Nectar in a Sieve

by Kamala Markandaya

  "At least it stood until the worst was over," said Kali to me, "and by God's grace we were all spared." She looked worn out; in the many years I had known her I had never seen her so deflated. She had come to ask for some palm leaves to thatch the new hut her husband was building; but I could only point to the blackened tree, its head bitten off and hanging by a few fibres from the withered stump.

  "We must thatch our roof before the night," I said. "The rains may come again. We need rice too."

  Nathan nodded. "We may be able to buy palm leaves in the village -- also rice."

  He went to the granary in a corner of which the small cloth bundle of our savings lay buried. It had been heavy once, when we were newly married: now the faded rag in which it was tied was too big and the ends flapped loosely over the knot. Nathan untied it and counted out twelve rupees.

  "One will be enough," I said. "Let us go."

  "I will take two. We can always put it back."

  In the village the storm had left disaster and desolation worse than on our own doorstep. Uprooted trees sprawled their branches in ghastly fashion over streets and houses, flattening them and the bodies of men and women indiscriminately. Sticks and stones lay scattered wildly in angry confusion. The tannery stood, its bricks and cement had held it together despite the raging winds; but the workers' huts, of more flimsy construction, had been demolished. The thatch had been ripped from some, where others stood there was now only a heap of mud with their owners' possessions studding them in a kind of pitiless decoration. The corrugated iron shacks in which some of the men lived were no more: here and there we could see the iron sheets in unexpected places -- suspended from tree tops, or blown and embedded on to the walls of houses still left standing. There was water everywhere, the gutters were overflowing into the streets. Dead dogs, cats and rats cluttered the roadside, or floated starkly on the waters with blown distended bellies.

  People were moving about amid this destruction, picking out a rag here, a bundle there, hugging those things that they thought to be theirs, moving haltingly and with a kind of despair about them. People we knew came and spoke to us in low voices, gesturing hopelessly.

  "Let us go," I said. "It is no good; we will come back later."

  We turned back, the two rupees unspent. Our children came running out to meet us, their faces bright with hope.

  "The shops are closed or destroyed," I said. "Go inside. I will get you some gruel presently."

  Their faces faded; the two younger ones began crying listlessly from hunger and disappointment. I had no words to comfort them.

  At dusk the drums of calamity began; their grave, throbbing rhythm came clearly through the night, throughout the night, each beat, each tattoo, echoing the mighty impotence of our human endeavour. I listened. I could not sleep. In the sound of the drums I understood a vast pervading doom; but in the expectant silences between, my own disaster loomed larger, more consequent and more hurtful.

  We ventured out again when the waters had subsided a little, taking with us as before two rupees. This time things were somewhat better; the streets were clear, huts were going up everywhere. My spirits rose.

  "To Hanuman first for rice," said Nathan, excited. "The gruel we have been swallowing has been almost plain water these last few days."

  I quickened my steps: my stomach began heaving at the thought of food.

  Hanuman was standing in the doorway of his shop. He shook his head when he saw us. "You have come for rice," he said. "They all come for rice. I have none to sell, only enough for my wife and children."

  "And yet you are a merchant who deals in rice?"

  "And what if so? Are you not growers of it? Why then do you come to me? If I have rice I do not choose to sell it now; but I have told you, I have none."

  "We ask for only a little. We will pay for what we have -- see, here is the money."

  "No, no rice, but -- wait... they say Biswas is selling ... you can try...."

  To Biswas. "We come for rice. Look, here is our money."

  "Two rupees? How much do you think you can buy with two rupees?"

  "We thought --"

  "Never mind what you thought! Is this not a time of scarcity? Can you buy rice anywhere else? Am I not entitled to charge more for that? Two ollocks I will let you have and that is charity."

  "It is very little for two rupees --"

  "Take it or leave it. I can get double that sum from the tanners, but because I know you --"

  We take it, we give up the silver coins. Now there is nothing left for the thatching, unless we use a rupee or two from the ten that remain in the granary.

  I put the rice in my sari, tuck the precious load securely in at the waist. We turn back. On the outskirts of the village there is Kenny. His face is grim and long, his eyes are burning in his pallid face. He sees us and comes up.

  "You too are starving, I suppose."

  I tap the roll at my waist -- the grains give at my touch.

  "We have a little rice -- it will last us until times are better."

  "Times are better, times are better," he shouts. "Times will not be better for many months. Meanwhile you will suffer and die, you meek suffering fools. Why do you keep this ghastly silence? Why do you not demand -- cry out for help -- do something? There is nothing in this country, oh God, there is nothing!"

  We shrink from his violence. What can we do -- what can he mean? The man is raving. We go on our way.

