The Faith of Ashish (22 page)

"Where will we live?" Jinil snuffled through his tears.

"In the house of Virat the
chamar,"
Ravi said.

"What if Virat comes back?"

"If he does, then we will talk about it."

For almost a week, Ranjun hid out at his brother's house in another village. When he finally came back to his house and saw the destruction in his shed, he roared in fury. "Ravi! Jinil! Where are you wicked boys? I will find you and beat the life out of you both!" He found them at Virat's house. Spread across the courtyard lay row upon row of newly fashioned pots, drying in the sun. Fury overtook him all over again. "I am your father and you owe me your respect and affection. You owe me your loyalty, too!" he yelled. "Family members do not compete with family!"

"Go away," Ravi said. "We do not know you. We are our own family now."

"If you compete with me, you will starve to death!"

Family quarrels were not a common occurrence in the settlement. Certainly not loud, angry ones that forced everyone else to be involved. When difficulties did develop, friends were the greatest help at finding a way through the dispute. But Ranjun had no friends. Though many men stood close enough to hear every word he said, not one man came to stand beside him and speak in his defense.

An old carpenter, his face aged into leather, stepped up first. "I'll take two of your best pots there," he said to Ravi.

"They aren't dry yet," Ravi said. "We still have to fire them."

"When they are finished, I'll take two."

"Four for my wife," said the youngest of the weavers, who had recently taken himself a bride. "Two of a larger size and two smaller ones. And how about a large cooking pot for the fire pit? Can you make me one like that?"

"At the new moon, my woman will want an entire new set of pots," the village barber called out.

"Stop!" Ranjun ordered. "Do not talk to my sons as though they were men. I am the potter for this village!"

"Not if the villagers refuse to buy from you," the barber said. "Then you can either starve or leave this village."

"And you stay far away from these boys, too," the weaver warned Ranjun. "We in the village will watch out for them."

"Can you do the work for us?" the carpenter asked Ravi and Jinil.

"Yes. Yes, of course," Ravi said. "We will start tomorrow."

When Virat told Latha that Pooni was no more, she covered her face and wept. "Where are the gods?" she implored. "Where are the ones who demand our sacrifices, our obedience, our worship?"

"They are nowhere," Virat said. "Even
chamars
deserve better than this."

"We can never go back to our mud hut in the settlement, can we?"

"No," Virat said. "Our place in the village is gone. But we will find another place, Wife, and we will be happy there."

W
edding preparations spilled out of the landlord's house and spread across the village, all the way to the workers' settlement. The timing could not have been better. With the rice paddies flooded and more rain pouring down each day, Anup needed only a few workers to maintain the fences and guard the fields against thieves. But Mammen Samuel Varghese required all kinds of crafts people, and he had them ready in his settlement.

A singer to entertain the wedding guests? A stout man by the name of Hadia Behara, who lived in the hut behind Virat's, happened to be a professional singer already known in the village. And since he owed so great a debt to Mammen Samuel, his services would cost the landowner nothing. Potters to provide an entirely new set of fine pots to cook the wedding feast? Mammen Samuel owned many excellent potters. Carpenters to construct the wedding pavilion? Ten were already at work on it, and they had their own tools too. Tailors to sew new wedding clothes for the entire family? A whole array of tailors lived in the settlement. All Mammen Samuel needed to do was choose the best among them and let his family's wishes be known.

"If we ever hope to escape, now is the time," Virat whispered to Latha. "With so much happening around us, it could be days before anyone notices we are missing."

"We can head toward the mountains," Latha said. "We can go to my father's village."

"Our plans must be carefully laid. And we must watch every word we speak. Say nothing to Ashish."

"We have so few belongings to get ready," Latha said.

"Then let us leave in the dark of this very night. By sun-up, we will be well on our way."

The entire village buzzed with gossip about the wedding. "There will be food for everyone," a woman in an orange
sari
whispered excitedly to Prem Rao when she stopped to buy pepper and turmeric at his spice stand. When the woman left, three others came along in search of
marsala
spices, and Prem Rao passed the news along to them. "There will be food for everyone, and all castes will be invited to the feast!"

One of the three women hurried home and told her husband, the seller of salt, "There will be food for everyone, and all castes will be invited to the feast, and all of them will sit together and eat together!" The seller of salt saw his neighbor mending a plow, so he stopped to tell the news: "There will be food for everyone, and all castes will be invited to the feast, and all of them will sit together and eat together for an entire week!" And so it went.

It pained Parmar Ruth to see her gentle daughter preparing to leave her home and family at the age of twelve. She herself had not married Mammen Samuel Varghese until she was a fully developed young woman—perhaps all of fourteen years old. Parmar Ruth had been considered a beauty, and many families had vied for her as a bride for their young men. Her hopes were so high, and then on her wedding day, when she finally gazed upon the man her family had selected for her, she sobbed.

"Tears of joy," the guests whispered, but of course, they were not. No one would call Mammen Samuel Varghese a handsome man, and his voice was anything but gentle. Still, his family had wealth, and he treated Parmar Ruth kindly. And their children, as well. Perhaps that was the most a wife should expect from a husband.

Mammen Samuel, who prided himself on being an astute businessman, counted and recounted the mounting costs of his daughter's wedding. Why, for the dowry alone he had been forced to pay a king's ransom in rupees! Yet, what could he say? His uncle had done well to arrange so fine a marriage—a Christian bridegroom, a man of twenty-six years, rich and perfectly qualified in every way. And since the money had already been spent, Mammen Samuel took every opportunity to brag about the prestigious union he has secured.

As for Sunita Lois, no one knew how she felt. No one cared. In her chest of personal belongings she kept a rosewood dowry box her grandmother had given her when Sunita Lois was but a little girl. "Put special things inside that make you happy," her grandmother had said. "You will need them when you marry. It is not easy to be a wife."

