Free The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai Page A

making Lila shrink back.
    ‘Money?’ she murmured, clenching her fists and wishing Hari would appear. ‘We have no money.’
    ‘No money – we have no money,’ he mocked her. ‘Very nice answer. Did he teach you to tell me that – that rogue, your father? Like father, like daughter. A family of liars, no-goods. No money,
no good – all of you. But wait till I catch him. I’ll break his neck and find the money all right.’
    Pinto, giving an uncontrollable yelp of rage at this man who stood shouting and swaying and waving his arms about in front of their house, suddenly broke away from the girls, darted past Lila and was out on the path, digging up sand with agitated claws, showing his sharp teeth and barking like a proper guard dog. He approached the man in short leaps and bounds, and when he was close enough to bite, the man raised his arms and roared, ‘Call that dog back. If you don’t keep him off – I’ll kill him.’
    Bela and Kamal, screaming together, darted out after Pinto, flying to save him from the drunkard. Seeing them all out on the path, ready for a battle, Lila hurried after them, calling, ‘Pinto – Pinto – come back. Bela, Kamal, catch him. He won’t bite – he won’t bite –’
    ‘If he bites,’ the man roared, ‘I’ll – I’ll –’
    The uproar brought them some help after all. It was his old mother, the woman who had sent them the magic-man that morning, who came hobbling through the gap in the hedge to see what it was all about. Seeing her son there, tottering drunkenly in a circle and shouting, she grabbed
him by the arm and gave him a quick, sharp shake.
    ‘
You
,’ she said fiercely, ‘you
idiot
. What are you doing here, frightening these little girls? Get back to the house – do you hear? Get back – you’re not fit to go out or talk to anyone. Go, hide yourself in your dirty black mud-hole. Stick your head in your toddy-pot and don’t show it around here again. Go.’ She gave him a push and he, silent now, stumbled off, half falling over the round pandanus fruit and muttering to himself, ‘Go, go, go, they say. Where shall I go? I want my money. I’ll get my money. I’ll kill that rogue. I’ll kill his dog –’
    ‘Be quiet,’ his mother screamed after him, picking up a stick and hitting it hard against a tree trunk. ‘Be quiet, I say,’ she screamed again and went off after him without another look at the girls who stood like shadows cast by the coconut palms on the sand.
    Then they turned and filed back to the house silently. Lila lit the fire early, to drive away the shadows that seemed so threatening, so full of danger tonight. They were sitting around that small fire when Hari came home to ask, ‘What has happened?’ and they could burst out at last
and tell him. There was nothing he could do – they knew that – to make their mother well, to keep away the drunken neighbour or his threats, to save Pinto from him and save them all from the cruelty all around them, but it helped that he, too, knew their fears and shared their troubles.

4
    Hari knew now that he could not continue to sit in the silent shadowy hut with his sisters, nor trail along the beach with his empty net, nor go lurking around the shack at the foot of the hill with the temple in the hope of a job that might not come through for years. He had to act, since there was no one else in the family fit to act and action was needed.
    Next morning he went stumbling over the baking white sand of the beach to join the group around Biju’s boat which was now beginning to look nearly ready. With the deep freeze installed in it, Biju would not leave the boat night or day. It was said he slept on the deck as if the boat were already at sea. Now, in the bright morning light,
he sat – seemed to be planted – on the folding chair, his palms pressed against his knees, watching as the men crawled about the boat, polishing and painting and planing. A sheet of tin, painted bright blue with the