Trial by Silence Page 4

  It had been some years since Kali had started confining himself to the barnyard. He never socialized with anyone. Only those who happened to traverse the pathway that ran by his barnyard got to talk to him. Since everyone seemed to ask him constantly about his childlessness, he had decided to avoid everyone’s company. When they were younger, Muthu and Kali had roamed these parts. Since Muthu was very fond of Kali, he let him marry his sister and made him his brother-in-law. Muthu had only got involved in this new plan of Seerayi’s because he was concerned that being childless was making Kali a recluse.

  Muthu had left from Mandayan’s place when the day’s heat began to sting him, making it difficult to lounge about any more. When he reached his place, his father had already killed a chicken and was roasting it. Muthu realized that Kali had not come there. As he walked to the cattle enclosure, wondering if he should go to Kali’s barnyard and check if he had reached there safely, Kaaraan arrived with news from Seerayi. That brought him some relief, but something kept niggling at him. When Ponna asked him why Kali had left, he said to her, ‘Apparently, your husband cannot stay away from the barnyard for even a single night. He has asked you to stay here for a few days and return at leisure.’ The only thing he asked his mother was if everything went to plan at the festival. She nodded.

  There was an excitement in Ponna’s face. It looked as though the deity had definitely blessed Ponna. Muthu prayed that this should lead to a pregnancy—and a child. He was confident that Kali could be managed later. But he needed to know if Kali had found out about the plan. Not knowing that for sure made him very restless.

  So he set out one afternoon to Kali’s. As soon as he stepped inside Kali’s fields, he realized something had changed. The brinjal patch Kali used to tend to very carefully now lay dry. It had not been watered. Kali would never leave things this way. Seerayi was sitting in the shade of the palai tree by the well, looking at the sheep. As soon as she saw Muthu, she came running to him. ‘Dear boy,’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t even ask! That morning he came over here and hung a noose on the portia tree. Somehow the goddess Kooliyatha made sure I arrived here at just the right moment. I managed to save him. What do I tell you? What can I tell you? I can manage one or two difficulties, but when so many of them pile on at the same time, I will break. He has not done any work since then. He doesn’t eat well either. He just lies on the cot and stares at the ceiling. I have been talking to him, trying to get him to say something. He hasn’t budged. If he was a little boy, I’d slap him and tell him off . . . So I have been staying here. I was hoping his anger would subside in four or five days, and then I could send for Ponna. You go and try talking to him. Please get your dear friend back to normal!’

  Muthu was now scared to even enter the barnyard. He didn’t know how he would face Kali. He removed his headcloth and draped it over his shoulder. From behind him, he could hear Seerayi singing . . .

  He used to wear a white veshti, he’d fold it up in style

  He’d walk with a swagger on the streets

  And people would salute, people would make way for him

  Now he wears no white dhoti, doesn’t care for style

  There is no swagger in his walk, he walks on no street

  And he lies in a corner, staring at the ceiling . . .

  Seerayi alone could launch into a dirge on the spot. Her voice sent shivers down his spine.

  How could he even look at Kali’s face? What would he say to him? How would he begin? So Kali had been so hurt that he had gone to the extent of preparing to hang himself? How terrible it would have been had Kali succeeded in his morbid plan! Muthu shuddered even at the thought. If that had happened, how would Muthu have broken it to Ponna? He walked towards the barnyard. It was very quiet there. Kali might be lying down in the shade of the portia tree or inside the hut. Muthu approached hesitantly. He also tried to comfort himself—after all, Kali had been saved from dying. What could he do now that could be worse? Would Kali attack him and kill him? Muthu had done it all solely for Kali’s good. Kali may or may not understand that. Muthu just had to face things as they came.

