Nectar in a Sieve Read Free Page A

and a husband to look after. Look at me, am I any worse that I cannot spell my name, so long as I know it? Is not my house clean and sweet, are not my children well fed and cared for?" My father laughed and said, "Indeed they are," and did not pursue the matter; nor did he give up his teaching.
    When my child is ready, I thought now, I will teach him too; and I practised harder than ever lest my fingers should lose their skill. When Janaki, recovered from her sickness, came to see me, she marvelled that I could write; but Kali, who had come too, was scornful of the strange symbols which had no meaning for her and dismissed it as a foible of pregnancy.
    "You will forget all about such nonsense when your child is born," she said. "Besides, there will be others and your hands will be full. Look at me, do I have one spare minute to myself?"
    "How is it then," I asked, forgetting myself, "that you are here now -- yes, and I have seen you in the village too -- if you have so much to occupy you? As for my children, it is for them that I practise writing and reading, so that I can teach them when the time is ripe."
    Kali sniffed, but she was good-natured and did not take offence.
    Nathan used to come and sit beside me when I was writing. The first time he came to see what I was up to, he sat in silence with his brows drawn together and meeting; but after some watching he went away, and when he came back his face was clear.
    "It is well," he said, stroking my hair. "You are clever, Ruku, as I have said before."
    I think it cost him a good deal to say what he did, and he never varied his attitude once. That was typical of my husband: when he had worked things out for himself he would follow his conclusions at whatever cost to himself. I am sure it could not have been easy for him to see his wife more learned than he himself was, for Nathan alas could not even write his name; yet not once did he assert his rights and forbid me my pleasure, as lesser men might have done.
    Now that I did not work in the fields I spent most of my time tending my small garden: the beans, the brinjals, the chillies and the pumpkin vine which had been the first to grow under my hand. And their growth to me was constant wonder -- from the time the seed split and the first green shoots broke through, to the time when the young buds and fruit began to form. I was young and fanciful then, and it seemed to me not that they grew as I did, unconsciously, but that each of the dry, hard pellets I held in my palm had within it the very secret of life itself, curled tightly within, under leaf after protective leaf for safekeeping, fragile, vanishing with the first touch or sight. With each tender seedling that unfurled its small green leaf to my eager gaze, my excitement would rise and mount; winged, wondrous.
    "You will get used to it," Nathan said. "After many sowings and harvestings you will not notice these things." There have been many sowings and harvestings, but the wonder has not departed.
    I was tying the bean tendrils to the wire fence I had built when I saw a quiver in the leaves of the pumpkins. The fruit is ripening, I thought, the birds are already here. Or perhaps mice. Leaving the beans I went to look, stooping to part the leaves with my hand.
    Why did not the snake strike at once?
    Was the cobra surprised into stillness that a human should dare to touch it? My hands recoiled from the coldness of serpent flesh, my nails clawed at my palms, the leaves I had parted moved back to cover it. For a moment my legs remained stiffly planted beside the pumpkins, then the blood came racing to my limbs again, and I ran from the spot screeching with fear and not looking behind me.
    Nathan came rushing to me, almost knocking me over, caught and shook me.
    "What is it, what is it?" he shouted roughly.
    "A snake," I whispered, bereft of voice and breath. "A cobra. I touched it."
    He looked at me as if I were mad.
    "Go in and stay there," he said. I wanted only to fall at