“Shush.” Janaki shudders. “What about Palani veeboothi?”
“Palani veeboothi!” Sita says loudly into the space to Janaki’s right. “I must have holy ash from Palani mountain, to cleanse my soul of guilt and memory.”
One or two people are looking their way. Janaki, feeling very strange, indicates that Bharati should help her lead Sita out of the crowd. Sita seems to walk all right, if a bit stiffly. Bharati speaks across Sita’s glassy gaze.
“The Chettiar’s life force must have jumped into her. I’ve heard of that.”
“You have?”
“My mother’s sister,” Bharati says. “It happened to her when she was very young. That’s why unmarried girls aren’t supposed to see funeral processions. We’re vulnerable.”
“Oh, God.” Janaki feels sick with anxiety. “Sita shouldn’t have gone so close. God, Amma is going to be so mad.”
“Palani veeboothi!”
“Shut up!” Janaki yells at whoever has taken up residence in her sister. “Is that all you need, to leave my sister? If we get you Palani veeboothi, will you go away?”
“Only Palani veeboothi can cleanse my soul of guilt and memory,” the Chettiar affirms.
They lead Sita home, taking her in by the back entrance, partly because Bharati, as a non-Brahmin, cannot walk on the Brahmin quarter, partly because Janaki would rather the neighbours not know before her grandmother does. Vani is still playing, though the gramophone has stopped. For a moment, the girls stand at the back door. Even the dead give respect to Vani’s playing, it appears: Sita is silent. Janaki leads her sister in and sits her in the courtyard while Bharati goes to sit under their usual tree, a few steps from the back door. Janaki takes a long look at Sita’s face, its expression addled yet intent: the look of someone with a single desire. Janaki leaves Sita in the courtyard, telling her firmly not to move.
By now, the jolly in-laws have departed. Vairum lies on the floor of the hall, listening to his wife’s music. Thangam is huddled in the corner by the gramophone. Everything looks highly normal. Janaki seeks Sivakami and finds her in the garden, looking critically at one of the mango trees, while Muchami squats beside it.
“Amma?”
“Mm?” Sivakami looks up. “Did you bring Sita home?”
“Sort of.”
The song from the living room ends, and Janaki hears a voice boom in the silence, “Palani veeboothi!”
She and her grandmother look at each other and hurry from the garden to the back of the cowshed, and from there through a door into the courtyard. Sita is a terracotta streak of silk and skin exiting the back door where Bharati catches her and holds her fast. Muchami is with them in a flash and takes hold of Sita just as Bharati is losing her strength. As Muchami pulls the struggling, writhing Sita over the threshold into the courtyard, Sivakami asks, “What happened?”
Janaki begins to explain, and Sivakami goes to close the courtyard door, glancing quizzically at the girl standing just beyond the threshold, a girl she doesn’t know. What luck she was passing! she thinks, though she doesn’t say anything to her, just nods a little. Perhaps a child of one of the Brahmin-quarter servants, though awfully well-dressed for that. Bharati doesn’t move, but stands looking at Sivakami, her chin raised, while Sivakami closes and bolts the courtyard door.
As soon as Sivakami hears the Chettiar’s demand, she dispatches Janaki to get some holy ash from the people three houses down who just got back from the Palani hills day before yesterday. And to get the priest from the temple. Vani resumes her playing, which calms Sita once more. They induce her to sit on a mat in the courtyard, since she has been multiply polluted: by Bharati’s touch, by Muchami’s, and of course by inhabitation by the spirit of a dead Chettiar. Janaki pictures Bharati sitting out back and realizes they shut the door in a panic without saying bye or thanks. But for Bharati, Sita could have been God knows where right now. I’ll apologize tomorrow, Janaki thinks.
The neighbour insists on bringing the holy ash herself, after changing her sari and refreshing her hair. She can sniff out a gossip opportunity anywhere within a ten-mile radius. By the time Janaki returns home with the priest, there are no fewer than ten people sitting and clicking their tongues in the front hall and occasionally going through the kitchen to peep at the now prone girl. The priest administers the ash externally, on the forehead and throat, and internally, a pinch on the tongue, then everyone sits around and waits.
After about two hours of muttering and twitching, Sita’s skinny frame leaps to its feet. She goose-steps to the well and draws a bucket of water. Face skyward, she dumps the bucket of water unceremoniously over her head. Three seconds later, her body gives a great heave and a shudder and collapses to the ground.
A cry goes up among the watchers, and they pick her up and carry her into the hall. She is feverish and barely conscious, but restored to herself.
They are settling her in the hall and congratulating one another on the success of the treatment-Janaki thinks they are acting a bit too much as if they thought of it, forgetting it was in fact the dead man’s own suggestion-when Goli bursts through the door like unwelcome relief. He has a wild look in his eye, and today is extra dandy, with bowler hat and cane.
“My brother-in-law has called me!” Goli announces. “Such an honour!”
What he says is true; Vairum awaits him on the roof. Goli sweeps through the hordes of gigglers and gossipers and general hangers-on in a single noisy motion. Sivakami and Gayatri join Muchami in the garden, where they can hear the conversation beginning above. Gayatri and Muchami, in whom Sivakami has confided, look at each other with conspiratorial hope and then turn their attention inward and upward.
“I’m interested in the cinema, Goli Athimbere.” Vairum must not even have given Goli time to sit. Sivakami winces, wishing Vairum were better about observing niceties. He is standing, and they can see his hands and head for a second at the balustrade; then he walks away.
“The cinema is an enormously interesting proposition,” Goli agrees. “Do you know-”
“I know, I know,” Vairum interrupts. “Look-”
“Oh, I’m looking, Vairum,” Goli says, clearly annoyed at the interruption. “I’m looking.”
Sivakami shakes her head.
“Okay,” Vairum goes on. “I don’t know what you know, but you do know that these are tricky times for investment, which is the whole reason all these possibilities are…” Vairum is uncharacteristically searching for words.
“Possible? That’s only a part of it. Naturally, a part of it, but a person needs a nose for these things. It’s not everyone who can get on board.” Goli’s voice sounds as if he is marching pompously back and forth across the roof.
“It’s a good bet, the cinema, Athimbere.” Vairum is no longer hesitating. “The only aspect of the proposal that makes me nervous is the fact that you are in charge.”
Sivakami, Muchami and Gayatri simultaneously lower their foreheads onto their palms.
“But the amount of investment you need takes the project largely out of your hands,” Vairum proceeds, reasonable and direct. “I will front the rest of the money-because it gives me the controlling interest. You must admit, it’s safer, for you and for everyone else involved.”
Incredibly, Goli has said nothing through this speech, but now he sounds as though he is orbiting madly, an electron around Vairum’s nucleus.
“I spit on your money, you cheap-nosed freak of a not-quite-man! How dare you insult me with your generosity! Don’t you think for a second you are getting any part of this so let that be a lesson to you with your swell-headed individualistic ambitions and attitudes! I ought to-”
Vairum bellows, “You cannot for a second speak of what it is to be a man, you who leave your children to be raised by others.”
Sivakami prays the children did not hear that. (They did.) She knows Vairum doesn’t mind the children’s presence, not at all. It is Goli he resents. Oh, why did she suggest this?