The Toss Of A Lemon Part 36

"It's beautiful," she responds.

He gestures. "Open it."

She lifts off the lid, which fits onto the bottom half by means of a latticework border. Inside is a small sack and, inside the sack, glossy peppermints in pink and white stripes.

"Take one," he urges, but she thinks they look too lovely to eat, and she feels so shy. She imagines playing palanguzhi, Kamalam's favourite game, with him, using pink and white peppermints for tokens.

She hands back the bird-shaped box, indicating Baskaran should offer the mints around the compartment. He tries and is ignored by the others, who are shouting now, evenly divided on a number of related political topics. Finally, he takes a mint, presses it into her mouth and chucks her lightly under the chin. Taking another candy for himself, he sits back to enjoy her discomfort.

MUCHAMI FINISHES PUTTING AWAY THE BULLOCK and cart and comes through the courtyard toward the kitchen door, carrying Raghavan, who is nearly asleep. Sivakami is in the pantry, reading her Ramayana, only her forehead and hands visible above the book. The older children have scattered. Muchami calls out softly, "Amma?" then goes back around to pa.s.s through the back room, then the room under the stairs, into the main hall.

Sivakami lays a mat down in the main hall. Muchami deposits the little boy on it, and Raghavan rolls luxuriantly onto his side, already asleep.

Sivakami and Muchami take their separate paths, she through the kitchen, he through the other pa.s.sage, out to the courtyard, where Muchami draws some water. He washes his feet, face, neck and hands, and takes a long drink.

"Everything went all right?" Sivakami asks from the small veranda at the back of the house.

"Oh, yes," he says. "Janaki's a good girl, very smart girl."

"Yes," Sivakami says. "They're all good."

"I will miss her more than the elder ones," he says, a little apologetically, "and probably more than the younger ones, too."

"Sure, who will practise Sanskrit with you?"

Muchami laughs. "She surpa.s.sed me so long ago, she has no use for this old man's stuttering!" He looks serious again. "Amma ... seeing her in-laws, I couldn't help thinking again about how Vairum, what he said about how we warned off Goli. Ah, I felt so bad, all over again."

Sivakami is silent: she had tried to talk to Vairum about that after the wedding was over, but he wouldn't allow it. "What's done is done, Muchami. Don't torture yourself. I wouldn't even have told you what Vairum said if you hadn't asked."

"I should have known." Muchami hits his head with his fist. "Vairum is also so intelligent. I should have known he would antic.i.p.ate whatever we could. I was just so concerned for Janaki."

"Yes, yes." Sivakami doesn't see the point of talking about it. They can't take it back and they'll never do it again. "The point is, she'll be fine there."

"I think she will." His face s.h.i.+nes as he thinks of her, all dressed up, with her rich husband. "I think she'll really do well."

At the Pandiyoor station, the family's bullock cart, magnificently decorated and drawn by a majestic and fatty black bull, awaits them. Gopalan, the family's head servant, is driving. Before he mounts the cart, Baskaran pulls a small tin from the pocket of his kurta, inhales a few pinches of snuff from it, and sneezes. Janaki looks away, wis.h.i.+ng she hadn't seen. He mounts the cart and Gopalan twitches the reins against the bullock's back.

Leaving the station, they cross a small commercial street and travel past the bus depot and a post office before turning into one of two streets that, intersecting at a T, make up the Brahmin quarter. Single Street, the top of the T, is composed of a row of houses facing the sides of two long houses on Double Street, including Baskaran's family home. Double Street, the T's stem, looks more like the Cholapatti Brahmin quarter, with two rows of houses facing each other. On both streets, the houses share walls with their neighbours, the red and white stripes of the verandas, as in Cholapatti, practically continuous. Double Street culminates in a Krishna temple, behind which stretches the Vaigai River.

Almost everyone on the street between the station and the Brahmin quarter recognizes the cart and puts palms together respectfully. Baskaran's brother gives the expected reaction: sometimes he nods in acknowledgement; mostly he doesn't react at all. Baskaran, though, puts his own palms together, offering namaskarams to labourers, merchants, a tailor, hardly conventional Brahmin behaviour. Suspicion inkles in Janaki's breast: she hasn't married a radical, has she?

