Sita works her mouth in horror and confusion. Janaki, Kamalam and Laddu are rising around her; they open their eyes to Goli’s words. Thangam, who had already risen, lies back down. Sita replies, “That’s not… But…”

“Nine-thirty,” Goli thunders. “Be ready. If you won’t be happy any other way, that’s what you will have.”

Sita doesn’t turn to look at her siblings but feels their alkaline shock neutralized by her stinging helplessness.

Nine o’clock sees them trooping out the door. Thangam sits in the large room, by the exit, clutching Krishnan and Radhai. She is holding Radhai so tightly, in fact, that the child keeps trying to squirm out of her pale-knuckled grasp. As each of the older children files past, he or she drops a kiss on Thangam’s powdery skin. She says nothing, nor even moves, but looks long and almost sullenly on each. Only as the last one leaves, a gold-flecked tear trails down her cheek.

Sita wonders why Goli couldn’t give her grocery money yet can pay for their tickets back to Cholapatti, but decides it’s not her problem. He strolls whistling from the bus stop toward the station, the snuff pocket of his kurta jangling. Each child carries some baggage or bedding, since Goli has arranged no bullock cart for them, nor have they seen the houseboy more than twice in the week since they arrived.

A shrivelled, cackling man waves bunches of faded paper pinwheels at everyone hurrying into the station. Goli tosses a rupee coin at him. The old fellow catches it with startling ease as Goli relieves him of the entire bunch, distributing one each to his faithless children and the remainder magnanimously among all the children in sight. The old man wanders off elated-a rupee is many times more than that bunch was worth. Kamalam had already been struggling under her baggage allotment and is a sad sight, trying to carry the pinwheel as well.

A freak of architecture has created a gale force wind in the doorway to the station. As the children pass through the vacuum, the curved petals of each of their pinwheels rip free of their moorings, so that the pointy ends dangle like seaweed out of water.

The four children approach the platform while Goli buys their tickets. One by one, they toss their pinwheels onto the track. May as well have saved the effort and just put the coin on the rails for the train to flatten, Sita thinks morosely. Three of the pinwheels lie limp and motionless, and the fourth rotates in futile quarter-turns, one direction, then the other, back, back again, until a beggar child wanders up the track and urinates on it.

The tickets are two and a half rupees each, ten rupees for the four children, just the amount Sita used to feed the whole family for the ten days that the experiment lasted. Goli gets a ticket for himself, too.

Their baggage is stowed and they are on their way. Goli is in a gleeful mood, buying snacks, cracking jokes, making a party with everyone in the compartment. Isn’t this fun, his attitude seems to say. Charming man with his four beautiful children, off for a holiday. Listening to him speak to other passengers, the children learn he had had a good night at the club-another source of supplemental income, though this pursuit is often as expensive as it is profitable.

In the spirit of a game he asks his children, “What if… I were murdered? What if someone got on at the next stop and stabbed me dead, right here and now?”

They look like a naive painting of dismayed witnesses to a crime, their faces yet without depth or perspective. Smiles wiggle nervously on all their faces except Kamalam’s, who starts to cry. Maybe on account of the fleeting thought that, scary as it sounds, she might be happier if he were dead. Her tears attract Goli’s attention.

He asks sympathetically, “Missing Vairum Mama?” and slides down the wooden seat, shoving Janaki and Sita along and knocking Laddu off the end. Now he is across from Kamalam, her face filling his vision as he leans in closer and closer, head cocked like a father crow’s. “I only let you all live with him because he can’t have children of his own.”

Closer.

“He can’t have kids.”

Kamalam is looking down. She is making an enormous effort at continence but it’s not quite enough: one last slippery tear bubbles out to run over her cheek.

Goli bounds to his feet and roars at the people ramrod still all around the compartment. Chop chop chop chop goes hand against palm.

“He talks against me! He is a stingy coward who can’t have relations with his wife! He tries to steal my children! He talks against me!”

Kamalam bellows through her weeping, her eyes still shut, “Don’t talk about my uncle that way!”

Goli leaps over and hits her.

He stands and fumes at the door as the train pulls into a station. He gets out and paces around the platform, then buys fifty packages of snacks from another vendor who looks as if he hasn’t had a sale all year. Goli throws them through the windows at everyone in the compartment, telling them to eat. Janaki hands one to her little sister, who will not take it. Janaki puts it in her lap. There the package sits untouched until Laddu points at it. She nods faintly. He eats it with alacrity.

Goli is strutting up and down, stuffing a couple of packages of the stale, greasy bits into his mouth. Like an aristocratic host at a royal banquet, he is aggressively hospitable, ordering everyone to eat. The new people in the car smile at his neighbourliness, his good spirit, and their mood affects even those who were present before, as they and the children nibble the age-old snacks. Janaki offers some of her own to Kamalam, who doesn’t respond. There are finger marks on Kamalam’s pale cheek.

In the city, their father puts them on the train bound for Kulithalai. He bids farewell to all of his good friends from the compartment and now to his children. He has business to which he must attend.

They reach Cholapatti slightly after sunset. Not knowing how to tell their grandmother or Muchami of their arrival, they walk home from the station, dragging bags, bedding, bottoms. Sivakami looks them over anxiously but asks no questions. Vairum, when he sees them, takes a breath as though to say something, but Sivakami raises a hand, and he keeps silent.

Late that night, Sita, Laddu and Janaki all rise with terrible diarrhea. Only Kamalam sleeps soundly.

PART SIX

29. Time to Go 1938

GOLI AND THANGAM MOVE EVEN FARTHER AWAY in 1935, and then, in 1937, close enough that Thangam can consider coming to Cholapatti for Pongal, the January harvest festival. She is four months pregnant and, at Sivakami’s suggestion, agrees to stay until her delivery. Her health is waning; she lost a baby two years earlier while stationed too distant from Cholapatti to come and receive the benefit of Sivakami’s lucky hands. Krishnan, now a rambunctious three-year-old, needs companions to exhaust him, Sivakami believes. Sita, recently married, is preoccupied with her imminent departure for her husband’s home, and Laddu has been given a job at a oil-processing plant Vairum is about to open. The younger sisters, however-Janaki, twelve, full of unspent creative energies; Kamalam, a sweet and pliant nine-year-old; and Radhai, an indefatigable six-welcome their little brother with the aggressive delight of children who don’t have enough to divert them.

Goli brings Thangam, along with a business proposition, he tells his mother-in-law. They have arrived mid-afternoon, after six hours’ travel. Thankfully, the weather is temperate at this time of year, and though it’s the hottest part of the day, it is only about twenty-eight degrees outside. Still, Thangam, exhausted, is settled on a quilt to rest.