by Anita Desai
Throwing his bag down on the steps, Ramu sank down, grey-faced. Mopping his face with a filthy handkerchief, he told the speechless Uma sourly, 'I've come to take you back. Couldn't you find a better time to run away than in the middle of summer?'
'Uma!' screeched Arun from the other end of the veranda. 'See, monkeys in the tree! Have you a catapult?'
Mira-masi held her head in her hands. 'Now what is this? Who has sent them? Who told them to come here?'
Uma stood wrapped around the stucco pillar of the veranda, tongue-tied as she tried to disentangle her delight at seeing her cousin Ramu from her embarrassment at being the cause of his distress. 'I—don't—know, I—don't—know,' she mumbled to Mira-masi. Then asked Ramu, 'Ramu-bhai, who sent you to fetch me? I haven't run away. I'm here.'
'I can see you're here,' he told her. 'I only wish you weren't. Then I wouldn't have been sent all this way by bus and tonga by your Papa to bring you back.'
'Back? Why?' she faltered, knitting her hands around the pillar. She had quite forgotten that she was expected to return.
'Because your MamaPapa thought you would be back in a week and you have been away for a month. When I arrived for what I hoped would be a bit of a holiday, they were all howling and crying. They were sure you'd been abducted by the priests.'
'What's abducted?' Uma asked cautiously.
'Stolen. Kidnapped. Ravished!' he shouted. 'All that. And I have been sent to rescue you. Don't ask why it had to be me and not your father. I suppose he couldn't travel by bus and tonga—he'd lose face. Next time you run away or get abducted, make sure it's to a place on the railway line.'
Uma threw frightened looks at Mira-masi who was frowning. She did not understand Ramu's English but she was clever at following the drift of a conversation. She seemed to guess what he asserted by his tone. She was folding her arms, tucking her feet beneath her, preparing for battle. She was not going to be beaten by this English-speaking, meat-eating, polluted outcast from Bombay. But he simply ignored her and spoke to Uma. 'Go and get me some water, there's a good girl,' he said. 'Don't you see your old cousin's about to collapse? And silence that brother of yours, will you? He's been enough of a nuisance all through the journey.' He looked bitterly in the direction of Arun who was running around the banyan tree in search of a stick to throw at the monkeys.
Uma was relieved to be given a task and hurried to fetch a glass and pour water from the jar for Ramu. He took it from her, closed his eyes, and emptied it over his head so that the water ran through his hair and into his eyes and dripped down his nose and chin into his collar. Uma, remembering now why Ramu had always been her favourite cousin, shrieked with laughter. She held her middle with folded arms and doubled up and hooted with laughter.
Mira-masi sat as if she had been turned to stone. Disapproval of Ramu made her mouth tighten as if around some sour, unripe fruit. But finally she sent Uma off to silence Arun before anyone started complaining about the noise he was making. While Uma was away, she would deal with Ramu, her look said.
The battle raged all afternoon. It was mostly silent, conducted by grimaces and gestures, an occasional sharp, exasperated word. Ramu drooped and now and then rolled his eyes upwards to express his feelings. Mira-masi remained bolt upright, her hands folded on her lap, her lips folded into her chin, shooting looks like fiery arrows from under brows that were drawn bows. But whenever Uma slipped in or out, frightenedly glancing at them, Ramu would make a face at her—thumb his nose or stick out his tongue, and even pretend to pour an invisible glass of water over his head. This reduced her to giggles, and, armed with her giggles, Ramu won.
Uma found'herself being handed into the bicycle rickshaw the gate-keeper had hailed to take them to the bus depot. What with the trouble of finding room for three passengers on the single narrow seat, and loading their baggage on as well, there was no time for farewells or leavetaking. They were already pedalling out of the sky-blue gate and down the road in a whirl of grey dust when Uma realised she had been taken away from Mira-masi and the ashram and river and was on her way home. She tried to get up in her agitation and jump off.
Ramu shouted, 'Sit down, Uma. D'you want me to deal with broken heads and legs as well?' Then, seeing her face so bereft, he dropped his threatening manner and said contritely, 'You look starved. We'll stop and have some samosas at the depot before we get on the bus.'
