"Only the eldest. When Thangam has another, we'll keep Visalam. And so on."

"It's a good idea. The son-in-law has been in Cholapatti a couple of days already, trying to find investors for a business idea. I take it that one of the friends he has made here has agreed to front for it."

Seeing Sivakami's look of confusion, he clarifies.

"That is, the friend put up some of the initial money and his name will be on it, but he has had trouble getting others to invest, so the son-in-law has come to convince others."

"Ah. What kind of business?"

"Hm." He wishes she hadn't asked. "Ah, a cigar and cigarette manufactory."

"What?" Sivakami is scandalized. At the very least, she thought Goli was a decent sort. She's sure he doesn't dabble in such vices himself, but even pandering to others is hardly upstanding.

"Honestly, Amma, I don't think it's going to move," he hastens to say. "There's so much involved: you have to convince a landowner to switch over to tobacco, teach the tenant how to grow it. It's a very particular soil type, I think, that is good for it. It's not an easy proposition. Of course, if anyone can sell it, it's the son-in-law," he continues, as though to himself. Looking at Sivakami again, though, he backtracks. "But I'm sure he won't."

What he keeps to himself is that Goli has been spending early evenings in the club and later evenings in places of even lesser repute, spending beyond what Muchami would guess to be the means of a low-level official with three children to support, as well as losing money at cards. Friends who deal in such things have told him this is how big men do business: "You have to spend money to make money, Muchami!" But Goli's prospects of making money on this seem to Muchami so dicey that he fears the son-in-law is just spending money to spend it. No wonder he didn't object to the transfer of one of the children to Sivakami's home: all the more available income for him to invest in his "outside interests."

Sivakami instructs Mari to wash the babies' things and Thangam's saris, then gives them a final rinse herself, so that they are free of lower-caste pollution, throwing them over rods in the courtyard with a pole that she also uses to spread them out to dry. The next day, since Goli didn't say when Thangam should be ready, Sivakami exhausts herself making snacks for Thangam to take with her: crunchy swirls of savory thangoril, thangoril, fried patties of ghee-soaked fried patties of ghee-soaked appam, appam, great for nursing mothers, and in honour of the new baby, a load of great for nursing mothers, and in honour of the new baby, a load of laddus. laddus. She packs them in aluminum tins while Rukmini folds and packs their clothes. She packs them in aluminum tins while Rukmini folds and packs their clothes.

It's well she does, because the next morning, Goli steps into the house long enough only to call, "Hup, hup! Come! The next train leaves in forty-five minutes! I'm having a word with an a.s.sociate, then we go." He vanishes along the Brahmin quarter.

It is only eight o'clock, more than two hours before the mid-morning meal. Mari has not arrived; Muchami is out in the fields. Sivakami is forced to go and ask Murthy to send someone to find Muchami, who must ready the bullock cart. Rukmini has Saradha over next door to play, as is their routine each day at this time.

Thirty minutes later, the cart is packed and Thangam settled in the back with Visalam and Laddu, but Goli has not returned. Fifteen minutes pa.s.s; the train will have departed. Thangam is unloaded, faint from the heat of the street. She trails her gold dust back into the house. It is the hottest season-no one with a choice ventures out from eight to four, when the day bubbles around 100 degrees. It should be forbidden to small children and women recovering from childbirth, Sivakami thinks.

She had not tried to explain to Saradha what was going to happen, though she had a feeling Thangam wouldn't either, unless Sivakami told her to. Sivakami knew the child would be deeply alarmed but also didn't want to prepare her too far in advance, not knowing when Goli had in mind for them to go. The little girl, seeing her mother loaded into the cart, had panicked and started screaming without moving, not wanting to get into the cart but not wanting to let her mother go. Sivakami had hesitated to pick up the child: she would merely need another bath, but she had been madi for so long that it was no longer her first response. Before she could, though, Muchami ran and scooped up the little girl, pressing her face to his shoulder, shushing and rocking her until she calmed down. He has carried her to his home village every day since her arrival-she is still too small to be contaminated by contact with the lower castes, though she is made to change her clothes in the courtyard before re-entering the house-and she is as close to him as to Sivakami now.

