Tales of Bengal (Sita and Santa Chattopadhyay)/The Cake Festival
The Cake Festival
Evening was closing in. The angry look of the red sun was gone. Like a spot of vermilion at the edge of the sky, it spread a soft radiance over the world. Seated on the floor of the husking shed, Surama, the widowed daughter-in-law of the Dutt family, was winnowing the paddy. Two peasant girls of the neighborhood were treading the rice-husking pedal. Thump, thump, the pedal danced on, pleased with the touch of their feet. Now and then, Surama would lay aside her winnowing fan and cast a look at the dusty grey road on the other side of the field to the west. As she did so, the peasant girl Pheli kept asking her in tender tones,—"Why are you so impatient, Bou-than? (Elder sister-in-law)[1]? Why do your thoughts wander? Gopal Dada (elder brother)[1] will come directly."
A thin dark-complexioned boy now appeared on the scene with some books under his arms. His head was covered with tangled hair, and his eyes were large with a helpless fawn-like look in them. He was somewhat tall for his age, but his face was soft and full like a baby's. Despite his stature, no woman could see that face without pressing his cheeks in caress.
Before Surama could raise her eyes, Gopal threw the books into a big wicker-basket and began pulling at the fringe of her cloth. A bunch of keys instantly passed from it into his hands. And then what a dance! What fun! "Give them back to me at once," cried Surama, stretching out her hand. "You'll lose them and I'll have to search everywhere!" The more she called out to him, the more he danced to and fro before her and cried—"No! No! No! I've got them now! And I won't give them up! Promise you'll give me four annas! Or else I'll run off to the Talpukur (the lake of palms)." And he began to race away at once. Surama ran close at his heels, crying, as she went, "Stop, stop, you naughty boy! No! Don't do it, there's a dear! Don't please! Do give them up!"
While she was running across the large court-yard facing the pedal-shed, the voice of the postman rang out from the door: "A letter for Bouma (daughter-in-law)!" She hurriedly drew her veil over her loosened hair, and as she put her hand forward from behind the door, Gopal suddenly appeared, and snatched away the letter. He stepped into the yard, letter in hand, and shouted, "Oh, it is addressed to you, Bou-than. Tell me who has written it! Let me open it!" He was all impatience! Who could know what fresh news it had brought! And to wait, letter in hand, without knowing it at once,—could any boy's patience survive such a test? No, he would not wait,—no, no, not for a second! He must know at once. She would first go to her room, then open it, and then read it; and then might or might not show it to him at all. That was not to be endured!
Surama, however, betrayed no such impatience. At the very mention of the letter, her face seemed to grow pale and thin. She made no answer, but quietly put forward her hand and took it. A glance at her face and Gopal instantly grew calm. He could read every expression. He saw there a portent of evil, and his soft liquid eyes instantly grew sad. He probably was never clearly conscious how every pang of hers touched a chord in his heart; but the secret touch of pain in her always checked his high spirits, and cast a shadow on his child-like face.
"I suppose there's nothing funny in that letter?" said Gopal, as he entered the room.
"No," says she.
"Oh," says he and runs out of the room instantly, but steals back, neither knowing when.
"But who has written it?"
Hearing the question, she said at one breath, "It is from my father's house. I'll have to go there."
"And I?" asks he eagerly, with a slight start.
"You'll have to stay here, dear."
"Alone?" he pouts, his face clouded. "You are not coming back, perhaps?"
Who knows whether his voice grew thick as he spoke? Surama thought it did. She thought it choked a little with tears, and instantly her own eyes filled before his. But what would the boy think if he saw? She must speak with a smile on her face.
"Why shouldn't I come back?" she replied. "Of course, I'll come back, dear, very soon." Then she tried to laugh. "You'll have to stay, darling, as you've got your lessons, you know. Could I leave my little brother otherwise?"
Gopal did not like such caressing words. He had grown up, and coaxing made him blush. Forcing a laugh he said with unconcern; "Very well. What do I care? Go away by all means! It won't matter to me. You think I can't get on by myself do you? Well, you leave me the key of the cupboard, ask Pheli to light the stove and wash the dishes, and I'll do the rest, and get on quite well without you. But do leave a rupee behind when you go. I've got to be at the fair at Sashipur. Do you hear? And don't forget about the stove. I can't light it myself."
