The same funeral procedures that they so recently observed for her husband now follow for the mother: new clothes, a pyre, a little shrine like a dollhouse. Sivakami makes the rice balls and recalls her daughter’s small hands and the care Thangam applied to this task. She works to apply herself as her little girl did. And now, Sivakami cries. She weeps at the shrine and at night and alone in corners, expecting and receiving little comfort from her brothers and their wives, who are sensitive enough to leave her alone, nor from her father, who has his own burdens. She cries for her mother in this house where she is a child.
After nearly three weeks at her father’s house, though, she must return to Cholapatti and her children, to pack up their lives.
Back in Cholapatti, she and Muchami decide that, after she and the children have moved, he will periodically collect the paddy percentages from the tenants. He will take his own share and those of the two remaining old servant couples. He will then sell the balance, tie the cash in a cloth and toss it through one of the high windows into the front room. The house, thoroughly padlocked, will function as a giant safe, and every few months, Sivakami will return to count the income and put it in the real safe, which sits in the northwest corner of the main hall.
Annam, Hanumarathnam’s aunt, will set out the daily offering for the monkeys, which tradition Sivakami believes she inherited from her late mother-in-law, yet another expression of reverence for Hanuman, Rama’s monkey devotee. Since the house will be locked, that daily offering will have to replace Sivakami’s daily pujas for the Ramar.
Murthy is still grieving, so dramatically that Sivakami would resent it if he weren’t so sincere. “He was my brother,” she hears him sighing whenever she goes to talk to Annam or Rukmini. “Ah”-she sees him pinch the bridge of his nose and sniff loudly-“but not even he could dispute what was in the stars.” Annam and Rukmini smile consolingly at Sivakami, almost as if in apology, but she is mute.
Muchami is bearing up bravely. He avoids meeting Sivakami’s eyes because he thinks she looks like tragedy. He has had his own head shaved to a half-inch too. He has worn only white since coming into their service, so he cannot adopt white garments in mourning, but he robes himself in a look of bereavement.
Vairum now is insatiable in his need for attention. At night, Sivakami holds him. He has stopped looking for her thirumangalyam but instead plays with her index and middle finger, obsessively and rhythmically twirling them through his own until he falls asleep. During the day, though, from sunrise to sunset, he is not supposed to touch her. These are the new rules. When Vairum comes to her for the comfort of her lap, she must back away from him, offering explanations he doesn’t accept. Finally, he gets angry and slaps out at her knee or her hand, and once, her head. This is not mere violence, it is sabotage: she must bathe again and wash her sari. From time to time, she gives in and permits him the lap, since she will have to bathe anyhow. This sometimes happens twice in a day, so that her saris haven’t time to dry. Vairum gets damp, sitting in her lap and holding onto her; they both catch cold.
The day before their departure from Cholapatti, Sivakami has just finished her penultimate puja for the Ramar, asking the stalwart gods to guard their home in her absence. Her needs at her brothers’ house will be few, and she intends to return to Cholapatti every four or six months to look after the business. She is taking only a single trunk-no pots, no furniture, no jewels. She has only the two white saris, one of which she will wear, and the children’s clothes hardly fill one-third of the trunk; they have many clothes, but they are small children. She is also taking a book, the Kamba-Ramayanam, the Tamil telling of that epic story, the only book she reads.
She fetches the keys to the safe. This gesture, too, is enveloped in nostalgia. As she lifts the loose brick between the doors to the garden, revealing the keys beneath, she permits herself to wallow in memory, as in sun-warmed mud: her first week as a bride, newly come of age, learning to be mistress of her own house; her husband’s delight at showing her the Dindigul safe. Dindigul: a brand to rely on.
There are four iron keys, only two of which are key-shaped. Another is a rounded stick, like a hairpin, and the fourth is flat, a lever. Hanumarathnam had deposited the bundle of keys in her palm and pointed to the safe without a word, challenging her to figure it out. She had poked and tickled and pounded the safe, neither wholly haphazard nor exactly methodical, but determined. Finally, Hanumarathnam had wrested the keys back from her, near helpless with laughter, and shown her the way:
1. Use the flat stick to remove the screw from the trim on the top right-hand side of the door.
2. Poke the rounded stick into the hole and the “L” in the safe’s nameplate will pop loose, revealing a keyhole.
3. Insert the key with the clover-shaped end and turn it once counterclockwise. Pull open the front of the safe. Within you’ll find a second, smaller door with a keyhole in the conventional place, halfway up on the left side.
4. Turn the second key a half turn clockwise in this hole, just until you feel a soft click.
5. Slide the flat stick between the door and the wrought iron trim on its left edge. The lever will catch and the inner door pop open.
It sounds like her heart popping open. She feels her shoulder blades locking across her back. From the safe’s inner sanctum drifts the scent of sandalwood.
She takes out the bundles of ancient palm leaves on which were recorded mysteries of the universe: her husband’s treasures. She pushes their clothes aside and puts the palm-leaf bundles in the bottom of the trunk even though he didn’t give her the keys to unlock these mysteries. Now she takes out a slim sandalwood box. It contains the leaves on which the children’s astral portraits are scratched. She doesn’t open the box, just lifts it quickly from the safe and drops it in the trunk, among the children’s clothes. She shuts up the safe and the memories and the scent. She shuts the trunk lid on the little clothes, and her spare sari, and the scent. She lifts her hand to her nose. The smell of the soft, golden wood is upon her fingers.
The children play in the sun on the veranda. A familiar shadow darkens the light from the front door. Her hand falls from her face and resentment and fear rise in her throat: it is them again, the siddhas. She wonders if they know that her husband is dead. She has not allowed herself to be seen.
Before she decides whether to move to the door, the siddhas begin to sing, accompanied by a little dholak drum, finger cymbals and a rough lute. Their voices are more strident than melodic, yet everyone on the Brahmin quarter will hum this tune, without admitting it, for weeks.
Where there is onion, pepper and dry ginger
What is the use of other remedies?
Pus and filth, thick red blood and fat
Together make an ugly smelling pitcher.
A few morsels for the cremation fire am I
Like a bubble that arises on the surface of water and perishes,
So indeed perishes this unstable body.
Salt will dissolve in water
Be one with the incomparable.
The wish to master science does not halt
I wish to master powers undissolved
To transform all the three worlds into shining gold.
Use as your riding beast the horse of reason
Use as your bridle, knowledge and prudence
Mount firmly your saddle of anger and ride in bright
serenity.
When there is no solace in the world
There is still solace
In the holy names of the lord who rides the bull…
The song’s undertow pulls Sivakami to the open door, but the siddhas have already begun to move off. They travel the length of the Brahmin quarter, singing.