  Muthu opened the thatched gate flap a little loudly to announce his arrival. The dog came running to him, wagging his tail in welcome. Muthu spoke to the dog in a loud voice. It looked like Kali was inside the hut. Muthu wondered if he was asleep. He decided that he would wake him up even if he was sleeping. ‘Mapillai, Mapillai!’ he called out as he walked inside. There was no response from Kali. He continued to stare at a distant point, unaware that Muthu was addressing him. Even when Muthu went and stood right next to him, Kali did not register his friend’s presence. He seemed oblivious to all noise and movement around him. It was as though he was lost in some other world. Muthu gathered some courage and touched Kali on the shoulder and said, ‘Dey, Mapillai!’

  Kali suddenly jerked awake and shook himself free to Muthu’s touch. Then he lifted his head and looked at Muthu. ‘Come!’ he said. ‘Are you here for my final rites? But I was saved, you see. My mother, that wretched widow, that whore who has raised me and is responsible for the state I am in, she held my feet firmly and refused to let me die. Otherwise, right now that dog we have here would be peeing on the spot where they would have cremated me.’

  Muthu shivered on the inside. He saw tears pouring down Kali’s face. ‘Please don’t dwell on it, Mapillai,’ he said. ‘Only good things will come to us. Why do you have die for this?’ But his lips went dry and his tongue parched even with these few words.

  ‘Right!’ said Kali ‘So it is a good thing to send one’s wife to another man? You plied me with arrack the other day, didn’t you? You could have mixed some poison in it and killed me, and perhaps then sent your sister to another man. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Please don’t say that,’ said Muthu gently. ‘There are so many people in the village who have done this and been blessed by the deity. We are only doing what others have done.’

  ‘Do you know if all those men who agreed to send their wives to the festival did so wholeheartedly?’ said Kali, weeping. ‘How would you know if those other men too had all these thoughts I am holding in my heart? When they play with the child that comes from this, how could they not remember that it was some other man’s child? And the women who went there once—won’t they be tempted to go again? You have turned my home into a whorehouse!’

  ‘We are all here with you,’ reassured Muthu. ‘Nothing bad will happen. Please don’t cry.’

  ‘What do you mean nothing bad will happen?’ snapped Kali. ‘She went and slept with some other man, that whore! And now she is spending time happily at your place? Let me see how she manages to come here and look me in the eye.’

  ‘Please don’t call Ponna that,’ pleaded Muthu, his voice trembling. ‘We tricked her into believing she had your permission. Please don’t blame her for this!’

  ‘So she would go just because you told her I said yes?’ Kali spat out. ‘Even if I had said that to her myself, if she really had any love for me, would she have gone? The truth is that she was horny. One man was not enough for her any more. That’s why she went!’ He then proceeded to aim more expletives at Ponna.

  Muthu could not bear to listen to any of this. He said in a pleading voice, ‘Please don’t say such things about her. Don’t you know how much she loves you?’

  But Kali suddenly grabbed Muthu by the piece of cloth draped over his shoulders. ‘Look at him! A brother who pimped his own sister! And he has come to advise me! Go away. Get out!’ And with that, Kali pushed Muthu out of the hut.

  Muthu was taken aback. ‘Mapillai . . .’ he managed to say.

  ‘Who is Mapillai?’ shouted Kali. ‘We have no relationship any more. If you come here again, I will break your legs. Go away, you dog!’

  Muthu tried to say something placatory, and walked back towards the hut, but Kali came running, punched him in the back and pushed him away. Muthu fell on the ground. Kali attacked him without restraint. He held Muthu by his head-knot and slapp
ed him repeatedly on his face. He kicked Muthu’s feet. Noticing a long stalk from the portia tree lying on the ground nearby, he picked it up and, eyes closed, whipped Muthu with it. Muthu tried to shield himself from the blows using his hands. But when that proved to be ineffective, he tossed and turned and writhed on the ground, trying to evade Kali’s assault.

  Seerayi came running. ‘You wretched motherfucker!’ she screamed. ‘How can you hit your friend like this? Didn’t I tell you that it was all my idea, that I am responsible for everything? Then why are you hitting him? Here, hit me. If your rage has not subsided, hit me. Here, punch me. I will die of heartbreak. Come, hit me on these breasts that suckled you!’ The words poured out of Seerayi as she knelt down in front of Kali, looking up at him.

