Read Online Mistress by Anita Nair - Free Book Online

will have to see that they get only a pot each, or it won’t last very long,’ Dr Samuel said.
    Then the water level in the well began to recede too, and Sethu took the doctor to show him how much was left. ‘We have to stop providing water now,’ Sethu said.
    Dr Samuel peered into the well with a worried expression. ‘This might sound silly, but if the water goes below that level, we are in for trouble. I thought we would be spared this year, but if it doesn’t rain soon …’
    ‘Drought?’ Sethu asked, realizing for the first time the implications of a dwindling water supply.
    ‘Drought, and cholera. Just last year, this district suffered a cholera epidemic.’
    What next, Sethu wondered. What would a cholera epidemic be like?
    He soon knew.
     
    Where did they come from, these hordes with cracked heels and dry lips, oozing from their orifices, with cramps that gripped their bellies and bodies that craved for fluids and yet were unable to hold it in? Who were these people who emerged from a countryside that in all his viewings had seemed empty of life?
    They kept coming. Old men, young children, able-bodied men and matrons with a touch of grey in their hair, bound by a bacteria. Kindred spirits in suffering, they were stalked by a nameless dread: would it be their turn next?

    Then Sethu had no time to ponder. Dr Samuel drove them with his manic will. ‘We don’t have enough of anything—people, medicines or energy. But we must cope. We must manage somehow,’ he barked as he went about ministering hope and help.
    The beds were full and even the corridors were lined with palm-leaf mats. Every inch of space in St Paul’s was covered with disease and despair. Sethu had never seen suffering on such a scale. For the rest of his life, the odour of phenyl and palm-leaf mats would bring back to him the stench of cholera, the coming of death.
    ‘What do we do now?’ Sethu asked, coming back from the storeroom. ‘We have almost entirely run out of medicines. We need a miracle now.’
    Dr Samuel rose from his chair. ‘Come with me,’ he said. Through the deserted streets of Nazareth, Dr Samuel led him to a little church with a high steeple. Its inner walls and pillars glistened a curious white.
    ‘You have been living in Nazareth for some months now, but you never seemed to want to come here. And I let it be because I knew that when you were ready to seek God’s house, you would do so,’ the doctor said.
    Sethu bit his lip. You brought me here, he wanted to say. But he let the words rest, as usual.
    Sethu reached out to touch the wall. ‘They must have mixed at least a million egg whites into the lime for the plaster to be so smooth and pearly.’ His voice reflected the awe in his eyes.
    Dr Samuel warded off a fly as if to dismiss Sethu’s comment. ‘I agree, the walls are quite amazing, but that isn’t why I brought you here.’
    He paused. Once again, his hand flew in the air to brush the errant fly away.
    Sethu suppressed a smile and the thought that sometimes the good doctor was a pompous prig. ‘Some years ago,’ the doctor began.
    Sethu leaned against a wall. He knew by now the doctor’s predilection for telling a story. How every moment, every emotion, every expression, even everything unsaid, would be dwelt upon.
    ‘Some years ago,’ the doctor said, seating himself in a pew. His pew. There were only four lines of pews. The rest of the congregation sat on the floor. ‘Nazareth was afflicted by God’s curse. Why God
chose to curse Nazareth, I do not know. It has only as many sinners as any other town of this size does. Nazareth is not Sodom, and yet we had four cholera epidemics in one year and …’
    The doctor stopped, overwhelmed by the horror of that memory.
    ‘And …’ Sethu prompted. For that, too, was one of the parts Sethu was expected to play: mesmerized audience and chief prompter.
    ‘And when it seemed that nothing but divine intervention would help, the priest here, Father