Страница 33 из 156
“Twelves,” Vairum replies. He likes this game best: twelve cowries in each of the three bowls to either side of the centre bowl, which is empty at the start but accumulates cowries, round after round, like a bank. Either player-if he or she counts right-can claim either bank, even both. Vairum feels intoxicated by the sight of the cowries piling up and even overflowing a central bowl as the game progresses.
He returns and Gayatri says, “You go first.” She looks at him closely. “You missed it again. Don’t you know how to wipe your face?”
“I did it.” He swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.
Gayatri frowns and, grasping his chin, tilts his face up. “Sivakamikka,” she calls, letting go and rubbing her hand on her sari. “Have a look at this.”
Sivakami comes from the pantry, already knowing what Gayatri is going to tell her.
Gayatri fetches her father-in-law at Sivakami’s request. He comes and has a look at the new white patch, which has appeared like the begi
“I’m sure it is not what you think it is,” Chi
“What is it, Amma?” Vairum says, rising.
“It’s nothing, child,” says Chi
Chi
The LMP examines the child. Palpating the patches, he asks, “Can you feel this? Is it numb?” Vairum looks at him with a catlike expression of defiant incomprehension until Chi
“No,” Vairum grunts, but the LMP sighs sharply and repeats,
“No-numb. Can he feel anything at all?”
“Ah, yes,” Chi
“Of course,” Vairum snorts.
Chi
“It’s called vitiligo,” he finally grunts, repacking his black bag. “A condition of the skin: not painful, not contagious, as far as we know, and incurable. Do you understand?”
Chi
“No, no, no. Damned village superstition.” The LMP leans in to Chi
Chi
He then comes back to the rear of the main hall and asks, “Sivakami? What do you think?”
Muchami is waiting in the garden to relay her response to Chi
“I am quite satisfied,” she says, with forced authority.
Muchami conveys this to Chi
“What do you think?”
“Yes, it confirms what I thought,” Chi
Muchami relates this to Sivakami verbatim, again bringing his skills in mimicry to bear.
“But now you must do something for the boy’s condition.”
“Mm, yes,” Sivakami hurries to agree. “I want to pledge a golden armour for the Rathnagirishwarar Lingam. Vairum can carry it up the hill to give.”
“A very good idea for skin maladies. Shall I order that for you? There is one Kulithalai goldsmith I trust to do a very good job.”
Sivakami consents.
“May I also suggest a puja to ward off possible ill effects of the planets?” Chi
Sivakami thinks this a very good idea.
When Chi
“What’s wrong with me?” the little boy demands.
“Nothing, sir.” Muchami shakes his head insistently. “Don’t you worry yourself about this. Come on, I have time for a round of dayakkattam. Come chalk the board on the courtyard. Come.”
This is a house without mirrors, and so until Vairum leaves it to go out into the world, he will have to take Muchami at his word.
THE OLD MEN AND WOMEN who had been in Hanumarathnam’s employ have, after years of pretending they were too old to work, finally grown into their pretense. Sivakami asks Muchami if his wife would like a job.
He doesn’t see why she wouldn’t. So Mari begins, only an hour or two daily at first, then staying to serve Muchami his mid-morning meal, and then staying to help with the late-afternoon cleaning. She is appropriately shy and deferential with her husband and his employer, but her strength of personality is evident. Like Gayatri, Mari is a confident young woman who did not know Hanumarathnam and who therefore comes unaccompanied by residual sadness. Unlike Gayatri, however, Mari is very strict in religious observance. One of the reasons she wants to spend time with Sivakami is to learn the practices of the caste she considers closest to God.
Mari appears determined to make herself a Brahmin woman in every way she can-which is to say, every way except birth, marriage and where she makes her home. Since everyone in Cholapatti considers Sivakami a paragon of Brahmin widowhood, Mari replicates all her habits, which are, apart from her shaven head and white sari, simply orthodox practices that any person with deep concern for his or her spiritual well-being might adopt. Most often, Brahmin men and women take on these renunciations late in life, when their children are gone and their material obligations with them. But Mari is impatient to improve her spiritual welfare and starts immediately. She maintains madi from sun-up to sundown. She takes food prepared only by her own hand, or Sivakami’s. She refuses foods such as pazhiah sadam, dosai and idli, which involve fermentation; at home, she will eat only food cooked the same day, and if it’s not available, she eats raw fruit. It’s a sacrifice but she relishes it. Visibly.
Almost all the Brahmins on Sivakami’s street who learn of Mari’s imitations are flattered; she basks in their approval. She knows many in her own community are contemptuous; she takes their contempt as proof of her success. But Gayatri, who comes over daily to keep Sivakami up to the minute on gossip and opinions, new purchases and the news of the day, is openly amused by Mari’s pretensions. She unapologetically drinks her daily cup of coffee at Sivakami’s, teasing Mari about it, pressing her to imbibe. Worse, Gayatri never once says she wishes she could be so strict with herself. It is of Gayatri alone that Mari might be jealous-not because she wants to be like Gayatri, but because Gayatri doesn’t want to be like her.