So Punchi Menika and Hinnihami grew up to be somewhat different from the other village children, who crawl and play about the compounds, always with the women and always listening to women's gossip. Long before they had grown strong and big enough to go down in the morning and evening with Karlinahami to the tank, and to carry back on their heads the red earthenware waterpots, they had learnt from Silindu to sit by his side for hour upon hour through the hot afternoons, very still and very silent, while he stared silently before him, or droned out his interminable tales. They grew up to be strange and silent children, sitting one on either side of him in a long, thoughtless trance. And they learnt to believe all he told them about the strange world of jungle which surrounded them, the world of devils, animals, and trees. But above all they learnt to love him, blindly, as a dog loves his master. When they grew old enough to trot along by his side, Silindu used to take them out with him into the jungle. The villagers were astonished and shocked, but Silindu went his own way. He showed them the water-holes upon the rocks; the thick jungle where the elephant hides himself from the heat of the day, strolling leisurely among the trees and breaking off great branches to feed upon the leaves as he strolls; the wallow of the buffalo, and the caves where the bear and the leopard make their lairs. He showed them the sambur lying during the day in the other great caves; they dashed out, tens and tens of them, like enormous bats from the shadow of the overhanging rocks, to disappear with a crash into the jungle below. He taught them to walk so that no leaf rustled or twig snapped under their feet, to creep up close to the deer and the sambur and the pig. They were surprised at first that the animals in the jungle did not speak to them as they always did to Silindu when he was alone. But Silindu explained it to them. 'You are very young,' he said. 'You do not know the tracks. You are strange to the beasts. But they know me. I have grown old among the tracks. A man must live many years in the jungle before the beasts speak to him, or he can understand what they say.'
Punchi Menika and Hinnihami were also unlike the other village children in appearance. They, like Silindu, never had fever, and even in the days of greatest scarcity Karlinahami had seen that they got food. Karlinahami was far more careful to wash them than most mothers are: she used to quote the saying, 'Dirt is bad and children are trouble, but a dirty child is the worst of troubles.' The result was that they never got parangi, or the swollen belly and pale skin of fever. Their skin was smooth and blooming; it shone with a golden colour, like the coat of a fawn when the sun shines on it. Their eyes were large and melancholy; like the eyes of Buddha in the Jataka, 'they were like two windows made of sapphire shining in a golden palace.' Their limbs were strong and straight, for their wanderings with Silindu had made their muscles firm as a man's, not soft like the women's who sit about in the compound, cooking and gossiping and sleeping all day.
There was therefore considerable jealousy among the women, and ill-feeling against Karlinahami, when they saw how her foster children were growing up. When they were ten or eleven years old, it often burst out against her in angry taunts at the tank.
'O Karlinahami!' Nanchohami, the headman's wife, would say, 'you are growing an old woman and, alas, childless! But you have done much for your brother's children. Shameless they must be to leave it to you to fetch the water from the tank and not to help you. This is the fourth chatty full you are carrying to-day. I have seen it with these eyes. The lot of the childless woman is a hard one. See how my little one of eight years helps me!'
'Nanchohami, your tongue is still as sharp as chillies. Punchi Menika has gone with my brother, and Hinnihami is busy in the house.'
'Punchi Menika wants but three things to make her a man. I pity you, Karlinahami, to live in the house of a madman, and to bring up his children shameless, having no children of your own. They are vedda[5] children, and will be vedda women, wandering in the jungle like men.'
The other women laughed, and Angohami, a dirty shrivelled woman, with thin shrivelled breasts, called out in a shrill voice:
'Why should we suffer these veddas in the village? Their compound smells of their own droppings, and of the offal and rotten meat on which they feed. I have borne six children, and the last died but yesterday. In the morning he was well: then Silindu cast the evil eye upon him as he passed our door, and in the evening he was dead. They wither our children that their own may thrive.'
'You lie,'said Karlinahami, roused for the moment by this abuse; 'you lie, mother of dirt. Yesterday at this hour I saw your Podi Sinho here in the tank, pale and shivering with fever, and pouring the cold tank water over himself. How should such a mother keep her children? All know that you have borne six, and that all are dead. What did you ever give them but foul words?'
