Nectar in a Sieve

by Kamala Markandaya

  Now not even a heap of bones: only a few ashes to show that once a man has lived.

  Raja had not been dead three full days when two officials from the tannery came to see us, and the one who was tall and burly with long moustaches did all the talking, and the other who was thin and insignificant stepped timidly in his shadow and agreed with what he said.

  "The watchmen were only doing their duty," the tall one began. "They are engaged to protect our property, you understand."

  "I understand."

  "No violence was used," he said. "Only enough to stop him. You agree, it was necessary."

  "He was doing nothing."

  "On the contrary. He was seen in the yard, where he had no business to be, and when the chowkidars caught him they found he had stolen a calfskin."

  "I do not believe it," I said. "What use had he for such a thing?"

  "Not in itself maybe," he replied in a strained voice, as if struggling to keep his temper, "but of course he could have sold it -- sold it anywhere. We have had a lot of losses recently."

  "You cannot blame my son," I said wearily. "We live from hand to mouth, as you can see. . . there is no wealth here, such as your goods might have brought."

  "I am not blaming your son alone," he said carefully, "but of course it is well known your sons have been troublemakers. Now we do not want any trouble from you, you understand. The lad was caught in the act of stealing -- maybe, as you say, for the first time and in a moment of weakness -- still, he was caught, and for the consequences that followed, no one was to blame except himself. He should not have struggled. In these circumstances you naturally have no claim on us."

  "Claim?" I said. "I have made no claim. I do not understand you."

  He made a gesture of impatience.

  "You may think of it later, and try to get compensation. I warn you, it will not work."

  Compensation, I thought. What compensation is there for death? I felt confused, I did not understand what he was getting at. There was a pause. The timid man said kindly: "He was not brutally treated or anything, you know. They merely tapped him with a lathi, as he was trying to escape, and he fell. He must have been very weak or something."

  "He was," I said. "He worked hard, and ate little."

  "Naturally, it must have been a blow for you," said the timid one. "It is hard to lose -- that is --" He tailed off incoherently, seeing his companion's glance fixed on him.

  "The point is," the other said, and he thumped on the floor to emphasize his point, "that no fault attaches to us. Absolutely none. Of course, as my friend has said, it is your loss. But not, remember, our responsibility. Perhaps," he went on, "you may even be the better off. . . . You have many mouths to feed, and --"

  The thinner man raised his hand to check him, appalled by the words, yet scared by his own daring. Poor little mouse, that gesture must have taken all his courage, he had none left for speech. His aggressive companion stopped short; the look of surprise spreading over his face was quickly replaced by displeasure. He turned to me.

  "I did not intend to wound you. But sometimes the truth must be stated, unpalatable as it is."

  I nodded. There was no sense in agreeing or disagreeing, the gulf between us was too wide; it was no use at all flinging our words at each other across that gaping chasm.

  "So you agree," he insisted. "No responsibility attaches to us."

  "Yes," I said, my lips felt stiff.

  "I am glad everything is settled then. An unpleasant matter, but amicably settled." He drew his lips back, imitating a smile, and turned triumphantly to his companion.

  "Did I not tell you there would be no trouble? You always fear the worst. I told you they would be reasonable."

  The other did not look triumphant: if anything, he seemed to have shrunk a little, he avoided looking at me altogether; but as they went out together he glanced at me quickly, once, and in that brief moment I saw that his eyes were grieving.

  "You should not care," I said very softly to him alone. "It does not matter."

  He heard me and half-turned, his eyes clearing a little.

  "I am very sorry for you," he said in a low voice. "May you find peace."

  He went, his face overlaid with shame and misery.

  CHAPTER XVI

  "THERE is the reaping," I said, "and the threshing and winnowing. How shall we manage when the time comes?"

  "When the time comes," Nathan said with a gleam in his eye, "the strength will be forthcoming, never fear."

  I looked at him doubtfully: thin and drawn, with thighs and arms so puny that no muscle showed even when he flexed them. The rice would have to be lifted plant by plant, and the grain separated from the husk, and the husk beaten for the last few grains. . . it meant working long hours in the flooded fields with bent back, and much labouring thereafter converting the paddy into rice. It was no task for weakened bodies.

  "You will see," he said with confidence. "We will find our strength. One look at the swelling grain will be enough to renew our vigour."

  Indeed, it did our hearts good to see the paddy ripen. We watched it as a dog watches a bone, jealously, lest it be snatched away; or as a mother her child, with pride and affection. And most of all with fear.

  As we sat there Irawaddy came to us, stepping softly.

  "It is hot within," she said forlornly. "I could not rest."

  She went and picked a head of paddy before sitting down beside us. I saw her fingers parting the husk, feeling for the grain within.

