Read Online The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Free Book Online
Authors: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Tags: Literary Fiction
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little points of light flickering deep within. There’s nothing in him to show lonely except a spiderweb thought in the corner of my mind, nothing to account for why I’m drawn so.
Then it comes to me. With the others I have always known what they wanted. At once.
“Oh, just looking,” he says when I ask in my oldwoman voice that I suddenly wish were not so quavery.
Just looking
, and gives a surprisingly lopsided smile and gazes at me from under straight brows, as though he’s really seeing me, me underneath this body, and likes what he sees. Though how can that be.
He keeps on gazing straight into my eyes as no one except the Old One has ever done.
There’s a lurching inside me, like something stitched up tearing loose.
O danger.
And now I can’t read him at all. I go inside him to search and am wound around in a silk cloud. So all I have for knowledge is the quirk of his eyebrow as though he finds it amusing, all of it, but surely I’m silly to think he knows what I’m doing.
I want it, though. I want him to know. And I want him, knowing, to be amused. How long it has been since someone looked at me except in ignorance. Or awe. As I think this, loneliness fills my chest, a new dull aching weight, like drowning water. It is a surprise. I did not know that Mistresses could feel so lonely.
American I too am looking. I thought all my looking was done when I found the spices but then I saw you and now I no longer know.
I want to tell him this. I want to believe he’ll understand.
In my head an echo like a song of stone.
A Mistress must carve her own wanting out of her chest, must fill the hollow left behind with the needs of those she serves
.
It is my own voice, out of a time and place that seems so distant I want to call it not-real. To turn my back on it. But.
“You are welcome to look,” I tell the American, my tone all business. “I must be getting ready to close the shop.” To give myself something to do I restack packets of
papads
, pour
rawa
into paper sacks and label them carefully, push a bin of
atta
to the other side of the doorway.
“Here, let me help you.”
And before I have stopped thinking that his voice is like gold-roasted
besan
all mixed with sugar, his hand is on the rim of the bin, touching mine.
What words can I choose to describe it, this touch that goes through me like a blade of fire, yet so sweet that I want the hurting to never stop. I snatch my hand away obedient to the Mistress laws, but the sensation stays.
And this thought: no one ever wanted to help me before.
“A great place you have here. I love the feel of it,” says my American.
Yes I know it is a liberty I take, to call him mine. To smile my response when I should be saying
Please go, it is much too late, good-bye good night
.
Instead I pick up a packet. “This is
dhania,”
I say. “Coriander seed, sphere-shaped like the earth, for clearing your sight. When you soak it and drink, the water purges you of old guilts.”
Why am I telling him this. Tilo stop.
But that silk cloud pulls my words out of me. And into him.
He nods and touches the tiny globes through the plastic covering, courteous and unsurprised, as though what I am saying is most natural.
“And this”—I open a lid and sift the fine powder through my fingers—“is
amchur
. Made from black salt and mangoes dried and pounded, to heal the taste buds, to bring back love of life.”
Tilo don’t babble like a girl.
“Ah.” He bends his head to sniff, lifts his eyes to smile approval. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever smelled before—but I like it.”
Then he moves away.
And says in a voice grown formal, “I’ve kept you too long already. You should be closing up.”
Tilottama. Fool who should know better. To think he’d be interested.
At the door he raises his hand, in salute or good-bye or maybe just to wave away the hovering moths. I feel a great sorrow because he is leaving empty-handed, because I couldn’t find what he
Then it comes to me. With the others I have always known what they wanted. At once.
“Oh, just looking,” he says when I ask in my oldwoman voice that I suddenly wish were not so quavery.
Just looking
, and gives a surprisingly lopsided smile and gazes at me from under straight brows, as though he’s really seeing me, me underneath this body, and likes what he sees. Though how can that be.
He keeps on gazing straight into my eyes as no one except the Old One has ever done.
There’s a lurching inside me, like something stitched up tearing loose.
O danger.
And now I can’t read him at all. I go inside him to search and am wound around in a silk cloud. So all I have for knowledge is the quirk of his eyebrow as though he finds it amusing, all of it, but surely I’m silly to think he knows what I’m doing.
I want it, though. I want him to know. And I want him, knowing, to be amused. How long it has been since someone looked at me except in ignorance. Or awe. As I think this, loneliness fills my chest, a new dull aching weight, like drowning water. It is a surprise. I did not know that Mistresses could feel so lonely.
American I too am looking. I thought all my looking was done when I found the spices but then I saw you and now I no longer know.
I want to tell him this. I want to believe he’ll understand.
In my head an echo like a song of stone.
A Mistress must carve her own wanting out of her chest, must fill the hollow left behind with the needs of those she serves
.
It is my own voice, out of a time and place that seems so distant I want to call it not-real. To turn my back on it. But.
“You are welcome to look,” I tell the American, my tone all business. “I must be getting ready to close the shop.” To give myself something to do I restack packets of
papads
, pour
rawa
into paper sacks and label them carefully, push a bin of
atta
to the other side of the doorway.
“Here, let me help you.”
And before I have stopped thinking that his voice is like gold-roasted
besan
all mixed with sugar, his hand is on the rim of the bin, touching mine.
What words can I choose to describe it, this touch that goes through me like a blade of fire, yet so sweet that I want the hurting to never stop. I snatch my hand away obedient to the Mistress laws, but the sensation stays.
And this thought: no one ever wanted to help me before.
“A great place you have here. I love the feel of it,” says my American.
Yes I know it is a liberty I take, to call him mine. To smile my response when I should be saying
Please go, it is much too late, good-bye good night
.
Instead I pick up a packet. “This is
dhania,”
I say. “Coriander seed, sphere-shaped like the earth, for clearing your sight. When you soak it and drink, the water purges you of old guilts.”
Why am I telling him this. Tilo stop.
But that silk cloud pulls my words out of me. And into him.
He nods and touches the tiny globes through the plastic covering, courteous and unsurprised, as though what I am saying is most natural.
“And this”—I open a lid and sift the fine powder through my fingers—“is
amchur
. Made from black salt and mangoes dried and pounded, to heal the taste buds, to bring back love of life.”
Tilo don’t babble like a girl.
“Ah.” He bends his head to sniff, lifts his eyes to smile approval. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever smelled before—but I like it.”
Then he moves away.
And says in a voice grown formal, “I’ve kept you too long already. You should be closing up.”
Tilottama. Fool who should know better. To think he’d be interested.
At the door he raises his hand, in salute or good-bye or maybe just to wave away the hovering moths. I feel a great sorrow because he is leaving empty-handed, because I couldn’t find what he
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