  Kali spat on Muthu and went back into the hut and lay down on the cot. He was still enraged, and his angry gasps sounded like the noise the portia tree made when it swayed in the wind.

  Seerayi gave Muthu a hand and lifted him up. He was covered in soil and he bled from the cuts caused by the tree stalk. Rising from the ground, Muthu looked around for the towel he usually wore around his neck; when he found it, he wiped himself with it, and said, ‘Dey, Kali, I am not upset at all that you hit me. If you are still not satisfied, come back out and hit me some more. If you want to kill me, do that too, come. But please don’t blame Ponna and call her names. She is a good girl. She considers you her life. I will tell you just one thing. I only wanted to do you good. You may not see that now, but you will at some point. You will always be my friend, Kali.’

  Muthu then slowly walked out of the barnyard. Seerayi walked after him without saying anything, without knowing what to say. Outside, she stood watching as he walked past the fields, over the common path, and until his figure vanished in the distance.

  SIX

  Poovayi waited for Muthu until the sun climbed over the hillock, hoping he would return home at least for the morning meal. But he did not show up. He had been gone since the day before. And he had not eaten anything since lunch. They lived in Thottakkaadu. Five or six farmsteads beyond that was Mettukkaadu, the elevated fields. That was where they had built the enclosure for cattle and sheep since they could use the animal refuse for manure in these fields. Muthu spent all his time in Mettukkaadu. Toddy tapping from the palmyra trees was well under way. This was almost the end of the toddy season. What they tap now would be the final batch of toddy for the year. It was particularly potent. Poovayi wondered if Muthu had drunk a lot of this toddy and was lying somewhere in those elevated fields.

  She gave voice to her frustration. ‘Even a dog would come running back to be fed if you call out to it. But who can keep track of where this man goes and when he comes back? This has become a constant nuisance!’ The night before, she had sent food for Muthu with the farmhand. When she asked him later, he said he couldn’t find Muthu and had hung the food carrier on a pole near the cattle shed. She then asked him if he had looked inside the enclosure. To that, the farmhand replied that there was no one in the enclosure and that he had shut the sheep in and latched the gate on the outside before he left. Usually, Muthu went to the enclosure to sleep only after the eight o’clock siren was sounded at the local municipal building.

  Muthu’s mother too was annoyed at his behaviour: ‘Can’t a man return home at the appropriate hour? Look at that poor little boy. He is staring at the path eagerly waiting for his father. Can’t he come back to at least look at the kid’s face before he sets off again? He has really become uncontrollable.’

  But Poovayi retorted, ‘Well, you will say all this now, but when you see him, you go quiet.’

  Ponna found all of this rather amusing. Their father, on the other hand, said, ‘Where can he go? He must be sleeping in some hideout of his. He will wake up and return home. Stop worrying.’

  But when Muthu did not return home in the morning, Poovayi went to Mettukkaadu herself to look for him. The makeshift latch the farmhand had put on the outer side of the gate was still intact. No one had cleared the cow dung in the enclosure. When they saw her, the sheep started bleating non-stop. The dog had not been tied up inside, and was roaming all over the fields. ‘Even this dog is more responsible than this man,’ Poovayi ranted. ‘How could he stay away leaving all these sheep uncared for? Anyone could come and just herd the entire flock away. That is definitely going to happen one day, and that’s when he will mend his ways.’

  Poovayi emptied the previous night’s food from the carrier into the dog’s bowl. The dog came running to her and stood by, wagging its tail. They only fed the dog once a day: at night. Otherwise, it fended for itself, hunting rats in the fields. Days like this, when it got to eat leftovers, were lucky days for the dog. ‘From now on, I should just tie him up like a dog and feed him,’ she vented as she walked back home. But her ranting did not stop; it only got worse as the day progressed. Ponna was really irritated. In her view, everyone knew what her brother was like. He would wander around here and there and would return for sure. Where else would he go? She spent her time playing with her brother’s son, Murugesan. Kali had not sent her to her parents’ home for two years. Somehow this year he agreed not only to visit this place but to go to the festival as well. Now he had even sent word to her asking her to stay here for a week. All of this made her very happy. She believed that the deity had definitely granted her wish. But she was discomfited thinking about how she would tell Kali about the night at the festival and how she would look him in the face. So she welcomed the prospect of spending another week here.

