The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,91

at night were difficult beasts to catch, slippery with their schedules, murky with nameless predators who feasted on lone female travelers. Narayan too would have an equally long commute to his new Anand-saar-sponsored school. She would never see him; he would be entirely out of her control and management, prey to his own inventiveness.

So Kamala had pleaded. Please increase my rent, Kamala said. Just for a little bit. Or allow me to make a large lump-sum payment that will help your son. Something to delay the sale of this courtyard by a year or two. Please. Amma, please.

The old lady had listened, and something in her implacable face had yielded to Kamala’s tears. She’d placed her hand upon Kamala’s head. “You have been like a daughter to me. I cannot promise anything, but let me speak to my son.” She’d nodded. “And you in turn speak to your brother and see how much you can raise.”

I will, Kamala had said. I will.

Now she gazed hopelessly at the wall in front of her. It was one thing to make such an offer, but how was she to raise a sufficiently large sum of money? Her mind spooled forward into ever-widening aspects of misery.

“How large, Amma?” asked Narayan. “How large a sum?”

“Why?” cried his exasperated mother. “What difference does that make to us, the size? It is so large that it doesn’t bear speaking of. When one cannot put two-pie together, what use is it to speak of whether lakhs or crores are required?”

“They would want so much?” Narayan asked, startled.

“No,” she said grudgingly. “But they may as well. It would be a sum as much out of our reach.” Then, in response to the persistent question in his eyes, she said: “I don’t know, perhaps as much as fifty thousand rupees?”

This sounded to her like a substantial offer of money. Would it be sufficient? Would the landlady expect much more? Fifty thousand rupees was forty thousand more than she had saved in the little cover at the bottom of her trunk. That ten thousand had been accumulated over ten years, painfully, squeezed out like blood from a bone when all the flesh has withered away and the bloom of life long vanished.

“Oh, Narayan,” she said. “We will be forced to roll up our beds and sleep on the streets. Where will we go?”

She glanced at him helplessly. She had been so proud of him; so proud of the ease with which he had settled into the new school, so smart in his new uniform and proud of his book bag. His English tuition master had reported that he was learning the language quickly; good news, so pleasing to his mother—and now this. Why did the gods envy the little she had? And immediately temper the good with bad?

They ate their night meal in silence; Kamala could not cook in her distraction, and the meal of dry chapattis and pickles would not settle in her mouth. She tore at half a roti before giving it up. Narayan too ate absentmindedly, his young brow furrowed in thought. “Can we not raise the money, Amma? Somehow?”

“Forty thousand? How is it possible, Narayan?”

“My uncle,” he said. “He said we have wealth waiting for us in the village. From my father’s family.” His mother’s silence was eloquent. “Amma, do we really have cows and fields waiting for us in the village?”

“You and I do not. That is certain,” said Kamala. “But do not be spreading that around the courtyard. It would be disrespectful to your uncle.”

“Can you ask him for the money?”

“I have not asked your uncle for a paisa since you were a baby. I should be ashamed to start now.”

“Can we start a chit fund like Thangam? She has made a lot of money with it.”

“Us? A chit fund? Are you crazy? Who will run it? You? It is not so easy. And besides, I think it is one of those things that gives trouble more than it helps.”

Narayan did not look convinced by his mother’s lack of enterprise. “In that case, do you suppose Thangam might be able give us a loan?”

“Aiyo! Ask! Ask for money!” She slapped her hand on the ground next to her, feeling the pain radiate powerfully through her palm. “I, who have never asked anyone else for a paisa, not for a glass of water that I have not earned, now you want me to lower myself, abase myself, abase the entire work of my blood and body,