NECTAR IN A SIEVE
Kamala Markandaya
Copyright 2013 by Stellar Books.
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PUBLISHED BY
STELLAR CLASSICS
Printed and manufactured in the United States of America
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live. COLERIDGE
Part One
CHAPTER I
SOMETIMES at night I think that my husband is with me again, coming gently through the mists, and we are tranquil together. Then morning comes, the wavering grey turns to gold, there is a stirring within as the sleepers awake, and he softly departs.
One by one they come out into the early morning sunshine, my son, my daughter, and Puli, the child I clung to who was not mine, and he no longer a child. Puli is with me because I tempted him, out of my desperation I lured him away from his soil to mine. Yet I have no fears now: what is done is done, there can be no repining. "Are you happy with me?" I said to him yesterday -- being sure of the answer. He nodded, not hesitating, but a little impatient. An old woman's foibles. A need for comfort.
But I am comforted most when I look at his hands. He has no fingers, only stubs, since what has been taken can never be given back, but they are clean and sound. Where the sores were, there is now pink puckered flesh; his limbs are untouched. Kenny and Selvam between them have kept my promise to him.
In the distance when it is a fine day and my sight is not too dim, I can see the building where my son works. He and Kenny, the young and the old. A large building, spruce and white; not only money has built it but men's hopes and pity, as I know who have seen it grow brick by brick and year by year.
My three sisters were married long before I was. Shanta first, a big wedding which lasted for many days, plenty of gifts and feasts, diamond earrings, a gold necklace, as befitted the daughter of the village headman. Padmini next, and she too made a good match and was married fittingly, taking jewels and dowry with her; but when it came to Thangam, only relations from our own village came to the wedding and not from the surrounding districts as they had done before, and the only jewel she had was a diamond nose-screw.
"What for you," my mother would say, taking my face in her hands, "my last-born, my baby? Four dowries is too much for a man to bear.""I shall have a grand wedding," I would say. "Such that everybody will remember when all else is a dream forgotten." (I had heard this phrase in a storyteller's tale.) "For is not my father head of the village?" I knew this pleased my mother, for she would at once laugh, and lose her look of worry. Once when I repeated this, my eldest brother overheard me, and he said sharply, "Don't speak like a fool, the headman is no longer of consequence. There is the Collector, who comes to these villages once a year, and to him is the power, and to those he appoints; not to the headman."
This was the first time I had ever heard that my father was of no consequence. It was as if a prop on which I leaned had been roughly kicked away, and I felt frightened and refused to believe him. But of course he was right, and by the time I came to womanhood even I had to acknowledge that his prestige was much diminished. Perhaps that was why they could not find me a rich husband, and married me to a tenant farmer who was poor in everything but in love and care for me, his wife, whom he took at the age of twelve. Our relatives, I know, murmured that the match was below me; my mother herself was not happy, but I was without beauty and without dowry and it was the best she could do. "A poor match," they said, and not always quietly. How little they knew, any of them!
A woman, they say, always remembers her wedding night. Well, maybe they do; but for me there are other nights I prefer to remember, sweeter, fuller, when I went to my husband matured in mind as well as in body, not as a pained and awkward child as I did on that first night. And when the religious ceremonies had been completed, we left, my husband and I. How well I remember the day, and the sudden sickness that overcame me when the moment for departure came! My mother in the doorway, no tears in her eyes but her face bloated with their weight. My father standing a little in front of her, waiting to see us safely on our way. My husband, seated already on the bullock cart with the tin trunk full of cooking vessels and my saris next to him. Somehow I found myself also sitting in the cart, in finery, with downcast eyes. Then the cart began to move, lurching as the bullocks got awkwardly into rhythm, and I was sick. Such a disgrace for me. . . . How shall I ever live it down? I remember thinking. I shall never forget. . . . I haven't forgotten, but the memory is not sour. My husband soothed and calmed me.
"It is a thing that might happen to anybody," he said. "Do not fret. Come, dry your eyes and sit up here beside me." So I did, and after a while I felt better, the tears left my eyes and dried on my lashes.
For six hours we rode on and on along the dusty road, passing several villages on the way to ours, which was a good distance away. Halfway there we stopped and ate a meal: boiled rice, dhal,* vegetables and curds. A whole coconut apiece too, in which my husband nicked a hole with his scythe for me so that I might drink the clear milk. Then he unyoked the bullocks and led them to the small pool of water near which we had stopped, giving them each a handful of hay. Poor beasts, they seemed glad of the water, for already their hides were dusty.
We rested a half-hour before resuming our journey. The animals, refreshed, began stepping jauntily again, tossing their heads and jangling the bells that hung from their red-painted horns. The air was full of the sound of bells, and of birds, sparrows and bulbuls mainly, and sometimes the cry of an eagle, but when we passed a grove, green and leafy, I could hear mynahs and parrots. It was very warm, and, unused to so long a jolting, I fell asleep.
