The Faith of Ashish (20 page)

With cheers and shouts, other men rushed in with twig brooms and swept the kernels into piles so that the women could shovel them into sacks.

"A fine harvest!" Anup announced. "An extra measure of rice tonight for every man and every woman!"

When Latha got back to her hut, sore and exhausted from the hard day's work, she found Ashish inside, lying on the sleeping mat. She first noticed his black eye and the cut on his temple, surrounded by a huge purple and red bruise.

"What happened to you, my son?" Latha exclaimed.

The boy shook his head and turned his face away.

Latha sat down beside him. Ashish scooted over and laid his head in his mother's lap. The two of them cried together.

A
ll through the long, hot summer, Saji Stephen sent for Ashish to come and play with him. Ashish wept and begged to stay at home. He grabbed for his mother's hands and clung to her
sari.
But Virat gently pulled him away.

"It is not for you to decide, my son," he said. "It is not for your
amma
to decide, or for me, either. When the landlord calls, you must go."

No longer was Ashish the happy child who had scrambled about hunting for firewood with Little Girl. No longer was he the laughing boy who had scurried up the mango tree in search of fruit. Now he trembled at the sound of a raised voice and stammered when he talked. If he wasn't called to go to the master's house, Ashish huddled in the hut and waited alone for his
amma
to return. When she did, he clung to her and followed her everywhere she went. And when she sat down, he laid his head in her lap and wept.

"We cannot stay here," Latha whispered to Virat.

"We cannot go," Virat replied in a voice old and exhausted.

The rice paddies had been thoroughly weeded and the laborers were busy thinning the crops when the first clouds appeared high in the early July sky.

Everyone saw them and heaved sighs of hope.

The broiling sun shimmered on the horizon. It would have baked the earth, had everything not already been seared to a crisp. Three times, Anup had the men open the water trenches from the river wider in order to keep the newly planted rice flooded. One morning the laborers had found a dead leopard lying in the field. The poor animal was bone thin, his coat dull and faded. Not enough water for it to survive. Not enough water for his prey to survive, either.

A few days after the first cloud sighting, clouds grew darker and more numerous. The workers stopped to watch them rolling up in banks from the direction of the sea. "Back to work!" Anup ordered. "Finish the thinning quickly!"

When they came back to the settlement for their afternoon break, Hilmi walked out of his palm leaf hut, his family following after him in a straight line.

"We will leave here today," he told Anup. "Please give us our pay."

Anup ran his calloused hand across his face. "You have already received your pay," he said. "The landlord says to tell you it went to pay for your family's food and shelter."

"Our shelter? We built our hut with our own hands."

"But you built it on land that belongs to the landlord," Anup said. "Master Landlord charges rent for his land."

Hilmi stared hard. His wild black eyes bored into Anup.

"You are a good worker," Anup said with a heavy sigh. "I thank you and your family for that. But the landlord has his own way of payment. I cannot change his mind and neither can you."

A look of disgust crossed the dark, untamed face. Without a word, Hilmi turned and walked away from the settlement. His family, their eyes straight ahead, followed along behind him.

And then the rains came. Great pouring torrents pounded down. The mountains roared with thunder and flashed with lightning. A cool breeze crossed the settlement as the thirsty ground drank in the water.

"The rains!" the workers rejoiced. "Finally the rains have come!"

Men stood outside in the soaking deluge and laughed out loud. Women danced and sang. Children chased each other and slid in the mud. Soon the ground would be green again. Soon the world would be revived.

Latha gave Little Girl strict instructions to call her when Sethu's baby came. "You don't need to tell your
amma
I said so," she added, for she knew Sethu wouldn't want help. Sethu might be a midwife to the fancy ladies, but she considered herself fortunate if she could simply bear her baby in the comfort and privacy of her hut. Each of her other babies had been born in paddies among the rice plants.

As soon as Latha saw Little Girl running toward her, she knew that the baby boy had arrived. She hurried toward Sethu's hut and shouted for joy when she heard the muffled cry of a newborn.