Thus counting over the pleasures of his future housekeeping he went out. Surama, however, did not quite like his words. She herself wanted him not to cry; otherwise it would be difficult to leave him behind. But still, strange to say, her heart yearned for a little sob, and for some troubled look in his eyes. She was going away, and Gopal kept playing the part of wounded affection with only a word or two of protest, and forthwith started a merry tune. Her heart wanted him to be a good boy, who gave no trouble when she went away; but the heart of her heart wanted him to be a bad, naughty, obstinate boy, who gave her no end of trouble when she went away. Why did he disappoint her? If he were really happy, well and good; let him be as merry as he liked, after she had gone. But oh! if he had only wept a tear or two before she left! "Of course he is sorry!"—she said to herself at last. "There can be no doubt about that! This was only his pretence, lest I should be unhappy. He must be deeply hurt, poor boy! Oh yes, he is! Or why should he start like that? And didn't he go away in a kindly hurry?—Ah! he wanted to hide his tears!"
At dinner, after night-fall, Gopal said nothing. Surama came out of the kitchen, and shading the lamp with her cloth went across the verandah and came into the bed-room. She put down the lamp on the shining brass lamp stand, and was engaged in making the bed when Gopal stole into the room. The plates on the wooden bathing-seat were shining in the dim light; and Gopal, after lingering near them for a little while, suddenly began to twist a lock of her hair round his finger.
"Oh! What are you doing? It hurts!" she cried.
"When does the cake-festival come on?" he asked abruptly. "You will come back then won't you? Who else will make me cakes?"
That one word of affection touched a heart hungry for love. It was not an appeal for cakes. It was a piteous cry for herself. She answered at once. "Oh yes, dear! I'll surely come then, and make you ever so many cakes! My parents are old, and can't eat half as many as you do."
The boy was very glad. Surama understood.
That night, as they lay on a pair of bedsteads placed side by side how much they had to talk about to each other! Surama was practically a listener through-out, while Gopal was the speaker. Her spirits were depressed by the bad news she had received from her father's house, and the effort of hiding it made her somewhat silent; but lest the hard touch of her silence should choke the gush of his gay laughing chatter, she said a word or two now and again and thus kept the flow going.
His stories went on in endless succession. The story of the unknown blind beggar who sat singing to himself at the gate of an almost forgotten fair, nobody knows when, and the tragic ballad he sang with such pathos; the boat race on the Bijaya[2] day; the delights of hot parched rice and peas as he sat by the fire in a cold winter evening well wrapped in dolai; the endless miseries suffered by the boys at the hands of the village schoolmaster; and a thousand other things, followed in bewildering confusion. The pleasures and pains, the tears and smiles, associated with those memories, seemed as though they would never come to an end. Suddenly in the middle of a story, Gopal said—"By the way, do you know why I was so late coming home to-day? Jadu Moyra (confectioner) was telling our teacher that an Arkati (a coolie-recruiter) had come to our village. I wondered what sort of a Kati (stick) it was! I had never seen one. So off we ran to the milkmen's quarter where we heard he could be found near the indigo factory. None of the fellows could beat me in running, you know. But what do you think we saw? Not a kati at all, but a big fat man, wrapped in a pair of sheets, who sat comfortably by a huge fire of chaff and straw, stretching his limbs. And they all said that this man was the Arkati, They thought me a fool, and tried to make me believe whatever they liked. But I am not to be taken in like that. I went straight to the man and asked him, "Please sir, have you heard, they call you a kati." The man burst into a laugh. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and his huge stomach shook with laughter. What a sight he was! More like a big Dacca jar than a man."
"Was he?" Was the brief response of the sister-in-law.
Early next morning, before the crows and koels had begun their cry, Surama was already out of her bed. Gopal lay cuddled up under the blanket, his knees under his chest, and his arms clasping a pillow, fast asleep. A smile was playing on his lips. Obviously the enormous jar of that recruiter's body, shaking with laughter, was keeping up a supply of laughter in his dreams. Surama covered him with an expensive embroidered quilt and went out of the room. Even at that early hour, you could find a few of the young house-wives of the village at the tank at the back of the house. The eldest daughter of the other branch of the Dutt family came up, rubbing her eyes, and as she saw Surama exclaimed:
"What! Are you up so soon? I hope there is nothing wrong with Gopal."