'Samosas?' Arun yelled. 'Ya-ay!' He, too, was a boy on holiday.
Uma made a polite attempt to eat them while Ramu smiled at her encouragingly. He held them out to her on a piece of newspaper—a peace offering, a consolation—but her throat was dry, nothing could pass through it. She looked back at him dumbly and Arun ate her share.
Six
IT is years since Mama had any new jewellery made but the old jeweller still comes around every winter to unwrap his bundle, take out his boxes and open them before her in the hope of tantalising her beyond the point where she can refuse.
Mama always does begin by refusing but then tells Uma to go and fetch the gold bangles or a broken chain. He looks up from tying his boxes and bundles together and smiles joyfully, his betel-stained teeth juicy in his mouth. 'Am I to make Baby's wedding jewellery this year?' he asks. He has been making the same joke since she was two years old. On each visit, they have found each other greyer, older. Now he can hardly see through the spectacles which he has done up with tape and string so he can hook them onto his nose.
He sits in a corner of the veranda, on a white cloth Mama has had spread for him, bent over his instruments and his little lamp, turning an armband into four thin gold bangles, or else putting together four thin gold bangles into one armband, whatever Mama's whim dictates. She sits on the swing, rocking, watching him, humming at the sight of the shining metal she loves so dearly, and Uma sits mending Mama's petticoats or knitting a sweater for Arun—more practical, she thinks, than the shawl Mama has sent to protect him from the cold of the Massachusetts winter—occasionally glancing in the direction of its golden allure. Sometimes she gets up to go and fetch him a glass of tea.
Placing it on the floor beside him, he beams at her and cackles, 'And the wedding jewellery for Baby? Am I to make it this year?' Uma can never control the blush that reddens her face, and she sniffs, 'Don't talk nonsense. Such an old man, and still talking nonsense!'
***
THERE was a time, a season, when every girl in the big, farflung family seemed suddenly ready for marriage. It was as if their mothers had been tending them, in their flowerpots, for just this moment when their cheeks would fill out and their lips take on a glisten and all the giggles and whispers would arrive at that one decision—marriage.
As anyone might have predicted—and aunts and grandmothers had been doing for years—it was cousin Anamika who was the first fruit to be picked. Cousin Anamika, in distant Bombay, had seemed the blessed one of her generation from her birth onwards, and it was not just because she presented such a startling contrast to her misshapen, deformed, dark misfortune of a brother, Ramu, with his club foot, his hunched back, his nearly sightless eyes—a son, a child who had gone wrong, missed all the graces and gifts that were accorded instead to his sister. Nor was it just a matter of her beauty. Aruna was pretty too, and in her case it was also evident quite early that her future would be bright, but there was a sharp edge to her prettiness, a harsh edge given to it by a kind of steely determination, a dogged ambitiousness, that seemed to be born of a desperation. In Anamika there was no such thing: she was simply lovely as a flower is lovely, soft, petal-skinned, bumblebee-eyed, pink-lipped, always on the verge of bubbling dove-like laughter, loving smiles, and with a good nature like a radiance about her. Wherever she was, there was peace, contentment, well-being.
When she was small, her parents would bring her on visits; not very often because Bakul Uncle's practice in Bombay was such a thriving one, he could scarcely ever leave the city to visit his more plodding, less spectacular younger brother who had preferred to be a big frog
in the little well of a small provincial town rather than risk the challenges of a metropolis. This created a certain air of rivalry and mutual censure whenever they came together which was obediently echoed by their wives and made these visits a fraught occasion; and there would be fierce competition between Uma and Aruna as well, for Anamika's attention. Uma would link arms with her cousin to lead her to her room to show off her collection of Christmas cards, and Aruna would try to snatch at her hand and take her out shopping for glass bangles. If Uma wanted to stroll with her in the garden where the bed of roses bloomed briefly in the cool of winter—the only season when Bakul Uncle and Lila Aunty would consider visiting them—then Aruna wanted to take her indoors and show her all the clothes in her wardrobe. Somehow Anamika managed to please them both, smile at all their suggestions, accept them with an equal readiness. She never allowed herself to be pulled into one camp or another; she achieved this equilibrium by simply remaining at the centre, so that everyone had to come to her, attracted to her as bees to a lotus. A lotus, with her deep, creamy, still beauty—that was what she was. Or a pearl, smooth and luminous.
