Free Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya Page B

Kuti, which means tiny, and being a happy, untroublesome baby everybody took pleasure in his arrival. None more so than Ira: the transformation in her was astonishing as it was inexplicable. I had feared she might dislike the child, but now it was as if he were her own. She lost her dreary air, her face became animated, the bloom of youth came back to her.
    "Our daughter is herself again," said Nathan to me. "I have heard her carolling like a bird."
    "She is happy with the child," I replied, "but I do not know what is to become of her in the future."
    "Always worrying," he chided. "It is not a mercy that she is young again, should one not be grateful?"
    He was a man and did not understand. How could I stop worrying? We had no money to leave her. Who would look after her when we were gone and the boys were married with families of their own? With a dowry it was perhaps possible she might marry again; without it no man would look at her, no longer a virgin and reputedly barren.
    No one had been more upset about the outcome of Ira's marriage than Old Granny. It was she who had arranged the match, and though failing in health she thought it her duty to come to me. She had aged considerably since the last time I had seen her. She walked slowly, pausing before each step to gather strength for the next; her hands kept up a slight, shuddering movement like the nervous flutter of a bee on a flower.
    "No fault of yours, or the girl's or her husband's," I told her. "It is Fate. Nevertheless, I do not like to think of the future."
    "Why fear?" said the old lady. "Am I not alone, and do I not manage?"
    I thought of her sitting in the street all day long with the gunny sacking in front of her piled with a few annas' worth of nuts and vegetables; and I thought of Ira doing the same thing, and I was silent.
    "It is not unbearable," said she, watching me with her shrewd eyes. "One gets used to it."
    It is true, one gets used to anything. I had got used to the noise and the smell of the tannery; they no longer affected me. I had seen the slow, calm beauty of our village wilt in the blast from the town, and I grieved no more; so now I accepted the future and Ira's lot in it, and thrust it from me; only sometimes when I was weak, or in sleep while my will lay dormant, I found myself rebellious, protesting, rejecting, and no longer calm.

     

    CHAPTER XII

    ONE day in each week, when the tannery stopped work, Arjun and Thambi would help their father on the land, and this gave Nathan great pleasure. He liked to see his sons beside him, to teach them the ways of the earth: how to sow; to transplant; to reap; to know the wholesome from the rotten, the unwelcome reed from the paddy; and how to irrigate or drain the terraces. In all these matters he had no master, and I think it helped him to know he could impart knowledge to his sons, more skilled though they were in other things, and able to read and write better than any in the town.
    The rest of the week they worked at the tannery, going there soon after daybreak and not coming back until it was dark. By the time they had entered their late teens they were earning good wages: a rupee for each day's work, and without fail they would hand me their earnings, keeping nothing back for gaming or whoring as many of the lads did. Each morning I cooked rice for them, sometimes dhal or vegetables as well, which they took with them to eat at midday; and when they came home I gave them rice water and dried fish, sometimes a little buttermilk or perhaps even a few plantains I had kept from selling. But from what they gave me I had also to buy clothes for them, for they were expected to put on shirts over their loincloths, and red turbans on their heads, so that although we had full bellies and were well clothed, there was not much left over, and the hope I secretly cherished of putting by some money for Ira soon withered; and when it finally died I recovered my peace of mind and was happy enough.
    If there was