  "How much longer?"

  The same question, the answer to which she already knew, who had lived on the land since birth.

  "Three weeks," Nathan's reply, grave, sincere, absolutely honest where another might have been tempted to easier words.

  "It is not long to wait," I said, trying to hearten her. "And if the Gods are kind it may even be sooner."

  That was what we prayed for -- that it might not be too late. The tears that brightened Ira's eyes, the silences of my husband, the twitching face of Selvam, all came from one thing, the thought, imprisoned in the brain but incapable of utterance, that Kuti might not live to see the harvesting. The rest of us might struggle on, our endurance was greater; but he was only a child, not yet five, who had already waited a long time and who had suffered more than any of us. Whether from the unsuitable food, or from the constant restless movement of his body, he had developed a thick, irritating rash which he kept scratching; and where his nails caught, sores and blisters began, destroying whatever little peace he might have had. Sometimes after moaning for hours at a stretch he would fall into an exhausted daze -- it could not be called sleep, it was nothing so sweet -- and I would go to him with beating heart to see if the fight was ended; but again and again he struggled back to consciousness, took up again his tormented living; almost I wished it otherwise.

  Some two or three days later I noticed a change in Kuti: his eyes lost their dullness and the whimpering that had been so harrowing to listen to lessened and stopped. I thought it was the end -- a brief rallying, a frothing up of the last reserves of strength when there is no longer any need to hold back, like the sudden brilliant glow of an expiring taper -- since we gave him nothing, there being nothing to give, that might account for the change. The following day, however, the improvement continued, and that night he slept peacefully. I gazed at the small tired face, soothed by sleep as it had not been for many nights, and even as I puzzled about the change, profound gratitude flooded through me, and it seemed to me that the Gods were not remote, not unheedful, since they had heard his cries and stilled them as it were by a miracle. Irawaddy crept up to me as I watched, and smiled at me and the child; and I whispered, "He is better," but there was no need as she, of all people, knew.

  Through relief and exhaustion I slept well that night, waking refreshed before daybreak with a renewed hopefulness. Soon all will be well, I thought. We shall eat and the strength will come back to us, and there will be no more fear. This has been a bad time but
it is passing as all things must, and now it is not joy, which passes in a trice, but sorrow, which is slower in the going, and so one must be patient. A few more days' waiting, a few more days' anxiety -- it is not beyond enduring, it is not too much to ask. This I thought as I lay there, listening to the sounds of sleep and lost in my own imaginings.

  The darkness was lifting when I heard the sound of footsteps, wary, soft, less heard than felt as a slight tremor of the ground. If it had been a reverberating gong, that sound could not have had more violent effect. My fancies fled headlong from me; in their place a cloud of black and grey arose, revolving before my eyes and assuming fantastic shapes and forms until at last one stood out clearly away from the swirling mists and with a face to it. Kunthi. No one but Kunthi, coming stealthily by night to thieve from us what little we had, unashamed as she was and always had been.

  The footsteps were coming nearer: I raised myself on my elbow the better to listen, trying to still the thudding in my eardrums which impeded my hearing. Nearer and nearer. I stood up, bracing myself for the encounter, and stepped from the familiar darkness of the hut into the greying night outside. The figure was there, soft and blurred in outline, but a woman's. I threw myself at it, pinioning the arms savagely; thrust at it and beat it to the ground; fell on it with fury; felt the weak struggles of the body beneath mine like the feeble fluttering of a trapped bird, and exulted. The air was full of harsh sounds, but whether they issued from my throat or hers, or existed only in my imagination, I do not know. The being that was me was no longer in possession: it had been consumed in the flames of anger and hatred that raged through me in those few minutes; what took its place I do not know.

  Then I heard a thin, shrill scream. "Mother! Mother!" Hands were dragging we away. I felt myself pulled and thrown to one side. "Fiend! Madwoman!" Nathan was shrieking. "Accursed mother!" He was bending over the form, doing something to it. I saw he was quite naked and wondered at it, forgetting he had come straight from sleep. He turned to me.

  "Are you out of your mind? Your own daughter, you have killed her. Murderess!"

  He and Selvam carried her in. I slunk after them, disbelieving. It could not be Irawaddy. It was some monstrous mistake they had made, not I. I crept to her side and saw it was Irawaddy. Her face was puffed and bore horrible marks, one lip was bleeding where her tooth had bitten down. I closed my eyes. Red circles opened out before them, receding into an endless blackness. I shook myself clear of them and went to aid my husband. He had a pot of water beside him and was wiping the blood from her body. Her sari was stained with blood. I took the cloth from him.

  "I will see to her."

  He thrust me aside. "Get away; you have done enough harm. You are not fit."

  "I thought it was Kunthi," I whispered.

