As Sweet as Honey (5 page)

Meterling carried the poet’s books about with her on occasion, but mostly they stayed in her room on a shelf, thin spines edged neatly together. There was a pile of paper bound together
with a ribbon as well, blank pages for Meterling herself to fill up when the time was right. To that end, she kept some fresh pens and a few sharpened pencils in a long, narrow wooden box.

And when will the time come for Meterling to pen her own thoughts? We wondered about that mysterious force that would rise up somehow, in a cloud of ink and erasure, and take her away from us. We knew so little about writing. There was a hundred-year-old man who lived near to us, a famous author, said our grandmother. He needed very little contact with the world, it seemed, and mostly penned his famous work in foreign hotels on holiday. He asked only for quiet. Once he paid for a family of bleating goats to be removed from his neighbors’ garden, supplying them with milk from his writing income to make up for their loss. He was eccentric, and just a bit scary, and the poet sounded just as bad. We certainly did not want Meterling to end up a writer!

6

T
here’s all kinds of magic,” said Rasi.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s the person who just guesses really well—like the weather, or whether you’ll get a boy baby or a girl. That’s not magic, that’s just luck.”

“Uncle Thakur can predict which horse will win a race.”

“That’s not magic.”

“Uncle Raj says it is.”

“Then,” continued Rasi, “there’s the person who can read people’s minds. That’s called Especially.”

“Especially?”

“Yes,” said Rasi. “I read it in a book. And so, say you’ve got a bad thought, and that person has Especially, then you’re in trouble, because that person will know what you are thinking.”

“I don’t believe it … What kind of bad thoughts?”

“Like lying or stealing or cheating. And you should believe me, because it’s true.”

“Amma says to look straight at her elbow if she thinks I’m lying.”

“What?”

“She points her elbow at me and asks me to repeat whatever I said, except at the elbow. If I don’t laugh, she knows I’m telling the truth. But I always laugh. It’s her
elbow
.”

“But to really be magic, it takes someone special.”

“Especially?”

“Special,”
said Rasi, exasperated. “The kind of someone who can turn little boys into frogs, that sort of thing.”

“A magician!”

“Yes. And on Pi, there are only eleven such magicians.”

“There are?”

“Where are they?”

“Oh, they live in ordinary houses and everything, but they have great power.”

“Do you think Aunt Meterling is one?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it.”

“She might be.” Aunt Meterling did do some mysterious things.

“I saw her one day, hair not even combed, with a sword in her hand,” said Sanjay.

“A sword? We don’t have a sword,” protested Rasi at once.

“And not only did she have the sword, which was just a plain one, not encrusted with jewels or anything—”

“Because that would make it too special!” said Rasi, rolling her eyes.

“She walked out into the garden, plunged the sword right into the ground, and walked back inside.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. It seemed possible that maybe Archer had given her a sword, but if he had, where was it? When friends of relatives in Bengal got married, the father of the bride presented the groom with a sword, which was displayed proudly in the front room of their house. I must have been only four or so when I saw it and was very impressed. Maybe this was the sword Sanjay saw, but how did it get from Bengal to our island? It made no sense. He was making it up.

“She’s a magician,” said Sanjay, folding his arms against his chest.

We did know about the fakes. A practiced charlatan will pay a dishonest iron wallah or pot mender to tell him a few details about a certain family. Had there been a death recently, an old history to elicit a bit of gossip? The charlatan would not act on the information immediately. He’d wait a few months, then casually stroll into the courtyard.

“Amma, can you spare some change, and I’ll tell your fortune?” he’d say.

Grandmother usually chased such cheats away, but others, like Mrs. Gupta, were not so lucky.