Once she stopped yelling, he explained to her in soft tones what was happening. She continued to cry softly on his shoulder; he carried her back through the garden to the courtyard, where she changed clothes and came back through the house to take Rukmini's hand on the veranda. She follows her routine for the rest of the day, though from time to time hiccups rack her little chest and tears track the peach-fuzz cheeks as she doggedly helps Mari to sort the rice or Muchami to feed the cows.

The next train is now not for two hours, and they wait nervously for Goli to come, ready to spring into action again. Two hours pa.s.s, then four. Muchami has moved the bullock every hour, to try to keep it in the shade. Finally seven hours after he first hollered, Goli leaps up behind the bullock and hollers again. As Murthy makes Thangam and the two youngest children comfortable in the cart, Sivakami attempts a few civil words with her daughter's husband.

"I understand you will next be shifting house at about the time we will celebrate my son's first Pongal with his new bride, but perhaps it will be too much to come with the babies and return in time to take up your next posting..."

"How's that? Preposterous!" Goli sounds as though he is addressing a crowd. "Would my wife miss her dear little brother's first real pot of pongal?"

"Also because Thangam's perhaps not strong enough..."

"Preposterous!" Goli snaps his shoulder towel at the bullock's rump to punctuate his exclamation. The bullock jolts forward and lumbers the cart around the corner with Muchami looking like there must be some better way.

Sivakami expects, for a time, an indignant reaction from Goli's parents. Indeed, she hopes for one. In her mind, she challenges them to fight for the babies. If they do, she will allow them to take the children. It is only right for children to live with paternal grandparents. Goli and Thangam are moving everywhere, helter-skelter, but strictly because Goli's job requires it. They stay in various places. They live with Goli's parents.

The paternal grandparents never challenge Sivakami. She a.s.sumes they don't have the energy or interest, let alone the will, to raise a brood. Their efforts on Goli's behalf appear to have been desultory, or ineffective: the results were not, she admits, very cheering.

They also perhaps haven't the means to take a child or children in. Not only do they not object, they don't offer a.s.sistance, nor do they even ask how she will keep them. But this is the question Sivakami must now confront.

She is the caretaker of her son's property. None of this, not the house, nor trees, nor lands, nor cows, belongs to her. It is her son's duty to support her, but his property does not belong to her, and it certainly would not be proper to use it to support a daughter of the family, or that daughter's children. She had written to Vairum to tell him that Thangam's daughter will now live with them, but had offered no explanations or ramifications, and he didn't ask for any. Perhaps he didn't want to repeat in writing the arguments they have had about Goli. She recalls his suggesting Thangam continue to live with them; he clearly would not object to her children doing so.

There is the income from the lands her brothers have been purchasing and managing on Thangam's behalf. But who knows how many children Thangam will have? How many girls' weddings to pay for, how many boys' schoolings? Sivakami's brothers are condescending, but they don't condescend to share many details of their acquisitions, especially since Sivakami made it clear that she is fully capable of understanding anything they choose to tell her. They are not particularly shrewd or active managers. Chances are that the income from those lands would not support the day-to-day costs of Thangam's family, which gives indications of growing large, in addition to the special costs of festivals and ceremonies. Goli's parents' lands would not feed their grandchildren, neither in their possession or in the hands of others. And Goli, well, it's probably safe to say accounting is not one of his primary interests.

Since Thangam's children will not be supported by any of the overt and respectable channels, Sivakami must gain access to a wealth whose existence depends on a measure of disrespect.

