how slow he will be to act on any such request. And she is touched by his sincerity. She takes leave of her elders by performing oblations for them and making her children do the same, requesting and receiving blessings on this departure. Then children and baggage are bundled sleepily onto the bullock cart, she mounts beside them and they are trundled toward the train.

Mistress of my own house. On the train, her mind ticks with business. She will have to get caught up on all the tenants. Muchami had included a note in his last letter to say one of them was resisting payment and another had fallen ill. Muchami’s mother had also written her—that was a surprise—saying Muchami was acting oddly and refusing to attend his own marriage. She beseeched Sivakami, as his employer, to make him comply. She has already rehearsed what she will say to him. She feels charged with responsibility, as though it’s some species of lightning. She turns and hugs her children close as the train pulls out of the station. She cannot be madi on a train.

If Thangam is excited about a return to Cholapatti, Sivakami can’t tell. Vairum has no use for the place of his infancy, little as he remembers it. He complains but assumes they are going for a visit, as Sivakami has, every four or five months since they moved. Sivakami has not had the heart tell him he is to live out the rest of their days there, in the place where he was friendless and sad and where his father died. Children this young, she thinks, recover quickly from moves. He’ll cry for a few days, then he’ll forget he ever left.

She is saying this to herself as she watches him awaken on the train. He raises his gaze to hers, eyes like leaded-glass windows behind which his trust shines softly. She strokes his head. He takes advantage, cuddles up. She strokes his head, thinking,
This is for you, this is for you,
to the train’s rhythm,
this is for you.
She feels steel spark against steel, wheels on rails. There is no other way, she winces. Stroking his dear, quiet head, bracing herself for his misery.
This is for you, this is for you
.

ANGAMMA, MUCHAMI’S MOTHER, stands in front of the little roadside temple, her fingers clamped around his wrist, waiting for a lizard to chirp. It has to come first from the left, next the right—the other way around would be a bad omen and would put her to a great deal of trouble, coming up with good omens to counter the bad until she felt satisfied the wedding could proceed.

Men of Muchami’s caste generally marry in late adolescence, but there has been in his case a delay. The elder of his two younger sisters took overlong to marry, owing, so people said, to her buckteeth and pointed tongue. His plump, malleable younger sister was snapped up in no time at all, liberating Muchami of his obligation to wait, but then she divorced and all was thrown into confusion. Fortunately, she remarried with equal haste and now Angamma is hustling to get him settled before anything else changes.

At least there was, in his case, almost no question of whom he would marry: the second of his mother’s five brothers has a girl of thirteen. Muchami probably would have married the girl cousin just elder to him, had his sisters not taken so long (his caste permits boys to marry older girls, though he would have had to do something to compensate, like swallowing a coin or gifting a coconut for each year of the age difference); he might have married the girl just elder to his now-intended, but she was bundled off with someone else in that brief period of uncertainty and lowered family reputation when his younger sister returned home.

Even this alliance is not without matters to be resolved, though. The birth order is not ideal, for example: both Muchami and this girl, Mari, are the eldest children in their families and Muchami’s mother forebodingly quoted the proverb that says, “The contact of two heads of family is like the clashing together of two hills.”

Mari’s father, Rasu, claimed that this was just another minor and obscure objection Angamma thought she could use as a bargaining chip. He actually accused her of inventing superstitions and conditions, which was silly because she clearly was not capable. Everyone, including him, knew Rasu would be crazy not to take Muchami as a groom—a sister’s son, employed, of sound mind and body, and appropriate height and colour. The only real question was when.

And, of course, the verdict of the omenistic lizards. “At least everyone knows we have to do this,” Angamma huffs as they wait. The lizard chirps. Muchami looks to the right of the little shrine, but his mother looks left. They look back at each other. “So far, so good,” Angamma says, and Muchami shakes his head and looks as though he’s about to say something, but his mother raises a hand to stop him.

“Chirp.”

Angamma looks to the right though he looks left. “That’s settled then!” she says and raises his hand in triumph as though this was his prize fight. He resists ineffectually. “We can choose a date. Now we just have to get that cheapskate bustard to settle on the terms.” Angamma never swears but often says things that sound close.

Mari, Muchami’s bride, is an irritating girl in many ways. Everyone agrees that her pretensions make her a perfect match for Muchami, as do her looks, which are similar to his, perhaps owing to the fact that they are cousins. She is skinnier than is considered attractive, with a wilful set to her protruding lower jaw. Her eyes, though, are quick and dark, and she cuts an energetic figure. Muchami’s mother finds Mari unbearable, but, in the lead-up to the wedding, feels more kindly toward the girl than she ever does again.

Muchami’s caste, almost without exception, pays bride-prices. Angamma had been forced to return most of what she received for her younger daughter’s first marriage because her daughter was at fault and she couldn’t pretend otherwise, though she indignantly did not pay the interest the other side implied was due.

But Mari’s fondest aspiration is to practise Brahminhood even though she can never belong to any caste other than the one into which she was born. Individuals can be robbed of caste—temporarily, by means of such brief pollutions as haircuts or funerals, or permanently, by transgressions. Or they can be exalted within their caste—as much as Mari can hope for. She is laughingly referred to as “more Brahmin than the Brahmins,” and most of her affectations involve imitating the higher caste.