"Oh no, he is all right," Surama replied. "But my father is very ill. No ordinary illness this time, but smallpox. I am very anxious about it. I must start to-day at noon, and catch the night train."
"Your father, Ah! Ah! he is a good old man. May Sitala (goddess of small-pox) spare him," said the daughter of the Dutts.
"I was going to see you, sister," Surama said with some hesitation. "I can't take Gopal with me. If only you could keep him for a few days,"-
The sister was in a pleasant mood.
"Of course, I will," replied she. "It is nothing at all uncommon for a sister to keep her little brother for a short time!"
Surama now gently came to the point. "You know sister," whispered she, "your little brother will not have me out of his sight for a moment. I had to tell him, I would come back on the day of the cake festival; but, between you and me, this won't be possible. That is why I was going to say,—of course, he is your cousin, you'll take care of him. But he's rather sensitive, and may cry on the festival day. Keep an eye on him, do. I know, I needn't tell you all this.—for he is your little brother, but I say it all the same."
"Certainly, I'll take care of him," said the sister. "Don't be anxious. I'll make him plenty of cakes."
At noon a bullock cart drew up at the door. Gopal was then kneeling before his trunk, busily engaged in ransacking his wardrobe for the Sashipur fair. As he was smoothing out a crumpled silver-bordered dhoti for himself, Surama's small green box, and a big wickerbasket, containing four small bundles, made up of a napkin fastened at the corners, were placed on the cart. Wrapped in an old blue shawl, Surama turned the key of the inner room, and came towards the cart. As her eyes fell on Gopal, she said: "It is time for me to start, darling." He raised his large eyes and pouted; but his hands were still in his trunk. She pressed his soft cheeks and touched his forehead with her lips. He was too busy to say good bye to her, and put his head again into the trunk. As he heard the rattle of the cart, he looked up and saw his sister-in-law holding up the screen behind the cart and looking at him.
All day long her mind fluttered in anxiety about the boy. Not that she ceased to think of her father; but when the early bond of her own home had been cruelly torn by social custom, her heart had bled for a time and then had healed again and formed new ties. Every time she pictured her father's face, there arose by its side a dark young face set in a mass of black tangled hair. The back part of the house, where a water melon trails on a bamboo net-work and shoots up a thousand tendrils, was visible up to the turn of the road, and Surama looked on, her eyes fixed on that spot, as long as it remained in sight. To the last moment, she expected to see Gopal there, waving his arms and calling her back, like the naughty boy he was! But he did not come. "Ah! perhaps he is crying," thought she. "He is lying with his face on the floor, in tears." And she longed to rush back to him and wipe away those tears with a thousand kisses! But Gopal was then lost in thoughts of the Sashipur fair. "The poor darling wanted to hide his tears! That is why he would not speak or say good-bye to me." And in her mind's eye she read, in the helpless look of his large eyes, a thousand mute appeals. That single glance with which he looked up from the trunk with pouting lips, came back to her, as a silent complaint; and her eyes filled with tears.
A smiling field of maize lay before her stretching out its golden limbs amid the dust. As the cart lumbered by, she thought of another day in the month of December long gone by. That was before her marriage, when she, a little girl of ten, came to this very village with her cousin, across a field of golden corn, to see the home of her cousin's husband. One day, they went to visit the Dutt family and to see the new baby. That was the first time she saw Gopal in his mother's arms. She recalled how, as she bent down to look at the little thing, her hair, curling up her neck, hung down to its soft hands, and how,—nobody knows what it saw in her,—the baby caught her ringlets in its tiny pink hands with a ripple of laughter. Really, did he know her, even then? Who could have told at that time how she would be married into this very family, and how this little one would be all in all to her?
