The Faith of Ashish (26 page)

Virat fell to his knees before Abigail. His words poured out, rapid and urgent—and totally unintelligible to her.

"They thought we were being the landlord's men coming to catch them," Darshina translated.

"We shall take them back to the clinic," Abigail said. "They can stay with us and be safe."

In the distance, a great commotion of birds suddenly flew up into the air and flapped away. Virat stared at the spot. A dark shadow moved up the path.

"Tell the English lady we have no time!" he cried. "Tell her the landlord's men will attack us all. Go! Carry our boy away with you. We will lead the hunters in the other direction!"

Abigail looked uncertainly from Virat to the moving shadow.

"Go now!" Virat ordered. "Before it is too late . . . for all of us!"

Darshina picked up Ashish and handed him up to Abigail.

"No,
Appa!"
Ashish cried. "Don't leave me!"

"Hurry!" Virat insisted. Latha wailed behind him.

Abigail turned the horse and raced away with Ashish, leaving Darshina to walk back to the clinic alone.

"What have we done?" Latha cried. "Oh, what have we done?"

Virat reached out a shaky hand and touched her muddy arm. Soft as butter, it was to him. Despite all, still soft as butter to him. "You are a good wife, Latha," he said. "You are a good mother."

O
ver here!"

An earthenware pot, half buried in the mud—one that had slipped from the load on Virat's back. A Sudra picked it up and held it high.

"The trail toward the mountains!" Boban Joseph ordered. "Move!"

Two sets of larger footprints and one very small set that had not been erased by the rain. Boban Joseph rode right over them without noticing, but the Sudras did not.

"Over here! A scatter of sticks, Master!" Yes, remnants of a make-shift shelter, hastily tossed apart.

"They came this way," a Sudra called to Boban Joseph, "but they're changing direction!"

"Follow them!" Boban Jospeh ordered. "Pick up the pace!"

A yogi at prayer would not answer questions, but he responded to Boban Joseph's threats with a nod and a quick gesture.

"This way, Master!" a searcher called, pointing to a muddy slide down the side of a long, slippery slope.

Riding on horseback, with the twelve Sudras pointing out each twist and turn of the way, Boban Joseph had less and less trouble following the trail. An eager grin spread across his face. This would be a quick capture.

"Shall we keep going?" Virat asked Latha. "Or shall we sit down and wait for what is certain to come?"

"Go!" Latha said. She lifted off her headload and threw it to the ground. "We will not make it easy for them."

Boban Joseph lashed at the horse with his switch, the same one he used on the bullocks that pulled his father's cart. Whooping like a triumphant warrior, he galloped toward the runaways. True to their word, Virat and Latha did not make it easy. But they could not outrun a horse.

"There!" Boban Joseph called as he caught sight of Virat and Latha scrambling up a hillside. He slowed the horse. "Grab them! Now!"

When no one responded, he turned around in the saddle. The Sudras, though they were running as fast as they could, had fallen far behind the rider. "Hurry, you lazy louts!" Boban Joseph bellowed.

Strong men the Sudras might be, but they had been walking and running for hours. Of course they could not keep up with a horse. Still, rather than apprehend a weary man and his stumbling wife alone, Boban Joseph stopped the horse and waited for them.

"No, we will not make it easy for them," Virat whispered.

Two more hours passed before the first Sudras grabbed Virat. They bound his wrists, then drew the rope around him and tied it tightly about his waist. The next ones caught Latha and bound her in the same way.

"The boy!" Boban Joseph demanded. "Where is he?"

Latha raised her voice in an agonized wail. "He is no more. A leopard carried him away."

Boban Joseph paused and looked uncertainly from her to her husband. "Where?" he demanded.

Virat pointed up the mountainside. "On the road, far up there. His blood still smears the road."

"Do you want us to search for him?" a Sudra asked.

"No," said Boban Joseph. "If they were foolish enough to leave him behind, he will not survive the night."

Boban Joseph, sitting tall and proud in the saddle, turned the horse toward the village and led the procession along at a goodly pace. Virat and Latha, their wrists firmly bound to their waists, struggled to keep up with him. But the Sudras would not allow them to slow down. Latha stumbled on the torn hem of her
sari
and fell against Virat. Moments later, she stumbled again. The third time, she tumbled to her knees.

"Slower!" Virat cried. But Boban Joseph ignored him.

Latha tried to lift her
sari
with her bound hands. Faltering, she slipped into a mud hole and fell flat. This time she refused to get up.