Sometimes they met in other towns, at family weddings to which relatives from all the corners of the land came streaming, happy to display their richest silks and jewels to each other. Then a little group formed of just their generation, and rampaged through the wedding marquee, drinking as many soft drinks as they could lay their hands on, eating enough sweets to make an elephant sick; and always it was Anamika who prevented them from going too far, not by words or a look, but simply by her example which was cool, poised, mannerly and graceful. Wherever Anamika was, there was moderation, good sense and calm.
Even the adults looked on Anamika's glossy head, her thick dark braids and her big dreamy eyes, and smiled, sometimes sadly as if thinking how their own daughters and daughters-in-law could never measure up to this blessed one. Many observed how Ramu seemed to have drawn all misfortune upon himself so nothing but good fortune could look upon his sister. Uncles and grandfathers liked to have Anamika near them, ask her about her school and studies, for it was the astonishing truth that Anamika was not only pretty, and good, but an outstanding student as well.
In fact, she did so brilliantly in her final school exams, that she won a scholarship to Oxford. To Oxford, where only the most favoured and privileged sons could ever hope to go! Naturally her parents would not countenance her actually going abroad to study—just when she was of an age to marry—everyone understood that, and agreed, and so the letter of acceptance from Oxford was locked in a steel cupboard in their flat on Marine Drive in Bombay, and whenever visitors came, it would be taken out and shown around with pride. The visitors would congratulate Anamika and she would look down at her lap and play with the end of her braid and say nothing at all. She could never bring herself to contradict her parents or cause them grief.
The scholarship was one of the qualifications they were able to offer when they started searching for a husband for her, and it was what won her a husband who was considered an equal to this prize of the family.
THEN why, at that moment, when triumph should have reached its apogee, did everything change? And all good fortune veer around and plunge shockingly downwards?
In a way, it was Anamika's scholarship that had summoned him up, brought him to her parents' attention out of the swarm of other suitors, because he had qualifications equal to hers; he too had degrees, had won medals and certificates, and it seemed clear he would be a match for her.
Uma, Aruna and all the other girl cousins crowded around to see the match when he came, a bridegroom, to the wedding, and they fell back when they saw him, in dismay. He was so much older than Anamika, so grim-faced and conscious of his own superiority to everyone else present: those very degrees and medals had made him insufferably proud and kept everyone at a distance. The children saw that straight away i there would be no bridegroom jokes played at this wedding, no little gifts and bribes from him to them. In fact, he barely noticed them; he barely seemed to notice Anamika. The children saw that too—that she was marrying the one person who was totally impervious to Anamika's beauty and grace and distinction. He was too occupied with maintaining his superiority. He raised his chin and his nose—which was as long and sharp as a needle—and seemed to look over the top of her head as they exchanged heavy garlands of rose and jasmine, then sat before the ceremonial fire. The children twisted and squirmed to see what it was that he was staring at: was there a mirror hanging a little above the bride's head in which he could see himself?
Yes, in a way there was: it was the face of his mother, as sharp-nosed and grim-featured as he, gazing steadily back at him with an expression of fortitude in the face of calamity. They were to find out that this was how it was—it was the relationship central to his life, leaving room for no other. Anamika was simply an interloper, someone brought in because it was the custom and because she would, by marrying him, enhance his superiority to other men. So they had to tolerate her.
Only they did not tolerate her. No one said so openly, but Uma and Aruna heard gossip, over the next year or two, whispers and low voices that dropped even lower when they were within earshot. When they did pick up some hints, some information, it was deeply troubling: Anamika had been beaten, Anamika was beaten regularly by her mother-in-law while her husband stood by and approved—or, at least, did not object. Anamika spent her entire time in the kitchen, cooking for his family which was large so that meals were eaten in shifts—first the men, then the children, finally the women. She herself ate the remains in the pots before scouring them (or did Uma and Aruna imagine this last detail?). If the pots were not properly scoured, so they heard, her mother-in-law threw them on the ground and made her do them all over again. When Anamika was not scrubbing or cooking, she was in her mother-in-law's room, either massaging that lady's feet or folding and tidying her clothes. She never went out of the house except to the temple with other women. Anamika had never once been out alone with her husband. Aruna wondered what she did with all the fine clothes and jewellery she had been given at her wedding.