Only one of Baskaran's sisters is at home, the one who married locally. She squeals delightedly, a habit Janaki noticed when they met earlier. The two sisters-in-law are more-what? Reticent or decorous ? Surly or proper? Janaki can't read them. Vermilion water is swirled; songs sung. The bride and groom are instructed to step up onto the threshold with their right feet. Janaki, looking down, watches her own foot, hennaed in dots and lines, entering her real and forever home in unison with the wide, pale foot of the husband who brought her here.

Her mother-in-law has stood for the occasion and waits inside, Dhoraisamy t.i.ttering and bobbing beside her. Baskaran and Mrs. Baskaran prostrate themselves before the household elders.

Her sisters-in-law indicate that they will show Janaki around while her luggage is brought in, and Baskaran goes off to bathe. Janaki turns and, without thinking, blurts words of caution about her veena. She receives a look of pained hauteur from Gopalan in return-a servant of his calibre needs no such instruction. She cringes, but is also rea.s.sured.

The house is two or three times the size of the one she grew up in. The ground floor has not only a veranda and anteroom leading into the main hall from the street, but a front study that corresponds to the anteroom, with a desk on which are neatly arranged a blotter, pen and paperweights. Tidily labelled ledgers bound in red or brown leather line a rotating rosewood bookshelf beside it. After a peep into the study, Janaki is led back through the main hall and into a small extra room, lit by two windows that give onto yet another room. The windows have no panes, bars, or shutters, but they are a bit too high to see through, the bottom edge at the level of Janaki's brow. Vasantha, the elder sister-in-law, explains in a low tone that this is the women's room. It contains untidy piles of tatting and embroidery, magazines and novels, a harmonium and now her veena still within its jute wrappings. Swarna nods nervously and whispers, "We spend time here, you see-when we're not doing everything else we have to do." Janaki wonders why they are acting as if this is a secret.

There is a communicating door between the windows, and she is led to it but stopped before she goes through. There, she is surprised to see Senior Mami, her mother-in-law, in a bright room barely wider than the good lady herself, about three times as long as it is wide. It contains a radio, a gramophone, a floor desk, two more bookshelves fully stocked with books and a cot, currently containing Senior Mami, who is reading what appears to be a religious commentary. Janaki sees that, among the pride of children following them on the tour, only one aggressive two-year-old still needs to be told not to enter their grandmother's lair.

The set-up seems regal or Muslim, somehow, with its hierarchies and its rigorous division of the masculine and feminine. This impression is a.s.sisted by the fine latticework that covers the windows of Senior Mami's room. Such fas.h.i.+ons are rare in areas such as this, where Muslim emperors never really gained a toehold. Here, the ruling cla.s.ses are likelier to ape the British, a less threatening practice, as far as Janaki is concerned.

Janaki tries to look coolly appreciative as, inwardly, she frets-could such details possibly be in accordance with the Shastras' dictates on construction? She takes a deep breath and doesn't think about it. Doorways are lined up from front to back in two rows-that's one Shastric prescription she does know about. She can see clear from the door of her mother-in-law's zenana entrance, through the women's room, into the extra room, into the puja room, the pantry, the kitchen, straight out into the garden, whence wafts the smell of curry leaf, jasmine, tulsi. Janaki exhales. She's imagining-she couldn't smell all that from here. But she can see a patch of green. Everything will work out.

They pa.s.s back through the great hall and mount the stairs to the next storey, where each brother has a chamber that he shares with his wife. Janaki and Baskaran are in the last. Her luggage is already there, between the double bedstead and almirah. almirah. The windows are hung with strung flowers in what strikes her as a Rajasthani fas.h.i.+on. Her sisters-in-law, who probably hung the flowers, giggle nastily and Janaki's flus.h.i.+ng shyness turns to annoyance. She thinks to shoot them a look but stops herself. Janaki had very much hoped to find things in common with these girls. Observing them now, she feels homesick. The windows are hung with strung flowers in what strikes her as a Rajasthani fas.h.i.+on. Her sisters-in-law, who probably hung the flowers, giggle nastily and Janaki's flus.h.i.+ng shyness turns to annoyance. She thinks to shoot them a look but stops herself. Janaki had very much hoped to find things in common with these girls. Observing them now, she feels homesick.

