As Sweet as Honey

by Indira Ganesan

  “You are like Isak Dinesen,” he said, taking her into his arms.

  “Who?”

  “A woman who was brave beyond her times.”

  And then he began to kiss her, and there really was no further talk on the subject.

  Meterling found the story from Isak Dinesen that Archer had mentioned. A woman pleads for the life of her son, who is accused of arson, and the overlord asks her to plow a field of rye in one day to spare his life. She plows with the village and the overlord and his guest watching, until she finishes, her son walking beside her all along, and collapses in his arms to her death. For the freedom of one, the death of another. Sorrow-Acre. An inheritance of sorrow. A haunting tale. Isak Dinesen, who had had a philanderer for a husband, whom she still loved, some say, after their divorce. And now Archer was gone, and she had no wish for rye.

  And here was his cousin, wanting her to phone, leaving a message hurriedly scribbled by Pa. She had no wish to phone. She wanted Archer.

  Archer had told her about the seasons in Surrey, his old home. In March, everything became mud, as the weather shifted from ice to less ice. Then a brief, pale-lemony sun that melted the ice and softened the soil, painting the backs of rubber boots with squishy dirt.

  “Once I was walking and came across violets, half-hidden in all that mud,” he told her. “The trees hadn’t greened yet—everything was still bare branches and gray. But the burst of violet was sudden, a gift.

  “Finding you, Meterling, is like coming across those violets—a gift.”

  And Meterling blushed. For even though the idea of an absence of flowers was alien to her, she knew what he meant from the emotion in his voice. And again, there was nothing else to do but fall swiftly into his arms.

  Later, they wondered about children.

  “Yes, a good idea,” she murmured, her face pressed to his neck.

  “Yes,” he replied, “a wonderful idea.”

  9

  Look at the way our neighbor conducts himself late at night,” said Aunt Pa. “Who is to say he is not at war with his whole life, all of the time like that? My uncle Das was his classmate, after all,” she told us, “arm in arm back in those days, one wiping his nose, the other scratching. Two peas in a pod, you know, the pair of them: and how often did my own grandmother take a broom to their shenanigans? My grandmother, who was so severe,” she said—and here we looked at each other, listening to Aunt Pa’s tale, astonished.

  But Aunt Pa was looking off into the distance.

  “You never expect your uncle to be killed so young, of course. This was your great-uncle from your grandfather’s side of the family. And it was our neighbor himself who went to the stationmaster’s office to demand reparation. Of course, it wasn’t that poor man’s fault—a train is bound to fail once or twice for all the times it runs properly. And your great-uncle, eighteen, he was fond of crossing the tracks to get home for tiffin. The train came at a quarter past, that was the schedule, and usually your uncle crossed while the roar of the departing train could still be heard and seen in the distance, receding. He liked to touch the rails, too, to feel their heat. And whose fault was it except that of the glass he struck his foot on, and later the stone he hit his head on before he passed out? No one saw him, that was the trouble, or in a wink they would have pulled him off the tracks. And that was the day the train chose to come late, too late that day.

  And even though Auntie Pa was relating a story she must have related a hundred times before, and even though we had heard it before, there was something in her voice that told us that she would have given anything to have been there that day, to pull him away from the tracks, so even now her grandmother, were she too alive, could shake a broom at him still, to spare our neighbor who drinks late into the night and smashes bottles from his second-storey window onto the street below.

  It wasn’t only for her uncle that our neighbor got drunk, but it was the start of his downward spiral, as Aunt Pa tells it—Aunt Pa, who often rises early and carefully sweeps up the glass before most of us are up the next day.

  Nalani had a funny little finger, smaller than the usual small pinkie. It was a birth defect, a stub. We loved to hold it, and compare its littleness to our own little and littler fingers. Nalani had long, thick braids, and liked to wear chiffony dupattas over her skirts. We thought her laugh was like running water, all sparkle and stream. Nalani liked to paint on glass as well as fold paper fortunes; she was the artist in our family. She painted beautiful girls from the classical period, dancing girls and musicians holding tamburas and veenas, small drums and cymbals. She went to Madhupur Women’s Art College, and took two buses to get there. There had been a row about her going, but Auntie Pa prevailed, saying that all girls should go to college; it was nonsense to think otherwise.