"Do what you want to me," she said. "I don't care." In the end, Latha and Virat walked back to the village, but with only their hands tied, not with the rope around their waists. And they walked in front where they could set the pace. They rested when they were tired, and when they called for a drink, the Sudras gave them water. "Let them take their comfort now," Boban Joseph muttered. "When my father gets them, then they will suffer right enough."

But how could Mammen Samuel Varghese publicly whip this runaway family while so many outsiders still swelled the village? Two hundred wedding guests, all congratulating him and praising him as a generous and gracious landlord! No, he could not. So Mammen Samuel sent a messenger to meet the procession on the road and instruct his son to take them along the back pathway to the workers' settlement.

"It isn't fair!" Boban Joseph complained. "The entire village should see a great landlord mete out his punishment!"

Every laborer in the settlement knew the exact hour and minute that Virat and Latha returned. Some workers stood brazenly in the courtyard, staring and ridiculing the two as they passed by. Others crowded around Virat and Latha's hut to gawk more closely. But most hovered outside their own huts and whispered to one another:

"Cursed, that's what they are. Punished by the gods."

"Their son is dead, eaten by a great tiger, or maybe a leopard."

"Evil boy, that one!"

"It was Virat's fault for withholding a proper sacrifice."

"No, no, it was Latha's fault! Didn't you know she is the one with the evil eye . . . "

Virat and Latha, caked with mud and weary beyond endurance, paid the gossipers no mind.

Anup waited for them at their door. "See where your foolishness has gotten you," he lamented. "See what happens when you refuse to accept your
karma."

Virat said nothing. His exhausted body hadn't the strength to argue.

"You should never have named your son Ashish. You called him Blessing so long that you started to believe it. Now see what has happened. Now you have no son at all. You have lived long enough to know the truth, Virat—no blessings ever come to us. Not to such as you and me."

Latha would have wept, except that she was too exhausted for tears.

That night Virat and Latha lay together on the bare dirt floor of their hut. They had no sleeping mats. They had no earthenware pots. Even their water jugs were gone. They still owned the drying rack for dead animals and the two containers they had left behind with spices and dried vegetables, but nothing else.

"It doesn't matter," Virat said. "We are here. And Ashish . . . our Ashish is in the hands of the English woman's God."

Mammen Samuel Varghese didn't like violence. He talked harshly and clung fast to his money and his slaves, but he wasn't one to raise the lash to another person. So it pleased him to have an excuse to forego the whippings he had threatened. He had his workers back, and their son, too small to work anyway, was dead and gone. Besides, Mammen Samuel's eldest son had once again proven himself to the villagers.Why should the landlord dampen the lighthearted mood that still prevailed with such a show of violence? Of course, there must be punishment, but it could wait until a more opportune time.

With a smug feeling of moral superiority, Mammen Samuel greeted Brahmin Keshavan when the Brahmin appeared at the steps of the veranda.

"Your daughter married well," the Brahmin said.

"Yes," agreed Mammen Samuel. "I have successfully combined two great Christian houses." (He couldn't resist emphasizing the fact that they were Christian.)

"The union should bring you much success, and even more wealth."

Mammen Samuel smiled proudly.

"And your Untouchables have been brought back to you, I understand. It would seem your good fortune knows no bounds."

"Thanks be to God for the prowess, talents, and bravery of my first son," Mammen Samuel said.

After that, the two men sat in silence. Mammen Samuel could not imagine why the Brahmin had come out of his way to offer such praise. As the silence stretched out, be began to fear a trick.

Finally Brahmin Keshavan repeated, "Your daughter has married well."

"Yes," Mammen Samuel agreed again, but this time with less enthusiasm. "I am pleased."

"Your fortune knows no bounds," the Brahmin said again.

Mammen Samuel's eyes narrowed. Not everything that sounded like a flattering remark turned out to be a true compliment. He braced himself for what was still to come.

"I am certain you will want to pay me my due for the blessings I pronounced over your daughter at her wedding," the Brahmin said. "And you want to give me my share for the
mantras
I said on behalf of the Sudras who brought your slaves back to you. You show yourself to be a wise and compassionate man. Therefore, I am certain you will want to respond in a way that is wise and compassionate."

"Pshaw!" Mammen Samuel spat. "What do you know? The highest of all castes, you call yourself, yet you Brahmins consider yourselves subject neither to the law nor to the responsibility of work. Beggars, that's what you are—all of you. I will not give you one rupee!"

The expression on Brahmin Keshavan's face did not change at all. "I see you do not understand the extent of my service to you," he said. "You do not realize that I protect you from the evils around you. You do not comprehend the degree to which I prevail upon the gods and goddesses to withhold their plagues from your house."