The Toss of a Lemon

9. High Time 1907

WHEN THANGAM COMPLETES HER FIRST SEVEN YEARS, Sivakami’s family starts making noises on the subject of the girl’s marriage. Sivakami’s father begins and Kamu, her eldest sister-in-law, nods her lip-pursed agreement. Their strong opinion (stronger for being not at all original) is that it is high time. Kamu’s husband, Sambu, a roomy, sedentary man, is less enthusiastic than he should be-arranging a wedding is a lot of work and all that work is the brothers’. Their father, since his wife’s death, has largely withdrawn from family life and obligations. The middle son, Venketu, who is unnaturally energetic, annoys his elder brother with ambitious proclamations about the match they will make their niece.

With respectful comments on their brother-in-law’s renown as an astrologer, they request Thangam’s horoscope. Sivakami goes to her trunk, which now contains only the palm-leaf bundles and the carved sandalwood box. She had aired the clothes out on arrival, set them on their allotted shelf with her Ramayana and not opened the trunk since. Now she lifts out the long, slim box and sets it on the floor in front of her.

She bends to breathe the ancient scent-rich, antiseptic, vaguely obscene-of the sandal tree’s protected parts, the heartwood and roots. She is trembling a little with an old, familiar flush of resentment at her responsibilities: she has never opened the box, inside which are the leaves whose graven words have caused her loneliness. In the scent is every morning, when her husband ground a block of sandal against a dampened black stone to make a paste, to anoint the foreheads of their gods and each other and their children. It is the scent of her husband’s forehead when she bent over hi0.as he slept.

Sivakami exhales and straightens, and as she does so, her shoulder blades, which had spread slightly, lock back into place. The breath of good memory has steadied her to open the box. As she lifts the lid, she feels an icy breeze escape and curl around the back of her neck. Thangam’s horoscope is on top. Sivakami lifts it out and shuts the box without looking farther. She doesn’t think until later that Vairum’s would have logically been in that place, since he was born after Thangam. Hanumarathnam must have put Vairum’s beneath their daughter’s. He would have known that Thangam’s marriage would come before their son’s, and he must have realized that if Sivakami, not he, was opening the box, she would have reason not to want to see Vairum’s horoscope.

The brothers take the palm leaves to the corner astrologer. He quacks over them briefly, threads a silver stylus through the hole in his index fingernail and doodles out his pronouncements on a supplementary leaf. He slips this appendix onto a couple of pegs and stacks the original four leaves on top of it. The holes line up, but he seems to cut his leaves slightly larger than the standard two-by-eight-inches, or Hanumarathnam cut his smaller: the edge of the update leaf protrudes as though the little-known local garnished and trimmed Hanumarathnam’s predictions, readied them to be served.

The brothers return with long faces. Sivakami, scooping rice onto a plate in the kitchen, hears her eldest brother, Sambu, telling his wife, “She’s got a tough one.”

The wives are not ill-intentioned, but the eagerness of their concern is evident as they ask, “What-what does it say?”

Sivakami pauses to listen to Sambu’s reply.

“It says… whoever she marries, he’s going to die young.”

“Ayoh!” The exclamation comes from Kamu, Sambu’s wife.

Meenu, the second, echoes her, muttering, “Ayoh, ayoh.” She shakes her head and whispers, “Young widow.”

Sivakami comes out to serve lunch and they fall quiet. Ecchu raises her hands to her lips, seemingly to hide a nervous grimace. Sivakami goes back into the kitchen to fetch other items and thinks, This is also the fate that awaits my daughter?

While the men have their afternoon rest, the women discuss marriage even more than usual-and this is a much-discussed subject. With the subversiveness that compensates for but never threatens the domestic hierarchy, Sivakami’s sisters-in-law talk to her of the inaccuracy of horoscopes.

Ecchu overcomes her customary remove to tell of a boy in her family who wanted to marry his cousin. “She was a nice girl, beautiful girl, suited to him in every way except that her horoscope said her husband’s brother would die. So the boy’s elder brother’s wife objected, ‘No. If this marriage is conducted, I will be a widow!’ But the boy insisted, ‘If I do not marry this girl, I will not marry. At all.’ What could the family do? They could not leave their son unmarried. The older brother had already had children. So the cousins married, and guess what? No one died, not the brother, nobody. Thirty happy years later, the boy himself, the groom, died. Just last year. The older brother still lives, even today.”

The sisters-in-law nod and pat their babies. Meenu chips in spunkily with another story. “Yes, my sister, she had a horoscope that said her mother-in-law would die. My brothers showed it around, but no one would accept. Then they heard of a widow lady and thought she might consent, but when she saw the horoscope, she chased them out of the house with a big stick!”

