Trial by Silence

by Perumal Murugan

  He couldn’t see the oxen. The calf was freely bounding about inside the barnyard, running from one end to another. The mother cow was nowhere to be seen. Kali caught hold of the calf and tied it up. That made him feel a little calmer. ‘Where are the oxen? Did you sell them?’ he asked Seerayi, without looking at her.

  ‘We have left them grazing on the mud road. Shall I fetch them?’ she replied calmly. She knew he had a special affection for the oxen, and perhaps that was why he was asking after them now.

  He said, ‘No. I will go,’ and stepped outdoors. It was quite sunny outside, but he thought he felt better there in the open rather than inside.

  ‘Wait,’ said Seerayi, and went to the new cottage to wake Ponna up.

  There was a wall erected in the middle of the cottage to separate the area into two rooms. They could use the other room to cook and to store pots and pans. The front portion was for the cot and to keep their clothes. It was quite a spacious cottage. All of this had been built according to Muthu’s plans. He had given clear instructions to the man who brought the sand needed for the construction. And he personally supervised everything, from making sure the workers brought the proper kind of soil for the plastering work to making sure they got the right quantity of wood.

  Ponna handled all the finances. She had enough to cover all the expenses, and she was absolutely keen to make sure Muthu did not spend anything out of his own pocket. She had also communicated that very clearly to him through Seerayi. ‘Until the ritual separation is lifted, we should not accept even a penny from them, Atthai,’ she had said several times.

  Ponna’s face was expressionless now. These days she struggled even to sit and walk. The child’s kicks had grown stronger—and Ponna had grown impatient and kept saying she couldn’t wait for the child to be born.

  On waking her up, Seerayi did not say too much to Ponna. Laughing, she just said, ‘The officer is here. You should see his tonsured head and his tone of authority!’ Ponna wanted to see Kali with his hairless head. She rose from the cot slowly and stepped outside the cottage. But, to her disappointment, Kali had gone out. He had been an away for a month—how lovely it would have been if he had come to her and said, ‘Ponna, how are you?’ She might have felt better even if he had come into the cottage and yelled at her. Ponna let out a deep sigh and went back to lie down on the cot. She felt exhausted.

  By the time Seerayi ran out through the gate to see where Kali was, he had already walked into the fields. She trotted after him, and said, ‘Did everything go well on the journey?’

  He just murmured, ‘Mmm.’

  ‘We were very confused as to what we should do until you returned, my boy,’ Seerayi said, walking alongside him as she launched into an explanation. ‘People say that farming is a man’s job, don’t they? We did not know whom to find to keep a watch over the barnyard at night. So we did that ourselves for two nights. Our teeth shuddered in the cold. That’s when we thought the best thing to do would be to move here, and we got the cottage done. Ponna protested, “How can we do all this without asking him?” It was I who convinced her that I’d talk to you myself. Things are better now. Even after the child is born, we can continue to live right here. If we lived in the village, people will talk. Why put ourselves through all that? Then, I also hired Vengayi for a month. She and I cut the maize stalks, picked the corn ears and did all of that work together. Here, look at my hand. The stalks have cut my hand in so many places. Not a day went by when I did not think of how my son usually protects me from such hardship. I prayed to god to make sure you returned to us safely. Having Vengayi’s help made the tasks a little easier. I even managed to separate the bales of corn into two piles. All the kambu stalks were just lying around for so long. The cows were not eating it. I thought they were of better use on the roof. As for the corn stalks, I made sure they were made into smaller bundles. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to pull out stalks from larger bundles. This way, I can still pull out stalks for the cattle to eat even when you are away.’

  Seerayi did not fault Ponna in any of this. She only said, ‘She is a pregnant woman. She finds it hard even to walk, carrying her large belly. Poor thing, she is so frail.’

  Kali walked on to the mud road and looked the oxen grazing. As soon as they saw him, they lifted their heads and mooed. He had been worried that the oxen might have gone thin. After all, who would take care of them the way he used to? But they looked healthy and fine. One of them even had a new rope. Kali had nothing to say. His mother’s voice carried on prattling. But Kali said to her, ‘You go in. I’ll be back soon.’