She doesn't know if her brothers suffered pangs of loss when she bundled up her offspring and rejected their plans, but then she didn't show them her pain at this parting, either. What was evident and accepted was that this action hurt their pride. If their relationship to her was not outwardly defined by affection, it was defined by duty, and if their duty was to carry out the responsibilities of the children's dead father, to get the girl married and the boy educated, it was her duty to comply with their image of themselves. Sivakami broke this implied covenant, apparently without a backward glance. Now, despite her having broken one agreement, she needs them to comply with another.

Manjakkani is an inheritance customarily pa.s.sed from mother to daughter to daughter. Literally, this translates as "yellow money," as though this land, or money, or jewels, were rubbed with turmeric, as is the thread of the thirumangalyam that knots a woman into married life, as is a woman's skin, freshened by the cut edge of that root on finishing her bath. is an inheritance customarily pa.s.sed from mother to daughter to daughter. Literally, this translates as "yellow money," as though this land, or money, or jewels, were rubbed with turmeric, as is the thread of the thirumangalyam that knots a woman into married life, as is a woman's skin, freshened by the cut edge of that root on finishing her bath.

Many a woman does not receive her manjakkani. Many a woman, married by the time her mother dies, is convinced by her brothers that they need not give her the mother's wealth. She is well enough provided for, they say, and her husband would get it if they gave it to her, and so better it should stay in the family. Many a woman buys this line.

Sivakami's mother, though, on her deathbed, called to her side her only surviving daughter. There, in confidence, she told Sivakami about the battle she had fought with her own brothers, her mother's battle against the mother's brothers, and so on and up and down through the generations to defend the wealth of the family's women.

"G.o.d's grace, you will never need this money, as, G.o.d's grace, I didn't," she had croaked. "But you may. And even if, by G.o.d's grace, you don't, your daughter may. You must therefore fight for it, as I did, and my mother, and my mother's mother..." Sivakami's mother trailed off, exhausted, a jewel of spittle nestled in the skin around her mouth.

And Sivakami, though she was very young, newly widowed, not sure how she could afford to confront her brothers, not certain that the unpleasantness would be worthwhile, promised, because what else could she give her mother then? Sivakami was to blame for her husband's death. So, too, for her mother's, whose death proceeded from his.

She had followed her mother's directions and obtained, from a trustee, the doc.u.ment stating the value of lands and gold that should be pa.s.sed into Sivakami's hands. Now she takes from her safe that yellowed parchment, written by a scribe, inscribed by a judge, stamped with a seal, listing the deeds to three plots of land, adjacent to one another, and a kaasu maalai, kaasu maalai, a necklace of coins weighing eighteen sovereigns. Accompanying the testament is a letter from her mother saying that the ownership of the land transfers to her daughter upon her death. The necklace had come to Sivakami upon her marriage and had been pa.s.sed to Thangam at hers. The plots of land-large, fertile grounds with old tenants, midway between Sivakami's native village and Cholapatti-are being managed by her brothers. All these years, the income from the plots of land has been going into the family coffers-her brothers'. Sivakami does not begrudge them the income so far. If she had continued to live with them, it would have in some way paid for her and her children. a necklace of coins weighing eighteen sovereigns. Accompanying the testament is a letter from her mother saying that the ownership of the land transfers to her daughter upon her death. The necklace had come to Sivakami upon her marriage and had been pa.s.sed to Thangam at hers. The plots of land-large, fertile grounds with old tenants, midway between Sivakami's native village and Cholapatti-are being managed by her brothers. All these years, the income from the plots of land has been going into the family coffers-her brothers'. Sivakami does not begrudge them the income so far. If she had continued to live with them, it would have in some way paid for her and her children.

Sivakami replaces the keys to the safe beneath the loose brick and sits on the floor by the door to the garden, in view of the back room where all her grandchildren have slipped and burst into the world. The light from the garden billows and waves like long gauzy curtains on her left. Before her is a floor desk, a foot high at the near end and sloping up to a height of sixteen inches. She pulls it toward her and smoothes the uneven yellowy paper against the jackwood surface.

Her mother and grandmother fought their battles against their brothers in British courts. Sivakami doesn't know how their fore-mothers fought before the British; she knows only how she must wage her struggle.

