Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘O Rama, save us,’ Arun said.

‘Give me one,’ Janvi said; she held out a hand, steady.

Ram Mohan picked up one of the laddoos with the tips of his fingers and held it in the hollow of his right hand; it felt heavy, like iron, and despite the warmth of its brilliance, it was cool against his skin; he held it out, his biceps twitching a little from the weight. Janvi took it, held it up, and it danced in her pupils like fire; her tongue flicked out, red, and then her cheeks puffed out and her eyes bulged; for a moment or two, her throat worked, and then she fell over onto her side and rolled off the couch, struggled across the tamped-down clay, hands reaching until they brushed against Ram Mohan’s dhoti, and she held on, body arching. Ram Mohan touched her face and flinched at the clammy sweat that instantly coated his fingers; at last, she managed to get it all down, and her mouth opened and she gasped for breath: ‘Aa-ha, aa-ha, aa-ha.’

‘What is it, child?’ Shanti Devi said.

‘At first,’ Janvi said, panting, ‘a sweetness so sweet I thought it was ambrosia. Then a bitterness so complete that I thought my mouth was melting. Then it forced itself soft but insistent down my throat and I felt it in my belly and my bones and my blood, and I felt it settle in and harden like steel.’

‘Oh, god, what is it, child? Where is it from?’

‘Give,’ Janvi said. ‘Give me another one.’

‘No,’ Ram Mohan said.

‘Give.’

‘Please.’

‘Give.’

‘No, no more.’

‘Mohan,’ she said.

He picked up another laddoo and placed it on her mouth, feeling how soft her skin was just below, how the fullness of the lower lip curved away into the sweep of the chin; she swallowed, and again her body thrashed against him.

‘Worse,’ she said. ‘That was worse.’

‘Please,‘Ram Mohan said.

‘Sons, ‘she said. ‘I must have sons.’ And she swallowed another, and her hips lifted off the floor this time and smashed down, and he felt the tears break from his eyes; this time, when her throat had stopped working, she screamed, a quavering hiccup. ‘I can’t. No more.’

‘Good,’ Ram Mohan said, and reached out for the last laddoo.

‘No, don’t, don’t do anything to it,’ Janvi said, struggling to prop herself up on an elbow. ‘Shanti Devi, you have done much for me. Take it. We will have sons together.’

‘No,’ Arun said. ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t do it.’

‘Who is it from?’ Shanti Devi said.

‘I can’t tell you. Please take it,’ Janvi said, taking the laddoo from Ram Mohan. ‘I can’t throw it away.’

‘Shanti, you can’t,’ Arun said. ‘Think of what it might be. Think of what evil we would do to our forefathers, giving them a son spawned of who-knows-what evil. Think.’

‘Greater evil if we give them no sons,’ Shanti Devi said, and extended a hand, in which Janvi placed the last laddoo. Shanti Devi hesitated for a moment, but Arun stepped forward, and that decided her, and the laddoo disappeared; it sent her rolling off into the darkness, groaning, and when Arun jumped to her aid, her body twitched him off like a mosquito and continued its thrashing alone. When it was over she crawled from under the murky shade of the trees to Janvi, and they held each other, heads close and hair hanging down like wet rope, tangled together, and the men watched quietly, still trembling a little from fright.

‘Some poison, some poison you have taken,’ Arun said, but shortly, both women ballooned, and both walked about with a smile of secret pleasure on their faces, feet angling out and hands on hips to support the weight. Both acquired a taste for bitter foods: karela, grapefruit, methi; and now both listened to the final versions of the Sikander play with a dream-like expression on their faces, and Ram Mohan wondered if they were listening to the story at all, or whether they were concocting some private tale of conquest and glory. Ram Mohan was hoping, with a sentimental poet’s whimsy, that both children would be delivered on the same day, and that would be the day of the court presentation of the play — entitled, now, ‘Sikander, Master of the Universe’; but the play’s day in court came and went; and the two women went on as before, calm and other-worldly.

One night, Shanti Devi sat up in bed, and called out for her brother and husband. ‘I heard a shriek,’ she said, but nobody else had. They waited till morning, listening to the crickets and then the birds; as soon as it was light they went out to the wall, and the men paced nervously until they heard the scraping of foot-steps in the mud on the other side; Janvi’s head appeared over the stone.

‘I delivered last night,’ she said with a smile.

‘Oh, child, we heard you,’ Shanti Devi said.

‘No, that wasn’t me,’ Janvi said, climbing lightly over the wall. ‘I didn’t make a sound. It was nothing. That was the midwife. The fool, she said when she laid the boy out on the cloth she could see straight through him, the sheet and everything, and then he solidified slowly.’

‘Hai Ram,’ Shanti Devi said.

‘No, it’s all right. When they showed him to me, I knew he wasn’t the one. He had pale skin, and thin limbs, and how long they were, with an awful stretch between the elbow and the wrist. I had always known that he would want the first son, and so he did. He took him, and I said nothing. Let him have him. The next one will be my Sikander.’

‘Yes,’ Shanti Devi said. ‘Of course.’

‘Yes,’ Janvi said. ‘But what about you now, sister? It’s your turn.’

But it wasn’t to be Shanti Devi’s turn yet, not for another nine months. For nine months, during which Janvi’s belly grew full again, they waited anxiously, hoping every day that the time had come, that Shanti Devi’s child would at last descend into the world, but nothing happened. At first vaids and physicians and surgeons were summoned, but they retired baffled; then, as the pregnancy became ominously long, priests, sooth-sayers, astrologers and magicians were called, and they all looked appropriately troubled, practised their respective crafts and retreated. One morning, in the seventeenth month, Ram Mohan was shaken awake by Arun, who looked old and exhausted and grey.

‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘She’s not there.’

They stumbled through the house, waking the servants, and then ran into the garden, calling her name; hearing a soft thumping, Ram Mohan stopped, then tacked off to the right, crashing clumsily through the bushes, slipping often, and then almost falling into his sister, who ran past him, arms extended to her sides, the swelling of her belly held out like a weapon, ran slowly forward and crashed into a peepul tree; with every impact Sikander’s huge knot, suspended nearby, swung backwards and forwards; Ram Mohan lunged at her, and they collapsed against the wood, her face against his chest; she put her hands together in front of her face and wept.

‘What sort of monster will I breed? What lives in my belly? He kicks and shakes my whole body.’

‘Hush, sister. It’s nothing like that. He’s just wary of this wicked world, he’s too wise to come out yet. He’s just waiting until he’s strong enough.’

‘No, he was right. I have something evil inside me.’

‘Shhh. Shhh.’

‘He will never come. He will take my life. He’ll eat me up.’

He didn’t take her life, but he did eat her up: by the time he was born, Shanti Devi had lost all her bulk, and resembled, post-natally, the slim girl Arun had married; one night in November, she screamed joyfully, an exuberant ululation mingling pain and relief: ‘Oh, it’s starting, it’s starting.’ And far away, on the other side of mango and peepul trees, Janvi answered her wail for wail; Arun and Ram Mohan fled into the garden and sat side-by-side on a little ledge, among flower-pots and heaps of rich-smelling mulch; Ram Mohan flinched every second or so, as the women screeched at each other, and as Arun reached some particularly vehement passage in his incessant prayers (appealing to all the gods in heaven, and for good measure, to some not-so-savory characters who resided elsewhere), but even as he flinched Ram Mohan was thinking of aesthetics.