Vasantha and Swarna attack her luggage, searching out a fresh sari, blouse and undergarments so Janaki will not contaminate her things by touching them before she has had her bath. They swarm like ants over a torn-open package of candy, appraising her bodices with the lace straps and trim she crocheted herself, putting her saris in order of their preference, yanking out sheets, hairpins, cooking vessels. The entertainment is too soon concluded and Janaki senses, astonished, that she has come up short. Her trousseau is the grandest and most modern that any of Sivakami's granddaughters has had-Janaki had felt both embarra.s.sed and proud at its opulence. But Vasantha and Swarna are rich girls, raised for boredom and discontent.

Janaki's things have been left in heaps and tangles, but she doesn't mind-organizing will be something to do. She follows her sisters-in-law as they descend the stairs with the outfit they have selected for her. Gopalan is in the hallway when they reach the bottom, gathering some sacks and a basket to do the evening marketing. At the sight of the new daughter-in-law, the head servant's chiselled features turn stony. Janaki feels sc.r.a.ped by his expression: she can't be working to ingratiate herself with the servants, but it would be nice to be liked, if not respected. Or perhaps respected, if not liked. She didn't mean to offend him with her instruction. Isn't he employed to take orders?

Fuming, she is led to the back of the courtyard and shown the bathroom. Her sisters-in-law hang her clothes and towel on a rod that extends from wall to wall, and leave her to marvel. The bathroom is three times the size of theirs in Cholapatti, with a slanting tiled roof and sunlight streaming in the gap between roof and walls. She removes the small clay plate covering the mouth of the enormous curved bra.s.s pot on a woodstove. Using a small bra.s.s jug as a dipper, she fills a cylindrical pot sitting on the floor. Her bad temper is rinsed into the gutter with the first sluice of hot water. The servants probably build the fire even before the family rises, she thinks. And my sisters-in-law sisters-in-law take it take it for granted. for granted.

She opens her soap and turmeric dish and rubs her skin until it smarts red beneath its veneer of gold. She is already quite fair and hairless, and she wants to stay that way. She washes her travelling clothes, wrings them and sets them on a high shelf.

After having drawn the bath out as long as she can, she combs, braids and ties up her hair and dresses with care in a dusty-rose sari with burgundy stripes and border. She has been wearing a nine-yard sari since she got married, several months now, but is still not yet entirely comfortable wrapping herself. She puts on her new wrist.w.a.tch-her first, another item in her trousseau, with a slim, octagonal face and slithery metal band-and checks the time: 1:35. Her edges and rims still glowing bright yellow from the turmeric, she emerges fresh and dressed, and newly cautious. She hangs her clean clothes to dry. Seeing the household's tulsi plant, the holy basil to which housewives pray daily, growing from a vermilion-anointed stand in the courtyard, she does an obeisance for it. As she does so, she hears the sound of chanting from next door-Yajur Veda. A master sings out and young boy voices chime back.

This must be the paadasaalai, she realizes, the Vedic school Baskaran's family has charge of. It is one branch of the charity established by Dhoraisamy's uncle, who had acc.u.mulated a fortune as a moneylender but had no child to whom he could leave it. He had bought the house next door as a venue for the school. The little boys must take their lessons in the courtyard, under a tree, perhaps, in the traditional style, Janaki thinks, lingering to listen to the pleasing, timeless sound. She can see the top of a tree, over the wall that separates the two courtyards.

Apart from the paadasaalai, Vairum had told her in a briefing, the rich and childless uncle had inst.i.tuted two other major works under the auspices of the Kozhandhaisamy Charitable Trust. One was the odugal, odugal, a concept new to Janaki. The Vaigai River, which she has yet to see, appeared dry most of the year, though its waters continued to flow just beneath its glittering sandbed. The odugal is a large T-shaped cut, eight feet or so along the top, about twice as long, and a few feet deep, into which the river's waters spring. Brahmins use the top of the T for their ablutions; the other castes descend the stem downriver of them. The cut needs daily maintenance lest the river's sands collapse back and fill it in; the charity pays for a servant to come and re-cut it daily. Were it not for this, each man or family would have to dig a separate hole for bathing and water gathering. a concept new to Janaki. The Vaigai River, which she has yet to see, appeared dry most of the year, though its waters continued to flow just beneath its glittering sandbed. The odugal is a large T-shaped cut, eight feet or so along the top, about twice as long, and a few feet deep, into which the river's waters spring. Brahmins use the top of the T for their ablutions; the other castes descend the stem downriver of them. The cut needs daily maintenance lest the river's sands collapse back and fill it in; the charity pays for a servant to come and re-cut it daily. Were it not for this, each man or family would have to dig a separate hole for bathing and water gathering.