She takes a slate from within the low desk and makes a few calculations based on her knowledge of crops and yields and the recent strengths and weaknesses of the regional agricultural economy. She regards these for a few moments, then lifts the lid of the desk once more and tucks the slate into a ledger within. She sends Muchami to fetch a scribe, the son of the man Hanumarathnam retained all those years ago.

Sivakami is not illiterate, but, with no formal schooling, writing is a labour for her, and her nibs are not really of a quality appropriate to matters of importance. Vairum can write fluently, and has good pens, with proper ink, not the powdered stuff, but it is some time before his next visit. In any case, this letter would take some explaining and this is her initiative alone for now.

Muchami escorts the scribe into the courtyard and enters the house to bring out the small desk. The scribe, seated on the cobblestones, pulls the desk to and arranges upon it his pen, ink and parchment. He confirms that Sivakami, who sits, almost out of view, in the kitchen, has her own wax and seal.

She begins dictating and he writes with terrific grace and fluency, in perfectly straight rows with many flourishes. Muchami watches from the side, his mouth slightly open. He is fascinated by letters and words, the ability to drop them from pen onto paper and pick them up again in recitation.

Twice the scribe makes suggestions as to wording, and Sivakami accepts his suggestions. Though young, he has a lot of experience with official correspondence. He meticulously blots the first copy and places it on the warm stones to dry while he bends to the task of preparing a duplicate.

Sivakami reads the first copy and places it in the safe along with the testament and her mother's letter. She takes out a coin for Muchami to pay the scribe and tells him to pa.s.s on her regards to his father, who has inked letters for the town of Kulithalai for more than thirty years. She places the second copy, still slightly damp, at the feet of her G.o.ds, prostrates herself before them and sits back on her heels. After a few moments she rises and, by the light of the ghee lamps, readies the letter to go out in the morning mail. She folds it carefully into a homemade envelope and heats a stub of wax marbled with smoke. The wax liquefies and is about to drip when she notices some dusky gold motes on the paper. They must have been carried, clinging to the doc.u.ment, from the courtyard cobblestones. She tries to blow the motes off of the envelope, but it is too late. The wax drips and churns up the gold flecks. Taking up the bra.s.s seal engraved with her husband's initials, she aims and presses.

The wax cools and hardens quickly. Sivakami runs her finger over the cold seal, and then presses her left thumb to it, so long and hard that her husband's initials are depressed in the pad of her digit. She watches the impression fade by the b.u.t.tery lamplight until her thumb is once again grooved only with that signature which is hers alone, flecked with the odd dot of gold, like the sign of her husband on the fateful letter.