"Oh, Sethu!" Latha exclaimed as she ducked through the door. "I can tell he is healthy from his cry. He sounds so—"

"Not
he."

"What?"

"It is another girl. The fortune-teller told the truth in the first place. He took my carved bracelet and gave me worthless charms even though he knew. I have borne my husband yet another girl."

Latha peeked over at the tiny, scrunched face and said, "Oh, Sethu. But she is such a beautiful one."

"What have I done to deserve this curse?" Sethu screamed. "What have I done to earn such a punishment?"

"Your children may be girls," Latha said, "but they are very fine girls."

"Pshaw!" Sethu sneered. "Only Devi brings money to the family, and she will be the first one married and gone. Lidya is a good cook and keeps the floor swept, and that is helpful to me, but she is scarred and ugly. Who will marry such a one? Little Girl and Baby are nothing but two curses on us. If they both disappeared tomorrow, no one would cry for them."

"Sethu!" Latha exclaimed. "How can you say such a thing about those sweet little girls?"

"Get out!" Sethu roared to Latha. "Get out of my house!

For two days, torrential sheets of water poured from the sky. Latha lit a cooking fire close to the hut, but it wouldn't burn long before the rain washed it out. "I'm sorry, Husband," she said as she handed Virat a bowl of half-cooked rice. "I couldn't keep the fire hot enough to cook it soft."

Rain washed mud into the hut and rain pounded Latha's pepper plant into the ground. Finally, on the third day, the rain began to slow. Although the sky stayed dark and threatening, every woman took the opportunity to gather wood and cook a real meal for her family. Then she paused to breathe in the rain-freshened air.

Already the trees were festooned with tiny buds of new leaves. Birds reappeared in their branches, and insects that had been burned away once again buzzed around people's faces and flew into their cooking pots.

"It's so wet and muddy," Virat said to Anup. "A most difficult time to have a new baby."

"Another girl," Anup said flatly. "My daughters hang around my neck like cursed millstones."

Virat could think of nothing to say.

"My brother has three sons," Anup said. "He is a wealthy man. I have four daughters. Five now. And what am I? An impoverished slave. Five girls! You tell me, Virat, where am I to get the thousands of rupees I will need to marry these girls off? If I cannot get the dowry money, I will be stuck with them forever, eternally disgraced by the unmarried daughters that remain in my house."

Sethu stepped out of the hut. "The baby is gone," she said.

Virat and Anup stared at her uncomprehendingly. But Latha, who stood off to the side, gasped out loud. "What have you done?" she cried as she ran to Sethu.

"I took away the added curse," Sethu said with not the least sign of emotion. "Now we have the four girls again."

"Oh, Sethu!" Latha cried. "What did you do to the baby?"

"I put her in an earthen pot and covered the opening, and I buried the pot deep in the ground. By now, the baby has left this life and is free to begin a new one."

A scream tore from Latha, and she fell to her knees in the mud. She threw the end of her
sari
over her face as her scream faded into an agonized wail.

"The fortune-teller told the truth," Sethu said. "That baby was born under the wrong star. The moon was in a bad position. It could not survive."

"If you didn't want her, I would have taken her," Latha sobbed.

"No, it is best that she be made to suffer for her sins," Sethu answered. "To suffer is her
karma.
If I didn't do this, the baby would have died some other way. She was not meant to live. She could not escape her
karma."

"It is true that the baby is now a freed spirit," Anup agreed. "She does have a new chance now."

"Come," Virat said as he took Latha's arm. "Come on home with me."

"Yes, that would be best," Anup said. "Go to your own hut.We shall never again speak of the baby."

R
oaring wind snatched the fronds off Hilmi's palm hut and tossed them to all ends of the courtyard. It ripped off the woven door and flung it into the well. Only Jeeja's cook pit and the rock Hilmi claimed as his favorite seat remained unmoved.

Devi picked her way through the storm and peeked into Virat's hut. "Come, Ashish," she said softly. "The landlord sent for you."

