Trial by Silence

by Perumal Murugan

  These days, Kali came during the day to eat. He sat and ate on the porch, while Ponna stayed inside the house. They still did not look directly at each other. Sometimes, Ponna would be sitting on the porch when she would hear the sound of Kali’s footsteps. She would get up immediately and rush indoors. She really wanted to see him and embrace him. This was the first time in their marriage they had been apart for so long. In fact, they had never not spoken to each other for more than a day. Even on those occasions, it was Ponna who would turn her face away and go silent, especially if she was angry. He was never able to be angry with her. And he was also good at soothing her anger and coaxing her out of her silence.

  It was quite easy for him. He would pinch her waist when she wasn’t expecting it, and run away before she could react. But she would still run after him. He’d run out into the fields. She would pick up stones and hardened mud and fling them at him. He’d deftly avoid all her attacks, but she would eventually catch hold of him. He’d bravely withstand her punches on his face and chest. ‘Oh, it feels like a shower of flowers on my chest!’ He’d laugh. She on the other hand would grow tired and get caught in his tight embrace. Not that she wanted to escape from it. Sometimes he’d make as if he was letting her go from his embrace. She’d get annoyed and hit him on the chest again. And he’d pull her back into his embrace.

  The first time she saw them at this sport, Seerayi was terrified. She scolded Ponna. ‘You can’t hit a man!’ she said. ‘You are throwing stones at him. What if it gets him in the head?’ But they didn’t pay any attention to her. Once Seerayi realized what this game was all about, she stood by, watching quietly. It made her happy. But she was anxious to ward off any evil eye that people might cast on the happy couple. She would say, ‘See, this is why a new life is not being born here. There are husbands and wives who can’t get along with each other, but they are able to produce children.’

  Ponna had not been able to bear that one thing he called her. If she happened to look him in the eye now, who knows what else he might say?

  Besides, Kali was now coming home to eat. Whenever Ponna brought brinjal from the fields, Seerayi said loudly, ‘Please cook them yourself. Your husband only likes them the way you make it. He says yours is full of ghee and mine is full of shit!’

  Ponna said, annoyed, ‘Why do you talk like this, Atthai?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. I wanted to make sure our neighbours hear what I said.’

  And Seerayi was right. Porasa next door asked cheerfully, ‘What is this talk of ghee and shit?’ For some reason, Porasa was always tickled when Seerayi scolded Ponna. Seerayi said, again loudly, ‘Well, I called ghee ghee, shit shit. What else can we do? We have to let things know what they are and where they belong, don’t we?’

  Porasa did not say anything in response.

  After Kali started tending to the brinjal patch again, the plants started bearing vegetables. He found out that it was the mist that most affected the plants. So he hung some thatched panels on the sides of the shelter he had already made for them. He let them down like a screen at the end of the day. Then in the morning when it was quite sunny and warm, he lifted the screen. He realized that just like humans needed blankets and scarves to protect themselves from the cold, plants too needed protection. And the well-protected plants expressed their gratitude by bearing brinjals. While there weren’t enough brinjals to sell, they still got more than what they needed.

  Ponna cooked them in various ways. She made a poriyal with brinjals and coconut. It was a bright green dish that went with hot rice. Kali especially loved that slightly thick gravy that was left at the bottom of this dish. She also mashed brinjals to eat with pap. As for the ragi meal, any brinjal recipe would go with it, but the best side dish for that was brinjal cooked in a thickened gravy that she made. She was delighted to hear the sounds of him smacking his lips tasting the brinjal she cooked with black-eyed peas. One day she cooked brinjals with lentils, but without using any tamarind. Seerayi always used tamarind in that recipe. She asked Ponna, ‘How do you get this taste without tamarind?’ Kali too loved that dish. Earlier he had wondered if Ponna was deploying her cooking as a way of communicating with him. Now he was sure of it.