Sunita Lois took out the oddly shaped rosewood box and ran her fingers across the polished wood, then over the cast brass fittings. She drew the key from her shelf in her mother's wardrobe cupboard and fit it into the brass lock. She had only a few things inside the box: A jasmine blossom, once beautiful and fragrant, but now brown and crumbling. A gold necklace and a tiny solid gold leopard, both gifts from her father. A little book of Indian poems. Oh, and a folded paper with the words of Psalm 23 printed on it. Sunita Lois stumbled through the psalm, pointing to each word as she spoke it:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;

he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:

for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;

thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Sunita Lois folded up the paper and put it back in the dowry box, closed the box, and locked it. She put it away and slipped the key back into the cupboard.

Ashish bounded into his hut. "I don't have to go back to play with Saji Stephen for a long time!" he announced.

Latha looked at Devi, who stood at the door.

"At least until after the wedding," Devi said. "Madame Landlord says two boys are one too many."

Latha sneaked a quick look at Virat, but he kept his eyes straight ahead, his face impassive. Latha could not manage it. She smiled in spite of herself.

But Parmar Ruth was wrong. Without the attention to which he had grown accustomed, Saji Stephen became increasingly whiney, sullen, and demanding. He stamped his feet and shrieked and cried at the slightest provocation. When he interrupted yet another consultation to demand, "I want a ride on my elephant! Now!" Parmar Ruth exclaimed in exasperation, "Two boys are
better
than one! Send the garden girl to fetch Ashish! Tell her he will stay here until the wedding is over. She is to sleep in the barn with him at night."

When Devi arrived at their hut, Virat quickly grabbed up his
chaddar
and threw it over the stacked supplies he and Latha had made ready for their escape. "Say nothing about our plans," Virat whispered to Ashish. "Nothing! Not even to Devi."

Ashish took Devi's hand and went with her quietly. But when he turned to look back, his cheeks were wet with tears.

Latha pulled the edge of her
sari
over her head and sobbed. "The curse is on us. We will never get away from here."

"Maybe this wasn't a good day to leave," Virat said. "Maybe it isn't a Tuesday night. Everyone knows travel must begin on a Tuesday night if it is to be successful."

But Latha would not be comforted. She wrung her hands and wept.

"Leave everything where it is," Virat said. "The time will come, and when it does, we will be ready."

Saji Stephen stood at the edge of the garden, waiting. As soon as he saw Ashish and Devi coming up the road, he jumped up and down and called, "Hurry, Ashish! Run!"

Ashish pulled back on Devi's hand and dragged his feet in the mud.

"I have peanuts for us!" Saji called. "Hurry!"

"What are peanuts?" Ashish asked Devi.

"You'll find out," Devi said with a laugh. "Go on to Saji Stephen. I'll come back and get you tonight."

Saji Stephen piled a large handful of peanuts on the ground beside him. "Sit down," he told Ashish. "One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. Five peanuts for you because my
amma
said you have lived for about five rice harvests." Saji Stephen grabbed the rest and pulled them over to himself. "All these are mine because I am your master."

Ashish tried to eat his five peanuts slowly, but they were too good. When they were gone, he didn't want to sit and watch Saji Stephen smacking his lips over his pile of nuts, so he went to examine the rows of sunflowers that grew along the side of the garden. Ashish loved those huge blooms that reached up so high over his head.

Usually, so high, but not now. Now the huge flowers drooped low on their stalks, and the vibrant yellow-gold had faded from their petals.

"What happened to them?" Ashish asked.

"You did that," Saji Stephen said. "You polluted them.You're so stinky and dirty that you make the flowers die."

Ashish looked down at his mud-splattered legs and grimy fingers.

"Everything about you is dirty," Saji Stephen said. "Your face and your hair and your teeth."

Ashamed, Ashish tried to wipe at the dirty splatters.

"I'll show you how to clean your teeth," Saji Stephen said. He ran over to the neem tree at the corner of the house and scratched around in the mud at its base.

"What are you doing?" Ashish asked.

"Looking for a twig from this tree. Just a small one . . . Here! This will do." Saji Stephen held up a muddy twig. "Chew on this and it will clean your teeth."

Ashish took the twig and stared at it. "My
amma
says I'm not supposed to eat mud."

"Wipe the mud off, stupid boy."

Ashish wiped the twig on his clothes, then put it in his mouth and chewed.

At the corner of the veranda, Babu waited with the usual bucket of water and a set of clean clothes. He grabbed Ashish, pulled off his clothes, and started scrubbing. "Don't you get dirty again!" he ordered. "And don't you make Master Saji Stephen dirty, either."

At midafternoon, when the rain returned, the boys were relegated to the big room. "You can play chess," Parmar Ruth suggested. "Or paint a picture."

But as soon as his mother left with Sunita Lois, Saji Stephen bragged, "We have a sitar. I know how to play it." He pointed to Sunita Lois's magnificent instrument propped up against the wall. "I will teach you to play it too."

"No, no! I shouldn't touch it," Ashish protested.

"You have to do what I say," Saji Stephen insisted. "I am your master. I say you have to learn to play my sister's sitar, so you must."

"No, please. I can't."

"First, sit down with your legs crossed," Saji Stephen said.

Reluctantly, Ashish sat.

"Put the round part by your feet and hold the long, thin part straight up."

Saji Stephen grabbed the rosewood neck and pulled the sitar away from the wall. But the instrument turned out to be much larger than he had realized and much heavier too.When he tried to move it, it crashed to the floor.

"What happened?" Parmar Ruth called as she rushed into the great room with Sunita Lois right behind her.

Ashish sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, and the sitar lay upside-down beside him.