The third branch of the charity is the Kozhandhaisamy Chattram, a rest home for Brahmin travellers, in one of the concentric streets around the famous Meenaks.h.i.+ temple in the nearby city of Madurai.

Janaki finds it deeply rea.s.suring that this family, however wealthy, is bound to a trust whose goals are clearly in the service of Brahmin knowledge and prestige.

On her way to the puja room, she glances into the kitchen, expecting that she will see enormous, hurried activity. Feeding a household of over fifteen people, not including servants, must take military-level organization, and she is curious to see how they do it. She is surprised to see just two cooks, an old woman and a young one, making snacks, even though tiffin is to be served in an hour. They nod and put their palms together ingratiatingly and she smiles shyly back. She supposes the mystery will be solved shortly and goes to her prayers.

Arriving in the puja room, she is seized with comfort and rea.s.surance-finally, familiar faces! Some of the G.o.ds are in different settings or configurations from those she is used to, their skins or outfits tinted differently from the pictures in Cholapatti-artists will take licence. But they are still her idols: Ganesha, with his fat tummy and encouraging expression; Krishna, with his knowing smile and valiant chest; Lalitha Parameswari, who always promised to guide her when this time came; Lakshmi and Saraswati, money and erudition, the matters that brought her here. Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman ... Gazing at them with compa.s.sion and grat.i.tude, she thinks of all they have endured, the private doubts, mental tests, failures, betrayals. And here they are welcoming her, s.h.i.+ning and beautiful and so well put together. She performs a sincere series of obeisances and settles to the task of settling herself in.

Or she starts to and then stops. She thinks she should ask whether she is needed. But whom should she ask? Senior Mami, seemingly completely removed from the operation of the household? Her sisters-in-law-where are they? Baskaran is coming into the great hall now from the veranda-perhaps she should ask him. But what's the protocol in this house for talking to her husband?

He beckons her impatiently from the puja room doorway, where she stands like a golden deer, torn between stillness and flight. Relieved to have a signal, she goes to him and asks in a stage whisper, "What should I do now?"

"I don't know," he whispers back. He's wearing a fresh kurta and dhoti, and a different scent from the one he wore this morning. "Did my sisters-in-law tell you?"

Janaki shrugs uncertainly. She doesn't think they did.

"Are you hungry?" Baskaran asks with concern. "Tiffin is at three o'clock."

Janaki shakes her head. "What about-should I be helping to cook?"

"I really have no idea." He smiles helplessly.

"Where," she asks, "where is the tiffin being prepared?"

"The paadasaalai kitchen."

They stand there another moment, perplexed but not willing to part, until Janaki takes matters in hand. "I'll ask your mother what I should do. I can't go wrong that way."

"Yes ..." He purses his lips. "Unless she's asleep or not in a mood to tell you. Or doesn't know herself!"

Janaki frowns at him reprovingly as he smiles at her. Are they flirting? How fun! She goes off to find her mother-in-law.

She finds her sisters-in-law first, strewn in the women's room with their children like more jumbles of fabric and feminine fancy. Janaki doesn't want to undermine their authority, but neither does she want to address questions to them, especially in hearing or sight of Senior Mami, that really should be put to the matriarch.

But Janaki has not only been raised to please. She has also absorbed-so thoroughly she doesn't even realize it-the finest points of strategy and diplomacy. She enters the women's room, greeting her sisters-in-law. She pauses as though to ask them something and then starts gently and advances to the door of Senior Mami's chamber. Her mother-in-law is semi-rec.u.mbent, listening to a radio discourse on Tamil poetry. Janaki addresses her question to the floor. "What work should I be doing now?" she asks with formal respect.

After more than several tense seconds, Vasantha emits a pip of breath and asks, in such a low voice Janaki can hardly make it out, "What were you thinking of doing?"