  She hesitated, but then moved away from the mud road. And he walked further along the road, looking for the toddy tapper.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  On the morning of the last Thursday of the month of Thaii, Ponna gave birth to a baby boy.

  Everyone was convinced that the baby was the spitting image of Kali. All the relatives who came by to see the child said he looked just like Kali. But for a month after childbirth, all Ponna did was cry. She herself could not understand what made her cry so much—whether it was the fact that the child was a boy and not a girl as she had hoped, or if it was because Kali never came by to see the child. In that month, Ponna did not regain any strength. How could she, if all she did was cry? Was it good for the baby? No matter what Seerayi said, Ponna could not bring herself to act differently.

  Every day, Seerayi asked Ponna to go to bed even before it grew properly dark. And she did all the work herself—carrying the baby, bathing him, rubbing oil on his tiny body. She also cooked various things for Ponna to eat in a bid to recover her strength. ‘A god is born here, but the chariot refuses to carry him,’ she said, directing her sarcasm at Kali. Whenever she carried the child to him, he walked away. Once she even said to him directly, ‘It is a newborn baby. What did it do to you to deserve this treatment? Wait for it to grow up a little, to run around and play, and climb up on you and pee and shit on you. You won’t be able to resist him then.’ But Kali did not appear to pay any attention.

  It had been a very painful labour and delivery for Ponna. Earlier, when she had asked Vengayi how difficult labour could be, Vengayi had said, smiling, ‘Well, it will be a little difficult for sure.’ But that was not the case. It was immensely difficult. She’d started having a light pain the morning before, but she did not realize it was labour pain. She had often had a sharp pain in her hip and lower abdomen in the mornings, but it usually waned as the day progressed. But this pain just kept increasing. By midday, when she felt she could not bear it any longer, she told Seerayi about it. Seerayi asked her to describe the pain, and at the end of it said with absolute certainty that it was indeed labour pain. As the pain kept mounting, Ponna grew terrified. She sent Vengayi to fetch the midwife. Seerayi asked the worker in the adjacent farm to make a trip to Adaiyur.

  By the time the midwife, Thangamma, prepared and packed everything and arrived there, it was well past dusk. Until then, Ponna kept asking every few minutes when the midwife would come. It was as if she believed that once she arrived, the midwife would simply take over and miraculously absorb all of Ponna’s pain herself. But Thangamma came unhurriedly, felt Ponna’s abdomen with the palm of her hand and told them that the baby would be born by the morning. Ponna was deeply disappointed at that. She had assumed that the delivery would happen as soon as Thangamma arrived on the scene. Now she had to endure this awful pain all night?

  Vengayi left for her home. Seerayi went to secure the sheep and the cattle in their places. And Thangamma said, ‘Ponnu, don’t be afraid. The pain is always a bit more during the first delivery. Try to bear it patiently. You were able to bear all the insults people directed at you. What can this pain do to you? This is the good kind of pain. It leads to good things.’ She asked Ponna not to eat anything more that night, and she also asked her to try and shit right away. The midwife then gave her a concoction made of karupatti to drink. She had brought all sorts of medicines in a box, but she did not tak
e anything out. Then she too left.

  After that, only Seerayi and Ponna remained. Kali had been walking around the barnyard until a little while ago, but he too suddenly disappeared. Perhaps he did not think he could bear Ponna’s suffering. Or perhaps he wondered, ‘Is this my child? What will I do if they expect me to go see the child once it is born?’ Ponna felt like everyone had abandoned her. When she went to the outfields to relieve herself, she looked in the direction of the Karattur hillock and temple and said a prayer. She couldn’t pray at leisure, but she stood holding her hip, and said, ‘This is your child, isn’t it? Please make sure things go well.’ She could not say anything more.

  She drank more of the karupatti concoction and lay down on the cot. But she could not stay lying down for even a second. She rose again and then lay down on her side, though that didn’t seem to help either. So she got up and stepped outside. She sat on the rock and wept. Looking at her crying, Seerayi said, in an attempt to be jocular, ‘You can cry all you want, but you, and only you, will still have to go through with giving birth!’ She laughed.