  While Kali had not completely changed his mind in her favour, his reserve had certainly thawed a little. But something in him kept telling him that he should not let her come close to him. And he was not able to reason it out. As he sat on the porch eating his lunch, sometimes people from the village quarters stopped by to chat with him. It was usually about farming, sheep and cattle. If anyone mentioned that they had run into Muthu, Kali said nothing in response. Ponna always listened eagerly to these conversations he had with others. But she could tell that there was no excitement in his voice. He weighed each word carefully. Did the voice become cautious when the mind became secretive? Seerayi too could hear Kali’s voice only when he spoke to others. And one day, when Kali got ready to return to the barnyard, she said sarcastically, ‘So it is fine to talk to the useless people from the village. Only we lowly folks at home don’t deserve that kindness?’

  He understood the import of her remark, but he still did not say a word in response.

  EIGHTEEN

  Margazhi was the eighth month of her pregnancy. The midwife had told them that the delivery was likely to be at the end of Thaii. These days, Ponna was able to feel the child kicking inside her. Whenever that happened, Ponna had to stand hunched. It was uneasy at first, but once she started closing her eyes and enjoying it, she found that it made her happy. Sometimes she wondered if the baby was swimming inside her, paddling with an arm, quickly turning around. And these days, Ponna never felt lonely. Even the fact that Kali did not come to her or talk to her became a piece of stale news. She shared everything with the child growing inside her.

  She sometimes scolded Kali in her mind and then said to the child, ‘Are you upset that I am scolding your father?’ She shared whatever came to her mind with the foetus. And it listened. She narrated her story to it. The baby was lulled into sadness, and stopped moving. That scared her. She chided herself for bothering the baby with all that stuff. Why did it need to hear these stories of suffering even before it came into this world? There were times when she did not feel its movement for two whole days. She grew quite fearful on those occasions. She patted her stomach to try and wake up the baby. She thought it was in a deep sleep. She worried that the baby might not have liked something she had said. So she apologized, ‘I won’t talk like that again.’

  But soon she would be talking to the unborn child again: ‘Do you know what your father called me? He called me a whore. I never said no to him. When he asked me to go to him in the barnyard, I did. He’d ask me to go to bed. He would ask me to lie in the shade of the portia tree with him. He wanted to sleep outside in the moonlight. He’d insist I drank toddy. He has even made me drink arrack. It burnt my throat. But when I said, “This tastes like donkey piss,” he asked me when I had tasted donkey piss. One night he even made me lie down on the flat slab of stone he has laid there. No matter what time of the day it was, or where it was, I undressed for him whenever he wanted me to. That’s why he has called me a whore. I should have been like those women who keep themselves covered and only show a little at a time, like the way the priests in the temples offer you holy water. But I was a fool. I went along with him. And that has made him think I want it badly. It has made him think, “She came wherever I asked her to, so she must be willing to go with anyone.”’

  Then she sighed deeply before continuing.

  ‘You have to demand an explanation from him one day. “How could you call my mother that? Is your heart made of stone?” you should ask him. Will you? You should do that for me. You are my only companion from now on. Who else do I have? I have pushed away my parents, and I don’t know if we can ever reunite. How could they lie to me and trick me the way they did? How can I bring myself to reach out to them now? It will forever be an unhealed wound in my heart. I ha
ve no father, mother or brother. But then, you see, had they not done what they did, I won’t have you now. Perhaps this is what they mean when they say even bad things have some good within them. Now my husband does not talk to me. I have to be content with seeing him from a distance. My mother-in-law has always talked constantly about raising her son all by herself. I used to think, she talks as if no one else has ever raised a son, as if she is the only one who has done it. But she is the one who takes care of this entire family now. She has saved not one life but three. You have to take care of her in the last years of her life. Tell me, are you a boy or a girl? I can hear you laughing.’