  My own mother had gone to college, but many of my aunts had not. Nalani’s mother had been in a class of four, one of the first girls to go to the local Catholic college in 1951. In those days, families who sent their girls to college were made fun of. Why do they protest, our grandfather had fumed (so we’d been told); our girls would be skilled at economy, home science, at the arts, make better wives than those without a B.Sc. Others resisted any Catholic institution, and the kneeling that went on within those walls. All this fuss over a class of four.

  “What’s the matter, don’t you want her to get married?” persisted the neighbors, worried he had gone crazy. But my grandfather maintained that an educated woman could educate her family, and college was the natural step to take. But though the band of four was brave, there were faculty who refused to teach girls, who said “they were unteachable, that it was immoral, and even the Gita had concurred.” The president of the college, versed in Sanskrit and no slouch, defended his actions, and threatened to dismiss faculty who would not cross the border. It was a bold step; in other situations, a man might say this, but in private—it would be understood that the threat would not be carried out. Clustering close and walking hand in hand in the corridors, where the men frankly stared, then hurriedly looked away, the four sought to absorb information quickly and become good scholars.

  The following year, the enrollment for girls at the college dipped to two and the coed program was done away with. Then, in 1954, a new women’s college was built, and the compulsory Catholic prayer with kneeling was made optional, and families sent their girls in droves, or at least dozens. My mother attended RKV Subalakshmi College and, together with her two best friends, Anu and Miriam, studied physics and chemistry. When Miriam told the girls she was going to become a nun, my mother and the other friend cried. “But, Miriam, what about your hair?!” was all they could think of to say, so shocked and hurt were they; but Miriam hugged her friends and said no shaving was involved, only a crop—“Think of Joan of Arc!”—which made the girls cry even more, followed by Miriam herself.

  Everyone was full of stories about our grandfather. He had been posted to Malaysia, on assignment for the civil engineering project he was engaged in. He and a colleague subsisted on careful rations of rice, they were so poor. One morning his friend was so hungry, he ate the day’s supply, and Grandfather wouldn’t speak to him for the rest of the week. The friend apologized profusely, but my grandfather turned a stony ear. Years later, the friend married the daughter of a poet, and he asked his father-in-law to write a sonnet on a single grain of rice dedicated to my grandfather. My grandfather had the rice grain framed, and to this day, it hangs proudly in the house.

  My mother adored my grandfather. She told me all the time about the good things he did. Even though his son-in-law had childhood polio, he never let him feel bad, so to this day, Uncle Darshan is the jolliest man we know. Grandfather married my mother off to a scholar who drank far too much espresso, who had too much brilliance for India, so he sent him to America. He was part of a crowd of men accused by India: Brain Drain! Sons abandoning Mother India! But even though Kennedy, a young, smart man who once had said, Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what
you can do for your country, did not govern America, he had once, and that spoke of hope, even if they had killed him. He was an American who was as good as Nehru perhaps, but maybe not as wise, “for really, who could be as wise as Nehru and Gandhi, Mina?” My aunties loved to tell me about Indian history, about Asoka and the Pallavas. My head swam with story, lived for story—“Then what? … Then what?” I’d ask. In my school, my teacher said she could not continue the lessons, for I would constantly erupt with questions. She gave me a notebook so I could write them down to ask her later, but instead, I began to draw.

