“You see,” Tom explained to Ganesh, “this is a farm state. The politicians pay attention to what the farmer thinks.”
Ganesh understood farmers from his own experience. All his life he had seen them bending in the fields, tracking through mud churned by oxen, lying exhausted in bullock carts taking burlap bags full of rice to market. He knew how much a farmer loved and respected the land. “Yes,” he said to Lucy and Tom, “it’s a good sign.”
The day, though beginning on a hopeful note, did not continue that way. Euphoria disappeared and a general weakness returned. The Satyagrahis grew both restless and lethargic, bored, yet too fatigued for any activity. Hour followed remorseless hour. The Satyagrahis edged closer together in their increasing depression, in their need for sharing the worst experience of all — this new terrible emptiness. Some tried to meditate, but soon gave it up. Even Ganesh failed at it. Not that he was surprised; Father had told him how tricky meditation could be, how it might go well and then suddenly deceive you, making you feel worse than you had before attempting it.
Something peculiar and disturbing occurred during the heat of afternoon. They were all on the porch (except Aunt Betty, who rarely left her bedroom now), when suddenly Helen Soderstrom began sobbing. People gathered around, trying to soothe her, but she shrugged them off as if they were enemies.
“Go away, go away!” She sobbed, curling up in a ball against the side of the porch. “I love this house,” she murmured. Then in a louder voice she exclaimed again, “I love this house! I love this house!” Falling abruptly silent, she sniffled a few times and stared at the wall.
It was at this moment that Ganesh took the folded unread letter from his back pocket. He must break the spell of her despair, of the despair as yet concealed in the hearts of everyone.
“Listen,” he said, opening the envelope. “This is a letter from my friend in the village.” He read slowly, while in nearby trees a few sparrows chirped and flies buzzed through the spacious avenue of the open porch.
“Dear Ganesh, I was very glad to be having news from you, knowing you are in good health. My family sends best regards too. The hot season is finished, and we are having a breeze in the evenings. Subramanian broke his leg last week jumping from a hay mound. He was not aware that underneath the paddy hay was a big sharp stone. Vasu and I went viper hunting yesterday but caught only one. He does not have your eyes. Remember how we would be going through a field and you would be stopping like that and whisper ‘there,’ and I would look hard but see nothing and then when we took one step more, the viper would dart out through the grass?
“We miss you, all of us. We had such good times, you and me especially. I won’t let you forget the village and all of us here. But I can tell from your letter that you are making such good friends and that makes me happy too. The other day Subish — Subish from the crematory — stopped me and asked to be remembered to you. So you see, you have friends in both places. The other night I had a dream and in it you were coming toward me with people I didn’t know, all of you smiling. That was a good dream, wasn’t it. Write. Your friend, Rama.”
“He sounds okay,” someone murmured.
Helen Soderstrom was sitting up.
*
When night fell, they huddled even closer together. Someone asked in the darkness, “How long have we been here?”
Nobody answered right away.
“Didn’t we keep track?” There was giggling.
“We have now fasted eleven days,” Ganesh informed them.
A low awed whistle went through the night air.
“Ganesh! Come here!” Lucy Smith stood in the doorway holding the screen door open.
When Ganesh joined her, Lucy said nervously, “Your aunt isn’t well.”
They went upstairs; Aunt Betty lay in her bedroom panting, lips drawn, her face not haggard but — bloated.
Ganesh sat down on the bed and took her hand. It was feverish. “Aunt, you must have a doctor.”
“Don’t you dare stop me now,” she said feebly, her eyes fierce, as she lifted her head from the pillow.
“You must be having a doctor, ma’am. Or we quit.”
Aunt Betty glared at him. “You’d go this far and quit? I don’t believe it of you; I refuse to believe it of you!” Her lips were tense, straight in determination. “You must never quit!”
“We won’t,” Lucy Smith put in suddenly and stepped up to the bed. “Your nephew is wrong. We won’t quit, any of us. If he does, then we’ll stay without him.” She glared at Ganesh as his aunt had done.
Aunt Betty smiled wanly. “I believe you. All right, call the doctor.”
