Standing silent on the veranda with her brothers now imitating (badly) their father’s detached and philosophical gaze, Sivakami decides that it is not, in fact, right for her to live with them. She married into another house, and to there she will now repair.
After she serves the night meal, she announces, sounding quieter than she feels, “I’m… I have decided to move the children back to Cholapatti.”
Her brothers cease wiping their mouths, and Sivakami sees Sambu decide he must not have heard her correctly.
She repeats, too loudly this time, “We are very grateful for having had this time here. We are returning to my husband’s-to my house.”
“My dear sister,” her eldest brother says, “that is out of the question.”
She looks up from the floor and nervously at her sisters-in-law. She feels rising in her the stubbornness of the child she was, when she went and played at the river alone every day, despite slaps and warnings, or when she built nests for abandoned baby birds who then filled their courtyard with squawks and offal. When confronted, she sometimes was not able to think of a reason or response, but even when she knew exactly why she was doing what she was doing, she explained nothing.
“Talk to her!” Sambu commands the women, who commence wailing as their husbands retreat to confer. At a look from Sivakami, though, Kamu and Meenu’s weeping stops, while fragile Ecchu’s turns genuine.
Sivakami is as surprised as anyone else to find herself, a twenty-two-year-old matron, behaving just as she did when she was five. She had convinced herself that she had grown to be pliable-reliable and demure. But the next day, she sends her brothers to buy her railway tickets for early the following week, and they obey. When Venketu asks sarcastically how she will pay for her son’s education, the steadiness of her own voice surprises and reassures her, “My husband trained me to manage the lands. The income will be sufficient, and I know how to administer it.”
She has carefully considered all obstacles. In five days, she will march her children out the door and back to the household where she alone is head. It is only after she has overcome her brothers’ objections and made all arrangements that she permits herself to acknowledge-to herself, never to them-that she really would rather have stayed. Her visits back to Cholapatti have been brief, but each time, she has been overwhelmed by the loneliness of the house and glad to return to the affectionate company of her family in Samanthibakkam. Now she has closed that door, and the future sidles from sight.
On the eve of their departure, she wants the children in bed early so she can rouse them early for the train. Thangam is sitting on the veranda as always and comes in as soon as she is called. Vairum is running up and down the street with his gang, pretending to do battle on the plains of Kurukshetra. He gallops past his mother three times, once as horse, once as cart, once as charioteer, until Sivakami gets the attention of one of his elder cousins and commissions a capture. Vairum nobly resists arrest. Then he resists bedtime. They go finally to sleep, Thangam swiftly and sweetly, Vairum with much violent affection, hugging and kissing his tiny mother who is touched but not quite so athletic as to cope with his caresses.
At night’s darkest hour, Sivakami does an oblation for the gods of her father’s house as all its inhabitants sleep, save her. By tradition and by her heart, she no longer belongs here, but she is grateful to have had it as a stopping-place between grief and the rest of her life. She turns to leave the peace of the altar where she worshipped with her mother so many fond years ago and is startled by a listing white figure.
It is her father, roused from sleep, his gossamer hair leaping into the air above him as he moves. He pauses a moment to register her presence, then continues out back for his night business. Sivakami leans against the door of the puja room, thinking how he has aged-so quickly!-from the trim and prideful little man she knew. Her widowhood, and then his own, within weeks of one another: each death sparked in him a minor stroke, so now his left foot appears to be slightly more burden than support, and the left side of his jaw is slung low in the loosening skin of his face.
She hears the shufflestep of his return. He passes her and then stops and, without turning, says gruffly, “I still cannot decide if we were cheated on your behalf. I simply cannot decide.”
She says only, “He left me well provided for, in every way.”
Her father remains motionless; his hair rises and sways in unseen breezes. Their silence admits all the noises of the night beyond and the bricks cooling underfoot. He is the one who speaks: “You know a paadasaalai would be best-ah, for your son, for you. But the world is changing. Maybe the boy should be prepared to meet it when it comes to his door.”
He lurches into motion. He takes his place alone on his bamboo mat; he lays his head on the wooden pillow. The world turns beneath him, and sometimes, he thinks, he feels it move.
In the grey morning, the family bids them farewell at the veranda. Subbu will see them to the station. Sambu has wafted, for several days, an air of puzzlement, as though more concerned for Sivakami than for his own pride, though the opposite is transparently the case.
“I wish you success, little sister.” His gaze rests on her heavily, like the burden he thinks she is shouldering. “I hope, should you need help, that you will come to your brothers.”
Sivakami can see he is sincere, regardless of how slow he will be to act on any such request. And she is touched by his sincerity. She takes leave of her elders by performing oblations for them and making her children do the same, requesting and receiving blessings on this departure. Then children and baggage are bundled sleepily onto the bullock cart, she mounts beside them and they are trundled toward the train.
Mistress of my own house. On the train, her mind ticks with business. She will have to get caught up on all the tenants. Muchami had included a note in his last letter to say one of them was resisting payment and another had fallen ill. Muchami’s mother had also written her-that was a surprise-saying Muchami was acting oddly and refusing to attend his own marriage. She beseeched Sivakami, as his employer, to make him comply. She has already rehearsed what she will say to him. She feels charged with responsibility, as though it’s some species of lightning. She turns and hugs her children close as the train pulls out of the station. She cannot be madi on a train.
If Thangam is excited about a return to Cholapatti, Sivakami can’t tell. Vairum has no use for the place of his infancy, little as he remembers it. He complains but assumes they are going for a visit, as Sivakami has, every four or five months since they moved. Sivakami has not had the heart tell him he is to live out the rest of their days there, in the place where he was friendless and sad and where his father died. Children this young, she thinks, recover quickly from moves. He’ll cry for a few days, then he’ll forget he ever left.
She is saying this to herself as she watches him awaken on the train. He raises his gaze to hers, eyes like leaded-glass windows behind which his trust shines softly. She strokes his head. He takes advantage, cuddles up. She strokes his head, thinking, This is for you, this is for you, to the train’s rhythm, this is for you. She feels steel spark against steel, wheels on rails. There is no other way, she winces. Stroking his dear, quiet head, bracing herself for his misery. This is for you, this is for you.
PART THREE
12. Muchami Gets Married 1908
ANGAMMA, MUCHAMI’S MOTHER, stands in front of the little roadside temple, her fingers clamped around his wrist, waiting for a lizard to chirp. It has to come first from the left, next the right-the other way around would be a bad omen and would put her to a great deal of trouble, coming up with good omens to counter the bad until she felt satisfied the wedding could proceed.