Ashish crumpled onto the floor and sobbed. "No, no! Please don't make me go. Please,
Appa,
please!"

Virat looked helplessly from his son to Devi. Such a young child she was. In her soul, she must have wept the very same words.

"If you don't go, the landlord will come looking for you," Virat said. "He will be very angry and will punish you."

"I don't care," Ashish said. "Please,
Appa,
don't make me go."

"Come along, Ashish," Devi said. "Maybe the road will be flooded. Maybe a tree blew down to block our way. If that happened I can bring you back home and the landlord can say nothing."

Ashish wiped his hand across his eyes and nose. He took hold of Devi's hand and walked out with her into the rain.

Latha, who could not trust herself to speak in front of Ashish, threw the end of her
sari
over her head and wailed.

Virat wiped his hand over his face. A good man should obey his master, but a good man should also watch out for his family. He should be honest and true to his agreements, but he should also protect his son. He should yield to
karma,
but he should also do what is right. Right there lay the big question, of course. What was right? Why did the gods accept his sacrifices and still permit evil curses to slither into his path and rip his family apart?

"When I was a despised
chamar
and we lived on the edge of the mud hut settlement, we were nothing," Virat said. "But look at us now. We live next to the great landlord, and work in his fields, and we are less than nothing."

Latha mopped at her face and hiccuped. "It is our
karma,"
she lamented.

"No, it is not our
karma!"
Virat insisted. "We have been driven to this by people, not by gods or spirits or even demons!"

Once again, Latha started to sob.

"You were right from the first," Virat said. "We must leave here. We must get away."

Latha wiped the corner of her
sari
across her face. It shocked Virat to see how weary and drawn she looked. How tired and worn. How old his Latha had grown.

"Hilmi left," Latha said. "His whole family walked away and no one tried to stop them."

"The landlord didn't own them. They didn't owe him money."

"Our debt must be quite small by now," Latha said. "You and I have worked such long hours. And what of Ashish? Everyday he goes to play with that awful boy. That must count as hours of work."

Virat said nothing, but a shadow of despair passed over him. He had heard Anup's words. The landlord had his own way of figuring debts and payments, and no one could change his mind.

Even so, the debt was not Virat's greatest concern. His greatest concern lay with Ashish. Virat and Latha were nothing but untouchable laborers who could do little work in these months of pouring rain. Long before the rice harvest, the landlord could get other laborers to move into their hut and do their work. But Ashish—he would not be so easily replaced. If Ashish were gone, the landlord's boy would stamp his feet and yell, and the master would do everything in his enormous power to force Ashish back.

"The monsoon rains could help us," Latha said, as though she could read her husband's thoughts. "It won't be so easy for the landlord's men to come after us."

The surging storm smashed against their hut, sending pieces of the roof flying.

"It won't be easy for us, either," Virat said.

The sun sank low, but Devi didn't bring Ashish home. Even when night fell, she didn't bring him home. Virat spread the sleeping mat out in the hut and he and Latha lay down side by side. The two children would not be able to come through the pounding rain and fierce winds. Certainly not after dark. But where was Ashish this night? Sleeping in the barn with Devi, perhaps? Certainly the landlord would not allow him in their fine house.

"Maybe we could make it to the coast where Hilmi's tribe lives," Virat said. "What difference does it make if they treat us as outcastes? We are outcastes here. We will be outcastes wherever we go."

"If we went back to our mud hut in the village, maybe the landlord's men wouldn't follow us until the rains pass. That would give us time to find another village," Latha said. "Pooni will help us."

For a long time they lay side by side listening to the fury of the storm.

"We did it once before," Virat said. The crushing weariness had left his voice. "We left everything and everyone we knew and found a new home in a different village in a different place. It wasn't easy, but we did it. If we did it once, we can do it again."

"Back then, no one chased after us," Latha reminded him. "When we left there, we thought our troubles were behind us, but now here we are again. Could it be that slavery is our
karma?"

"We will speak no more of
karma!
I would rather we all die on our legs than live on our knees."