  The paddy was completely destroyed; there would be no rice until the next harvesting. Meanwhile, we lived on what remained of our salted fish, roots and leaves, the fruit of the prickly pear, and on the plantains from our tree. At last the time came for the rice terraces to be drained and got ready for the next sowing. Nathan told me of it with cheer in his voice and I told the children, pleasurably, for the fields were full of fish that would feed us for many a day. Then we waited, spirits lifting, eyes sparkling, bellies painful with anticipation.

  At last the day. Nathan went to break the dams and I with him and with me our children, sunken-eyed, noisy as they had not been for many days at the thought of the feast, carrying nets and baskets. First one hole, then another, no bigger than a finger's width, until the water eroded the sides and the outlets grew large enough for two fists to go through. Against them we held our nets, feet firm and braced in the mud while the water rushed away, and the fish came tumbling into them. When the water was all gone, there they were caught in the meshes and among the paddy, shoals of them leaping madly, wet and silver and good to look upon. We gathered them with flying fingers and greedy hearts and bore them away in triumph, with a glow at least as bright as the sun on those shining scales. Then we came and gathered up what remained of the paddy and took it away to thresh and winnow.

  Late that night we were still at work, cleaning the fish, hulling the rice, separating the grain from the husk. When we had done, the rice yield was meagre -- no more than two measures -- all that was left of the year's harvest and the year's labour.

  We ate, finding it difficult to believe we did so. The good food lay rich, if uneasy, in our starved bellies.

  Already the children were looking better, and at the sight of their faces, still pinched but content, a great weight lifted from me. Today we would eat and tomorrow, and for many weeks while the grain lasted. Then there was the fish, cleaned, dried and salted away, and before that was gone we should earn some more money; I would plant more vegetables... such dreams, delightful, orderly, satisfying, but of the stuff of dreams, wraithlike. And sleep, such sleep... deep and sweet and sound as I had not known for many nights; it claimed me even as I sat amid the rice husks and fish scales and drying salt.

  CHAPTER VIII

  KUNTHI'S two eldest sons were among the first in the village to start work at the tannery, and between them they brought home more than a man's wages.

  "You see," said Kunthi. "The tannery is a boon to us. Have I not said so since it began? We are no longer a village either, but a growing town. Does
it not do you good just to think of it?"

  "Indeed no," said I, "for it is even as I said, and our money buys less and less. As for living in a town -- if town this is -- why, there is nothing I would fly from sooner if I could go back to the sweet quiet of village life. Now it is all noise and crowds everywhere, and rude young hooligans idling in the street and dirty bazaars and uncouth behaviour, and no man thinks of another but schemes only for his money."

  "Words and words," said Kunthi. "Stupid words. No wonder they call us senseless peasant women; but I am not and never will be. There is no earth in my breeding."

  "If there were you would be the better for it," said I wrathfully, "for then your values would be true."

  Kunthi only shrugged her delicate shoulders and left us. She spent a lot of her time making unnecessary journeys into the town where, with her good looks and provocative body, she could be sure of admiration, and more, from the young men. At first the women said it and the men said they were jealous; then men too began to notice and remark on it and wonder why her husband did nothing. "Now if I were in his place," they said... but they had ordinary wives, not a woman with fire and beauty in her and the skill to use them: besides which, he was a quiet, dull man.

  "Let her be," said Janaki. "She is a trollop, and is anxious only that there should be a supply of men."

  Her voice held both anger and a bitter hopelessness: for a long time now her husband's shop had been doing badly. He was unable to compete with the other bigger shopkeepers whom the easy money to be had from the tanners had drawn to the new town.

  A few days after our conversation the shop finally closed down. Nobody asked: "Where do you go from here?" They did not say, "What is to become of us?" We waited, and one day they came to bid us farewell, carrying their possessions, with their children trailing behind, all but the eldest, whom the tannery had claimed. Then they were gone, and the shopkeepers were glad that there was less competition, and the worker who moved into their hut was pleased to have a roof over his head, and we remembered them for a while and then took up our lives again.

  It was a great sprawling growth, this tannery. It grew and flourished and spread. Not a month went by but somebody's land was swallowed up, another building appeared. Night and day the tanning went on. A never-ending line of carts brought the raw material in -- thousands of skins, goat, calf, lizard and snake skins – and took them away again tanned, dyed and finished. It seemed impossible that markets could be found for such quantities -- or that so many animals existed -- but so it was, incredibly.

  The officials of the tannery had increased as well. Apart from the white man we had first seen -- who owned the tannery and lived by himself -- there were some nine or ten Muslims under him. They formed a little colony of their own, living midway between the town and open country in brick cottages with whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs. The men worked hard, some of them until late at night, the women -- well, they were a queer lot, and their way of life was quite different from ours. What they did in their houses I do not know, for they employed servants to do the work; but they stayed mostly indoors, or if they went out at all they went veiled in bourkas. It was their religion, I was told: they would not appear before any man but their husband. Sometimes, when I caught sight of a figure in voluminous draperies swishing through the streets under a blazing sun, or of a face peering through a window or shutter, I felt desperately sorry for them, deprived of the ordinary pleasures of knowing warm sun and cool breeze upon their flesh, of walking out light and free, or of mixing with men and working beside them.