'Go and lie with your brother, the madman, the vedda, the pariah,' shrieked Angohami as Karlinahami turned to go. 'Go to your brother of the evil eye. You blighter of others' children, eater of offal, vesi, vesige mau! Go to him of the evil eye, belli, bellige duwa; go to your brother. Aiyo! aiyo! My little Podi Sinho! I am a mother only of the dead, a mother of six dead children. Look at my breasts, shrivelled and milkless. I say to the father of my child,[6] "Father of Podi Sinho," I say, "there is no kurakkan in the house, there is no millet and no pumpkin, not even a pinch of salt. Three days now I have eaten nothing but jungle leaves. There is no milk in my breasts for the child." Then I get foul words and blows. "Does the rain come in August?" he says. "Can I make the kurakkan flower in July? Hold your tongue, you fool. August is the month in which the children die. What can I do?" Then comes fever and Silindu's evil eye, curse him, and the little ones die. Aiyo! aiyo!'
'Your man is right,' said Nanchohami. 'This is the month when the children die. Last year in this month I buried one and my brother's wife another. Good rain never falls now, and there is always hunger and fever. The old die and the little ones with them. The father of my children has but nine houses under him, and makes but five shillings a year from his headmanship. His father's father, who was headman before him, had thirty houses in his headmanship, and twenty shillings were paid him by the Government every year, besides twenty-four kurunies of paddy from the fields below the tank. I have not seen rice these five years. The headman now gives all and receives nothing.' Here one of the women laughed. 'You may well laugh, Podi Nona,' she continued. 'Did not he[7] lend your man last year twenty kurunies[8] of kurakkan,[9] and has a grain of it come back to our house? And Silindu owes another thirty, and came but yesterday for more. And Angohami there, who whines about her Podi Sinho, her man has had twenty-five kurunies since the reaping of the last crop.'
These words of Nanchohami were not without effect. An uneasy movement began among the little group of women at the mention of debts: clothes were gathered up, the chatties of water placed on their heads, and they began to move away out of reach of the sharp tongue of the headman's wife. And as they moved away up the small path, which led from the tank to the compounds, they murmured together that Nanchohami did not seem to remember that they had to repay two kurunies of kurakkan for every kuruni lent to them.
Nanchohami had touched the mainspring upon which the life of the village worked—debt. The villagers lived upon debt, and their debts were the main topic of their conversation. A good kurakkan crop, from two to four acres of chena, would be sufficient to support a family for a year. But no one, not even the headman, ever enjoyed the full crop which he had reaped. At the time of reaping a band of strangers from the little town of Kamburupitiya, thirty miles away, would come into the village. Mohamadu Lebbe Ahamadu Cassim, the Moorman boutique-keeper, had supplied clothes to be paid for in grain, with a hundred per cent, interest, at the time of reaping; the fat Sinhalese Mudalali,[10] Kodikarage Allis Appu, had supplied grain and curry stuffs on the same terms; and among a crowd of smaller men the sly-faced low-caste man, who called himself Achchige Don Andris (his real name Andrissa would have revealed his caste), who, dressed in dirty white European trousers and a coat, was the agent of the tavern-keeper in Kamburupitiya, from whom the villagers had taken on credit the native spirit, made from the juice of the cocoanut flowers, to be drunk at the time of marriages. The villagers neither obtained nor expected any pity from this horde. With the reaping of the chenas came the settlement of debts. With their little greasy notebooks, full of unintelligible letters and figures, they descended upon the chenas; and after calculations, wranglings, and abuse, which lasted for hour after hour, the accounts were settled, and the strangers left the village, their carts loaded with pumpkins, sacks of grain, and not infrequently the stalks of Indian hemp,[11] which by Government order no man may grow or possess, for the man that smokes it becomes mad. And when the strangers had gone, the settlement with the headman began; for the headman, on a small scale, lent grain on the same terms in times of scarcity, or when seed was wanted to sow the chenas.
In the end the villager carried but little grain from his chena to his hut. Very soon after the reaping of the crop he was again at the headman's door, begging for a little kurakkan to be repaid at the next harvest, or tramping the thirty miles to Kamburupitiya to hang about the bazaar, until the Mudalali agreed once more to enter his name in the greasy notebook.