The women laugh hard, startling toddlers silent and babies awake. A smile even breaks through the anxiety cobwebbing Sivakami’s face. Meenu laughs hardest of all. “They had to run pretty fast, or they would have got a nice whack. They came home crying and yelling, ‘What’s her problem? She’s a widow anyway, what does she care if she lives or dies? We’re not going to arrange this marriage any more!’ ”

“What happened?”

“Another widow. She had been a second wife, she didn’t mind.

The marriage was for her youngest son, the last of her responsibilities.

“The marriage took place, oh, twenty, twenty-five years ago, and the old lady is still going strong. Sweet, mild-mannered lady, but strong as a plow-ox.”

The women wipe the laughing tears from the corners of their eyes-imagine their husbands being chased by widows with big sticks! They go back to absentmindedly joggling babies and mending clothes. “Marriages are made in heaven, that’s what. No one can say how one will turn out.”

Their chatter is cut off by the tiffin hour. Sivakami’s father wanders past in a cloud of his musings, moving toward the dining area. Sivakami and Ecchu rise to serve him his meal.

+9 The stories of wrong horoscopes serve as distraction but certainly not as consolation. Her husband’s own horoscope was accurate, and he did Thangam’s horoscope himself. Sivakami feels sick but all too confident that he got it right.

The brothers return from a day of searching with an unexpected proposition.

They have called on three families-enough, in their opinion, to take a decision. This is the report, which Sambu, the eldest brother, delivers in a slow, sonorous monologue, regularly interrupted by the impatient Venketu. Subbu, the youngest, doesn’t try to contribute but smiles comfortingly at his little sister. She smiles warily back.

“The first family asked us if we were kidding,” Sambu relates. “They have only one son, they have waited so long to marry him, until their duty was done by all his sisters. Will they marry him to a woman who is just going to kill him off? No. The second family: they hesitated because they have been searching for a long time for a bride. Their son is an ascetic, a renunciant. He has been so since a very early age and has said he can only marry a woman who accepts this lifestyle. Since he wants nothing so much as to be taken to the next world, his family thought he might take our option, but after some discussion, they finally said no, they could not be party to this union. Although any wife of his would have a more austere life during marriage than during widowhood, they need to find a girl who is already inclined to a spiritual life. We said Thangam is a very undemanding girl, but they were not sure. So we went to a third house. They were recommended to us as a great landowning family, but it was clear when we arrived that they are very much in debt. I’m sure that’s why they are having trouble finding a match for their son. We saw him-extraordinarily handsome, talkative, smiling face.”

Here Sambu pauses for even longer than usual. He normally speaks so slowly as to make it seem he is choosing each sentence from a dwindling supply. Sivakami’s face, which had been frowning in concentration, now smoothes into wariness. She looks around at her sisters-in-law, who look back inquiringly to their husbands. Their husbands look down at their food, and Sambu continues. “This is the best option. There is a catch, but this is still the best option.”

They each eat a mouthful.

“The catch is,” Sambu drones, “that the son has something in his horoscope that suggests…”

Venketu breaks in, “Well, suggests strongly…”

“Yes,” Sambu reasserts. “Strongly suggests his wife will… die married.” Here he takes one of his customary pauses, permitting Sivakami’s shock to jell. “Far preferable to being a widow, certainly.”

“Of course,” Venketu yelps, “it suggests this will happen after many, many years.”

“Yes, many years,” Sambu eventually adds.

“Yes, many,” Subbu chimes in at the last.

Sivakami waits a long time, but Sambu has nothing else to say. They resume eating, nervously.

This is a choice between frying pan and fire-and the women know, as men do not, the consequences of such choices. Sivakami’s mouth is dry and she feels a bit dizzy with tension but decides to plunge forward.

“How old a married woman?” she asks her eldest brother. “How many years will she have?”

“Many years, many years,” Sambu replies without looking up.

“How many?” Sivakami insists, feeling close to tears while knowing she will not cry.

“Well, let’s see…” Sambu frowns.

Venketu helps him. “She’s seven now, so that would make thirty-three more years. Practically a lifetime.”

“And ‘strongly suggests,’” Sivakami presses them, surprised that her voice is not shaking. “What does that mean? How ‘strongly’ does it ‘suggest’ his wife will die married?” She can’t bring herself to use “Thangam” and “die” in the same sentences.

“Hm. Well,” Sambu begins, and Venketu finishes, “More strongly than Thangam’s suggests its opposite.”

