He did not reply at once. His face had shrivelled. I have offended him, I thought, panic overcoming me. Why did I have to speak?. . . The silence deepened. Then at last he looked up. "I am surprised you have not asked me before," he said. "It is many years since I saw you in your mother's house."
Well, I thought, if I have not asked, it is because I have not dared; there is a look about you that is quelling, and your manner forbids such talk.
I said awkwardly, "I have thought about it more than once. . . but it is not my place to ask questions. You come and go, and it is your own concern. I do not know what made me ask you now."
"Yet, since you have asked, I will tell you," he said. "I have the usual encumbrances that men have -- wife, children, home -- that would have put chains about me, but I resisted, and so I am alone. As for coming and going, I do as I please, for am I not my own master? I work among you when my spirit wills it. . . . I go when I am tired of your follies and stupidities, your eternal, shameful poverty. I can only take you people," he said, "in small doses."
I was silent, taking no offence. Barbed words, but what matter from one so gentle? Harsh talk from one in whom the springs of tenderness gushed abundant, as I knew.
"I told you what I did, in a moment of lunacy," he said. "I do not want it repeated."
"I am not cursed with a gossip's tongue," I said, annoyed. "I would not repeat what you have said."
"Never. Understand?"
"I understand."
He rose to his feet and without another word was gone, walking with long, quick strides and stooping a little as always. A strange nature, only partly within my understanding. A man half in shadow, half in light, defying knowledge.
CHAPTER XIII
THAT year the rains failed. A week went by, two. We stared at the cruel sky, calm, blue, indifferent to our need. We threw ourselves on the earth and we prayed. I took a pumpkin and a few grains of rice to my Goddess, and I wept at her feet. I thought she looked at me with compassion and I went away comforted, but no rain came.
"Perhaps tomorrow," my husband said. "It is not too late."
We went out and scanned the heavens, clear and beautiful, deadly beautiful, not one cloud to mar its serenity. Others did so too, coming out, as we did, to gaze at the sky and murmur, "Perhaps tomorrow."
Tomorrows came and went and there was no rain. Nathan no longer said perhaps; only a faint spark of hope, obstinately refusing to die, brought him out each dawn to scour the heavens for a sign.
Each day the level of the water dropped and the heads of the paddy hung lower. The river had shrunk to a trickle, the well was as dry as a bone. Before long the shoots of the paddy were tipped with brown; even as we watched, the stain spread like some terribledisease, choking out the green that meant life to us.
Harvesting time, and nothing to reap. The paddy had taken all our labour and lay now before us in faded, useless heaps.
Sivaji came to collect his master's dues and his face fell when he saw how much was lost, for he was a good man and he felt for us.
"There is nothing this year," Nathan said to him. "Not even gleanings, for the grain was but little advanced."
"You have had the land," Sivaji said, "for which you have contracted to pay: so much money, so much rice. These are just dues, I must have them. Would you have me return empty-handed?"
Nathan's shoulders sagged. He looked tired and dispirited. I came and stood beside him, Ira and the boys crouched near us, defensively.
"There is nothing," Nathan repeated. "Do you not see the crops are dead? There has been no rain and the river is dry."
"Yet such was the contract, else the land would not have been rented to you."
"What would you have me do? The last harvest was meagre; we have nothing saved."
Sivaji looked away. "I do not know. It is your concern. I must do as I am bid."
"What then?"
"The land is to be given to another if you cannot make payment."
"Go from the land after all these years? Where would we go? How would we live?"
"It is your concern. I have my orders and must obey them."
Nathan stood there sweating and trembling.
"Give me time," he said at last humbly, "until the next crop. I will pay then, somehow."
"Pay half now," Sivaji said, "and I will try and do as you wish." He spoke quickly, as if to give himself no time to repent of his offer, and hurried away even before my husband had assented.
"No easy job for him," I said. "He is answerable, even as we are."
"That is why he and his kind are employed," Nathan said bitterly. "To protect their overlords from such unpleasant tasks. Now the landlord can wring from us his moneys and care not for the misery he evokes, for indeed it would be difficult for any man to see another starve and his wife and children as well; or to enjoy the profits born of such travail."
He went into the hut and I followed. A few mud pots and two brass vessels, the tin trunk I had brought with me as a bride, the two shirts my eldest sons had left behind, two ollocks of dhal and a handful of dried chillies left over from better times: these we put together to sell.
"Rather these should go," said Nathan, "than that the land should be taken from us; we can do without these, but if the land is gone our livelihood is gone, and we must thenceforth wander like jackals." He stared awhile at what we had to sell, and made an effort to say something and tried again and at last he said, choking, "The bullocks must go. Otherwise we shall not have enough."
But when we had added them and reckoned and rereckoned, there was still not enough. "There are the saris left," I said. "Good ones and hardly worn, and these we must sell."