Sivakami's letter reads: Safe.My beloved elder brothers:Greetings to You and my Sisters and Father. I trust this finds You all in the best of health. We are all well here. hairum is performing well at college and I see him every month or so on those weekends when he has no Sat.u.r.day cla.s.ses. On this Deepavali, he will go to his in-laws in Pandiyoor. We are eagerly antic.i.p.ating that you, also, might come to witness the half-wedding. Thangam, with G.o.d's blessings, has followed her two daughters with a son.Now I must come to the reason for which I am writing. As You know, I have been managing my own fcnancial affairs since the death of my husband and am quite conversant in the same. This income is more than sufficient for me to run our household and educate my son. [Sivakami is careful not to overstate this, lest it seem jeering or immodest. But she does state it, because she was right.] I feel I am meeting my responsibility of maintaining the property here in Cholapatti, in safekeeping for him until he comes of age and can a.s.sume management. He also is taking an increasing interest. So, I have no concerns in that regard.I am writing to You with a concern of another nature. As you know, my son-in-law holds a very responsible and demanding position. It requires of him that he leave his parents and settle for two-two years in all manner of places and circ.u.mstances. It is my observation that although He copes up well with this situation, it is a strain which is telling on Thangam, no less because she is weakened from childbearing, and must care for the children. In light of this, I have kept her eldest child here in Cholapatti, and am planning on keeping each eldest child as another is born.Which decision brings me to the matter at hand: How to feed and clothe these children under my son's roof? Clearly, I cannot, in good conscience, use Vairum's money to support his sister's children. Although I appreciate the n.o.bility and breeding of the family which You chose so well for Thangam, I know, no less from things You have told me, of their financial instability. It worries me not only that they seem to have little capital but that they seem to be sliding into a worse and worse financial situation, selling offproperties below value because they need more money to live than they earn from their lands, but making less and less because they have less and less income property. Please forgive my frankness. I know You will treat this as a matter of confidence. I am not confident they will be able to provide for the children. My son-in-law's salary, also, is still that of a young man, and he has many expenses of a professional nature. [That last had been Muchami's suggestion. Sivakami didn't know how her servant had the vocabulary, but expressed appreciation for it.] [That last had been Muchami's suggestion. Sivakami didn't know how her servant had the vocabulary, but expressed appreciation for it.] I expect You might suggest the income from the lands You have so astutely purchased and are managing on Thangam's behalf, but those lands were always intended to provide for her children's weddings and schoolings, and I still think they are best suited to that use. I expect You might suggest the income from the lands You have so astutely purchased and are managing on Thangam's behalf, but those lands were always intended to provide for her children's weddings and schoolings, and I still think they are best suited to that use.In light of all this, I have decided it is time for me to make my claim to the manjakkani property which our mother intended to pa.s.s to me. I did promise our mother that I would do so at some point, even had I no need, in case Thangam or her daughters should someday require a cushion to fall back upon. I know You will understand and, in memory of our mother, make this easy for me.Quarter-annually, I will send my man, Muchami, to collect the rent from the lands. Nothing should change for the tenants. I will honour your agreements with them, trusting that you have made arrangements both fair and profitable. I will send word of the first day when he will come.My namaskarams to all of You. You are in my thoughts and prayers.I remain, your affectionate sisterH. Sivakami She had signed her name herself, volunteering as the owlish young scribe penned the last words, to spare him the awkwardness of either presuming she could write her name or asking her for a thumbprint.

She feels proud and nervous about her letter: this was a hard bit of business. And when, after a month, she has received no reply, she sends another letter. It summarizes the first in brief, in case they hadn't received it. It also says that Muchami will be coming on the seventh day of the next lunar month. She receives no reply to the second letter either.

MUCHAMI DISMOUNTS THE TRAIN and tidies himself on the platform, meticulously smoothing dhoti, towel and kudumi. Finding his way to the first of the plots, he introduces himself to the men he finds in two huts side by side, at the corners of two sub-plots, farmed by brothers.

Muchami is not surprised to be gravely informed by these men that the tenants have been told not to pay him a single paisa. Muchami doesn't know Sivakami's brothers, but their behaviour is predictable to him. People are very generous about such matters as hospitality, but that is because they must be. Hospitality is required, by society and religion. It often costs very little, and it gains a person cosmic points. Generosity with property inheritance is quite a different matter-especially when the inheritor is a woman. There are so many ways to justify bilking someone. Muchami frankly admits-to himself and to Sivakami-that he would challenge his own sisters in just the same way, should they ever lay a claim to his mother's wealth. Not that she has any, but if she did, he would try to keep it. As the male issue, he was charged with the responsibility for his mother. He might someday have his own inheritors to consider. His sisters left the family when they married. They are not suffering for money. Let their husbands take care of them. He can easily imagine Sivakami's brothers' thoughts.

Muchami makes his rounds of the tenants, just to check the information he's been given. They are a little suspicious of his youth and cowed by the brilliance of his dhoti and the confidence with which he wields his walking stick. He speaks their language, though his accent is a little strange, being from that country to the southeast. They do not make eye contact with him, but they answer his questions in the affirmative : yes, they have been told not to give him any money.