In a half-hour her physician was in the bedroom, examining her, while Ganesh and the other Satyagrahis waited in the hall. The doctor, a white-haired, bent old man, finally emerged with his medical bag. “So you’re the nephew,” he said to Ganesh severely. “I must say, you and your friends have got your aunt into a real pickle.” He put up one hand to discourage interruption. “Nothing serious — yet. It’s a kidney problem. Develops with some people during a fast. Right now I can control it, but if she persists in this folly —” He shrugged and scowled. “It could get worse.”
“How much worse?” asked Ganesh.
“It could become fatal.”
Ganesh swallowed hard. “When could it be getting like that?”
“Who can say? In a matter of this sort it depends on a lot of factors. Each body is unique in a fast. Maybe five days, maybe two — maybe tomorrow.” The doctor gripped Ganesh’s shoulder with a clawlike hand. “Convince her she must stop.”
“She won’t.”
With a sigh of exasperation the doctor said briskly, “I can only advise, I can’t command.” He left the Satyagrahis standing in the hall.
“We better quit,” someone said.
“No!” chorused the others.
“Never,” Culver Williamson muttered between his teeth.
Ganesh stared at them a moment, then went into the bedroom.
Aunt Betty waved her hand weakly. “I’m okay,” she claimed with a faint smile.
“What good is this house,” Ganesh said, tears in his eyes, “if something happens to you?”
“What good is it? It’s everything. It just isn’t a house, Jeffrey,” she said, patting the bed lightly for him to sit beside her. “It means you and they —” She pointed toward the door, behind which the Satyagrahis were waiting. “You must stand up for your beliefs. Those friends of ours out there are in it as deeply as we are. You can’t let them down any more than I can.”
“If anything happens to you,” Ganesh said in a low voice, “I would be hating this house.”
“Then hate it. But you must fight for it anyway.”
She moves with the power of two, thought Ganesh.
“Do you understand me?” she asked sharply.
“No.”
“You started with — what did you call it? — a firm grip on the truth. Do you still have that grip?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Enough said, then. Go out and let me rest.” She took his hand and squeezed it, adding, “Don’t you give up for anything. Hear?”
Nodding, he withdrew his hand and went into the hall. The others had all gone downstairs. When he reached the porch, there was silence. Ganesh sat down with his back against the wall, staring into the moonlight. No one said a word, because words were no longer necessary.
A few minutes later the phone rang. Lucy Smith came to the screen door and called into the darkness of the porch for Ganesh, who rose and went inside the house.
When he said hello into the phone, from the other end came a soft, pleasant voice: “This is Sally Kane. From the Express. Remember?”
“We thank you for the news report,” Ganesh told her.
“I suspect you’re in for a lot more publicity. That’s why I’m calling. A friend of mine says a TV unit is coming to your house tomorrow for an interview. Do you understand what that means?”
Ganesh, still overwhelmed by what was happening to his aunt, said nothing.
“It means,” continued Sally Kane, “the state is going to be very interested in your problem. TV isn’t exactly what the officials want. TV could have a big influence on their decision.” She paused. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, my aunt is sick.”
“I see. Because of the fast. Well, what are you going to do?”
“Continue.”
“She wants that?”
“She is wanting it. We all are.”
“Including you?”
After a long pause, Ganesh said faintly, “Yes. I too.”
“Then good luck. I know it isn’t easy —”
“Thank you, Miss Kane. It is not.” After hanging up, he went to the porch and told everyone about the TV. No one shouted hurrah; no one said a thing, but, like Ganesh, sat there grimly determined. Nothing was going to change their mind, nothing good or bad. They were sitting until the house was free.
*
He awoke in the darkness with a violent start. The moon had gone past the porch, leaving the sky studded with brilliant little points of starlight. Had he been dreaming? Had it been a nightmare? Something had shaken him, perhaps the fear of his aunt dying. It was all very well to believe in something to the exclusion of other things. But at what cost might he be defending this house? He could not lose his aunt so soon after finding her. Ganesh stirred, feeling compelled to rise and tiptoe past the sleeping bodies to the screen door, then up the stairway to his own room.