I brought out the red sari that had served for both my wedding and my daughter's, and the sari and dhoti I had bought when Thambi worked at the tannery, made a parcel of them and set out.
"Ah, Rukmani," said Biswas with false welcome. "What brings you here? I have not seen you for a long time, nor had any of your succulent fruit. Would that be what you bear with you?"
"No indeed," I answered shortly, his voice grating on me as always. "For the earth is parched to dust and all that I grew is dead. The rains failed, as you know."
"Yes, yes, yes," he said, looking at me with his cunning eyes. "These are hard times for us."
Not for you, I thought. You thrive on others' misfortunes.
"We need money for the land," I said. "I have brought the two shirts my sons no longer need, being away, two saris I never wear and my husband's dhoti to sell to you. The saris are very finely worked, and worn but a few times." I took them out and laid them before him.
He fingered the rich stuff, and measured the borders between outstretched thumb and little finger, and lifted up the silver threads to examine them the closer, and held up the shirts to the light for sign of wear.
"How much do you want for these?"
"It is for you to make the offer."
"Tell me first how much you want and I will see what I can do."
"Enough to pay the land dues."
"How much is that?"
"It is my business."
He was silent for a while, and I said to him exasperated, "Tell me if you are not prepared to buy and I will go elsewhere."
"Always in haste," he rebuked me in that gentle, oily voice of his. "Yet I think this time you will have to await my pleasure, Rukmani."
"What do you mean?" I said, ruffled. "There are many who would be pleased to buy such good material."
"I think not," he said. "I think not. For, you see, the wives of other men have come to me, even as you have, and have gone away as you threaten, yet they have to come back to me because nobody else can afford to buy in these hard times."
"As no doubt you can," I said with contempt, and then an inspiration came to me and I went on: "Unless you pay a fair price I shall take these saris elsewhere. There is the Muslim wife of a tannery official whom I know, and she will buy from me as she has done before."
"Indeed,"
he said, a little disconcerted. "Well, Rukmani, since we have done business for a long time, and because you are a woman of spirit whom I have long admired, I will give you thirty rupees. Nobody could be fairer."
"Fairer by far," I retorted. "I will not take one pie under seventy-five rupees. Take it or not as you please."
I put the clothes away, making a pretence of going to the door. I hoped he would call me back, for in truth I did not know where else to turn, but if not -- well, thirty rupees was too far from our needs to be of use, and if I did not get what I asked I might as well keep the saris.
As I got to the door he called to me. "Very well, Rukmani. I will pay you what you ask, since it will help you."
I waited. He disappeared into another room and came back in a few minutes with a sour face and a small leather pouch full of money. He pulled the drawstrings and took from it notes and silver, counting them twice over to make sure.
"A very rare price," he said, handing me the money. "Remember always the good turn I have done you."
I tucked the money away, making no reply, and I went back with a lighter step than I had come out.
Nathan had returned too, having sold the pots and pans, the food and the bullocks. We pooled the money and counted it, and there was in all one hundred and twenty-five rupees, not even the half we had to pay.
"There is still the seed," Nathan said. "We must sell that."
"What of the next crop?" I said. "If we sell the seed we may as well give up the land too, for how shall we raise a new crop?"
"It is better to be without the seed than bereft of the land in which to plant it. Seed is cheap, it can be bought. I can earn a few rupees, or perhaps my sons. . ."
How? I cried to myself. How? Is not my son every day at the tannery, and no one will look at him because of his brothers! And you, my husband, what chance have you when so many young men are festering in idleness!
"It will mean only a few rupees," I said. "Let us not sacrifice the future to our immediate need."
"What is the alternative?" he shouted. "Do you think I am blind and do not see, or so stupid as to believe that crops are raised without seed? Do you take me for a fool that --"
He was not shouting at me but at the terrible choice forced upon us; this I knew, yet could not prevent my throat contracting, or force the tears back into their wells.
"Let us only try," I said with the sobs coming fast. "Let us keep our hope for a next harvest."
"Very well, very well," Nathan exclaimed. "Let us try by all means. We may be kicked for our pains, but what of that! Anything to stop your wailing. Now go, do not cross me further."
He is worried, I thought, smothering my sobs. He is distracted and does not mean to be harsh.
I went inside and lay down, with the money tied to my body, and at last dozed off into a troubled sleep.
In the morning Sivaji came, and my husband took the money and counted it out in front of him.
"One hundred and twenty-five rupees," he said. "Not half what we owe, but the best we can do without selling the seed for the next sowing."
"It would raise only a few rupees," I pleaded. "Let us but keep it, and we will repay you twofold."
"It is not for me," Sivaji answered. "You make payment to another. What shall I say to him that I bring so little? You made promise of half."
"Give us a little grace," Nathan said, dragging the words out. "We will make full repayment and over after the next harvesting."