  There were days when the baby kicked her a lot. ‘What happened? Did I eat something that is bothering you now? Are you not able to sleep? There are days you stay absolutely quiet, just like your father. And on other days, you trouble me just like he used to on days he got drunk. Look here, once you are born, it is possible that he might pick you up and play with you. That does not mean you can abandon me and shift your loyalties to him. You should ask him, “How come you paid no attention to me before I was born? You did not speak to me even once. Your voice is not familiar to me at all.” Will you ask him that? Or will you take his side and abuse me? You might. He is capable of seducing anyone.’ And she laughed.

  There were so many words available for scolding someone. One could do the scolding differently depending on the context. You could even praise someone in the guise of scolding them. You could use scolding as an expression of endearment. You could scold to tease. There are various motivations for scolding. Ponna scolded Kali in these ways, because that was her way of thinking of him. Her words could only fall like flowers on him. Some flowers had the appearance of stones. But when they fall on their target, they will reveal themselves for what they truly are. The baby surely understood all this, didn’t it? She couldn’t be sure. So she added, ‘Listen, just because I scold him, don’t you think poorly of him.’

  Kali did give her some reason to feel happy about him. It was the month of Karthikai, the seventh month. That was usually the month when the woman’s parents came over for a visit, cooked a lot of food and took their daughter home for the birth. Once the child was born, both families would discuss and agree on when the woman and the child would return to her marital home. Usually, when the baby was seven months old, the woman’s family would buy silver anklets and a waist chain for the baby and send them both to the husband’s home. If they were better off, they might even buy a gold chain and bangles for the baby. Even if they were poor people, they did one thing for sure. In the seventh month of the pregnancy, they all arrived at their daughter’s husband’s home and hosted a feast. Since this was the seventh month for Ponna, people were sure to ask Seerayi when the feast was going to be. What would she tell them? She might say, ‘She has severed her ties. They do want to come and host a feast, but how can they come now?’ Then the news of Ponna’s severed ties with her family would spread everywhere.

  Whenever Seerayi ran into Vallayi in the market, she lamented, ‘We have just one daughter, and she is pregnant after twelve years of marriage. But we are not lucky enough to pamper her at this time. We can’t even see her.’ Apparently, Muthu had come over a couple of times and, from the mud path, caught a glimpse of Ponna in the fields. How could they simply not have the feast?

  Ponna said, ‘There is no need for all that.’ If they came over to host the feast and Kali refused to partake of it, that would be a great insult. It was better not to do anything. But people came over from Seerayi’s family. Kali’s uncles arrived at the barnyard one day to speak to him and Seerayi.

  They said, ‘She is an innocent girl. She did not mean the things she said to us. We can’t stay away on account of that. She has conceived after all these years. We have to celebrate that. Even her parents cannot come and offer a feast here. But you are our elder sister. You are now getting a grandchild, and how can we, your brothers, not do anything to mark the occasion? People will fault us for failing in our duties. So we will do what we can. Please don’t refuse.’ Seerayi was very happy to hear that. Kali had nothing to say. He kept quiet. But his uncles insisted, ‘Ponna will not object. If Kali says yes, some ten of us will come one day, make food for the day and take her with us. If she can stay with us until the baby is born, that is fine with us too. People should not say you have no relatives to care for you. People are already asking us. What do you say, Kali?’

  Seerayi did not say anything. She wanted the response to come from Kali. He suspected that his mother was behind this arrangement. But even though Seerayi did consider such a plan, she had not acted on it. Ponna had been responsible for the rift in her relationship with her brother’s families. So she was not sure they would be eager to do anything for her now. Besides, even if they agreed, Ponna might not. But now Seerayi’s brothers had made the offer on their own, and this made Seerayi very happy. And since both brothers had cornered Kali with their insistence, he could not refuse. So they left after agreeing on a date. Then Seerayi used Kali’s acceptance to make Ponna agree to this arrangement. ‘He might have agreed under duress, but he will definitely come to the feast, he will eat and he will talk to everyone. Please don’t look for reasons to say no to this.’