At thirteen, during her first visit to her husband's home, her husband died and she became a widow. That very year, her husband's sister was married and went away to her father-in-law's house. The mother, stricken by the great sorrow of her son's death, took to her bed, never to leave it again. Thus left alone, in his third year, the baby clung to Surama, his sister-in-law, as his only stay. That is why she, a darling of her parents, could not go back to them and seek even a few days' solace away from that desolate home of her husband. The ever unhappy Bengali widow, Surama, took the boy into her life as her very own. If she had searched into her mind, she would have found no answer to the question of what Gopal was to her. He was not her son, not her brother, nothing; but still he was her all, the delight of her heart, the apple of her eye. She could, no doubt, recall the face of her husband,—the handsome blushing youth, who came one day in a palanquin of state, while the conches blew and the nahabat played, and in crimson bridal silk stood by her side. That sweet face still illumined a corner of her heart. But the happy memory of a single festal day cannot fill a woman's heart. She wants a living touch, and if memory alone is to be her stay, it must be the memory of a whole man, a full man, round whom a thousand pleasures, pains, tears and smiles, whims, fancies, caprices and moods, have clustered. She never had that mate of a brief festal day amid these. Thus it was round this boy that all the raptures of union and the pangs of separation sounded their notes. The husband smiled still, loved by her fancy like a distant god; but this boy, her daily companion, stood near her heart, filling with a living human touch the aching void in her life.
II
It was the last day of Pous. Surama was seated by her father's bed, nursing him; but whenever an opportunity came, her mind flew back to that desolate home of the Dutts. She was to have returned to Gopal that very day; but this, alas! was not to be. The fair at Sashipur was over. The charm of the music, the dream of a thousand lights, had vanished; the golden fetters which could keep Gopal chained to his village had burst. His vacant mind, free from its spells, sought to fly to his sister-in-law; it yearned for a nearer consciousness of her caress and reproof amid the details of daily life. But his young heart did not clearly know its hidden want. He was now angry with Surama, now pouting his lips at the thought of her neglect, and the cakes at his cousin's house had lost all their sweetness. It was too bad of her to break her word! Why hadn't she come, even to-day? Really, that was too bad of her! It was too bad! He would not stand it! He would go and drag her home somehow or other. In a fit of anger, Gopal went to the length of composing a letter.
III
It was a morning in January. The court-yard of Surama's father's house was blazing in the sun. All the little children of the family were seated on the ledge of the kitchen with their backs to the sun, eating cakes and making a deafening noise. One little fellow, wrapped in a check shawl fastened at his neck with knots, had a stream of treacle trickling down his dress. Up the quilt of another a swarm of ants was marching, eager to join in the feast. One over-cautious youngster was carefully saving his best cakes to eat them at leisure; while another, more greedy, having quickly finished his own plate, was now leaning over his hands pressed on the floor like paws, wistfully contemplating the beautiful fullness of another's plate. For the last few days, Surama had been fighting Death and had at last snatched her father from his clutches; but today, when there was a chance of his recovery, her tired eyes were heavy with sleep, and she sat curled up at the door of the kitchen, drowsing. She dreamed in one of the snatches of sleep, that Gopal was saying: "Bou-than, I got no cakes this year to eat. I'll never speak with you again, never; I am rid of you forever!" Surama awoke on hearing the postman's call. "Aunt," cried a little fellow, handing her a couple of letters smeared with treacle, "Here are two letters for you. Just fancy, two!" Gopal's handwriting startled her into pleasure, and she hurriedly opened the letter and read:
"Bou-than,
You are very naughty. Wait, you'll see the fun. I'll teach you a lesson. So you are coming on the Pous Parban (Cake Festival Day), didn't you say? I start tomorrow morning, and drag you here by force. Serve you right!"
She grew anxious, as she thought with whom so little a boy was coming: but carelessly opening the other letter, she read,
"Dear Sister,
I am anxious, because I have not heard from you for so long. Relieve my anxiety by sending some good news about yourself. On the Pous Parban Day, I made cakes all day long, remembering you were not here, and gave Gopal a good feed. But he ate them with a kind of heavy face. At night, however, when he went to bed, he looked quite cheerful. I have not the courage to tell you more; but this morning, when I found his bed empty, I had an uneasy feeling. A search was made, but he could not be found. A fisherman, who had gone out to catch fish before day break, tells us that he saw a boy, like Gopal, going along the road to the railway station with that coolie-recruiter, while it was still dark. I learnt, on enquiry, that that recruiter also had left the village. Do take action quickly."
Surama sat petrified, with the letter in her hand. A little tender face rose before her eyes, and the mischievous smile on its lips seemed to shake its finger at her, saying, "Served you right!"