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*
This and other Indian terms are defined in the glossary at the end of the book.
It was my husband who woke me -- my husband, whom I will call here Nathan, for that was his name, although in all the years of our marriage I never called him that, for it is not meet for a woman to address her husband except as "husband."
"We are home," he cried. "Wake up! Look!"
I woke; I looked. A mud hut, thatched, small, set near a paddy field, with two or three similar huts nearby. Across the doorway a garland of mango leaves, symbol of happiness and good fortune, dry now and rattling in the breeze.
"This is our home," my husband said. "Come, I will show you."
I got out of the cart, stiff and with a cramp in one leg. We went in: two rooms, one a sort of storehouse for grain, the other for everything else. A third had been begun but was unfinished, the mud walls were not more than half a foot high.
"It will be better when it is finished," he said. I nodded; I wanted to cry. This mud hut, nothing but mud and thatch, was my home. My knees gave, first the cramped one, then the other, and I sank down. Nathan's face filled with concern as he came to hold me.
"It is nothing," I said. "I am tired -- no more. I will be all right in a minute."
He said, "Perhaps you are frightened at living here alone -- but in a few years we can move -- maybe even buy a house such as your father's. You would like that?"
There was something in his voice, a pleading, a look on his face such as a dog has when you are about to kick it.
"No," I said, "I am not frightened. It suits me quite well to live here."
He did not reply at once but went into the granary and came out with a handful of paddy.
"Such harvests as this," he said, sliding the grains about in his hand,
"and you shall not want for anything, beloved." Then he went out to get the tin trunk and after a while I followed.
Sometimes now I can see quite clearly: the veil is rent and for a few seconds I see blue skies and tender trees, then it closes on me again and once more I am back in a world of my own, which darkens a little with each passing day. Yet not alone; for the faces of those I have loved, things that have been -- shapes, forms, images -- are always before me; and sometimes they are so vivid that truly I cannot say whether I see them or not, whether the veil is lifted to allow me the sight, or whether it is only my mind that sees. Today, for instance, I could see the brook that ran near our paddy field so clearly that I felt I had but to stoop to feel its water wet on my hands. Yet that brook belongs to a part of my life that is finished. I was a bride of only a week when I first followed it to look for a suitable place for my washing. I walked for nearly an hour before I found a wide stretch of water and a sandy beach, with boulders scattered about. I put my bundle down, untied it and put the clothes in. The water was clear but not swift running -- the linen did not float too far or too quickly away from my hands. I tucked my sari up above my knees and stood in the river, scrubbing the clothes against a large flat stone and using just a little of the washing powder my mother had given me; good stuff, with a clean sweet smell and much power in it. When I had finished, I carried the clothes beyond the beach and laid them on the grassy bank to dry in the sun.
Just then I saw Kali, wife of our neighbour, coming towards me, and with her were two women I had not seen before. All carried bundles of washing on their heads, and two had children at their hips and the third was expecting. They called out when they saw me, and I came down, a little shy, since they seemed to know each other so well; but before long I came to know them well too, these three women who lived nearest to us, and whose lives were so closely woven with mine. Kali, big and plump, with ample hips and thrusting breasts, whose husband worked the next field to ours; Janaki, married to the village shopkeeper, with her homely face and sagging figure, for she had borne her husband several children; and Kunthi, youngest of the three, small and narrow, moving gracefully despite her burden.
"It is her first," said Kali, jovially, "but by no means her last, for as you see her husband has not wasted any time!" She laughed loudly. Janaki frowned at her. "Chup woman! Do you not see these are young girls?"
"And what of it? Are they not given in marriage? Kunthi is already bearing, and this newcomer -- it will not be long. Men are all the same."
I saw Kunthi shrug with a slight disdain; Janaki was quiet. Perhaps they both knew the futility of trying to restrain Kali. She meanwhile was addressing herself to me.
"You are Rukmani, are you not? Wife of the farmer Nathan. The whole village has been curious about you -- heaven knows why, one woman is like another. The fuss your husband made! Why, for weeks he was as brittle as a bamboo before it bursts into flame! He built your hut with his own hands -- yes, he would not even have my husband to help."
"Built it?" I said. "I did not know -- he did not tell me."
"Oh, yes! Every bit of it himself, and neglecting the land sometimes to do it, so that Sivaji had often to chide him, although he is a good man for a Zemindari agent."
He had made our home himself, and I had felt only fear to live in it. About a month later, when we were no longer strangers, I told him of what I had learnt.
"You built this for us," I said to him. "Why did you not tell me?"
"Who has been talking to you?" he asked, not answering my question.