  It made Ponna happy to know that Kali, who had been uninterested in everything, had actually opened his mouth and said yes to this. She spoke to the baby in her womb that day, ‘I hear your father has said yes to the feast. I thought he was scared pearls would drop from his mouth if he opened it to talk. How come he said yes to this?’

  Ponna had a suspicion. She found it hard to believe that Kali’s miserly uncles from Thalaiyur were going to spend money on this feast. She wondered if Kali had actually given them the money and asked them to do it. Ponna knew that they wouldn’t completely abandon her, but she was still amazed that they were offering to do this despite her insults in the past. She thought it was quite magnanimous of them. They all arrived the following Friday. Not too many people. Just the two uncles’ families. Here, they had invited just a few neighbours to the feast. The uncles’ wives were very friendly towards Ponna that day.

  There were three kinds of rice dishes: tamarind rice, tomato rice and curd rice. Also kachayam sweet and karavadai snack. They did all the cooking. They had also brought a silk sari for Ponna. Both uncles went to the barnyard to talk to Kali. Then Kali came along with them for the midday feast. They had Ponna wear the new silk sari and made her sit on a wooden seat in the porch. They asked Kali to stand next to her. He stood right behind her. It had been seven months since they had stood so close to each other. But he did not bend forward to look at her. He could see the sari and the top of her head. It was a bright red sari. When he walked up the porch stairs and later walked back down, Ponna stole a quick glance at him. It occurred to her that he had lost weight, and his face was covered in a beard. Everyone thought he was growing a beard for ritual reasons, and that he would shave it off once the baby was born. Kali used to have a strong and firm body, much like a field that had hardened after a period of lying fallow. But now it was loose, like soil that had been ploughed a few times. Thinking of him made Ponna tear up.

  The visitors remarked, ‘She is feeling bad her parents cannot be here. It must be hard for her.’ The midwife and her husband came for the feast and they also participated in the ritual to ward off evil eyes from Ponna. The rituals included a gesture marking Ponna’s journey to her mother’s house. They did this by taking Ponna next door to Porasa’s, making her sit down on the porch there and drink some water. Then they brought her back home. Kali seemed to be chatting happily with his uncles. Looking at Kali’s face, she thought that he was drunk. He drank a lot these days. That was why his body has lost its form. She glanced in his direction whenever she could. She hoped that he might look towards her too, and their eyes might meet. But it did not seem as though he looked at her at all.

  NINETEEN

  Kali tied the thatched gate to the barnyard tight, and lay curle
d up on the cot. It had become even colder once the month of Thaii began. Even the ground under one’s feet seemed frozen. He completed all his tasks earlier than usual. The tapper had given him toddy in a dried-up gourd-skin bowl. Kali had drunk most of it well before dark, and he was not hungry. He was more intoxicated than usual. All he wanted to do was lie down. But if he did not go home for dinner, his mother would come to the barnyard, a jute bag draped over her head. There was much demand for jute bags in this season. He wondered if his mother had some bags of this kind in her house, or if she had left all of them here in the barn. If she could not find any in the house, she would just drape her sari over her head. But that was no protection from the cold weather.

  She’d wait for him in the house only till the seven o’clock siren sounded before setting off. Then she would start talking as soon as she arrived here: ‘How can you be so drunk all the time? The sheep and cattle are in the shed. People in the market were talking about all the burglary that’s been going on. We cannot afford to buy things if we lose them. Do you know how much prices have gone up these days? Gold is now at seventy-five rupees. That is equal to the price of two cows. How can we survive if you get drunk and just lie about like this?’

  But despite having drunk so much, Kali was not able to sleep. He lay tossing and turning. Then, in the middle of the night, he’d get up and even drink up the leftover toddy. It was not before dawn that he was finally able to fall asleep. And he woke up only when the sun’s rays fell on him, piercing through the gaps in the fence.