Read Online The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James - Free Book Online
Authors: Tania James
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are that beautiful mistake. And now I will marry some cross-eyed callus-hoofed heifer with whom my stars align.
“Not because of the Africans,” she concluded, a blush warming her cheeks.
All the facts we knew of Leela could have fit on the side of a toothpaste box. Her people hailed from some flyspeck village she neglected to name. She had no schooling or training. Her father was a bricklayer. How she and Jayan had met was a mystery my mother titled Their Filthy Beginnings and refused to read a single page.
If the world according to my mother was out of joint, the crop showed no sign of it. The stalks were growing strong, nodding strands of rice fine as seed pearls. Leela survived my mother’s silence behind a wall of politeness, swift to melt out of sight if my mother was in a mood. No sooner had my mother finished her morning tea than Leela whisked the cup away to rinse it. She took up the washing and ironing and sweeping while my mother pointed out every stain and crinkle and crumb, as if she had personally invented the art of housewifery.
All this abuse Leela bore with a steady temper. Jayan’s puppy love seemed sustenance enough. She basked in his stinky presence whenever he returned from the fields, and he was no less infatuated, his hand always grasping her waist, her braid, herbottom, handful upon handful and never enough. He only took such liberties at what he presumed were private moments, but in a three-room house few moments are private.
Sometimes I heard the tight murmur of an argument through the walls, likely to do with his continued visits to the forest. The wild was always reaching for Jayan, noisy and glowing with adventure. No matter how they fought, she always stood by the door in the sullen dawn and watched him leave for the fields.
“I worry about him,” she said to me once, after Jayan had gone away.
Get used to it,
I thought.
“He says there is no reason to worry. What’s so wrong with cutting a tree, he says. But there must be something wrong if there are laws against it.”
“What tree?” I asked.
“Sandalwood. His side business. Isn’t it?”
I stared directly into those simple eyes. My silence made the answer plain, did it not? Yet I could not betray my brother completely; I could give no further answer than this: “Ask him.”
She hadn’t the chance to take my advice, for the day Jayan returned from his final trip, he was all
Later later not now.
The day passed without the mini-lorry coming up the road, and by noon the next day my brother was in a black mood. I knew what had him pacing—there was ivory in the shed, the marrow drying, the weight lightening, the price lessening with every passing gram.
By dusk my brother secured a car for the following morning and vowed never to work with that irresponsible bastard ever again. Little did he know the bastard had already taken the same vows.
For that very night the Karnataka police punched at our door and clomped through our sitting room and took my brother from his bed before he had a shirt on his back. They yapped a mix of Kannada and Malayalam, something about crossing state lines with weapons. They retrieved the ivory from the shed, piece after piece wrapped in newspaper and nested like eggs in the cauldron never to hatch a penny. By the time Leela went running out into the yard with a blue mundu, the policemen were leading my brother to the jeep.
See the spectacle of us standing outside our house in the night. Leela holding a blue mundu. My mother shouting at the police. Me at fifteen, watching my brother in nothing but his chaddi between two brutes who have not the decency to let him put on a shirt.
It is difficult to place faith in a man who tells you during a ten-minute phone call from prison not to worry. But Jayan convinced us that Communist Chacko would post bail as he had done twice before. “Twice? What twice?” demanded Leela. My brother said he had no time to explain. He promised there would be no
“Not because of the Africans,” she concluded, a blush warming her cheeks.
All the facts we knew of Leela could have fit on the side of a toothpaste box. Her people hailed from some flyspeck village she neglected to name. She had no schooling or training. Her father was a bricklayer. How she and Jayan had met was a mystery my mother titled Their Filthy Beginnings and refused to read a single page.
If the world according to my mother was out of joint, the crop showed no sign of it. The stalks were growing strong, nodding strands of rice fine as seed pearls. Leela survived my mother’s silence behind a wall of politeness, swift to melt out of sight if my mother was in a mood. No sooner had my mother finished her morning tea than Leela whisked the cup away to rinse it. She took up the washing and ironing and sweeping while my mother pointed out every stain and crinkle and crumb, as if she had personally invented the art of housewifery.
All this abuse Leela bore with a steady temper. Jayan’s puppy love seemed sustenance enough. She basked in his stinky presence whenever he returned from the fields, and he was no less infatuated, his hand always grasping her waist, her braid, herbottom, handful upon handful and never enough. He only took such liberties at what he presumed were private moments, but in a three-room house few moments are private.
Sometimes I heard the tight murmur of an argument through the walls, likely to do with his continued visits to the forest. The wild was always reaching for Jayan, noisy and glowing with adventure. No matter how they fought, she always stood by the door in the sullen dawn and watched him leave for the fields.
“I worry about him,” she said to me once, after Jayan had gone away.
Get used to it,
I thought.
“He says there is no reason to worry. What’s so wrong with cutting a tree, he says. But there must be something wrong if there are laws against it.”
“What tree?” I asked.
“Sandalwood. His side business. Isn’t it?”
I stared directly into those simple eyes. My silence made the answer plain, did it not? Yet I could not betray my brother completely; I could give no further answer than this: “Ask him.”
She hadn’t the chance to take my advice, for the day Jayan returned from his final trip, he was all
Later later not now.
The day passed without the mini-lorry coming up the road, and by noon the next day my brother was in a black mood. I knew what had him pacing—there was ivory in the shed, the marrow drying, the weight lightening, the price lessening with every passing gram.
By dusk my brother secured a car for the following morning and vowed never to work with that irresponsible bastard ever again. Little did he know the bastard had already taken the same vows.
For that very night the Karnataka police punched at our door and clomped through our sitting room and took my brother from his bed before he had a shirt on his back. They yapped a mix of Kannada and Malayalam, something about crossing state lines with weapons. They retrieved the ivory from the shed, piece after piece wrapped in newspaper and nested like eggs in the cauldron never to hatch a penny. By the time Leela went running out into the yard with a blue mundu, the policemen were leading my brother to the jeep.
See the spectacle of us standing outside our house in the night. Leela holding a blue mundu. My mother shouting at the police. Me at fifteen, watching my brother in nothing but his chaddi between two brutes who have not the decency to let him put on a shirt.
It is difficult to place faith in a man who tells you during a ten-minute phone call from prison not to worry. But Jayan convinced us that Communist Chacko would post bail as he had done twice before. “Twice? What twice?” demanded Leela. My brother said he had no time to explain. He promised there would be no
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