  ‘I am crying here,’ hissed Ponna angrily, ‘and you find it funny?’

  ‘If you can’t bear even this pain,’ said Seerayi, ‘how are you going to deal with what’s to come? You will have contractions first. Once you start having those, the birth will happen soon. And that will feel like your entire hip is breaking apart. You will have to endure all that agony.’

  Slowly, one by one, a crowd gathered there. The entire barnyard was eventually full. Once the midwife returned, she boiled another concoction and gave it to Ponna in a little cup. Ponna drank it in one gulp, hoping that the bitter and pungent medicine would alleviate her pain or perhaps increase it and hasten the birthing process. But nothing of that sort happened. After a while, people began to leave, muttering among themselves, ‘It will happen only in the morning.’ Those who stayed behind sat chatting, laughing and enjoying themselves. Some stretched themselves and went to sleep right there. Kali too returned and lay down on the cot under the portia tree. Ponna was irritated by all this. The midwife would check up on Ponna every now and then. Then she too lay down to catch a wink.

  Ponna did not know how long she had slept. And she was also not sure if she had managed to get some sleep at all. Early in the morning, Thangamma gave her another round of the medicinal concoction. At dawn, when the blackbirds on the palmyra trees started their chatter, Ponna’s pain suddenly intensified. Unable to bear it, she shouted, ‘Ayyo! Ayyo!’

  ‘Don’t yell that,’ the midwife cautioned. ‘Call out god’s name.’

  Ponna could see that Kali was awake and was taking care of things in the cattle shed. She could also hear him responding to the visitors.

  When the contractions began and Ponna’s waters broke, the midwife made her lie down and asked her to push. Ponna held her breath, and heaved. Thangamma pressed down on Ponna’s belly with her hand and rubbed it fastidiously. But nothing worked. Then Thangamma sent for some ropes, and once they were brought, she asked for the ropes to be suspended from the central beam in the inner roof. They needed Kali for this job. Seeing him pulling and tying the rope properly, Ponna could not help but think: he had experience hanging ropes, didn’t he? Once he finished the task, he walked away without even a glance at her. Two or three women lifted Ponna from the cot, brought her close to the rope hanging from the ceiling, and asked her to grab hold of it. Ponna kept her feet apart, knelt down and got hold of the rope. It felt like the rope was hanging from the portia tree.

  She had closed her eyes, held on to the rope, and pushed. Just one push. She had then felt her stomach loosening—and she fainted before she could properly hear someone say, ‘It’s a boy!’ When she came to, she saw everyone happy and excited. She heard Seerayi saying, ‘The baby boy is pitch-dark just like his father, Ponna!’ Ponna did not have the strength to wail, so she whimpered. Did Kali see the child? Seerayi told her later that he had come to see the baby in front of everyone. She also told Ponna that when she tried to give him the child to hold, he declined, saying he had never handled infants before. Ponna had not taken a good look at the baby until then. And she could not do so afterwards either.

  For an entire month, it was Seerayi who took care of the baby. Slowly, Ponna started eating proper food. Gradually she was able to walk to the outfields without anyone’s assistance.

  Seerayi told her it was a month since the child was born. ‘We need to show a lamp flame to the child,’ she said, and busied herself in preparing for that ritual. They had some castor oil made from their own castor seeds. Kali had taken them to the oil press and got the oil made. The very day he brought the new oil from the press, Seerayi went to the village temple and lit some lamps there using that oil.

  There were a lot of preparations leading up to the ritual. On the seventh day after the child was born, the potter family had come by with three large earthen lamps and accepted kambu millets in exchange for them. Seerayi now poured castor oil into one of those three new lamps. She then put in a thick wick and set the lamp on its plank. Ponna was sitting on the cot, and the baby had been laid on the other end of the cot. Seerayi placed the lamp in such a way that it was on the same side of the cot as the baby’s head. She then lit the lamp. As the wick slowly caught the flame, a yellow glow spread all over the cottage. It reminded Ponna of the way lamps illuminated the inside of the temple. Seerayi gently patted the baby’s cheeks to make him open his eyes, saying, ‘Look here, darling.’ The baby woke up, whimpering, twisting and wringing his infant body. He shut and opened his eyes, trying to adjust to the glow of light in the room. Then he looked in amazement at the flame.