Mrs. Gupta lived a few houses down, with a grove of banyan trees in her backyard. Her daughter had run off at fifteen to live with an American sailor, a good-for-nothing who ditched her as soon as she got too eager, the fortune-teller said. We wondered
what she was eager for. A taste for the sea itself? Who wouldn’t want to set sail on salty water, look at an expansive horizon, and not know what the next port would hold? To see dolphins and jellyfish frolic on the water, to sleep soundly even though there might be a shark or two lurking nearby? In our storybooks, pirates were not always so bad, and could prove quite helpful, and we knew to eat plenty of lemons and oranges to prevent scurvy. Too bad he ditched her—we literally imagined her in a ditch, cast off, like Ariadne by Theseus. Lucky for Ariadne that Dionysus came along to rescue her. I don’t know who might have rescued Mrs. Gupta’s daughter. The charlatan didn’t seem to think anyone did. Let’s hope she became a pirate herself, wore tall boots and smoked a pipe; let’s hope she learned to tie good knots, fend for her supper. Let’s suppose she mended her heart, found many friends and a fulfilling life. Who doesn’t have the right to a happy ending? Especially one brave enough to follow her heart.

The days right before the wedding—how spacious they seemed, filled with possibility. We followed Meterling like lambs, running after her, tumbling on the grass, pulling at her sari. “Indulge us, indulge us!” we’d cry, and she’d patiently wipe a tear, fix a hem, get the splinters out. Meterling was like a rose that kept blooming, long after everyone thought it couldn’t bloom anymore. Unfurling like a flag, like a song, like joy, like love itself.

She was beautiful in her height, her face a calm, round moon. Her hair was also calm, affixed in a knot or twined around in a braid. In one photograph, she is on a scooter, her plait falling jauntily down one shoulder, sitting sidesaddle (because this was old Pi) and laughing at the camera. Before Archer, before the thought of a baby. Another was taken when she was my age. She sat wearing a pretty frock, her ankles crossed and
tucked in, but her body coming a bit forward, her hands on her knees. She is almost laughing, her face full of joy, her tight braids seeming to dance for the camera. Only one photograph shows her discomfort, a school picture, where, even seated, she is a head above everyone. She slumped in her seat, and I knew she was trying to make herself disappear.

When ice cream dripped down Meterling’s arm, she licked it up to savor each drop. This is why we loved Meterling so, she was our
difference
among all our tight-lipped sad women, the ones who could not take a walk in the dark, the ones who let horoscope and superstition rule all of their destiny, the ones who had no music in their feet. Tall, bold Meterling—all of us wanted to grow up and be just like her. We’d stretch our limbs, stand on tiptoe. We had to stand on each other like acrobatic clowns and still could not reach the ceiling. She couldn’t touch it, either, but she was closer to it than anyone.

Most nights, Meterling went to sleep early. She drank a cup of hot milk laced with saffron threads that turned a dark orange, russet, that stained her milk with exquisite scent. With her milk, she ate a butter biscuit; she dunked her cookie in her milk, relishing the flavor, the spongy texture, the soft taste. Lately, in this her third month, she craved nursery foods, like bread thickly spread with butter, sprinkled with sugar. She wanted pale baby food. She craved rice and ghee, mushy peas and chopped-up boiled carrots.

She woke at three one morning, resolved to make her own ghee and not wait for Shanti-Mami, our cook. From the icebox, still a luxury in the neighborhood, she removed a cold slab of butter. She placed it in a stainless vessel and lit the stove. The butter began to melt quickly, accompanied by the sound of rain, thick, splashing rain. Soon, the storm let up;
the smell of rich, buttery, nutty ghee permeated the room. She thought of how, when she was a child, her mother would let her swipe the ghee leavings on the pan with her finger, after the ghee was transferred to a clean jar. No one was to know, because there were so many pollution rules governing the kitchen, and there was no licking of pots done in the open. But it was a secret relish the two shared, licking up the ghee, sometimes surreptitiously dipping their ghee-brown fingers into a small plate of sugar.

That edge of something so unusual to be forbidden was compelling, like Colette with her burnt chocolate at school.

She savored early the idea of what could be left after the main show, what remained in the bowl.

Returning to the ghee at hand, Meterling watched as the melted butter began to clarify, the solids resting at the bottom, the clear yellow-gold liquid floating to the surface.
I am the clarification of butter
, Krishna had said to illustrate his divinity. Soon the pot was full of golden ghee.

