"The Toss of a Lemon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Viswanathan Padma)

2. Vairum 1902

THANGAM GROWS INTO A SOLEMN, obedient child. Even if she were not so heavy, one would have to say gravity is her chief characteristic. Sivakami recalls the feisty, fightingish child she was herself, battling three elder brothers and winning. It was hard for her as a girl: she was required to grow out of this and even now she is not sure she succeeded in leaving this part of herself behind. She is glad to see her daughter is not like her.

Sivakami is pregnant, again, four months along. But this new life is not heavy, neither is it soft. When Sivakami, curious, palpates her tummy, she feels a hard centre, like a coin, or a marble, or a gem.

One morning finds her in the kitchen, as usual, grinding rice and lentils into idli batter. Her left hand rotates the huge black obelisk of the pestle into the pit of the black stone mortar, polishing the pestle with her palm. As each rotation swings away, her right hand guides escaping batter back into the black stone pit. Thangam watches. Sivakami herself finds the motion mesmerizing and enjoys even more seeing her child engrossed.

Suddenly Thangam looks to the front of the house, where her father is holding his healer’s court on the veranda. She pushes herself to her feet and toddles forward with intent. Her weight grounds her. It enabled her to balance early, so walking soon followed. Sivakami calls her name, but Thangam doesn’t stop. Sivakami quickly wipes her hands and follows, but she is fearful of running, and so doesn’t catch Thangam before the little girl exits the front hall to the vestibule. She is confident, though, that her watchful father will keep her from leaving the veranda. When Sivakami arrives at the doorway, she sees Thangam framed in sunlight and, beyond her, three siddhas. The men return Thangam’s gaze, neither stare the more innocent or knowing, each curious and mildly calculating.

The trio is led by a tall man whose grey hair, yellowing at the temples, winds into smoothly matted locks that hit the backs of his knees. He has sharp, sculpted features and an imperious bearing. The others are younger and shorter. One appears to be in his forties, his wide face filled with sunny-looking, upturned features. The third, in his early twenties, has a surly, rebellious manner. He projects active defiance, while the others give off an air of amused inevitability about their Brahmin-quarter invasion.

Sivakami tries to lift Thangam into her arms, but of course the little girl is too heavy. She does succeed in turning her damply glowing child around and hustling her into the house, where she kneels and clutches her to her breast. She is furious: Hanumarathnam is telling the crowd of supplicants to come back another time, which means that, once more, with no notice, no thought for her feelings or preferences, he is off. He looks around the door at her and-without even a note of apology in his voice!-says he will not be away long.

The next day, they are to attend a wedding in Kulithalai, twenty minutes from Cholapatti by bullock cart. All Cholapatti Brahmins of stature are invited; the groom is one of their own. When Hanumarathnam’s aunt, Annam, calls from the road that they are ready to depart, Sivakami bustles out sullenly and pretends she will be able to lift Thangam onto the bullock cart alone, until Murthy is signalled by his mother to help. Rukmini, innocent and unobservant, asks after Hanumarathnam. Sivakami responds with a shrug, then feels shame at her own rudeness, which in turn prods her to cheer up and pretend to enjoy the day

At the bride’s house, a sea of primped matrons seethe round and among the festivities, cords of jasmine and roses tucked in their hair. Their husbands hover or sit, contented or nervous; their children race around. Girls twirl and squat, so their stiff silk paavaadais pouf out in bells that they pop like inflated cheeks; the boys twist and tweak the girls’ plaits and upper arms. In one corner is a sacred fire and around it are gathered the parties required to be relatively attentive-bride and groom, parents, bride’s brother, groom’s sister, priest. To satisfy a need for spectacle, puffed rice and ghee are sacrificed to the fire; any kind of animal sacrifice would admittedly command more attention, but at some point, for some reason, this came to be shunned in favour of things that don’t squeal or bleed. Once in a while, the priest intones the Sanskritic phrase that signals those gathered in witness to hurl rice or flowers to bless the union, which they do while hardly pausing for breath from their chattling-prattling.

The groom is from the last house on Sivakami’s street in Cholapatti, one of the grandest families on the Brahmin quarter. His father, Chinnarathnam, comes almost daily to exchange the news of the world with Hanumarathnam. The son, at thirteen, has already earned an English nickname, “Minister,” owing to his anglophilia and oft-declared political ambitions. Sivakami has met the boy often, since Minister accompanies his father whenever possible, interrupting pompously with opinions his father affectionately challenges him to refine. Sivakami has the impression that Chinnarathnam is more intelligent than his son, but skeptical in his essence and so unmotivated to join public life. Hanumarathnam also prefers the father but doesn’t hesitate to say it is Minister who will be remembered.

