‘Never, I tell you, has a cobra bitten an innocent man. It was only Chennayya’s Dasappa who ever died of a cobra bite. But then he went and poked his stick into the hole, poked and poked, saying he had the eagle-mark on his hand and never a snake did harm him, but within six months Father Naga slips right into his hut, and, touching neither his grown-up daughter nor his second child, nor his suckling brat nor his wife who lay beside him, it gives him a good bite, right near his bloody throat, and slips away God knows how or where. Barber Ramachandra comes in and wails out this chant and that chant, but he was not a very learned man in his charms, and Dasappa bloody well croaked. ’
And so he goes on, Siddayya, telling story after story, looking to this side and that for signs of the maistri, and they all lime their betel leaves and twist the tobacco leaves and munch on, when suddenly there is neither crunch nor cough, but the maistri’s cane has touched Vanamma and Siddamma and Puttayya, and everyone is at his axe or scissors and never a word is said. And they work on with axe and scissors till the sun’s shadow is dead, and then they go back to their huts to gobble ragi paste and pickles, and when the maistri’s whistle pierces the air, they rise and go, each one to his pit and plant.
But the afternoon sun is heavy and piercing and as each axe splits the wood or as each pick tears the earth, from head and armpit and waist the perspiration flows down the body, and when the eyes are hot and the head dizzy, Rachanna and Chandranna and Madanna and Siddayya lean back against the trunks of the jacks, and the freckled, hard bark sweats out a whiff of moisture that brings out more perspiration and then the body grows dry and balmed; but when the eyes seek the livid skies across the leaves, there is something dark and heavy rising from the other side of the hill, something heavy and hard and black, and the trees begin suddenly to tremble and hiss, and as Rachanna and Chandranna and Madanna and Siddayya strike their axes against the wood, there is a gurgle and grunt from behind the bamboo cluster — and the gurgle and grunt soar up and swallow the whole sky. The darkness grows thick as sugar in a cauldron, while the bamboos creak and sway and whine, and the crows begin to wheel round and flutter, and everywhere dogs bark and calves moo, and then the wind comes so swift and dashing that it takes the autumn leaves with it, and they rise into the juggling air, while the trees bleat and blubber. Then drops fall, big as the thumb, and as the thunder goes clashing like a temple cymbal through the heavens, the earth itself seems to heave up and cheep in the monsoon rains. It churns and splashes, beats against the treetops, reckless and wilful, and suddenly floating forwards, it bucks back and spits forward and pours down upon the green, weak coffee leaves, thumping them down to the earth, and then playfully lounging up, the coffee leaves rising with it, and whorling and winnowing, spurting and rattling, it jerks and snorts this side and that; and as Rachanna and Madanna and Chandranna and Siddayya stand beside the jacks, the drops trickle down the peeling bark, then touch the head; then the back and the waist, and once when the trees have all groaned down as though whipped to a bow, there is such a swish of spray that it soaks their dhotis and their turbans, and they stand squeezing them out. Then somewhere there is a lightning again and suddenly the whole Himavathy valley becomes as clear as under the moon, and in Kanthapura the smoke is seen to rise from every house and curl round the golden dome of the temple, and the streets look red and clear and flat, except for a returning cow or courtyard cart. Then the darkness again, and the trees bend and shiver and the bamboos creak.
‘He, this wretch! What’s all this noise about?’ asks Madanna of Siddayya.
‘Ah, in this country it’s like this,’ says Siddayya. ‘And once it begins there is no end to her tricks. ’
‘Hm!’
And from the bamboo cluster the voices of women are heard, and high up there, on the top of the hill, the sahib is seen with his cane and his pipe, and his big heavy coat, bending down to look at this gutter and that. The rain swishes round and pours, beating against the treetops, grinding by the tree trunks and racing down the waving paths. It swings and swishes, beats and patters, and then there is but one downpour, one steady, full, ungrudging pour. And somewhere is heard a whistle, the maistri’s whistle, which whines and whines, and Siddayya says to Madanna, ‘That’s for us to go home,’ and ‘Hè-ho, hè-ho,’ the husbands call to their wives, fathers to their daughters, mothers to their sons, and elder brother to younger brother, and through slush and stream they move on, men and women and children, squeezing their clothes and wiping their hair, and the rain pours on and on, a steady, full, ungrudging rain.
‘It’s like this in the mountains.’
‘How long?’
‘One day, two days, three days. And till then eat and sleep with your woman, sleep with your woman and eat. ’
‘Fine thing. this rain. ’
It poured just three nights and four days — the south-west rain.
And when the days became broad and the sky became blue as a marriage shawl, men and women and children rose again with the whistle to go to work — but for Rachanna’s child, Venki, seven years old, and Siddanna’s wife, Sati, the same who had had the stomach ache in the train, and Sampanna’s sister-in-law, and Mada’s two children. They all lay on their mats; for on the night before, they all had chills, and the chills rose and rose, while every dhoti, coat and turban and blanket was heaped on them, and yet the chill was piercing as ever. And then came fever, leaping, flaming fever, and the whole night they grinned and grit their teeth, and they cried for water and water and water, but the elders said, ‘No, no one drinks water when he has fever,’ and with the morning the fever went down, but a weakness remained which made their heads dizzy and their stomachs nauseating.
‘Oh, it’s the fever of this country,’ Siddayya explained. ‘It’s always like this. It harms no one. It comes every two days and goes away, and when you know it better, you can work with it as well as any.’
But this morning they would not work. It simply made them vomit at every step. When the sahib heard of it he sent a new man, who looked just as tall and as city-bred as the maistri, and he gave them eight pills each, eight pills for two days, and said if they took them, well, the fevers would die away. But ‘Don’t bother to swallow them,’ explained Siddayya. ‘They are as bitter as the neem leaves and the fever will come just the same. The sahib says that in his country they are always used for fever. But he does not know our country, does he?’ And the women said, ‘That is so — what does he know about us?’ And Siddanna’s wife, Sati, asked her neighbour Satamma, who had lived there for one year and more, what goddess sanctified the neighbouring region, and when Satamma said it was our Kenchamma, she tore a rag from her sari-fringe, and put into it a three-pice bit and a little rice and an areca nut, and hung it securely to the roof. And, of course, she woke up the next morning to find no fever at all, though Madanna’s second child still had it, hot, very hot. ‘Oh, it’s the grace of Kenchamma,’ she said to Madanna; so Madanna did the same, but the fever would not go. And so he said he would try the sahib’s pill, but his wife said, ‘If the gods are angry — they’ll take away not only your children but yourself, oh, you man. ’ and he, frightened, beat his cheeks and asked pardon of Sri Kenchamma. But he had had a wicked thought. Kenchamma would not forgive him. Fever on fever came, and the poor child’s ribs began to show and its belly to swell, and one day as he was just going to sleep, the child began to say this and that wildly and they all said, ‘Go and call the sahib,’ and when the sahib came, the child shivered and died in his arms. And the sahib grew so fierce that he gave Madanna a whipping there and then, and ordered that everybody should by his command take six pills a day. Some took them but others threw them into the backyard, and the maistri-looking man who had brought them said, ‘If you don’t take it, it does not matter. But never tell the sahib you don’t, and let me use it for myself; and the women said, ‘Of course! Of course!’ But one by one in this house and that, in this line and that, fevers came, and when it was not fever it was stomach ache and dysentery, and when it was not dysentery it was cough; and one thing or the other, such things as were never heard of in the plains.