The Toss of a Lemon Read Online Free Page A

chastise them. He passed through the door, said, “I’m going out,” and then she was watching him disappear. She had looked around, hoping, at least, that the neighbours hadn’t seen, but they all had. She had closed the door, something never done in daylight, too shocked to resume what the siddhas had interrupted: her afternoon cry.
    She enjoys this cry, as she enjoys the parrots at sunset, and sex, and being mistress of her own home. She is only thirteen years old and misses her mother’s hands in her hair each morning, and the little puppy her brothers had found a few weeks before she left, and so she weeps a little each day. A little less each day, but still she weeps because she is on her own with her husband—even though he is handsome and gentle and is teaching her the ways of love.
    Sometimes, during the day, she thinks about what happened the night before, in the dark of the closed house. He’s always giving her some instruction or another, which often makes her giggle. When she finally manages to do what he is telling her, however, he is usually correct about the result. (You may imagine him as a young scientist in his first laboratory—many theories and, finally, the opportunity to try them.) Last night’s was challenging, but she is slim and supple ...
    Sivakami snaps herself from her reverie. He is gone! He has disappeared into the forest and here she sits idly beneath a window with a stupid smile on her face. She walks briskly to the well in the back, draws a bucket of water, cool even now in the hot season, and roughly washes her face. Stalking back into the main hall, she falls on her knees in front of the large black stone Ramar that dominates the room.
    That morning, she ground fresh sandalwood pulp to anoint it, the figures of noble Rama, who stands in the centre, chest out, holding his signature bow; chaste Sita, to his left, her palms together, head modestly inclined; warriorlike Lakshmana, to his brother’s right; and faithful Hanuman, the monkey god and Rama’s deputy in the war on Lanka, who kneels before them. Every day Sivakami decorates them with sandalwood and vermilion, ornaments them with blossoms of marigold and jasmine and then proves the gods’ beauty by burnishing their features with chips of lighted camphor, held aloft. Her mother-in-law’s devotion to this statue had been legendary. She called her son after Hanuman, the monkey, Rama’s most ardent devotee, and appended it with “rathnam,” a common suffix for boys’ names in this region, in honour of the hill temple in whose shadow they live, the founding myth of which concerned a gem lost then found.
    Hanumarathnam’s name is a constant reminder to Sivakami (whenever she hears it; she herself would never say her husband’s name) of the legacy she has inherited. The statue is the household embodied.
    She prays, but on this dark afternoon when their home has been seemingly sundered by prehistoric wraith-men, she feels she must do more. She plucks flowers from her garden, weaves fragrant garlands, drapes them on her gods and falls again before them in supplication.
    It’s still not enough. She needs not cold stone but warm eyes. The neighbours have all seen anyway. She goes out her back courtyard and next door, to see her husband’s aunt, Annam. Sitting on the step behind her kitchen, she pours out her heart.
    Annam laughs, then stops at Sivakami’s expression and pats her knee. “He has always done that, ever since he was a small boy. They come and look for him, he spends a few days with them. He used to ask me to prepare a packet of food to give them when they returned. That will be your job now. No one knows what they do, what they tell. One very naughty boy, you know, Jagganathan, he tried to spy on Hanumarathnam once, some fifteen or twenty years back.”
    “Mute Jagganathan, up the road?” Sivakami frowns.
    Rukmini comes into the kitchen from their main hall, rubbing her eyes, her sari dishevelled as she wakes