The bride is seven. Sivakami’s first glimpse of her is in the bride-and-groom games, keepaway coconut, which she wins, and the one in which the couple are put on a swing and sung songs with teasing, sometimes even lewd, lyrics. The little girl shouts to her mother from the swing, a question about a word she doesn’t understand. She elbows her groom until he looks cowed, half hanging off the end of the swing. Sivakami recalls her own marriage, so long ago already. She defensively feigned uninterest in Hanumarathnam-at least, she thinks she was pretending. She had enjoyed the games and new clothes, but when, on the second day, she told her mother she had had enough and tried to ignore the priest’s instructions, she was reprimanded sharply by a half a dozen people she didn’t know.

Chinnarathnam greets Sivakami, one eye straying to look for Hanumarathnam. Unlike the many other people who have asked after him, Chinnarathnam is tactful enough not to confirm what he knows. Sivakami cannot guess whether he is offended by Hanumarathnam’s absence, though she feels it must be a serious gaffe.

This, the second day of the celebration, is the most important. The couple will be made to walk seven steps together in imitation of their future life, with the fire as witness. They will swear eternal fidelity on the unwavering pole star. They will exchange garlands like exiled royalty in myths, those who have no family but the forest to help bind their fates. The bride will be collared with the saffron-threaded thirumangalyam, the emblem of her new state: two graven gold pendants that tell the world, in symbols neither she nor anyone else can decipher, whose family she has married. Vermilion is rubbed into the parting of her hair and the gold medals hung at her throat, so she becomes warm colour and wealth-everything good to look on.

Any of these ceremonies is individually sufficient to declare a man and woman one. But then the whole thing would be over so quickly, and how to choose among them? Bride and groom are jostled upon the shoulders of maternal uncles for the exchange of garlands; they feed each other bananas in sweetened milk; they pray, together and individually.

Three times a day, roughly corresponding to the ending of each ceremony, the gathering is fed. This does not include the many-early, late or simply hungry-who are fed in between. But three times daily, talk goes up a decibel as the gathering seats itself at rows of banana leaves laid out on the floor of the dining hall with the narrow end to the left. Each diner sprinkles the leaf with water, wipes it off with a hand, waits. The servers-hired help mixed with relatives-begin with a dollop of a gooey sweet onto the lower right corner of the leaf. The eaters lick this up: the first flavour to touch celebrants’ tongues must be sweet. Then along the half of the leaf above the bisecting vein, in order from left to right, are dished vegetables in dry and wet curries, pacchadis of yogourt and cucumber, of sun-cured mango with palm sugar or, in more fashionable homes, of shredded beet flavoured with essence of rose. The arrangement ends with vadai, deep-fried patties of lentil and chili, and a spicy pickle, say of lemon or baby mango, in the top right corner. Some sweet in the form of a square or ball goes on the lower left side of the leaf, along with pappadum to offset the mushy main item: rice, lower centre, without which this is not a real meal.

The first course is rice mixed with sambar, a thick lentil sauce; the second is rice with rasam, and thin lentil broth, which the diner must chase continually until it is eaten to keep it from running off the leaf. Next, another helping of the first sweet, warm and runny or sticky. Last, more rice, with home-brewed yogourt: “Scrubs the teeth and tongue!” Sivakami always overhears some pompous uncle saying to an uninterested youngster. “And aids the stomach in digestion!”

Flavours and textures and the order of a meal are arranged according to the Shastras that proclaim that if a meal is taken as prescribed, it will settle happily. Those who violate the prescriptions take their stomachs into their own hands.

In the afternoons, the corners of the hall, the small rooms adjacent to it, even the veranda, are heaped with sated, sleeping guests.

For days, it will continue: a ceremony peaking every few hours, every chant and gesture worn smooth as pebbles on the Kaveri riverbed by repeated practice since the Aryans first entered the south, bringing with them new gods and myths, pushing into the forests the fierce deities they found the darker natives worshipping; bringing with them a system for dividing people according to function, which the Portuguese, thousands of years later, would call caste. In halls such as these, they gather, the Brahmins, hardly newcomers now, yet slightly apart from this place where they have lived for millennia. The marriage fire forges another link in the chainmail of caste; every sound, sight and smell is a celebration of the clan.

When Sivakami and the others return from the wedding, Hanumarathnam still is not back. The next night, she lies awake, angry, though unsure whether she will say so. She has already wrapped packets of food to send the siddhas on their way, the third night she has done this, just in case they return. She doesn’t like their audacity and she doesn’t like their taking her husband, but she is never sure how to put that, or to whom. She hears him at the front, hurries to unlock the doors and fetches the food.

He has followed her, takes up the packets and goes back outside. Sivakami hears a musical voice mutter, “Where is the golden child? The transformation of your seed, your soul-breath?”

Hanumarathnam laughs a little and answers ruefully, “Yes, the only alchemy I have ever effected.”

“No less miraculous, brother. And she will grow, flesh upon bone, to face the trials of this well-worn cycle.”

“You are kind.”

“Blessings on her, and the next, and on your home,” replies the voice.

Her husband enters their house once more and locks the locks against the night and the moon’s glow, and all is as it should be. From deep down the Brahmin-quarter path, the cry floats back at them, “Here is a body, feed it!”