Sambu glares.

There is silence as each woman in the room compares her own lifespan with the one Thangam’s uncles want her to accept. It is a little less than twice Sivakami’s current age. More time than she wants but not nearly enough for her daughter. Venketu offers Sivakami the courtesy of a little consolation, and she sees that, despite his early proclamations, he has put all the effort he intends to into this match. “Anyway, when she has children, remember, chances are very good that their horoscopes will change all this. Children give all women a new lease on life, isn’t that right, ladies?”

The ladies pretend they haven’t heard. Sivakami does not let herself reflect on whether children are a reliable method of altering one’s destiny. She thinks instead that her brothers will not be so hasty in selecting mates for their own children: good children, but ordinary. Plain, some of them very plain, and not exactly brilliant either. Her brothers will have to work double-time to pair them off and they will too. Without looking up from his slurping-burping, Sambu concludes, “They want a girl-seeing next week.”

Sivakami retreats to the kitchen in disgust. It will be concluded at the girl-seeing. No one has ever laid eyes on Thangam without tumbling headfirst into the well of love where she dwells, a little golden frog. She is a delicacy not to be resisted, the sweetest of sweets laid over with pure, pounded gold. Thangam melts on the tongue.

She hears her father calling from the far end of the house for his bedroll. He has concerned himself with nothing about the marriage since making the demand that his sons do their duty by their niece. That was his duty, to make the demand.

If only horoscopes were less impartial, Sivakami thinks, feeling sorry for herself, since to feel sorry for her daughter, already, would break her heart. The stars strike without pity. And they collude through generations. She, her husband and Vairum were all victimized by Hanumarathnam’s and Vairum’s star charts, and now, because of Hanumarathnam’s death, Thangam’s stars have shredded her life in advance. The stars’ effects can be altered in combination-look, Thangam’s destiny was reversed by this match. Surely her father, had he lived, would have found a way to turn hers to advantage.

Had he lived. Her brothers had asked her to come here so they could look after her: a woman alone is vulnerable, they said. They are right. Clearly, no one will protect her and her children now that her husband is gone.

As Sivakami predicted (see: she, too, has such powers), the boy’s family comes, sees, consents. The groom, called Goli, is eighteen, handsome, with the sort of creamy complexion customarily called red. (A tinge of aristocracy? Romance and good fortune?) He’s all charm and dash, glib compliments and a restless eye. Sivakami’s sisters-in-law are a-titter.

Sivakami can’t deny that Goli is good-looking, but his behaviour is suspicious. Has he affected this manner or is it natural? He acts like he cannot stay still. He has no obligation to find Thangam’s family interesting, nor even to act as though he does. But is something wrong with him?

Vairum began pouting even before the interloper arrived. He has been scrubbed and oiled and made to sit still, withheld from his cousins and the grubby roaming day that calls to him in sun and dust. He sits obediently in the main hall, a sad, bored expression on his face, determinedly reciting numbers, his lips barely moving.

Thangam serves sweets to her prospective groom. Sivakami observes the pair keenly. She believes she sees the light of attraction between them, like something seen close by the window of a moving train-Goli looks at the girl as she serves; Thangam looks at him as he looks away. Sivakami knows this may be merely wishful: Thangam is only seven, after all, and not a child whose feelings are easy to read. Next Thangam turns to serve Goli’s mother and father, and when they ask the little girl to sing, she treats them to a gentle, indulgent smile and sits to one side, silent and absent-looking. Her aunts hurriedly bring out the little girl’s needlepoint, evidence of her industry and intelligence. She may not speak much, but she is clearly no dolt. The embroidery is primitive; she is still small. Anyway, the handiwork’s beauty cannot compare to the girl’s, and all is forgiven with laughter in the warmth of Thangam’s glow. The families feel themselves on the brink of an agreement, and this makes the gathering even more agreeable.

A little apart, Vairum sits as dourly as only a precocious five-year-old can, keeping one cautious eye cocked on Goli, who continues to bounce about the salon, admiring trinkets and babies and pictures of gods, peering out at the street, tossing out non-witty non sequiturs that set the aunts adrift in gales of giggles nonetheless. No matter how he moves, his clothes hang perfectly on his body. Now he stops in front of Vairum, saying jovially, “Hey, mite!” He ruffles Vairum’s hair, bats his shoulders and generally takes liberties.

“Not the prettiest kid, eh?” Goli addresses the group.

Thangam leaps up, looking alarmed and hurt, as the rest of the gathering burbles and hiccups. Vairum glitters cold scorn. Sivakami bristles, but no one notices her, or Thangam, who eventually sits without speaking but also, now, without smiling.