" Kali. She told me a long time ago -- when I first went to where the brook widens near the river."
"She is an old chatterbox and should have her mouth stitched."
"What for? I am glad she told me. Should I not be proud that you have built this house with your own hands?"
He considered. "You are not a child any more," he said at last. "You have grown fast since the day we were married, and that not so long ago."
While the sun shines on you and the fields are green and beautiful to the eye, and your husband sees beauty in you which no one has seen before, and you have a good store of grain laid away for hard times, a roof over you and a sweet stirring in your body, what more can a woman ask for? My heart sang and my feet were light as I went about my work, getting up at sunrise and going to sleep content. Peace and quiet were ours. How well I recall it, how grateful I am that not all the clamour which invaded our lives later could subdue the memory or still the longing for it. Rather, it has strengthened it: had there not been what has been, I might never have known how blessed we were. True, my husband did not own the land he tilled, as my father had done; yet the possibility was there that he might one day do so. We owned our own ploughing bullocks; we kept a milch goat. From each harvest we saved, and had gunny sacks full of the husked rice stored away in our small stone-lined granary. There was food in plenty for two people and we ate well: rice for morning and evening meals; dahl; sometimes a coconut grated fine and cooked in milk and sugar: sometimes a wheatcake, fried in butter and melting in the mouth.
Once or twice a week I would go to the village to buy sugar, ghee and vegetables, calling on the way home at Durgan the milkman's to get curds, for our goat was running dry and there was not always enough milk to make my own. I liked going to the village and meeting its people, for they were a friendly lot and most of them anxious to help if they could. I got to know them all very quickly: Old Granny, who lived on what she made by selling peanuts and guavas; Hanuman, the general merchant; Perumal, husband of Janaki, who kept the only shop; and Biswas, the moneylender. Sometimes Janaki or Kali would come to see how I was getting on, but not often, for they were kept busy looking after husband and children. As for Kunthi, very soon she was unable to do anything for herself, for she was a thin, slight girl, and we had to go in turns to buy her provisions and to help her with the work in the home. Kunthi was different from the other women, quieter, more reserved, and for all that we tried to be at ease with her there was a barrier which we could not surmount. Especially high against me it stood, strange and forbidding, although why this should be I could not think, finally putting it down to my imagination.
She had, everybody said, married beneath her. Perhaps they said that of me too, but I was plain and she was pretty, so it didn't make sense in her case. For myself, I am glad I married "beneath me," for a finer man no one could have had; but possibly she was not so lucky.
A man is indeed fortunate if he does not marry above him, for if he does he gets a wife who is no help to him whatsoever, only an ornament. I know, for I was ignorant of the simplest things, and no ornament either. Kali and Janaki between them had to show me how to milk the goat, how to plant seed, how to churn butter from milk, and how to hull rice. What patience indeed my husband must have had, to put up with me uncomplainingly during those early days of our married lives! Not one cross word or impatient look, and praise for whatever small success I achieved. I had planted, in the flat patch of ground behind the hut, a few pumpkin seeds. The soil here was rich, never having yielded before, and loose so that it did not require much digging. The seeds sprouted quickly, sending up delicate green shoots that I kept carefully watered, going several times to the well nearby for the purpose. Soon they were not delicate but sprawling vigorously over the earth, and pumpkins began to form, which, fattening on soil and sun and water, swelled daily larger and larger and ripened to yellow and red, until at last they were ready to eat, and I cut one and took it in. When Nathan saw it he was full of admiration, and made much of this one fruit -- he who was used to harvesting a field at a time.
"One would have thought you had never seen a pumpkin before," I said, though pleased with him and myself, keeping my eyes down.
"Not from our land," said Nathan. "Therefore it is precious, and you, Ruku, are indeed a clever woman."
I tried not to show my pride. I tried to be offhand. I put the pumpkin away. But pleasure was making my pulse beat; the blood, unbidde
n, came hot and surging to my face.
After that, ten times more zealous, I planted beans and sweet potatoes, brinjals and chillies, and they all grew well under my hand, so that we ate even better than we had done before.
CHAPTER II
KUNTHI'S child was born a few months before mine, a fine boy who nearly took his mother's life in exchange for his own. Janaki was ill and could not come, Kali was away, therefore I had to do what I could. Kunthi's husband went off to fetch the midwife, leaving me with the sweating girl. When she saw who I was -- not at once, for she was half-dazed with pain -- Kunthi cried out that she did not want me.
"You must go," she kept entreating.
"Why?" I said. "Do you dislike me so much, then?"
"No, no, but please go. I do not want you here."
"I cannot and will not. Besides, there is no one else."
"I shall be all right. The midwife will be here soon."
"And what will your husband say," I said, "if I leave you here alone?" and I took no more notice of her cries.