Nectar in a Sieve Read Free Page B

his feet in my terror, to beg him not to leave me alone, but he was staring at me unrelenting. At last I went, cowed, but with the waters of panic receding.
    "The snake had not stirred," Nathan said as he came back. He had cut it to pieces with his scythe and buried the remains so that I should not be upset.
    "Yet you have lived long enough to learn to disregard them," he said. "Are they not found everywhere -- tree snakes, water snakes and land snakes? You only need to be careful and they pass you by."
    "True," I said, shamefaced yet rallying. "But it is one thing to see a snake and another to touch it. I have never touched one before."
    "Nor again," Nathan said, grinning. "I have never seen you fly as fast as you did, child and all."
    I lowered my eyes, abashed. I was getting very awkward in my movements. I reallsed I must have looked like a water buffalo, running in such a frenzy.
    "Never mind," said Nathan gently. "It will soon be over now."
    He was right. Whether from fright, or the running, my baby was born a few days later, a month too soon but healthy for all that. Kali came as soon as she knew, and the midwife some hours later but in good time to deliver the child. They placed it in my arms when I had recovered a little from the birth, in silence. I uncovered the small form, beautiful, strong, but quite plain, a girl's body.
    I turned away and, despite myself, the tears came, tears of weakness and disappointment; for what woman wants a girl for her first-born? They took the child from me.
    Kali said: "Never mind. There will be many later on. You have plenty of time."
    It is so easy to be comforting when your own wishes have come true. Kali had three sons already, she could afford to sympathise.
    When I recall all the help Kali gave me with my first child, I am ashamed that I ever had such thoughts: my only excuse is that thoughts come of their own accord, although afterwards we can chase them away. As I had done for Kunthi, so Kali did for me -- but much more: sweeping and cleaning, washing and cooking. She even took pains to water the garden, and one morning I saw her tending the pumpkin vine, which was overladen with blossom. In that moment a cold horror came on me again: my hands grew clammy, and I could feel once more the serpent's touch. I shrieked at her then, and she came running, her face frightened at the wildness in my voice.
    "Whatever is wrong?" she gasped, running to my side. The baby had awakened and was crying loudly, so that she had to yell. I was so pleased to see her whole, I could not speak for relief. At last I told her, shakily, about the cobra, and, rather ashamed by now of making such a fuss, I exaggerated a little, making the snake enormous of its kind, and the danger more deadly than it had been.
    Women can sometimes be more soothing than men: so now Kali. "Poor thing," she said. "No wonder you are terrified. Anyone would be. But it is a pity your husband killed the snake, since cobras are sacred."
    "She is a fool," Nathan said contemptuously when I told him. "What would she have me do -- worship it while it dug its fangs in my wife? Go now -- forget it."
    I think I did, although once or twice when I saw the thickness of the pumpkin vines I wondered nervously what might lie concealed there; and then I would take up knife and shovel to clear away the tangle; but when I drew near and saw the broad glossy leaves and curling green tendrils I could not bring myself to do it; and now I am glad I did not, for that same vine yielded to me richly, pumpkin after pumpkin of a size and colour that I never saw elsewhere.
    We called our daughter Irawaddy, after one of the great rivers of Asia, for of all things water was most precious to us; but it was too long a name for the tiny little thing she was, and soon she became Ira. Nathan at first paid scant attention to her: he had wanted a son to continue his line and walk beside him on the land, not a puling infant who would take with her a dowry and leave