Throughout this sparkling exchange, Vairum has continued to recite under his breath, “Four hundred and eighty-three times four hundred and eighty-three is twenty-three lakh, three thousand, two hundred eighty-nine. Four hundred and eighty-three times four hundred and eighty-four is twenty-three lakh, three thousand, seven hundred seventy-two. Four hundred and eighty-three times four hundred and eighty-five is twenty-three lakh, four thousand, two hundred fifty-five.”

Now his sister’s intended-for that is what he clearly is, though no one has bothered to explain anything to Vairum-peers at the younger boy’s lips, which immediately still. Goli asks, “What are you saying?”

Vairum turns away, repulsed by Goli’s scent of new rice and lemons-he is nauseated by everything about Goli, by all that everyone else clearly admires. The aunts explain: “Arithmetic. He is doing arithmetic.”

They turn to Goli’s parents, still as brick compared with their son, and elaborate, “He picked it up somewhere; he does it all the time. The children ask him to name two big numbers and add them divide them we don’t know what all, but they seem to find it amusing.”

The fiance likes this. He crows, “O-ho! A smarty-pants we have here, have we? So do some. Go ahead, let’s hear your arithmetic.”

Vairum is lost in his own thoughts, and startles when Goli repeats his request: “Come on, smarty-pants. Show us your tricks. I’ll get you started. What’s seven plus five?”

Vairum fixes a squint on him and says, in order to end the conversation, “Eleven.”

Goli leaps away shuddering and addresses the crowd. “Ugh, those eyes give me the creeps. Don’t they give you all the creeps?” He starts examining the beamwork of the house and asks, “So what’s this wood holding up your house?

Vairum’s had enough. He rises and heads for the door. His aunts admonish him sharply to stay, but he keeps moving. Goli leaps in his way, the chivalrous knight, barely glancing at his quarry. “Stop right there, little man.”

Vairum ducks past him into the vestibule. Goli grabs his arm and yanks him back over the threshold. “I said stop.”

Vairum tries without success to wrest away. “I don’t have to listen to you.”

His elder uncles slide fast from sycophancy to sharp authority: “You do have to listen. He is going to be your brother-in-law.” They slide back to ask the parents with jollity, “We are assuming?”

The in-laws-to-be give hurried assurance, lest anyone change minds. “No, yes, yes, you are quite right, quite right. All very satisfactory. Must get on to details immediately!”

Vairum, under cover of everyone’s etiquette, escapes Goli’s hold and bounds outside. From there he yells, so the whole street can hear, “Don’t tell me what to do!”

Goli poses briefly as though to give chase, but Vairum is gone and the older boy really hasn’t a spark of interest in a sweat-drenched trot through the sun-drenched village. He saunters back into the salon, but there is an unhappy tilt to his mouth. Sivakami sees it as a flag. Might these boys grow to understand each other as men or has she just seen an enmity enter her family?

Her father now rises from his corner. Everyone is mildly surprised, having forgotten he was present. He shuffles out to the veranda, where he will await the next meal to punctuate his existence.

Wedding plans are amicably contracted between the responsible parties. Thangam’s uncles ask for her feelings with questions that cannot be answered, such as “All seems very suitable, doesn’t it, Thangam dear?” and “Weren’t in a mood to sing, were you? Well, it doesn’t seem to have hurt anything.” There is no way to respond, and so Thangam doesn’t. All has gone as God intended and the day waves sunnily ahead.

To his immense credit-though he might have been goaded either by his conscience or by his wife-Sambu negotiates for a dowry to be given in land instead of cash and jewels. He has concerns about Thangam’s future family’s debt status and tries for one more condition: he would like to continue to manage the land and thereby improve it for the couple. To their surprise, the in-laws agree.

Sivakami is somewhat cheered by this small proof of her brother’s concern for Thangam. She feels doubly secure because, of course, he will not manage the land-she will. She trusts her own ability and industry above his.

Despite this discussion, Thangam will still come with a large trousseau. Her sisters-in-law do the shopping. The jewels from the Cholapatti safe will be displayed on the child at the wedding and go with her to her new home. Sivakami hears, even through the cacophony of her feelings about this marriage, the voice in her head making practical arrangements. She doesn’t trust Goli and doesn’t exactly know why, other than that he acts so strangely. But she also feels some relief at having the marriage contracted: Thangam had to marry someone and, who knows, maybe another union would be worse. Maybe this one will turn out all right. Still, she wonders as she bends sleepless over her beading that night, What is on this Goli’s mind? What is Thangam in for?