Mansions of the Moon by Shyam Selvadurai

Author:Shyam Selvadurai [Selvadurai, Shyam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2022-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

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Later that evening, once the visit was over and they were back in their palanquin, Siddhartha withdrew into a corner and folded his arms, depleted. After a moment, Yasodhara said tentatively, “They are nice people, kind.”

“Of course, Ushas. Why should they be otherwise?”

“It’s just an observation, that’s all,” she snapped, annoyed at his patient tone. “Polite conversation. Which you seem to have forgotten how to—”

“Oh come, come, ayyé.” He made a dismissive gesture and chuckled nastily.

She felt a hardness rise in her throat, but she would not cry, would not give him that satisfaction. “Yes, yes, polite conversation. But what a place we’ve come to that we have ‘polite conversations.’ Remember that tale of the wise quails who always outwitted the fowler by rising up together to lift his net away? We have ended up where those quails did—unable to agree on lifting the net together, and so become the fowler’s prey.”

“What a thing to say!”

They travelled on in silence and when they reached the women’s quarters, Yasodhara climbed down from the palanquin without glancing at him.

“I won’t come tonight, Ushas,” Siddhartha said.

“Yes, yes, Surya, I’m tired too.” She pretended to be distracted, pulling a gold thread from her red sash and breaking it so she wouldn’t have to see the earnest, fixed way he was regarding her—as if he indeed did come by all the time and was making this night an exception.

She turned and went towards the street doors, not looking back.

Inside, she took a lantern from atop a low wall and passed through the short passageway that led to the women’s private courtyard. It was deserted at this time, trickles of light spilling out from the rooms above creating patterns on the clay floor, glistening on the pond. She held up her lamp, looking at the new shrubs along the edge of the courtyard, shrubs she had planted in the last four months. She went to the archway that led into the walled garden and held up her lamp again as she walked along beds of flowers and vegetables. These, too, she’d planted in the last months, turning barren waste into a thriving garden, the air redolent with manure and turned soil. As she walked among the beds, she regarded them with fatigued solemnity. The lamp in her hand shook slightly, casting a wavering light over everything as if she were looking upon a moon-speckled pond.

She bent to examine the first flowers that had appeared on the onions she’d planted; moved closer to smell them, then sighed. Try as she might, this walled garden could not replace her fields in Mudgala, her back garden there. One place simply was not the other. And here her actions were watched by others, here she had to perform her role. The solitude her private self craved could not be found. Impossible to find it among these women who, even though they’d been kinder to her recently, weren’t Rupasiri and the village women. Now that she had the support of her aunt, she no longer feared the other women.

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