It's a risk, but Janaki decides to be honest. "I was thinking of helping in the kitchen or arranging my things."

After another pause, Swarna suggests, "They might need help in the kitchen."

"Go and arrange your things," Senior Mami orders decisively.

"Yes," replies Janaki with eager obedience.

Crying intermittently, she spends an hour putting the mattress on the bed-a mattress made from the fabric she got in Madras, stuffed with bolls she herself gathered and cleaned-and the sheets on the mattress. She had embroidered the edges of the sheets, even designed the pattern of English flowers. She puts her formal saris in the cupboard with the moth-repellant sachets she sewed from old blouses-she got the recipe for the herbal fillings from a women's magazine she found at Gayatri's.

At ten minutes before three o'clock, she descends. Never a trip wasted: she carries her four other everyday saris, two bright and new, two nearly so. She takes them through to the back and uses a pole to hang them in a free s.p.a.ce on the sari rod beyond the bathroom.

The men and children are gathering for the meal, seating themselves in the main hall, along with Vasantha, who a.s.sists with the children. Senior Mami eats in her room. Swarna indicates that Janaki should follow her, and they go through a door in the courtyard wall, so that they are back of the paadasaalai, where three cooks are arranging serving dishes just behind the kitchen. The daughters-in-law, along with one of the cooks, carry these back to serve: silky idlis and thayir vadai, thayir vadai, lentil nuggets swimming in creamy yogourt, with mint and coconut chutneys smooth as if made from flower petals. Every day is a festival in this house, Janaki thinks, trying to attune her pace and rhythm to that of her sister-in-law. She even succeeds in fulfilling one strange requirement against her training. Convention has it that anyone serving food must insist on further helpings, until the eater covers his banana leaf with his hands, pleading satiation. Senior Mami has a difficulty the daughters-in-law are charged with correcting, for the sake of her health: she is unable to refuse food or to leave it uneaten. Her daughters-in-law therefore have been instructed by their husbands to find artful ways of limiting her quant.i.ties: after she is served a judicious second portion and perhaps a minuscule third, the items are not offered again. lentil nuggets swimming in creamy yogourt, with mint and coconut chutneys smooth as if made from flower petals. Every day is a festival in this house, Janaki thinks, trying to attune her pace and rhythm to that of her sister-in-law. She even succeeds in fulfilling one strange requirement against her training. Convention has it that anyone serving food must insist on further helpings, until the eater covers his banana leaf with his hands, pleading satiation. Senior Mami has a difficulty the daughters-in-law are charged with correcting, for the sake of her health: she is unable to refuse food or to leave it uneaten. Her daughters-in-law therefore have been instructed by their husbands to find artful ways of limiting her quant.i.ties: after she is served a judicious second portion and perhaps a minuscule third, the items are not offered again.

Janaki's contentment is only slightly dented by Swarna, who suggests Janaki is messily attired, that she doesn't properly know serving etiquette, that she is moving too slowly or too quickly, until Janaki is in a transport of irritation, and grateful for her grandmother's training, which enables her to mask her reaction and to feel confident that Swarna is wrong. At 3:45, she eats her own tiffin together with Swarna, while Vasantha serves them.

As she goes, after tiffin, to take up a place in the women's room, she feels a flash of pride at being so genteel, so protected. Silent and invisible in her pa.s.sage, just like her grandmother in a way. Sivakami so respects herself that she has almost never been seen on the street after sunrise. Janaki can't think even of one time (except that time in Munnur, in the rain, but Janaki pa.s.ses over that quickly). She thinks of the Brahmin women employed in the kitchen. Were they born poor, or did something happen? G.o.d's grace, that's all that separates us from life's humiliations G.o.d's grace, that's all that separates us from life's humiliations. If she had chosen the other flower packet, she might not be here. And what if her father had been in charge of getting her married-would she ever have gotten married at all? She wonders what everyone, Kamalam especially, is doing back in Cholapatti.

Her veena is still in its wrappings-her sisters-in-law either are not bold enough for that or not interested.

"Shall I take out the veena?" she asks, again unsure of whom she is asking.

"If you want," says Vasantha ambiguously.