  "They have their compensations," Kali said drily.

  "It is an easy life, with no worry for the next meal and plenty always at hand. I would gladly wear a bourka and walk veiled for the rest of my life if I, too, could be sure of such things."

  "For a year perhaps," I said, "not forever. Who could endure such a filtering of sunlight and fresh air as they do?"

  "You chatter like a pair of monkeys," said Kali's husband, "with less sense. What use to talk of 'exchange' and so forth? Their life is theirs and yours is yours; neither change nor exchange is possible."

  Once, and once only, I actually saw one of those women, close. I was taking a few vegetables to market when I saw her beckoning me to come indoors. I did so, and as soon as the door was closed the woman threw off her veil the better to select what she wanted. Her face was very pale, the bones small and fine. Her eyes were pale too, a curious light brown matching her silky hair. She took what she wanted and paid me. Her fingers, fair and slender, were laden with jewelled rings, any one of which would have fed us for a year. She smiled at me as I went out, then quickly lowered the veil again about her face. I never went there again. There was something about those closed doors and shuttered windows that struck coldly at me, used as I was to open fields and the sky and the unfettered sight of the sun.

  CHAPTER IX

  ONE morning I was pounding some red chillies into powder. Cho-chup! went the pestle into the mortar, crushing the brittle chillies and the seeds in them. Each time it fell, a fine red dust rose up, spreading a rich, acrid smell in the air. A pleasant smell, hot and pungent, which made my nostrils water and squirted the tears into my eyes, so that every few minutes I had to stop to wipe them. It was a fine, peaceful morning, not a sound from the tannery, which for one blessed day in the week closed down completely. Each time I paused I could hear sparrows twittering, and the thin, clear note of a mynah.

  Into view on the horizon came two figures, moving very slowly. I went on with my pounding. The figures grew larger every time I looked up, and then when they were still a fair distance away I recognised my daughter. I had seen her only once since her marriage, and since then over a year had passed. Excited, I gathered up the chilli powder and put it away, rinsed my eyes, washed my face and came out. On the doorstep I traced out a colam, a pattern in white rice flour to welcome them.

  They approached slowly, as if their feet were somehow weighted, not with the lightness which should have brought them quickly to my side. Something is wrong, I thought. Young people should not walk thus. And when I saw their faces the words of welcome I had ready died unuttered.

  In silence Ira knelt at my feet. I raised her up quietly, with hammering heart. "Let us go in," I said. "You must be tired."

  Ira entered obediently. Her husband stood stiffly outside. "Come," I said again, "sit and rest for a while. You have travelled a long way."

  "Mother-in-law," he said, "I intend no discourtesy, but this is no ordinary visit. You gave me your daughter in marriage. I have brought her back to you. She is a barren woman."

  "You have not been married long," I said with dry lips. "She may be as I was, she may yet conceive."

  "I have waited five years," he replied. "She has not borne in her first blooming, who can say she will conceive later? I need sons."

  I summoned Nathan from the fields. The tale was repeated, our son-in-law departed.

  "I do not blame him," Nathan said. "He is justified, for a man needs children. He has been patient."

  "Not patient enough," I said. "Not patient like you, beloved."

  Ira was sitting with her face in her arms. She looked up as her father and I came in and her mouth moved a little, loosely, as if she had no control over her lips. She was lovely still, but strain and hopelessness had shadowed her eyes and lined her forehead. She seemed almost to back away as I went to her.

  "Leave me alone, Mother. I have seen this coming for a long time. The reality is much easier to bear than the imaginings. At least now there is no more fear, no more necessity for lies and concealment."

  "There should never have been," I said. "Are we not your parents? Did you think we would blame you for what is not your fault?"

  "There are others," she replied. "Neighbours, women ... and I a failure, a woman who cannot even bear a child."

  All this I had gone through -- the torment, the anxiety. Now the whole dreadful story was repeating itself, and it was my daughter th
is time.

  "Hush," I said. "We are all in God's hands, and He is merciful."

  My thoughts went to Kenny. He can help, I thought; surely he can do something. My crushed spirit revived a little.

  About this time Arjun was in his early teens. He was tall for his age and older than his years. I had taught him the little I knew of reading and writing; now he could have taught me and most other people in the town. I do not know how he did it, for we could not afford to send him to school or to buy him books. Yet he always had a book or two by him, about which he grew vague if I asked questions, and spent many hours writing on scraps of paper he collected, or even, when he had none, on the bare earth. Secretly I was glad, for I saw my father in him, although sometimes my husband worried that he showed no inclination for the land; but when one day he told me he was going to work in the tannery I was acutely dismayed. It seemed it was going to be neither the one thing nor the other, neither land nor letters, which was to claim him.