With the traders in Kamburupitiya the transactions were purely matters of business, but with the headman the whole village recognised that they were something more. It was a very good thing for Babehami, the Arachchi, to feel that Silindu owed him many kurunies of kurakkan which he could not repay. When Babehami wanted some one to clear a chena for him, he asked Silindu to do it; and Silindu, remembering the debt, dared not refuse. When Silindu shot a deer—for which offence the Arachchi should have brought him before the police court at Kamburupitiya—he remembered his debt, and the first thing he did was to carry the best piece of meat as an offering to the headman's house. And Babehami was a quiet, cunning man in the village: he never threatened, and rarely talked of his loans to his debtors, but there were few in the village who dared to cross him, and who did not feel hanging over them the power of the little man.
The power which they felt hanging over them was by no means imaginary; it could make the life of the man who offended the headman extremely unpleasant. It was not only by his loans that Babehami had his hand upon the villagers; their daily life could be made smooth or difficult by him at every turn.
The life of the village and of every man in it depended upon the cultivation of chenas. A chena is merely a piece of jungle, which every ten years is cleared of trees and undergrowth and sown with grain broadcast and with vegetables. The villagers owned no jungle themselves; it belonged to the Crown, and no one might fell a tree or clear a chena in it without a permit from the Government. It was through these permits that the headman had his hold upon the villagers. Application for one had to be made through him; it was he who reported if a clearing had been made without one, or if a man, having been given one, cleared more jungle than it allowed him to clear. Every one in the village knew well that Babehami's friends would find no difficulty in obtaining the authority to clear a chena, and that the Agent Hamadoru[12] would never hear from Babehami whether they had cleared four acres or eight. But the life of the unfortunate man, who had offended the headman, would be full of dangers and difficulties. The permit applied for by him would be very slow in reaching his hands: when it did reach his hands, if he cleared half an acre more than it allowed him to clear, his fine would be heavy; and woe betide him if he rashly cleared a chena without a permit at all.
Babehami had never liked Silindu, who was a bad debtor. Silindu was too lazy even to cultivate a chena properly, and even in a good year his crop was always the smallest in the village. He was always in want, and always borrowing; and Babehami found it no easy task to gather in principal and interest after the boutique-keepers from Kamburupitiya had taken their dues. And he was not an easy man to argue with: if he wanted a loan he would, unheeding of any excuse or refusal, hang about the headman's door for a whole day. But if it were a case of repayment, he would sit staring over his creditor's head, listening, without a sign or a word, to the quiet persuasive arguments of the headman.
The headman's dislike became more distinct after the birth of Punchi Menika and Hinnihami. Silindu had resented his interference between him and his wife, and when Dingihami died bitter words had passed between them; Though Silindu soon forgot them, Babehami did not. For years Silindu did not realise what was taking place, but he vaguely felt that life was becoming harder for him. A month after Dingihami's death his store of grain was exhausted, and it became necessary for him to begin his yearly borrowings. Accordingly, he took his gun and went in the evening to the nearest water-hole to wait for deer. The first night he was unsuccessful: no deer came to drink; but on the second he shot a doe. He skinned the deer, cut it up, and carried the meat to his hut. He then carefully chose the best piece of meat, and took it with him to Babehami's house. The headman was squatting in his doorway chewing betel. His little eyes twinkled when he saw Silindu with the meat.
'Ralahami,'[13] said Silindu, stopping just outside the door, 'yesterday I was in the jungle collecting domba fruit—what else is there to eat?—when I smelt a smell of something dead some fathoms away. I searched about, and soon I came upon the carcass of a doe killed by a leopard—the marks of his claws were under the neck, and the belly was eaten. The meat I have brought to my house. This piece is for you.'
The headman took the meat in silence, and hung it up in the house. He fetched a chew of betel and gave it to Silindu. The two men then squatted down, one on each side of the door. For a long time neither spoke: their chewing was only interrupted every now and then by the ejection of a jet of red saliva. At last Babehami broke the silence:
'Four days ago I was in Kamburupitiya—I was called to the kachcheri there. They asked me two fanams[14] in the bazaar for a cocoanut.'