Then the news came that Anamika had had to go to the hospital. She had had a miscarriage at home, it was said, after a beating. It was said she could not bear more children. Now Anamika was flawed, she was damaged goods. She was no longer perfect. Would she be sent back to her family? Everyone waited to hear.
Uma said, 'I hope they will send her back. Then she will be home with Lila Aunty again, and happy.'
'You are so silly, Uma,' Mama snapped as she whacked at a mosquito on her foot with the small palm-leaf fan she was waving. 'How can she be happy if she is sent home? What will people say? What will they think?'
While Uma gaped, trying to think of something to say that would strike down Mama's silly thoughts as her fan struck down the mosquito, Aruna cried out for her instead, 'Who cares what they say? Who cares what they think?'
'Don't talk like that,' Mama scolded them. 'I don't want to hear all these modern ideas. Is it what you learnt from the nuns at the convent?' She glared at Uma; Mother Agnes had made one of her periodic visits to persuade Mama to send Uma back to school and this always roused Mama's ire. Uma thought it better to withdraw. So then Mama glared at Aruna. 'All this convent education—what good does it do? Better to marry you off than let you go to that place.' She laid about her with the palm-leaf fan.
Mama's temper was bad that summer—some female problem was mentioned, one with a long name, when female friends or relatives visited—but Aruna simply swung her foot, toyed with her braid and rippled with an inner momentum.
Seven
UMA has been sent through the hedge to the neighbours with a message from Mama—one of those requests for a knitting pattern or a magazine that she often sends across—and Uma finds Mrs Joshi in her kitchen, one end of her sari tucked in at the waist, making icecream. Or, rather, overseeing a servant boy who is grinding away at the handle of a wooden tub. She waves when she sees Uma approach. 'Just i
n time—the icecream's nearly ready—don't go away without tasting it.' Uma immediately hastens her steps and comes over, smiling in anticipation. She too watches the boy turn the handle and listens to the ice crackle and crunch till the lid is lifted off and Mrs Joshi dips in her spoon to test it for thickness. She too cries out with pleasure when it is declared done. Mrs Joshi fills a little pink glass dish for Uma. Then she stands with her hands on her hips and watches Uma eat it up, so fast, in such quick gulps, that Mrs Joshi has to fill it a second time. Uma finishes that also and licks the spoon clean before putting it down beside the empty dish. She hands it over to the servant boy who has been watching her with a twist of a grin on his face.
When Uma has left, Mrs Joshi turns to the old widowed aunt who lives with them and has come to see if there is anything good going in the kitchen. 'That Uma,' she says, shaking her head a little, 'still like a child of six. Won't she ever grow up, poor thing?'
The servant boy makes a snorting sound at the sink where he is washing up, and Mrs Joshi swings around to reprimand him.
***
IT was during the sad aftermath of Anamika's marriage that all the relatives received letters from Papa to say, 'Uma is still young but may be considered of marriageable age and we see no reason to continue her studies beyond class eight—'; Papa had not informed them when Uma was withdrawn from school well before that level. The letter rippled through the ranks of the female relatives. Everywhere there was a gathering of forces. Then the ripples made their way back to the source. Some of their replies enclosed photographs of likely young men known to aunts and cousins in distant towns. Uma was shown them (a sign of the family's progressiveness). Aruna hung over her shoulder and pointed out that the tall one had spectacles and thinning hair and the fat one had bad teeth and hair that was greasy. Uma tried to shake her off, irritated by this criticism of her suitors, but she could not deny—and was rather frightened to see—that all of them bore glum, disgruntled expressions. For some reason that was not divulged to her, one of them was picked and invited to visit them along with his sister and brother-in-law who lived in the same town and even knew their neighbour, Mrs Joshi (in fact, it was she who had procured the photograph, unknown to Uma).