From this side of the house the moonlight was shining through the window upon the bronze figure on the desk. At this moment Ganesh understood that it was the elephant-headed god who had compelled him to come upstairs. He reached down and picked it up, hefting it to sense its bronze weight, peering closely at the tiny eyes, the curved trunk, the huge ears, the great belly, the four arms. In America it had sometimes seemed an odd, perhaps ridiculous object, unrelated to the image that had been worshiped during his life in the village. Yet often in the past Ganesh had been comforted by it, and once again, as he had during his father’s illness, he desperately needed comfort. Replacing the bronze figure on the desk, Ganesh dropped on his knees before it. He no longer worried if it was really a symbol of God or if it had any power or if in the past it had ignored or betrayed him. The elephant-headed god was right here, a vision conjured in the minds of countless people for centuries, in great temples, in wayside shrines, in little puja rooms inside modest homes, on calendars, in souvenir stalls during festival times. People believed in it, whatever it was, however capable it was of helping them in their distress. There was nothing wrong in such a belief. Nothing. Ganesh lifted his hands in prayer and recited a mantra to his namesake god. He did it with feeling, without embarrassment, simply repeating the gestures and words of men, women, and children from time beyond reckoning. Satisfied, he rose and went away. Back on the porch, he lay on his side and stared at the faint outline of the white picket fence until falling asleep.
*
He heard something stirring nearby and opened his eyes to look into those of Lucy Smith, also lying on the floorboards of the porch. They both smiled and sat up. Others were waking too in the gray mist of morning. A ground fog undulated like ocean waves on top of the grass, a freshness of air stimulated the wakers, who stretched, yawned, and blinked.
Ganesh went immediately upstairs to check on his aunt, who slept quietly, her face relaxed, her breathing slow and regular. He would let her sleep as long as she could.
Coming back downstairs, he opened the screen door in time to see, along with everyone else on the porch, a black limousine pull up to the curb.
Emerging from it was the man in the checkered suit, carrying the familiar briefcase: Commissioner Walton. This time he was not accompanied by the police, but walked unattended up the walk, with fog ballooning around his knees at every step. Reaching the invisible barrier, he stopped and gravely studied the people gathered on the porch. He asked for Mrs. Strepski.
Ganesh stepped forward and explained that his aunt was sleeping.
“I understand she is not well,” Commissioner Walton remarked. “Her doctor called me.” He frowned deeply at Ganesh, as if he had given the freckle-faced boy a lot of thought recently. “You have caused her — you have caused all your friends a lot of trouble,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Ganesh admitted quietly. “I know it. Like that.”
“But in the face of it you will have the fast continue?”
“Yes, sir.”
Commissioner Walton cleared his throat. “Well, that won’t be necessary.” He explained in crisp sentences, as if the saying of each one pained him, that at an extraordinary session of the Highway Commission Planning Board last night a change had been proposed in the plan. In the light of public interest, the board was going to reroute the highway by confiscating the drive-in and restoring the property of Mrs. Strepski under the legal designation of a Landmark Building, safeguarded by a statute related to the State Historical Society.
Commissioner Walton stared gloomily at the assembled kids. “I wanted you to know,” he told Ganesh, “as soon as possible, so your aunt will stop this fasting and let the state get back to its regular business!” Turning on his heel, he charged through the flowing mist.
The Satyagrahis watched the big black car vanish through the early morning like smoke.
“Shouldn’t we give a cheer or something?” Tom Carrington suggested, but instead of initiating it, he sat down against the house and put his hands in his pockets. No one else took up his idea, but everyone else sat down too.
“We’ll cook breakfast pretty soon,” Lucy Smith maintained, but curiously without enthusiasm, as if she were unwilling to see the end of their trial. “Ganesh,” she said, “is it all right if I give the news to your aunt?”
“No one else should,” Ganesh said, remembering how last night she had stood against him, against the world, in defense of the house. When Lucy had gone inside, he walked into the dewy grass through oceanic layers of fog. They had won, but for a while the thrill of victory was eluding them. It would come soon. But in those few moments before the Satyagrahis took hold of their triumph, he had the silence of the morning to himself. He walked away from the house to view it from the yard. Midway between it and the picket fence, Ganesh turned and stared through the mist at the weather vane, at the cast-iron rooster fixed securely above the house long ago by his great-grandfather to signify for everyone that here was a place of shelter, a home of memory.
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Ganesh Page 16