Muchami knows better than to try to muscle them. They are not refusing to pay rent, they are simply refusing to pay it to Muchami. Sivakami's brothers will not cease to demand their share, and these are poor people. They cannot pay twice. Muchami does not put pressure on them that would catch them between landlords. This feudal feud is between Sivakami and her brothers. He goes home.

When he gives his report in Cholapatti, Sivakami is no more surprised than he was. This is a strategic game. She advances to the next level of play. She informs her brothers that she is legally ent.i.tled to the income from that land and that if they do not observe this ent.i.tlement, she will find some means of enforcing her right.

At least this merits a response. Sambu, her eldest and most pompous brother, reminds her on behalf of their side that she is a woman. She has no legal ent.i.tlement. Her legal ident.i.ty resided in her husband and they are very regretful to have to remind her that he is no more. Poof went her legal existence, up in smoke and ash.

Sivakami, as might well be imagined, has not forgotten her legal and social status any more than she has forgotten that her mother intended for her to have that money. Her son has, as everyone knows, the right to act on her behalf in legal matters. Funny her brothers didn't remind her of this, too, in the course of all their other reminders. Perhaps they themselves forgot.

Some months have now pa.s.sed since Sivakami's initial efforts, and Vairum's first Pongal as a married man is impending. To her brothers' recent disdainful volley, Sivakami replies with only a gilt-edged invitation-modern, as Vairum had insisted. Further pleading, in her solitary, feminine voice, will be of no use. Vairum must now become involved in the claim. She will consult with him over the holiday and they will draft a response together.

SIVAKAMI BUZZES AROUND HAPPILY, arranging the house. Straight from college, Vairum will go to collect Vani, her parents and seven or eight other relatives and escort them to Cholapatti. It is out of his way and protocol certainly does not require him to go, but he will miss no opportunity to pa.s.s time in the company of his young bride. His affection and regard for her are so great as to be almost improper. Sivakami doesn't know it, but Vairum had journeyed to Vani's village about six weeks earlier, at the halfway mark between their first Deepavali and their first Pongal. He had gone alone and on some highly flimsy pretense. His in-laws might have been suspicious, had he not won them over with his good manners and respect. He made no attempt to speak to Vani, though everyone saw him looking and smiled behind their hands. Clearly, he had been properly brought up, poor boy, he was just enraptured by the household's well-favoured daughter.

The party arrive at an auspicious hour on Friday, late afternoon. Vairum leaves them at the Kulithalai chattram to freshen up, dashes home and can barely greet his mother through his throat-clenching excitement, then dashes back again to fetch his bride and her family.

Sivakami watches for them from her door. As they round the corner, Vairum appears so relaxed and expansive that, for a shocking moment, his own mother doesn't recognize him. He makes some small joke. Sivakami watches his face through the dusk, laughing, lit from the pale glow that hangs round Vani's visage, the moon shining through mist.

Vani is growing from a pretty child into an unusual-looking young woman, with a wide face, bluish-black hair and ivory skin, the legacy of some west-coast ancestor. But there is something about her that strikes the viewer as odd-her movements are not jerky but give the impression of being unconnected one to another, just as she seems unconnected to the world around her. And yet here: she is laughing at something Vairum said. She accepts him, she likes him, she puts him at his ease! For this, Sivakami murmurs a prayer of thanks, and another as they enter.

The evening pa.s.ses pleasantly in chat and feasting. Vairum's new relatives are prosperous, educated, confident in the art of gay conversation. They are modern-witness their willingness to permit their daughter to exhibit her talents publicly in such forums as weddings-and accomplished-the family not only includes several rising lawyers, but a poet, a dramatist and a member of parliament-but characterized more by their pa.s.sionate eccentricities. Vani's mother, for instance, is a collector of vintage and antique armaments. Her father had been good friends with a British Army chief of staff, who got her interested when she was a little girl. Vani's father is developing a set of calisthenics based on theories of yoga and medieval humours. The pract.i.tioner ingests and expels liquids at different points in the exercise routine, drinking five different juices and herbal extracts, as well as spitting, sweating, crying, leeching and urinating. They and the other family members chat about their pastimes, about politics and culture, while Vani sits quietly in their midst, not appearing, really, to be listening.