  Ponna and her sister-in-law Poovayi had stopped talking to each other four or five years ago. It had happened during one of Ponna’s visits. Murugesan must have been a year or a year and a half old then. Muthu had got married two and a half years after Ponna, but he and Poovayi already had a child, a boy, while Ponna was still praying and appealing to various deities for a similar blessing. During that visit, she had been playing with the dog as she always used to do in those days. She chased around little lambs. She was like an excited little girl who could not stay put even for a little while. But that was how Ponna always was whenever she came to her mother’s house. She was full of excitement and she did not do any household work. Even her mother would scold her, ‘She falls sick as soon as we ask her to do any work.’ But nothing bothered Ponna.

  Poovayi, who was then handling an infant, was annoyed at Ponna’s behaviour. She said in the course of some exchange, ‘If you’d had children at the right time after your marriage, you would by now have one holding your hand and one on your hip. You wouldn’t have had the time to be goofing around like this.’

  Ponna replied, laughing, ‘Even if that was the case, I would still be just the same when I come to my mother’s.’

  And Poovayi said sharply, ‘Only if that mentality changes will you be able to conceive, let me tell you.’

  Ponna was deeply offended by this remark. ‘You are being nasty to me because you were able to conceive? Why do you worry? I am quite happy that I don’t have to clean piss and shit all the time.’

  They had stopped talking to each other on that day. They did not even look directly at each other. Even now Ponna found Poovayi’s words and behaviour very annoying.

  Their father went to Mettukkaadu looking for Muthu. When he peeped into the sheep enclosure, he saw that Muthu’s slippers were lying there, trampled by the sheep. When he walked inside, he found Muthu lying on the cot. He woke him up and brought him back home. Muthu quietly followed him. His eyes were bloodshot. Thinking that he was intoxicated, his father scolded him all the way home. Muthu said nothing in response.

  But as soon as she looked at her brother, Ponna realized it was not drunkenness. He had not slept all night. His eyes were swollen. She sensed that something was wrong. He sat down on the cot laid in the shade of the portia tree. She sat next to him and asked, ‘What happened, Anna?’

  He did not lift his head. She saw the wounds on his body.

  ‘You are swollen all over,�
�� she exclaimed. ‘Whom did you fight with? Who beat you up?’

  His father had not noticed the swellings. So he was saying, ‘He must have been lying about on the ground or on the rocks, this dog! Who is going to beat up this spineless creature?’

  But Poovayi came running to Muthu and gently ran her hand over his body. ‘This is swollen so badly!’ she said and ran back into the house. When he saw everyone fussing over him and getting agitated, he started crying. He could not control himself.

  Ponna shook him by the shoulder and said, ‘What happened, Anna? Tell me!’

  He said, crying, ‘Your husband now knows everything, Ponna.’

  Ponna was shocked. ‘Does that mean he did not know anything until now?’ she shouted.

  Muthu remained silent. Ponna ran to her mother and asked the same thing. She too hesitated to reply, but she tried to manage the situation: ‘It was all your mother-in-law’s idea. She told us she had told him and there was no problem.’

  Ponna could see it all very clearly now. Kali had not consented to this plan. When he had sat in the shade of the tree, eating snacks, her mother had not let her have a quiet moment with Kali. She had kept calling Ponna to do this and that. Ponna had not got to speak to him that day. She had been too embarrassed to ask directly, ‘Can I go?’ And she had thought he was also too embarrassed to tell her directly that she could go. When he had said to her, ‘Go. We can manage,’ he had only referred to her going to her mother’s home. But she had taken his ‘We can manage’ to be his indirect way of agreeing to the plan. Her brother had also said to her, ‘I explained to Kali that this was a religious matter and I got him to agree.’ It had all been a lie.