Owing to her convictions, she forbids her father to accept a bride-price for her—she tells him he has to pay a dowry. There is no reason he should listen to her, and his brothers say he’s setting a bad precedent when he gives in. But there is a growing fashion these days for claiming that one’s caste is higher in the hierarchy than others think, and one way of substantiating such claims is by adopting higher caste practices. His wife is also in favour: she thinks they would gain more status from paying a token dowry than from receiving a fat fee.

Brother and sister still jockey for form’s sake. (Until movies arrive, there’s little in any village or small town that’s as much fun as fighting.) They settle on a dowry of three chickens and a sixteenth-harvest each of millet, rice and peanuts—a list more typical of a bride-price than a Brahmin dowry, but why would they give things they don’t have and don’t want? This is theatre—they get the gesture right, and the negotiations conclude to everyone’s secret satisfaction.

On the eve of his marriage, Muchami does his rounds of the fields in the morning and comes back to Angamma’s hut to eat. Late in the afternoon he goes out again. His mother calls after him, “Home early—got that? None of this gadding-about-late-night-seeing-your-friends. You have to wake up in the very early morning. All the women will be arriving to help by three o’clock and you must get dressed up...”

Her voice fades behind him as he walks away, waving his hand in what could be farewell but looks more like he wants to be left alone.

Angamma lies down at eight-thirty. She lies on her side on the mud floor, her arm tucked under her head, muttering her to-do list, along with increasingly strong, partially accurate, imprecations at her son. She gets up, lies down, gets up, rearranges clothes, jewels, betel-nut coconuts, switching them from one tray to another.

She has never asked her son where he goes when he goes out at night. She thinks it’s risky, but Muchami knows the fields better than anyone and she finds it difficult to restrain him. Too, there are in her vocabulary rude words, sexual insults, that she fears may apply to her son. No one has ever said anything like this to her, and this is one of the reasons she has never asked about his friends. But this night, of all nights, she would have thought he’d have the respect to stay home.

Eventually, she dozes, but even in sleep she mutters and twitches, and when the Kanyakumari train runs along the nearby tracks, her eyelids flip open. She leaps to the doorway and checks the time by the position of the moon. Midnight.

She fumes curses against her son. She starts to cry a little, with hurt and helplessness. Promptly at three, five women arrive to help. Angamma normally would bluff, but she feels weak. She knows a couple of these women are jealous of her: Muchami gives his mother most of his salary. He doesn’t drink. Really, he has been the ideal son before this, the women remind her, affectionately or with gloating tones. He will come soon, they say, he will come.

She accepts their reassurances, though they do nothing to assuage her nervousness. Dark drains into a hostile-looking day, and the hour arrives when she must step across to her brother’s. Angamma looks even worse than usual. She has fair skin, in contrast with her brothers, and though she is not heavy, her face is always puffy, with purple half-moons under the eyes, as though she were once prey to some terrible vice, which she never was. Today, her eyes are swollen with crying and sleep loss; her hair and clothing stick out in odd directions.

Under the canopy, the witnesses are assembled and in full gossip. The bride is bedecked and bejewelled. All wait expectantly. Finally, Angamma has no choice but to tell them that the groom has gone missing.

She so wants everyone present to think some huge and possibly violent misfortune has overtaken him. Her defiant eyes beg them to be alarmed. A tactful few react this way, even going so far as mildly to suggest a search party. To them she is forever grateful. Most, however, develop knowing expressions and ready themselves—not to depart but to witness whatever comes next. They hope it’s a fight.

Rasu demands of his sister, “Where is your son?”

Angamma is forced to reply with humility, “I... don’t... know.”

What can Rasu say? He is not going to insult his sister or call his beloved nephew bad names. The things he said before were a matter of form. He marches out to the toddy shop, shaking his head.

He has to admit he had a small worry all along. There are others like his nephew. But they all marry, have children. It is not a question of whether women interest a fellow, in general or in particular. It’s a question of what is done.

He arrives at his regular clearing and purchases a cup of cloudy amber drink from the slatternly woman who minds the brew. She pokes an escapee tuft into her matted coif and grins at him lewdly. Her husband is passed out not a quarter furlong away. Rasu doesn’t notice the woman, so taken up is he with the thoughts shadowing the backs of his eyes. She curses him; he makes a cursory reply. It’s the kind of ritual observed between men and strumpets the world over, almost obligatory, somewhat comforting. He sits by himself.

He’s not wholly unsympathetic to Muchami: he himself had to marry his uncle’s daughter. Not the prettiest nor the liveliest girl in town, but Rasu had an obligation and he fulfilled it. One gets married.

He drains his cup and gets another. The vendress of drinks is rolling in some shrubbery with one of the guests from the aborted wedding. Four or five others squat around the vat, retelling the morning’s events. They would have enjoyed a longer confrontation, and now embellish the story, for fun and to make it more plausible. Rasu ignores them all.

There is no question of calling the marriage off—he won’t leave his own sister in the lurch. Muchami must be made to face his obligations just like anyone else. Soon his brothers join him. They are slight but muscular, labourers all, dark and glossy. Squatting together, they look like a society of ravens.

The eldest says, “We will fix another date.”

They all wag their heads in assent.