So we stood and argued and begged, and in the end Sivaji agreed to wait. He took the money and turned to go, then he hesitated and said, a little wistfully: "What I do I must, for I must think of my own. . . . I do not wish to be hard. May you prosper."
"May you prosper too," I whispered, hardly able to speak, for his words had left me defenceless. "May the Gods give you their blessing." And so he departed.
The drought continued until we lost count of the time. Day after day the pitiless sun blazed down, scorching whatever still struggled to grow and baking the earth hard until at last it split and great irregular fissures gaped in the land. Plants died and the grasses rotted, cattle and sheep crept to the river that was no more and perished there for lack of water, lizards and squirrels lay prone and gasping in the blistering sunlight.
In the town a water reservoir had been built for the tannery workers and their families, but now others were allowed a limited quantity as well. So thither I journeyed every morning, and, when I said how many we were, perhaps half a mud pot would be doled out, sometimes a little more, depending upon who was in charge. Then some of the women in their greed began to claim to have more children than they had, and nonexistent relatives, and there were jealousies and spite and bitter argument. Until at last it was decreed that each person must come in his own right only, not for others, even children and old men, and this put an end to the cheating and quarrelling; but it was hard for many who had not their full strength.
Then, after the heat had endured for days and days, and our hopes had shrivelled with the paddy -- too late to do any good -- then we saw the storm clouds gathering, and before long the rain came lashing down, making up in fury for the long drought and giving the grateful land as much as it could suck and more. But in us there was nothing left -- no joy, no call for joy. It had come too late.
CHAPTER XIV
AS soon as the rains were over, and the cracks in the earth had healed, and the land was moist and ready, we took our seed to our Goddess and placed it at her feet to receive her blessing, and then we bore it away and made our sowing.
When a few weeks had gone by, the seed sprouted; tender shoots appeared, thrusting upwards with increasing strength, and soon we were able to transplant the seedlings one by one, and at first they stood out singly, slender, tremulous spires with spaces between: but grew and grew and soon were merged into one thick green field of rustling paddy. In that field, in the grain which had not yet begun to form, lay our future and our hope.
Hope, and fear. Twin forces that tugged at us first in one direction and then in another, and which was the stronger no one could say. Of the latter we never spoke, but it was always with us. Fear, constant companion of the peasant. Hunger, ever at hand to jog his elbow should he relax. Despair, ready to engulf him should he falter. Fear; fear of the dark future; fear of the sharpness of hunger; fear of the blackness of death.
Long before the paddy ripened we came to the end of our dried-fish stocks. There was no money left -- every pie had gone to pay the land dues. Nothing left to sell. Nothing to be had from my efforts, for the vines and vegetables had withered in the long weeks of drought.
At last no option but to draw upon my secret hoard: a small stock of rice, ten ollocks in all, shielded from every temptation to sell or barter, kept even when the need to hold our land had squeezed us dry of everything else. Now I brought it out and measured it again, ten ollocks exactly. Then I divided it into several equal portions, each of the portions as little as would suffice for one day, and counted the portions, of which there were twenty-four, so that for nearly a month we would not starve. For a long time I hesitated, wondering whether we could do with less, thus making thirty divisions, but finally I decided against it, for Kuti was already ailing, and we needed to preserve our strength for the harvest.
For at least twenty-four days we shall eat, I thought. At the end of that time -- well, we are in God's hands. He will not fail us. Sometimes I thought that, and at other times I was seized with trembling and was frightened, not knowing where to turn.
The nights were always the worst, and not for me alone. Peace then seemed to forsake our hut and I could hear my husband and children moving restlessly in their sleep and muttering, whether from hunger or fear I do not know. Once Nathan cried out loudly and sprang up in his sleep. I went to him, and he woke then and clung to me.
"Only a dream," I said. "Sleep, my dear one."
"A nightmare," he said sweating. "I saw the paddy turned to straw, the grain lost. . . . Oh God, all was
lost."
His voice was stark, bereft of the power of dissembling which full consciousness brings.
"Never fear," I said with a false courage lest panic should swoop down on us. "All will be well."
He composed himself for sleep again.
"You are a good wife," he murmured. "I would not have any other."
I drifted at last into uneasy sleep, and dreamt many evil dreams, and in one I saw a shadowy figure with no face creeping into our hut and bearing away the ten ollocks of rice. I knew it was but the result of an overburdened spirit, but the following night I had the same dream. As the days passed I found myself growing increasingly suspicious. Except for my family, I trusted no one. Only at night when there were no passers-by, did I feel completely safe. Then I would bring out the rice, and measure it, and run the grain through my fingers for sheer love of it, fondling it like a simpleton. When I had taken out the allotted portion for the next day I would bury the remainder: one half, tied in a white cloth, in a hole I dug some distance from our hut, the other half in our granary.