  He moved a little, making room for me, but remained near, not wholly trusting.

  She had been badly cut. A long jagged gash showed in her left side, there was a similar one on her left wrist.

  "These wounds," I said. "I did not make them." I did not expect him to believe me.

  "I know. The bangles broke."

  Bangles? How could she have bangles, who had not a pie of her own? I stared at him, not knowing amid these unreal happenings whether those were his words or only what I had heard. He pointed.

  "Do you not see the glass -- there and there. She was wearing bangles."

  They had broken against her body, which had protected me from injury. I began to swab. The cuts were full of glass, some of it in splinters, some of it in powder like shining sand. When I had cleaned them I bound the two largest gashes. For the rest there was nothing I could use, but these were smaller and mercifully soon stopped bleeding. The sari I had taken from her was soaked with blood and grimy where dust clung to the wet cloth. I took it down to the river intending to wash it, shook it clear of dust and broken glass. As I did so, something dropped from the folds, fell in the muddy water, sank and was lost; but not before I had seen that it was a rupee.

  I went on with my work, scrubbing the bloodstains, rinsing the cloth, laying it on the grass to dry: then I came back, swept and cleaned the hut, cleared the courtyard, removed all signs of the struggle that had been. The sun was moving to midday by the time I had finished. Now that there was nothing more to do, the thoughts I had so far avoided came crowding in on me in agitated turmoil. Who had given her the money? Why? Had she stolen it, and if so how and who from?

  Why did she have to walk by night wearing glass bangles? I kept very still, not to waken my sleeping daughter, while the thoughts went galloping through my head, and question after question, unanswered.

  Kuti, lying in a corner of the hut, began to moan. Ira heard and opened her eyes, gesturing vaguely towards him. I went to her first.

  "Lie still; the cut will open again."

  She looked at me sombrely: "Feed him; he is hungry. Take the rupee you will find in my sari."

  I knew then that it was she who had been responsible for the improvement in Kuti, not I, not my prayers.

  Nathan was about to say something, to question her perhaps. I gripped his arm, forcing him to silence. Ira was struggling to rise. I went to her.

  "Lie still," I said again, laying restraining hands on her. "I will see to him."

  I picked up the moaning child and took him outside, trying to quieten him. It was useless. Ira had fed him and freed him from hunger, the taste was with him still and he would not be quietened. I walked away from the hut with him in my arms, and at length his sharp cries sank into soft whimpering and finally into silence.

  The lips of her wounds had hardly drawn together when Ira was on her feet again.

  "Where do you go?" I said to her. "Rest a little longer; the marks are still livid."

  "Rest!" she said contemptuously. "How can I rest or anyone rest? Can you not hear the child?"

  "Where do you go?" I repeated. "Tell me only where you go."

  "Do not ask," she said. "It is better that you should not know."

  She was combing her hair, letting it fall away from her neck, first one way, then another, until the whole, head and hair, was sleek and shining. She had not troubled so much since she was a bride.

  I saw her go out in the dusk, sari tightly wrapped about her. Saw her walk to the town, along the narrow lane which ran past the tannery, following it to where it broadened with beedi shops along one side and tawdry stalls on the other, where men with bold eyes lounged smoking or drinking from frothing toddy pots. She moved jauntily, stepping with outrageous fastidiousness amid the litter of the street, the chewed sugar cane, the trampled sweetmeats, the red betel-nut spittle; jauntily, a half-smile on her lips answering the jeers and calls that were thrown at her, eyes darting quickly round searching, then retreating behind half-drawn lids. At each turning leading from the street -- and there were many of these, dim lanes and alleys -- she paused, and advanced a little along it, and waited, lost in the shadows.

  "I must know," I said, imploring. "It is better that I should know than that I should imagine."

  Ira gave me a sidelong glance: "Your imagination would not travel that far."

  "You do not know me," I said, troubled. "And I no longer understand you."

  "The truth is unpalatable," she replied.

  I pondered awhile, searching my memory: then it came to me: the man who had called after Raja's death. He had said the same thing. The truth is unpalatable.

  Nathan came in from the fields at sundown as Ira was setting forth. He had been clearing the irrigation channels and strengthening the dams, the fork he carried was caked with soil and water. He thrust it into the earth and leaned on it.

  "Where do you go at this hour?"

  "It is better not to speak."

  "I will have an answer."

  "I can give you none."

  Nathan's brows drew together: she had never before spoken to him in this manner. Looking at her, it seemed to me that almost overnight she had changedi she had been tender and modest and obedient,
now she had relinquished every one of these qualities; it was difficult to believe she had ever been their possessor.

  Nathan was groping for words, stumbling a little over them.

  "I will not have it said -- I will not have you parading at night --"