Janaki glances in at her mother-in-law's room, but the great woman doesn't look up from her reading.

Vairum had insisted on having the instrument packed professionally. Still, Janaki couldn't help fearing for it and so sighs with relief when it is finally unclothed, curving and gleaming in the late-afternoon sun like a cobra ready to be wors.h.i.+pped. "Shall I play?" she asks, not fully confident of the answer. Her sisters-in-law say nothing, but she hears an affirmative grunt from the front room. She tunes, and plays "Sakala Kala Vani" and "Jaggadhodharana," grateful for the leisure to practise. Her sisters-in-law continue reading and playing with the children, though once, when one of the boys gets noisy, Senior Mami shouts, "Hush, child!" from her hideout.

Janaki has another reason to be glad for moving to Pandiyoor: Vani visits her parents every few months, and Janaki is sure her sporadic lessons will resume. She is particularly hopeful that she will finally learn the Bharatiyar number she first heard on All-India Radio when Vani played her Navaratri concert. Vani's version of "Chinnan Cheeru Killiyai Kannama," is becoming famous. She set it to a ragamalikai ragamalikai, a garland of ragas, the scale changing with each stanza. There's talk, Janaki heard at her wedding, of having Vani make a gramophone recording of it.

Janaki concludes her second piece and her eye lights on the harmonium, which looks dusty. It should be covered with a cloth, she thinks, if it's not going to be cared for. Maybe she can sew a cover for it.

"Whose is that?" she asks politely.

"Mine," Swarna says.

"Oh, how lovely," Janaki soldiers on. "Perhaps you could sing something for us?"

"Oh, I don't think so." Swarna smiles sourly. "Perhaps you could."

Janaki is confused and looks down at her instrument, pretending to examine a string.

"Miss Perfect," Swarna whispers.

Janaki freezes, not entirely sure she has heard correctly, then hears Baskaran calling her from the main hall. She rises, grateful, with apologetic glances to her sisters-in-law, who ignore her, and takes her leave of Senior Mami.

It's time for them to pay the first few of the numerous required visits they must make, as a newly married couple, up and down the Brahmin quarter. Out of respect, they will visit Vani's parents first, their seniormost relatives on the quarter. They walk, slightly apart and not speaking, along Double Street in the direction of the Krishna temple, greeting neighbours on verandas. Vani's parents' house is, gratifyingly, not as grand as Janaki's in-laws', though it would have cowed her before she was married. The talk is strange and lively. Vani's father describes recent progress in his attempts to start a school based on his system of calisthenics and Janaki pecks at a silver plate loaded with murrukku and halwa as she eyes a china cabinet stocked with Vani's mother's collection of vintage weapons. At one point, the woman runs to it to extract a nineteenth-century French switchblade, whose mechanism she demonstrates with a cackle.

Janaki, dismayed, checks her watch surrept.i.tiously. She inquires politely about Vani and receives an earful, including the welcome news that Vani will visit next month.

At eight-thirty, the evening repast is served in Dhoraisamy's household, a simple meal. Janaki, after having visited three homes in which she was rigorously required to snack, wants nothing but a little yogourt rice. She and Baskaran are seated together and served by the sisters-in-law, one of the few nods to tradition in this otherwise unconventional first day. After today, Baskaran will eat with the men and Janaki with the women.

When the meal is done, the cooks of the house proper pour sweet hot milk with boiled almonds into silver tumblers, inverting a bowl on top, then turning them both so the bowl can be carried by its lip. Vasantha carries one to their father-in-law while Swarna carries another to Senior Mami. The brothers are chatting in the main hall. The children are asleep in various places. There is an ayah and a servant to keep track of them whenever a mother is not available. Each of the wives then takes a tumbler of milk and ascends to her bedchamber. The husbands shortly follow.

Janaki sits on the bed, scared once again. Unlike city girls, she knows how babies are made. And she is sharp, so when she overhears things, she puts the two and two together. But knowing the facts of life doesn't prepare a person for living.

Baskaran looks down as he enters, glances up, then down, and smiles a little. He closes the door, fumbles the bolt closed and closes the shutters on that side, which give onto the corridor. He clears his throat and hesitates, then crosses the room and reaches through browning garlands to close the shutters on the street-facing windows as well. The house across the street-Baskaran's uncle's-also has a second storey.