She is a little like Thangam in this sense, Sivakami must admit. Unlike Thangam, however, Vani's contented silence is regularly broken : during mealtimes, the girl unannouncedly begins to rattle on with abandon. Sivakami finds Vani's chatter far more unnerving than her silence, not only the suddenness of it, but the volume. Streams of stories rocket forth from the child while her food goes ignored. Her family accommodates seamlessly, reducing their own output and confining their topics to those that complement hers. Evidently, Vani's exhibition is a longstanding habit. Vairum leans forward and gapes without cease as though the words are nectar he would drink from Vani's rosebud lips, oysters he would suck from between her pearly teeth. Sivakami can see she will need to learn to tolerate Vani's odd habits, but this does not seem a high price for the happiness she can feel radiating from her son. She has not seen him so joyful and comfortable since ... since, she thinks resignedly, before he left the house of his uncles.

And now, sometime over the holiday, she must ask him to take those uncles to court.

She doesn't introduce the topic immediately. Several of her brothers have come to witness the celebration, and it seems neither wise nor polite to raise the topic when they are so near. They are warm and effusive toward her and avoid, with what appears to her an effort at grace, any mention of their exchange. She surmises that they think their hasty and factually incorrect letter has won them this battle. She meekly serves all, showing gracious hospitality, and lets them think what they want.

She introduces the topic with Vairum as soon as her brothers leave, immediately after the morning meal on the Sunday, the day of the dawn celebration, when first light saw Vani stir the first milk into the first pongal pot of her married life. Vairum is rather at loose ends, since Vani, her mother and the two unmarried paternal uncles, who will linger a couple of days in Cholapatti, have all gone to pay some obligatory calls. He sits before the floor desk with a slate for rough work, a copy book for fine work and an advanced physical chemistry text on the floor beside him.

He has turned the desk to face the door of the garden, ostensibly to receive a little of the breeze. Sivakami, at work cutting vegetables in the doorway of the pantry, watches him for a few moments and sees that he is staring out the garden door and not at his slate and paper. Every quarter-hour or so, he starts, as though a bubble around his head has burst, and bends with violent discipline toward the desk. But little by little, as though his chin is being lifted by an unseen finger, his head rises until his gaze again dreamily mixes with the morning sunshine, the sounds and smells of the drowsy garden. Sivakami watches him go through this cycle three times before she decides his a.s.signments cannot be terribly urgent. She snaps the blade down into its block and goes to crouch beside him.

His instinct with his mother is always to look self-important and preoccupied, but brusqueness is, in this moment, too great a reach. He succeeds only in looking as though he just woke up.

"Do you recall your grandmother?" Sivakami asks. Her carefully chosen opening line only disorients Vairum further.

"I thought my grandmother died when my father was small," he says cautiously.

"Oh, yes, no-that is to say, my mother."

"No." He is trying. "I don't think I do."

"You were very small when she used to come and visit us here."

"I was very small when my father died, and I remember him."

Sivakami was unprepared for this but tries not to show it. "You remember him?"

"Yes, of course, everything. Everything about him."

Vairum is getting impatient. She launches more firmly toward her point.

"Well, my mother didn't come when you and your sister fell sick with the fever, because she had visited recently, and I said we were fine here, we were managing. Then she would have come when your father took ill, she was preparing to come, but then he died and she fell sick herself. From the shock..."

She looks to see how Vairum is taking this. He doesn't understand why she is talking about all this now.

"Even if she had come, you might not have remembered her. There were so many people around at that time, it was hard for both you children." Sivakami shifts her position. Her knees crack. "When my mother fell ill, of course, I went to see her. Do you remember that? Murthy and Rukmini took care of you and Thangam. I meant to go for one week, but I stayed for three."

