That evening, Muchami and Gopalan are both among the men clustered around the circular stone bench in the centre of the Kulithalai market.
Gopalan asks loudly, “What do you do with the silver, Muchami?”
Muchami waves at him in friendly acknowledgement and continues paying careful attention to a vendetta story being related by a man beside him.
“Hoy, Muchami! Muchami-o!” Gopalan is not to be put off, and his cronies are also intrigued, since he has, of course, told them as much as he knows, on which information they have speculated as extensively as they are able. They move over to engulf Muchami. “Where do you keep the coins? Are you putting them in one of your mother’s pots?”
It would be no good to have word get around that he is storing Sivakami’s silver in his mother’s house. It doesn’t occur to Muchami to suggest he is depositing the money with a bank or moneylender. He must decide rapidly, and so, since he thinks their system is a good one, he opts against his better instincts to tell the curious men the truth.
“No, all the money goes back in the house. It couldn’t be more secure, no one in the village has keys to the padlocks, and you know there are several doors on each side. It’s as good as a safe. Anyway, Sivakami Amma will come back from time to time and put it all in the real safe inside. A Dindigul safe. The whole thing is impenetrable.”
The men are nodding evaluatively.
“But how do you put the money in the house?”
“Oh, there is a way.” Muchami makes as if to go.
“Where there’s a way in, there’s a way out.” Gopalan prods.
“No, no, this is a way only to put the money in,” Muchami says, trying to turn away. “It can’t be taken out the same way, no.”
“A hole in the wall?”
“A chute?”
The men sound as though they are trying to offer suggestions.
“No, please, nothing so complicated. But tell me”-Muchami turns to the man whose tale of a sordid family feud had been interrupted-“ how the sisters of the dead boy took revenge.”
“An open window.” It’s Gopalan who hits on this. “There are bars-you throw the bundle in, yes, Muchami? You never said you didn’t have keys to the courtyard, right, and from there you go to the garden…”
The men need no further contribution from Muchami; they can continue debating the merits and drawbacks of the house safe system on their own.
In this discussion, one of their number thinks he recognizes an opportunity.
Cunjusamy’s father had been a ruthless usurer and had accumulated a substantial fortune. Cunjusamy inherited his father’s values but none of his skill. His debtors take advantage: they don’t pay interest; they claim early to have paid off their pawns; they carry home collateral that is not their own. His once-considerable inheritance is dwindling.
He waits a month, long after everyone in the marketplace has ceased even to think about the house safe. Then he waits for a night when the moon is half full-half light so he can see, half dark so he cannot be easily seen-and walks along the canal behind the Brahmin quarter until he reaches Sivakami’s house.
Cunjusamy tried and failed to be subtle in his inquiries regarding Muchami’s methods, and so Muchami had, for some time, been watching Cunjusamy’s house. When he sees the moneylender leave his house in the dead of night, waving an iron spike, Muchami goes to the houses of several men, including one in Cunjusamy’s close circle, he has enlisted for this purpose, wakes them and goes to Sivakami’s house, expecting to find Cunjusamy there.
He finds Cunjusamy heading out of the courtyard.
Muchami inquires solicitously, “Going somewhere?”
“Yes. Home,” Cunjusamy replies officiously and tries to push past, but the labourers are much more solid than the doors were, and he is prevented.
Muchami takes a step toward him and asks, “Find anything interesting?”
“Sure, your four policemen,” Cunjusamy retorts and turns on his supposed friend accusingly. “So no one’s guarding the house at night, is it? Muchami’s just tossing the money in and letting the locked house keep it safe, is it? Huh?”
The friend looks at him like he’s crazy. “All anyone said was what they knew. Anyway, were we talking so you could come here and steal? From a widow?”
“Oh, she’s just hoarding.”
Muchami draws himself up to his full five feet three inches and spits back, “She needs every paisa.”
“Oh, is that how it is? Then how can she afford four policemen every night? Do policemen work for free now?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The policemen looking after Sivakami Amma’s money.”
Muchami stares at him for a moment, then looks at the other men and shrugs. Cunjusamy thrusts out his iron spike and parts the human doors. “Lock up, will you?”
There doesn’t seem to be much reason to stay. Muchami does a quick inspection of the courtyard and notices a hole in the weather-smoothed planks of the kitchen door. He points to it and barks, “Are you responsible for this?”
“So small, and you are worried about it? You can hardly see it. I put a hole in each door so I could see if anyone was inside, keeping watch. Good thing I did, or I would have played right into the policemen’s hands.”
Muchami has finally had enough. “What are you talking about? She couldn’t afford policemen, to pay them and bribe them and all other costs.”
Cunjusamy, who had been lingering, reluctant to step back out into the dark alone, becomes self-righteous. “Are you calling me a liar?
“What should I call you? A thief?”
“Did I take one paisa?” Cunjusamy steps back into the centre of the courtyard, jabbing his finger at Muchami. “Not one!”
Muchami matches him, jab for jab. “You would have, except the policemen stopped you.”
“You just said there were no policemen!”
“There aren’t any policemen! Yes, I am calling you a liar! And a thief! Liar! Thief!”
Muchami had mentioned his suspicions to Murthy, asking him, also, to keep an eye out for nocturnal activity. Now that neighbour comes over, attracted by the noise, and starts shouting at Cunjusamy to cover his own negligence, alerting still other neighbours who had heard rumours of Cunjusamy’s interest through one source or another. Only the witch’s husband, who has problems of his own and therefore pays little attention to gossip, is surprised to look down from his roof into Sivakami’s courtyard and see a bulky rich fellow and a servant shouting at each other.
Finally Muchami humbly offers a decision.
“No action can really be taken, because no robbery occurred. I don’t think there are policemen guarding the house, because I would have known, and because someone would have seen them coming and going. Besides, where are they now? No one but Sivakami Amma has a key to the house. So, I don’t know what happened, but I will inform her and find out what she wants to do.”
They all file off into the night, still berating Cunjusamy, who refuses to look at anyone and instead scans the sky for owls and waves his iron spike at darting shadows.
The next morning, Muchami goes to the courthouse veranda and has the scribe write a letter to Sivakami. Murthy had offered to write it, but Muchami insisted he would get it done He need not explain much since everyone knows the story, which has circulated the village several times already, gathering momentum, dust, branches and extra leaves at every turn. If anything, he finds he has to limit the scribe to the details he himself knows. “I was there!” he yells at the man, who says he’s only trying to help. “I’m the one in charge,” Muchami replies loudly. He is worthy of this responsibility, he tells himself. He is sick over how close his mistress came to losing what was in his charge to protect.
Even as the letter is posted, Sivakami is already on her way to Cholapatti. Early that morning, during her brief sleep, she dreamt of the black stone Ramar that dominated her main hall at home. In the dream, she was doing puja for the gods. But when she anointed each of their foreheads with sandalwood paste, as she had every morning of her life in that house, each turned to sandalwood. Then she garlanded each with roses and each turned to silver. And when she held the oil lamp aloft to reveal their features more brightly, each turned to gold. But when she finished, she began to pack her trunk, to leave for her father’s house, and the Ramar turned to khaki cloth and she picked each one up, shook it out and folded it and packed it away in her trunk.