Janaki had stood as he entered, and now holds the milk out to him. He takes it gravely and urges, "Sit." He again hesitates-there is a chair in one corner of the room-and opts to sit on the other end of the bed. "Sit," he repeats in a low voice. "Sit, ma." She collapses a tiny bit at this endearment, and slowly perches again on the high mattress-topped bedstead. He pours the milk into the bowl, stopping before the almonds at the bottom slip out. He pours it back and forth, twice, to mix and cool it, then pours himself several sips, and drinks, watching her, before he pours a little more that he holds out to her. She accepts wordlessly and drinks. He pours her another and then shares the sweet, milk-cooked almonds out between them.

He takes the tumbler from her and puts it and the bowl by the door, then turns down the flame on the kerosene lamp so the room is dim and seems to brighten again as their eyes adjust.

"I was listening to you play this afternoon," he says. He sits on the bed again, a little closer. "So beautiful, it was ..." He speaks with real pa.s.sion, or so it seems to her. "Everyone was touched, I could feel it. I imagine you don't even notice others, though, when you play, do you?"

"I ... I haven't played very much for anyone outside the family. Visitors occasionally. But I like it." She feels a shy smile tugging her lip upward, covers her mouth with her hand, lowers it with a breath.

He moves closer to her, awkwardly, and as though forcing his arm through a thin barrier, touches her face. Gaining confidence, he begins stroking her brows, temples and cheek. What a strange way of looking at her, she thinks, and how good it feels to be touched. She likes how he looks, his chubby cheeks and receding hairline. He looks like someone who means what he says. And he looks gentle.

Her face and neck feel ticklish and warmed, as if the skin is puffing slightly as he touches it. Now he strokes her shoulder, her arm and the hand on the bed, now her back, the skin above and below the lines of her blouse. She stiffens a bit as he leans toward her and brushes the base of her neck with his lips. He leans back to look at her, and she relaxes as he takes her face in one hand and kisses her neck again, stroking her forehead with his thumb as though to draw from it the tension of this strange day.

He is succeeding-this is the strangest part of it. He stands and removes his kurta. A twirled gold chain and his sacred thread lie on his mostly smooth chest. He has a single patch of hair, just above where his belly starts to curve out. He sits on the bed again and draws the pallu of her sari from around her waist and shoulder as he lies her down. He reaches to lift her legs onto the bed and kisses her belly, all hollows below her blouse.

Looking up at her, he puts both his hands under her thin shoulder blades and lifts her toward him to kiss her eyes and cheeks and each of her lips, and puts his cheek to hers and to her lips and she kisses him back just a little, as if to see what will happen. He emits a sigh as though he had no right to expect it.

She kisses his shoulders and neck. She has no idea if this is what she is supposed to do, but he is not objecting. It's funny to be kissing a grown man she hardly knows, but he did it first. He sighs several times and then brings a palm to her breast and strokes it through the cloth of her blouse. Janaki gasps-such a sensation! He watches her face anxiously, then smiles tentatively and tries it again.

"Does it feel nice?" he asks.

"Yes!" she gasps. "Er-I think so."

"Shall I continue?" He smiles, bringing his other hand from her back.

The only direct instruction Janaki received on these matters was from Gayatri, who said, "Whatever your husband asks for, whenever he asks for it, say yes."

"Yes," says Janaki.

He unb.u.t.tons her blouse with difficulty and his face shows complicated emotions at the sight of the cotton bodice underneath, with b.u.t.tons concealed under the arm. There is mutual awkwardness as the blouse and bodice are removed. Much later, they will giggle retrospectively at their own seriousness. Now he strokes his mouth between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and over them, holds her large, young nipples in his lips, then, gently, between his teeth, and then takes her whole breast in his mouth, or as much of it as he can. Janaki, repulsed at the sight and the damp, mystified at her enjoyment, closes her eyes.

When she opens them, it's because he is now unwinding her carefully wrapped sari from her narrow hips. Terror shudders subtly from her feet to her shoulders as he slips off the last crumpled yards, and she crosses her legs and arms. He has unwrapped his dhoti and now lies on top of her in loincloth and creamy skin. He rolls her awkwardly from side to side.