Vairum shrugs-maybe he remembers, maybe not. Murthy and Rukmini's house is like a second home. They always took their meals there when Sivakami was isolated with her period, for instance-who could remember whether they stayed for a few days or weeks?

"I stayed on then because she died, and, you know, there were things to be done. But before she pa.s.sed on, there was something else. When I arrived, she already knew she was dying. She called me to her side, when no one else was around, especially your uncles or their wives, and she gave me an instruction. It was something I had to promise her, at her deathbed, as her only daughter."

A person would have to be made of stone not to be interested by a promise extracted at the deathbed. Vairum's rock-diamond eyes glitter. He is intrigued.

"Now, the time has come for me to fulfill my pledge. Do you want to know what it was?"

He nods, just a little.

"I will take them to court," he responds, rising, even before Sivakami has proposed it. His eyes shine with ardour to be a tool for justice. "It is the only way, Amma, and you must not prevent me from fulfilling your pledge to your mother and getting my sister the money that is rightfully hers. Now you have told me, you must stand out of my way."

Sivakami has not even told him about her worries on Thangam's behalf, only that this was what her mother had wanted, a pledge she must fulfill and a point of justice. It appeals to Vairum's sense of the n.o.ble, the romantic; he's perhaps more than usually susceptible to things of this nature at the moment.

Sivakami is glad that she didn't have to use Thangam's neediness as a motivation. Vairum doesn't, in her opinion, need any more reasons to despise Goli.

For his part, although Vairum says that Vani's uncles will certainly represent the case, he doesn't mention how he will relish being on their side, one of a team with them, his comparatively puny shoulder between their ma.s.sive ones, breaking down his uncles' door (in a legal sense) and demanding his sister's due. Vairum knows he shouldn't be so grateful to be part of his bride's family, he knows he should have accepted her coolly into his household; she should be the grateful one. But that's not how he feels.

He notices his niece, Saradha, observing him unsurely. She has come through the kitchen from the courtyard and is flushed with heat. Fair skin, shining black hair: a perfectly attractive child. Vairum beckons her.

"Come. You want to draw a picture? Come and draw a flower on my slate."

She comes and sits and draws and smiles, as she will once a day until he leaves.

Vani's immense uncles come the following morning, as they have made it a habit to do on this visit, to take their coffee upon the veranda. They peruse newspapers Minister has sent through Vairum as a welcome gesture. They take snuff. Occasionally, one grunts and points out an article or announcement to the other. They don't appear to notice the children swarming the veranda's periphery, watching them, perhaps because it is not unusual to find swarms of curious children around any visitor to a village, perhaps because the uncles know they are a curious sight, with their linen jackets and wobbling, shiny cheeks. They are the largest specimens of humanity these children have ever seen.

After three-quarters of an hour or so, they go inside, abandoning the untidily folded newspapers and leaving the tumblers and bowls with sugary traces that soon attract ants. Vairum is looking over the doc.u.ment his mother has given him, the yellowed parchment that confirms the legitimacy of her claim.

He scrambles to arrange bamboo mats for the uncles while they cluck absently, "Relax, son." They beckon for the parchment and for him to open the second of the double garden doors to admit more light. Each carefully reads the text on the scroll. To Sivakami, out of sight in the kitchen, each sound-the sniff of an uncle, the low crackling of the scroll-is a word fate is writing on the taut parchment of her eardrum.

Then they begin to discuss: Uncles: "Why is your mother pursuing the claim now?"

Vairum: "She promised her mother that she would."

Uncles: "But why now?"

Vairum: "Because... she can, now. Because you can help her."

Uncles: "No, we think it's because she needs it, now."

Vairum: "Why does she need it? I look after her."

The uncles purse their brows.

Uncles: "Hasn't your mother begun to care for your sister's children? "

Vairum: "Yes...

Uncles: "How is she paying for them?"