  10

  Meterling stood in an archway. She saw the sunrise in bits—bright orange low in the sky. She saw the clouds grow purple, saw the sun loom large, awake. She saw the sun loom large, loom large and become round, filling her view—making her round, filling her view of the sky. She walked in the path of the sun, thinking of her son, and smiling and grimacing at once at the interplay of words, at the poor pun, but then her mind calmed again—she saw in the sun’s progression her own limitations and saw also her son’s possibilities. She knew she would have a son. She saw the possibilities for her son, who, like the sun, would turn from round orange to transparent yellow to a blue steel—a silvery steel, climbing high before she knew it. Her son would see the world, travel through the sky. And with a mother’s intuition, she held him strong in the womb, and gritted her teeth in anticipation of the childbirth months away.

  She greeted the day each morning by walking her coriander coffee to the herb garden. The tulsi in the pedestal was lush; the thyme had begun flowering too early, because of the spate of recent hot days. The oregano stood tall and full. Only the lavender was slow, raising perfumed leaves to herald the still-green buds. The burst of lavender had always been significant to Meterling, ever since as a child she weaved wreaths from the flowers to shape into crowns. The day was overcast. A thundery day might well ensue. This time, she did not think of Archer for a full ten minutes. Her fingers were growing plump. She had long taken off the rings, thinking she would give them to her son to give to his bride. What would Oscar grow up to be? Would he have his father’s white skin, his blond hair? Would he be ridiculed in school? She placed her hands protectively over her belly. She would protect him, she would surround him with such love, and it would shield him from taunts and cruelty.

  Nalani also spent a great deal of time in the garden. She liked to walk deep into the backyard, where there was a small clearing under the lemon tree. There, she could lose many minutes just staring at the green grass and breathing in the heady aroma of lemon blossom. She placed a small chair and table there, so she could sometimes sit with her feet up. One day she noticed a papery wasp nest deposited neatly on the table. It was so light and carefully constructed—a honeycomb of networking. As she tossed it away—it looked like there were some waspy remnants inside—she wondered how it got there. Three days later, a small bird’s eggshell was on the table. Two halves actually, beautifully oval and colored pale green. When the small strawberries arrived nestled on a mat of leaves, she knew that someone was leaving her presents. She wasn’t frightened. She didn’t feel as if she were being watched or stalked—no pinprick of fear or agitation to suggest anything out of place. Only a sense of peace and a calm happiness. Soon, they would arrange a marriage for her, and she knew to whom it would have to be.

  It was Sanjay, whom she finally caught in the act. Something to do, he shrugged.

  Meterling was four months gone and ready to give birth any day. But Dr. Kamalam had said there were four months and twenty-eight days still to go. She wanted to take off all her clothes and float in cool water, anything to feel less weighted. She did not want to wear the bangles at the bangle ceremony when all the women would crowd around her and offer baby advice. She wished she could take a plane to England, run among those violets Archer always spoke of. She wished she could drink a martini. She had seen a picture of one in Punch and it looked cool and inviting.

  Instead, she ate sugared sweets, round halvahs made of carrot and ghee; small balls of farina studded with almonds. Everything round to remind her of her round belly, her round baby. When she wasn’t eating sweets, she felt cross, magic Meterling, ready to break sticks, throw rocks, anything to get it all over with. Why had she been so hasty to sleep with Archer? Did she really think she could fool the gods? How could the baby brave a life with no father?

  “Come to the concert with me,” coaxed Nalani. “The loud violins might please the child.”

  “Can violins really be that loud?” wondered Meterling.

  It was a local Carnatic group practicing for the winter music fests in South India. A flute player was supposed to be especially good, having studied under the great Mali. Forty violins would accompany her.

  As it was, it was only four violinists, not forty. “Would that it were true, madam,” sighed the ticket master as he counted out their change. “What a celestial chorus that would be!”

  The aunties had wondered if it were wise to bring Meterling to the concert, but Meterling was twitching. Uncle Darshan suggested she go to a scary movie, but Nalani thought violins would give more grace to the birth. “The child inside can probably no doubt hear everything,” she said, and then blushed for the frankness of her expression. Smitten with a college boy named Rajan, whom she secretly named Goat Herder, and no one else, Nalani knew that she was not wise in anything to do with the heart.