'Aiyo! I have not seen a cocoanut for two years.'
'Two fanams! And last year at this time they were but one fanam each. In the bazaar I met the Korala Mahatmaya. The Korala Mahatmaya is a hard man: he said to me, "Arachchi, there are guns in your village for which no permit has been given by the Agent Hamadoru." I said to him, "Ralahami, if there be, the fault is not mine." Then he said, "The order has come from the Agent Hamadoru to the Disa Mahatmaya[15] that if one gun be found without permit in a headman's village there will be trouble both for the Arachchi and the Korala." Now the Disa Mahatmaya is a good man, but the Korala is hard; and they say in Kamburupitiya that the Agent Hamadoru is very hard and strict, and goes round the villages searching for guns for which no permits have been given. They say, too, that he will come this way next month.'
There was a short silence, and then Babehami continued:
'It is five months, Silindu, since I told you to take a permit for your gun, and you have not done so yet. The time to pay three shillings has gone by, and you will now have to pay four. The Korala is a hard man, and the Agent Hamadoru will come next month.'
Silindu salaamed.
'Ralahami, I am a poor man. How can I pay four shillings or even three? There is not a fanam in the house. There was a permit taken two years ago. You are my father and my mother. I will hide the gun in a place that only I know of, and if it be taken or question be made, is it not easy to say that the stock was broken, and it was not considered necessary to take a permit for a broken gun?'
But the argument, which before had been successful with Babehami, now seemed to have lost its strength.
'A permit is required. It is the order of Government. I have told you the Korala is a hard man, and he is angry with me because I brought him but two cocoanuts as a present, whereas other Arachchis bring him an amunam of paddy. For I, too, am a poor man.'
Silindu sat in helpless silence. The hopelessness of raising two rupees to pay for a gun licence for the moment drove out of his mind the object of his coming to Babehami's house. All that he felt was the misery of a new misfortune, and, as was his nature, he sat dumb under it. At last, however, the pressing need of the moment again recurred to him, and he started in the tortuous way, habitual to villagers, to approach the subject.
'Ralahami, is there any objection to my clearing Nugagahahena next chena season?'
'There are three months before the chena season. Why think of that now?'
'When the belly is empty, the mouth talks of rice. Last year my chena crop was bad. There was but little rain, and the elephants broke in and destroyed much kurakkan. The Lord Buddha himself would be powerless against the elephants.'
Silindu got up as if to go. He took a step towards the stile which led into the compound, and then turned back as if he had just remembered something, and began in a soft, wheedling voice:
'Ralahami, there is nothing to eat in the house. There is Karlinahami to feed too. If you could but lend me ten kurunies! I would repay it twofold at the reaping of Nugagahahena.'
Babehami chewed for some minutes, and then spat with great deliberation.
'I have no grain to lend now, Silindu.'
'Ralahami, it is only ten kurunies I am asking for—only ten kurunies—and surely the barn behind your house is full.'
'There is very little grain in the barn now, and what there is will not last me until the reaping of the next crop. There is the old man, my father, to be fed, and my wife and her brother, and the two children.'
'Will you let me die of hunger? and my two children? Give but five kurunies, and I will repay it threefold.'
'If you had come last poya, Silindu, I could have given it. But I owed fifteen rupees to Nandiyas, the boutique-keeper in Kamburupitiya, for clothes, and I took kurakkan to pay it. The barn is all but empty.'
'Aiyo! We must die of hunger then. Give but one measure, and I will repay one kuruni at next reaping.'
'I paid away all my grain that was in the barn. The grain which remains is my father's, and he keeps it for his use. You must go to the Mudalali in Kamburupitiya, Silindu, and borrow from him. And when you go there, remember, you must take a permit for the gun.'
Silindu felt that he had nothing more to say. He had the meat at home which he would dry and take to Kamburupitiya and sell in the bazaar. Then he would have to borrow from the Mudalali, who knew him too well to give anything but ruinous terms. Perhaps in that way he would manage to return to the village with a few kurunies of kurakkan and a gun licence. He walked slowly away from the headman's compound. Babehami's little eyes twinkled as he saw Silindu move away, and he smiled to himself.