  That was the first wonder the child was witnessing in this world. Seerayi cooed and played with the baby and then stepped outside to bring the things she needed to ward off the evil eye.

  Ponna observed the movements of the flame and of the baby’s eyes. She felt a sudden desire to look at the baby properly, so she moved closer. The baby’s gaze then alternated between her face and the flame. She happily ran her hand over its unkempt hair and its dark body. She was suddenly overcome with the care and affection she had not felt until then. She gently massaged the baby’s legs. She unfurled his little fingers and placed his hands on her face. She looked at the baby’s penis. It looked like another little finger. ‘Chinna kunjaan! Little penis!’ she said affectionately, touching it gently with her fingers and then bringing those fingers to her lips for a kiss. The baby flung his legs about and made some sounds.

  She was lost in enjoying her little baby. ‘Mottukutti!’ she said, and touched his little belly. ‘Chinna muthu! My little pearl!’ she said and brought her face close to the baby’s. The baby looked wide-eyed and wonderstruck at the way her face at first grew bigger and brighter as it came closer and then smaller when she pulled herself away. After she repeated this playful movement a few times, the baby laughed. He opened its mouth wide and let out a happy gurgle. Ponna was delighted. As she brought her hand close to the baby’s lips, she suddenly heard a voice saying, ‘What’s my name?’

  Did the baby just speak? When she looked closely at the baby’s face right then, she was reminded of that voice and that mouth. That face she had encountered at the festival. That face which had asked her, ‘What’s my name?’

  TWENTY-NINE

  He had spotted Ponna standing alone in the middle of that festival crowd. Then she too recognized him. He called her ‘Selvi’. But she did not feel the need to call him by any name. Massive crowds had gathered to have a glimpse of the deity on that festival day. Cultural events and performances were being staged all along the streets.

  Some people whistled at them both. ‘Oy!’ they shouted and teased. ‘Mapillai! So you found someone, huh?’ they called out to him. Ponna was irritated. She walked, head down. He held her hand with much liberty, and said, ‘This is how festival crowds are.’ Then he quickly managed to take her past these crowds.

  They walked around the hillock in the moonlight t
hat had draped itself over things. Now he was holding her close with an arm around her waist. She felt that that embrace was meant to dispel her fears. She huddled close to him. In his physique and appearance, he looked a lot like Kali. She even wondered if it was in fact Kali in disguise. He was wearing a veshti around his waist. Even though the dhoti came all the way down to his ankles, he walked with ease, without tripping. A piece of cloth was draped around this neck, falling over his bare chest. On his head he wore a large handkerchief like a bandana. Ponna thought this must be his way of concealing his identity.

  Kali too always wore his dhoti folded and two-layered whenever he went out of the house. He also wore a piece of cloth over his shoulders, which he sometimes tied around his head. And whenever she huddled close to him, Kali’s body too felt firm like granite, just like this man’s did now. She shook her head to avoid seeing Kali in her mind. But this was indeed Kali. The Kali who was in her mind was superimposed perfectly on this man. This was definitely Kali. This was Kali who had come to take her somewhere. Ponna hesitantly placed her hand on his waist. He pulled her hand close and placed it more firmly around him. Where was he taking her? She was unable to recognize the road. There were a few people walking about, but it was mostly deserted with only the moonlight providing illumination. Suddenly, Kali turned and walked towards the hillock. Or at least that’s what she thought he was doing. She did not think there could be a path down there. It was only rocks. But he still led her along.

  Kali climbed the rock deftly like a goat. He let her walk for small stretches and at other times he lifted her gently and carried her over the rocks. They seemed to have climbed a quarter of the way up the hillock. There was a large rock at that point, and right behind it was a flat, floor-like surface. Nothing other than the moon could know that spot. He removed the kerchief from his head. It was neither the size of a towel nor a dhoti. More like a shawl, a dupatta. He spread it on the ground. Then he sat down and invited her to sit down with him. She did. He pulled her closer to his chest. She wanted to embrace Kali, entwining her hands over his back.