  “But a baby, Nalani,” said Meterling, “has to do with the body, and sometimes—yes, only sometimes—with the heart as well. Archer and I didn’t think twice; we were caught up in the moment—there I was in his bed, with my sari coming undone. Who could have predicted it? Of course, we knew we were to marry—he’d asked already, but I hadn’t said yes, you know. I said yes only three days later, shocked by it all, of course …”

  Nalani blushed at Meterling’s frankness, thinking of Rajan, whom she met at an intercollege outing. She could bind herself to him in one breath, after all.

  “What does that mean?” Rasi would ask if she could hear her thoughts. What would it mean to bind oneself like that? Bind like a vine? Like a knot?

  “Like a love knot,” I would reply, “like a love knot.” But those adult conversations were not part of our privilege, so I make them up now as much as I can.

  They came back late from the concert, and Meterling was again in good humor.

  11

  Meterling said we are all of us braver than she could ever be. I didn’t understand, because to me it was Meterling who was the bravest of anyone I knew. She was the one in the family who went outside tradition, the one whom the aunts scolded, the one who gave rise to so much talk. But Meterling said we were young and therefore would always be able to do more than her.

  “I can’t even drive a car,” she said, “but you girls will drive as soon as you are able.”

  “Why can’t you drive, Auntie? Aunt Shobana can.”

  “I fear crashing, Mina, of hurting someone else with my hands. I fear panicking between choosing accelerator and brake. Perhaps I fear making mistakes. I worry about forgetting how to drive while driving. I worry I won’t know what to do at intersections. I know I need more experience behind the wheel to gain confidence, make left turns, merge into traffic, but I get scared. So if someone makes fun, says, ‘Take the bus,’ I think okay, yes, I’m not too proud to do that. But you, my dear, you will drive, and drive well, in all sorts of weather, at night, safely, securely.”

  “I will learn to drive a motorcycle,” said Rasi.

  “Of course,” laughed Aunt Meterling. “And why not?”

  What she didn’t tell us: that with Archer came her chance to travel, that without him, she was moored, unable to drive, fixed.

  Aunt Meterling herself had a friend, Chitra, who rode a turquoise blue Vespa scooter, always with her hair in a braid, tossed like a scarf around one shoulder.

  “Every girl has a friend like Chitra—even I had a friend named Chitra,” grumbled Grandmother,
and I knew she loved Chitra. I suppose Grandmother meant there are always girls who test the borders of every life. I wasn’t sure if I had that kind of mettle. Rasi did—she did for sure. But me, I tended, even at a young age, to be more cautious, to be the follower, not the leader. If we lied as children, it was my palms that would break out in a sweat, my eyes that widened slightly for fear of being caught. To this day, I can’t tell lies very well.

  “What is it?” Meterling asked, putting down her knitting.

  “Here, it’s from Archer’s estate.” Uncle Darshan smiled, handing her the envelope. Meterling saw the letterhead of Archer’s solicitor. Opening the note, she read swiftly.

  He had left her three fields: one for rye, two for spice. He’d left her a house. He’d left her his legacy in England.

  Rasi whispered, “She’s going to tell us that old story about the golden mango.”

  But Meterling shot us a piercing look, and said, “This is also a story about family.”

  And Nalani would tell us more later. Nalani would tell us to remember that Aunt Meterling was always thinking tenderly about her parents.

  And we knew the story by heart. One day Shiva and Parvati held a contest between their two squabbling children, Ganesha and Murugan. Whoever spun around the world three times first would receive the prize of a most special golden mango. Murugan was the older, and more prone to quick action. He sprang on the back of his peacock, laughing at his brother, and sped around the world. But Ganesha, slower, smaller, more compact, simply folded his hands together in a gesture of respect and circled his parents three times. Delighted, his parents presented him with the golden prize. When I first heard this story, I felt sorry for Murugan, because I too would have chosen to fly fast on a chariot. I thought that this was a story told by parents to keep their children home and safe.