Goli’s parents return at two in the morning, the prescribed hour, when Thangam’s mother-in-law is to pour oil on the bride’s and groom’s heads before they take their baths. But Goli is not with his parents. Sivakami does not ask after him. Muchami and Mari do not ask after him. Thangam bows her head for the oil. She goes to her bath, while her mother- and father-in-law stand, their heads bowed, unmoving. Gayatri runs in, breathless and excited. She’s hastily taken her own oil bath and wants to be the first to offer congratulations to the couple. Not seeing them, she waits. Thangam emerges from the bath. Gayatri’s body settles, particle by particle, in understanding, and it is she who addresses Goli’s parents in their attitudes of shame.
“Oh. I’m sorry that it seems your son’s stomach is still troubling him.” Her voice sounds as though cooled over blocks of ice, the kind one sees now in Thiruchi, glowing mysteriously beneath layers of sawdust and straw.
But what’s that sound? The ice cart, drawn by a pony? No, it’s little Vairum. He had gone to sleep content-thrilled, in fact-at his brother-in-law’s absence. Now he trots in, making pony-hoof clicking noises with his tongue, and pulls up short at the sight of Thangam’s mother-in-law and father-in-law. A quick glance around assures him that Goli has not come, and he restarts his pony with a whoop and trots into the bathroom, wide awake and wriggling with excitement at the thought of his fireworks. Two days ago, he laid them out on the roof to dry. Today, on Vairum’s command, Muchami will light them in the street. Vairum has invited his schoolyard bodyguards to come and watch from just beyond the Brahmin quarter.
Thangam sits with her back to Rukmini, Murthy’s wife, to have her hair plaited. Rukmini and Murthy have not yet had children of their own, but Rukmini, a good-natured innocent, is full of affection and care for Sivakami’s kids and Thangam goes to her daily for this small, intimate chore, which Sivakami can no longer do because she is madi.
Rukmini’s own hair is, by general agreement, the worst kind: so kinky it never grows past her shoulders. Puffs of it gather in front of each ear; a halo of frizz rises from her rectangular forehead. Her memories of daily tears, owing to her mother’s vigorous efforts to tame her curls, make her gentle with Thangam.
Sivakami remembers that Vairum should have put some oil in his hair, also. She takes the bottle of oil to the bathroom and persuades him to wrap his six-year-old modesty in a towel. Finally, he opens the door and she dribbles oil into his hair. He massages his scalp distractedly with one hand, the other clutching his towel. He closes the door and begins again to splash.
Rukmini holds Thangam’s hair in her left hand while she strokes the comb through with her right, careful to scratch the scalp healthily with each pull. Reflexively, she tilts Thangam’s head to inspect for lice; Thangam spends her days surrounded by children with their heads inclined toward her. Sivakami leans forward for a look.
They see no bugs, though there is dandruff nestling in the little girl’s part. Not much, but Thangam is a bit young for this problem. Probably Rukmini has not been scraping the scalp properly each day. Sivakami chastises herself for not monitoring Thangam’s toilet more carefully. Perhaps it’s the change in seasons. At Thangam’s next oil bath, she will have Rukmini rub extra coconut oil into her knees and elbows, with vigour for heat, and give her scalp a healthy massage. She now notices a sparkle of dust inching along the drain from the bathroom with the water from Thangam’s bath, as Vairum splashes within.
Rukmini tilts Thangam’s head toward the lamp, and the flakes glint as she extends the part down the back of Thangam’s head and makes three smooth ropes on each side. Thangam’s plaits are looped back up on themselves in the fashion of little girls from then to now, and tied behind each ear with a purple ribbon, just as the Deepavali dawn bends through a sulphur haze kicked up by the fireworks circling, shooting and trailing through the early light.
After the formalities of the bath are concluded, Thangam sits to witness the festival fun from her usual spot on the veranda, but without her crowd, because all the children who dare are busy running from their own verandas into the centre of the street with exploding devices to scatter and impress the others. Vairum makes a satisfying morning of it, watching his stash go up in smoke. Not permitted to handle fireworks himself, he stands with his group, just outside the Brahmin quarter, while Muchami juggles the sparkling, flaming or smoking cylinders and cubes.
Only one small mishap mars the morning-it wouldn’t be Deepavali without some trifling injury. Some naughty boys tie a string of crackers to a sow’s tail, intending to watch the fun from the fence post, but panic pushes the big pig over the bar and out of her pen. She tramples two of the pranksters before escaping through a paddy field and extinguishing hopes of further entertainment.
Sadly, Goli misses all the fun. No one fails to inquire after him, and each is told his stomach is keeping him indoors. All day, his parents mope from chattram to house and back again, no son and no explanation. Sivakami is not clear on how long they intend to stay, and cannot ask.
The day after Deepavali, Thangam wears royal-blue ribbons to match the borders of her silk paavaadai, which is, in the main, a salmon pink worked in gold thread with a tasteful density of flowers. Sivakami instructs Rukmini to comb Thangam’s scalp harder. The tender-hearted woman reluctantly complies, but when Thangam winces and blinks back tears, Rukmini starts crying herself. The flaking is getting worse, and not only from Thangam’s head. As the child rises, her hair pulled into braids so tight her eyebrows have lengthened, sprinkles fall from her elbows, sliding down the slippery silk paavaadai to shine in a half-sun against the courtyard bricks. She pads out to the veranda, leaving a faintly glistening trail of footprints.
Mari arrives to sweep and swab the floor, as she does daily. When she pours out the wash water, Sivakami can’t help but check the court-yard drain. This has been the worst Deepavali she has ever experienced, waiting for this boy who doesn’t seem to think any of the rules of propriety apply to him. It probably bears no relation, but, appearing when it has, she can’t help feeling as if this dust is evidence of Thangam’s humiliation. She hauls and pour bucket after bucket of water along the gutter, but the golden specks must be heavier than dirt, than skin, than flesh and blood, because they settle again to taunt her from the trough.
Goli’s parents linger for two nights after Deepavali and then take their leave. When Muchami returns from seeing them off at the train station, he reports the puzzled inquiries of a dozen townsfolk, wondering why Goli wasn’t there with them.
“I told them he had gone already and asked them, Didn’t they see him go? I said he had said goodbye to as many people as he could, and that I didn’t know how they had managed to miss him. They asked if he was recovered and I said, Well, no, but… and then I waited, but his parents didn’t say a thing, not a thing, just stood there, the mother looking at the ground and father looking at the sky. So I said he was called away on family business, that he had to go and look after some things, things to do with their land. Okay?”
“Yes, yes. What else could you say?”
Muchami responds, even more indignant than when he had started, “Right, what else could I say? Certainly not the truth.”
He is deeply alarmed and insulted by Goli’s behavior, though he chose not to share this with Sivakami until now. He made his own inquiries-he needed to know what they were in for, and planned to decide later how much Sivakami had to be told. He had found and followed Goli, who patronized several local haunts, including the relatively respectable Kulithalai Club, where, after dark, men played cards, as well as establishments of lesser repute, including one “house of gaiety” in the street of prostitutes. Muchami had ferreted out one man who appeared slightly less infatuated with Goli than others in his crowd (for Goli already had a small gang of “friends,” most of whom he met only in the course of this short festival), and learned that this man was a relative of Goli’s and that they grew up on the same Brahmin quarter in a village two hours away.