Was this when the tremendous midnight cooking began, with that first ghee, followed by rice and sesame, then honeyed badushas, then plump eggplants filled joyously with spice, until she was banned from the kitchen for being too pregnant? Almond kheer, buttery pooris, crisp jalebis that were like slender fingers, followed by perfect coffee already waiting when we awoke? Meterling told us that a famous author named M. F. K. Fisher had once described a good cup of coffee as being “intelligently made.” She loved that description, but we could think only of the name Fisher. I say it again and again: there was so much in those days that was lost on us, us children, but more that we could intuit, sense and get.

Some nights found my aunt unable to sleep despite the hot milk. Her body ached, and she woke, displaced and disgruntled.
She tried to calm her body by setting up a chair in the dark, to let the night air cool her face. It was difficult. Just as she began to fall asleep on her chair, she’d move to her bed, hoping to carry the sleepiness with her. She would lie awake. Mornings would find her having napped a bit, her left side aching, and her cheek creased by pillow folds, her nerves raw and on edge. Sleep was what she wanted—sleep and Archer.

7

F
olded fortunes made of paper. Nalani was very quick in making them. She’d put down words like
happiness, wealth, joy, peace, yes
, and
no
, but Rasi never had much time for them. Too easy, paper fortunes, she said.

One of our uncles always used a coin to decide whether he was going to get another coffee, or would it be tea, the
Madhupur News
or the
Albitar Accent
. Both papers were dailies and owned by the same person. But the editors were rivals, ready to best one another. The
News
featured Moon Lieutenant, a very funny commentator who wrote piercing articles poking fun at the Madhupur City Council. At the
Accent
, it was the Silver Bullet, who systematically ridiculed the Moon’s article from the day before. Uncle Raj, our neighbor, took one paper, Uncle Darshan took another, and the two compared notes over betel. Neither the Moon nor the Bullet, of course, they liked pointing out, held a candle to the late, great wit and publisher of Tamil Nadu, Kalki himself. Kalki, they said, had written it all, before it had even needed to be written.

Every evening it was the same. The uncles would settle on
the veranda with a silver box holding the paan leaf and betel nuts between them. Carefully they would attend to the matter of creating plump rolls of paan. This was done in silence. Then, chewing carefully, they would each let out their own thick red spit into the garden. Then one uncle or the other would comment on the dailies. Another stream of paan laced with tobacco followed. Then a sigh. And finally, one uncle or the other would speak of Kalki. And a third or fourth round of paan would commence.

I always watched fascinated and repulsed all at once at the thick red stream of spit.

Dreamy Nalani and her paper fortunes. There she was at the window, her hair in a loose plait down her back, and in a soft loose cotton gown we called her Juliet dress. She had a whole trunk full of such gowns, one for every day of the week, in soft purples, greens, yellows, pinks, and creams. Nalani, always sunny with her smile if you caught her by surprise. But at the window, her eyes were on her future, and she folded and unfolded the paper frogmouth she had made.
Joy, peace, love, happiness
.

Rasi said she should put in some other words, like
misfortune
, or
dire straits
, but Nalani has no use for words like that. She wanted a good life. Sometimes joy, sometimes peace. Mostly she wanted love, like Meterling had had, to share her heart with someone, romantic love, deep love, divine love.

“Shouldn’t they learn French?” our aunties wondered aloud. “They are running around like wild pigs.”

Their most focused talks had been about landscape. Archer had been an amateur naturalist. That was one thing his father, the Gin King, hadn’t taken away. So as he traveled for his father’s
company, inspecting bottling facilities and such, he always took one day to appreciate the scenery.

“That must sound dull,” he said, “but we so often take it for granted.”

He described what he’d seen: enormous mountains stranded in mist, the vapors rising, magically, ghostlike.

He told Meterling about California, a green wonder in America, where orange groves perfumed the air, where the Pacific crashed wave after wave against the reddish-tan cliffs.

“Fat sea lions line the harbor, and pelicans roost in the rocks. Whales migrate each year—it’s a sight, Meti. A sight we should see.”

And so they had planned a honeymoon, a quiet trip to visit all the oceans, all the shores, all the mountains he had seen. And then a trip to all that he hadn’t seen, scenery and landscape they would discover together. They’d pack a few clothes, some lotions and potions to ward off sunstroke, bug bite, and nausea. They would be easily equipped for adventure.