Hanumarathnam chuckles.

Sivakami’s objections are at a standstill. From anyone else, she would have had suspicions of dhrishti, evil eye, from such a compliment. Still, she goes and waves a fistful of salt over her daughter; it doesn’t hurt to take precautions. Siddhas don’t want family or home, so why would he put the evil eye on them? It’s not logical, not likely. She doesn’t let Hanumarathnam see her with the salt-he has no patience with superstition. She flushes the salt along the drain out the back of the courtyard and feels cleaner than she has for days.

Sivakami is much more mobile than she was with her first pregnancy, and keeps a closer eye on the hired help. The servants are a little resentful but do not take her too seriously.

Every pregnancy has its peculiar discomforts, though. This time, Sivakami finds it hardest when the baby kicks or she squats. His swimming within her is like being prodded with an iddikki, an iron pot-tongs, all angles and edges.

She says “him” because she knows-and her knowledge is bordered with single-minded wishing-that this baby will be a boy. If you have a girl and a boy, it doesn’t so much matter what the others are after that. Everyone says you raise a girl for someone else-you pay for her wedding and then the fruits of your investment are enjoyed by others. She is the wealth that leaves your family. A boy is the wealth that stays. Still, you must have a girl and a boy, a girl, then a boy, or a boy and then a girl, but she already has a girl… Everything is going so well, it would be very hard to have a disappointment now.

She has seen couples who seem very happy for the early years of their marriages. Then, if they have no children, they enter a state of suspension. If they have girl after girl, they enter a state of constant worry. The ones with boy after boy, though, say, “Oh, yes, shame, isn’t it, seven sons, we would have liked a girl, but at least we will have grandchildren and our boys to live with in our old age!”

And the parents of five girls say nothing but wonder if one of their daughters will be tending these idiots in their dotage, and make a mental note not to let it happen.

Disappointment and lack of change wear down the life of a couple, she concludes. It should not happen. In her last trimester, she takes some quasi-medical advice from old ladies to ensure it does not: rubbing holy ash on her belly and using compresses of fresh herbs they gather for her at specific times of day.

Finally, she is off to her mother’s house for the delivery. Her husband comes just before the birth. He hands the lemon to the barber’s wife and reminds her, “As soon as you see the top of the baby’s head.”

She nods, she nods, she waves him away. He says over his shoulder, finger wagging in the air as he is shunted out the door, “It’s very important!”

May as well be shouting to the trees. The trees, in fact, nod at him condescendingly as he enters the garden, and then they, too, ignore him. No choice but to take up his position, to pace and fret.

No one pays him much mind because he is behaving like any expectant father. He wishes his concerns were those of any expectant father. He wishes he were just concerned for the health of his wife and baby. Instead, he is concerned for himself-a concern that has pursued him ever since he first pursued Sivakami.

A man must marry. A man must have children. But what if a man’s horoscope-the weakest quadrant, but nonetheless-says he will die in the ninth year of his marriage? Because of its placement, this really is not likely to happen, but it is difficult not to feel qualms. But say a son is born at an auspicious moment: the conflagration of father’s and son’s stars, the conflation of their horoscopes, could change destiny. A son has the ability, with his birth, to assure his father’s longevity. Some people think of children as a means to immortality; Hanumarathnam doesn’t want to live forever but wouldn’t mind just a few more years. Then, the boy’s birth might make no difference at all, in which case he will live with the same uncertainty as everyone else.

With Thangam, he had no such worry, because he had a strong feeling the first would be a daughter. He was not ready for a boy, then. He was not ready to know. This time he does not know even if this child is a boy. He might be pacing and fretting for another girl.

Nothing to do but wait.

Hanumarathnam stomps the garden to a pulp while, within, Sivakami concentrates on the hardest thing she’s ever done.

“Oh,” says the barber’s wife. “Hmm… well… don’t worry,” she mutters, as though encouraging herself.

“What?” Sivakami pants.

“Bum first. No matter.” She nods at Sivakami. “We’re going to have to do this fast, all right? It’s your second time at this, you know what you’re doing…”

Sivakami feels another contraction coming on and the barber’s wife commands, “Get it out!”

A few moments later, Hanumarathnam hears a squalling. He throws his arms up in frustration, notes the time, goes to the window and yells, “Lemon!”

It is hurled out the window at him, but he pays no attention. “Girl or boy?” he shouts.

“Boy!”

A boy. The barber’s wife finishes wiping the child and hands him to Sivakami with the suppressed satisfaction of one who has accomplished a feat much more difficult than those around her appreciate. Sivakami doesn’t even look at her as she receives her son. He’s a little skinny, and darker than his parents, though she doesn’t notice either of these qualities until her sisters-in-law point them out. The baby calms as she rocks him and starts to sing a nursery rhyme that was one of her own favourites as a child. He opens his eyes to gaze at her, his irises nearly black yet strangely brilliant, diamond sharp.