His stubbly chin trembled as he began to speak. “A man has died and it is because of me. You are the only one who can help.”
“Tell me what has happened.”
The tale was bizarre. Panditji and his wife lived in a tiny house in the hills with their daughter and her husband. Life was hard, but they were happy for the most part. At the time of the marriage, Panditji ignored the custom of his caste of handing over property to his daughter and, instead, held onto everything. After a while, the resentment grew.
“I am not a trusting old man,” he explained.
“If you had reservations about this son-in-law,” Anita said, “why did you let the marriage go forward?”
Panditji shrugged. “My daughter wants this — a love match — but I have seen his hand. He is a man who wants his freedom.”
“Go on,” Anita said.
The son-in-law began to complain that Panditji kept all the money everyone in the family earned, and that was the same as stealing from them. Then one day Panditji’s wife complained that pieces of her jewelry were missing. Panditji inspected the jewelry box and went straight to his son-in-law and accused him, but the boy insisted he had not stolen anything. Unable to bully him into a confession, Panditji sought out K.R.S. Elavan, a mantrakara, a magician known for his effective spells. Elavan came to the house, had every member of the household eat holy ashes, and then waited. No one confessed. He performed a second puja. Still nothing happened. “I had to send him away, and everyone in the village laughed at me, except my wife, who is still angry; she wants her jewelry back.” He snorted and lifted his dirty cotton shirt to better scratch at skin hanging off him like worn tree bark.
“Where does murder come into all this?”
“Late at night,” Panditji said, taking her question literally. “Everyone was angry then. My wife refused to make a meal, my daughter and her husband quarreled, and he went off to the arrack shop.”
“Have you grandchildren?” Anita asked
He shook his head. “Not a one.”
“Oh dear,” Anita said. “Well, go on with your story.”
“That night, when my son-in-law returned and went to spread out his mat to sleep in the corner with my daughter, I told him he would not get away with this. He said nothing, barely looking at me, like a drunken man.”
“Was he drunk?”
“I guess so. He often goes to the arrack shop in the evening, but my daughter, Reki, is so besotted with him she never complains. When he comes home late, she gives him a meal or a massage or a song. Not a word of reproach from her.”
“Is that what happened the night he died?”
He nodded. “She gave him a massage, and I went back to sleep.”
“Then what happened?”
“In the middle of the night I awoke to hear my daughter sobbing and wailing. I thought the spell had worked, but no, she was wailing over her husband’s dead body. The neighbors called the police when they heard all the noise.” He began to scratch his belly.
“You know, Auntie Meena, I think it is time I took a little vacation to some other parts of Kerala,” Anita said as she walked with her older relative toward the hotel. Her aunt had been negotiating with a taxi driver for a group of guests and was preoccupied with rupees per meter and the costs of petrol. “I’ll be gone for several days.”
“Several days?” Meena stopped by the steps leading into the hotel compound. “But—”
“Just think, Auntie. Three days without me offending the guests, or messing up your office, like last time.” Meena blanched at the memory of Anita relocating guests to other hotels so she could open up the annex to a group of stranded nuns.
“Is there any chance you’ll be getting a job?” This is what Anita’s family forever hoped for — a legitimate job, one that did not involve the Hindu-American woman wandering around the country with only a camera and no sign of respectable occupation.
“I’m going to visit Panditji’s family.” Anita was about to ask her aunt if she remembered the old man, but the look on Meena’s face answered that question.
“He took my palm and told me I have a seera mark! Me, a seera mark! Am I a nervous person, Anita? I ask you! I am never nervous! Never!” Meena began to chew her left pinkie. “You!” She caught sight of Panditji and picked up a pebble and threw it at him.
“It is fate,” the old man whined.
“Do you think you know more than my astrologer?” Meena leaned over to glare at him.
“I think I know far less,” he said. “He is wise enough not to get stones thrown at him.” Pebbles flew at his legs.
Panditji sat limp and silent on the long ride up to the hill village of Arayanakkam, no matter how Anita tried to engage him in conversation. She was fond of the old man, and eager to tell him about her recent investigations. Certainly, there were few enough she could talk to about her bad habits, as her aunt called them. Sometimes, when she began to wonder about an unexplained death, she found herself rubbing her thumb over the middle digit of her left index finger, the Devi sign that had convinced Panditji that she would find answers that eluded others.
Panditji’s house had fared no better than he had. The compound wall was streaked with dirt and grime from past monsoons, dead banana trees were piled up alongside one wall, the gate hung precariously on its hinges, and a dog sprawled in the noonday heat, too beaten down to growl or even lift its head.
“You can hear them from here,” Panditji said. Anita listened. Sure enough, she heard the wails of a young woman and the cries and voices of others, the clattering of pots and the general racket of a house in disarray. The old man showed no intention of entering. Anita dragged him inside.
The midday meal was an awkward affair. Anita and Panditji sat in the middle of a small eating room, banana leaves on the ground in front of them, while Chennamma, Panditji’s wife, and her daughter, Reki, and a maidservant came in and out with various dishes. Chennamma hovered in the doorway, alternately telling Reki to stop sniveling and telling Anita about the neighbors and how hard her life had become with an old man whose reputation for incisive palm-readings was failing. When the meal was at an end for everyone, Anita found Chennamma on the back veranda directing the maidservant in her duties.
“A useless girl, she is,” Chennamma said. “Like all the young ones. I teach her and beat her and still she gets it all wrong. What is an old woman to do?” The maidservant gave her a smug smile.
“Tell me about your jewelry,” Anita said, leading the woman away from the veranda.
“Heh? My jewelry? I was robbed. What more is there to know?”
“Gold bangles? Gold necklace? The usual things?”
“Exactly so. Nothing special, just some of my gold bangles. I have little left after all these years. Didn’t I pawn a bangle last year to put on a new roof? And now I have even less.”
Anita nodded. She could see Chennamma in line in a bank along with other women, young and old, watching their necklaces and bangles being weighed in return for house loans, school loans, car loans, and other purposes. Anita could usually pick out the women there to pawn jewelry; they were the best dressed among all the customers, as though their appearance could counteract the taint of the transaction. “Can you describe the pieces that were stolen?”
“The standard bangle from the goldsmith,” she said.
“So whoever has it can sell it or keep it, and you’ll never be able to recognize it,” Anita said.