The Ivory Swing by Janette Turner Hospital Page A

moan and some poignant fluttering of hands, Yashoda crumpled gracefully.
    It was effective melodrama. The crowds babbled in a paroxysm of excitement and rumour, but parted to allow movement to the waiting taxi. The young doctor pushed eagerly and importantly forward but at Juliet’s insistence consented to carry the limp, blanketed bundle into the car. He did so with solicitous awe.
    Juliet was grateful for the safe cavern of the ramshackle vehicle, reassured by the reliability of the known driver. He was one of the two young men whose base was Shasta Junction near the Nair estate, men who lived and slept at the Junction in their rusty taxis, who were known to all in that district.
    As soon as they were inside and the doors shut, the market hush gave way to mob bravado. Boys by the score swarmed over the hood and roof, peering through the windshield with flattened noses, craning to gawk upside-down through the sides. Giggling like hysterical schoolgirls, their betel-stained teeth flashing, a mêlée of men leaned in through the windows, stroking the children’s faces, running their fingers down Juliet’s hair with exclamations of wonder. No one, however, attempted to touch Yashoda. There was something too potently inauspicious about her shrouded huddled blackness.
    Juliet held herself rigid and impassive to the mauling. This had happened so often and yet she never became inured to it. Instead, a sense of embarrassment about her own body would engulf her. An obscure shame about her fair hair and skin. She felt like a zoo animal, or a fish in its tank blinking out at the myriad eyes of the curious.
    â€œStart the car!” she ordered the driver. “Start moving!”
    And gradually bodies fell away as moths who have flown too close fall back from a lamp.
    Juliet slumped back in relief.
    â€œYashoda, where did you get that thing, and what were you trying to do?”
    â€œTalk softly,” begged Yashoda. “Even the taxi driver must not know. If word should reach Shivaraman Nair …”
    The children blinked in astonishment and Prabhakaran gasped, a hand over his mouth.
    â€œHush, Prabhakaran! Please, you must never speak of this.”
    â€œNever, never!” he promised.
    â€œYashoda, why …?”
    â€œFor disguise. It is the only way I can move in public without being recognized, without disgrace. But I did not stop to think how strange … I was not expecting such tumult, such staring.”
    â€œI could have warned you about that,” Juliet said grimly. “How do you come to have one of those things, those body sacks?”
    â€œFrom Srinagar. I have been there once with my father on a business trip. Oh Juliet, I am so unhappy, even my father cannot help me. I will die of loneliness.”
    â€œI tried to visit you twice.”
    â€œYes, yes. I was sent away to my husband’s family in Palghat. They are very strict and conservative. Shivaraman Nair told them that I am bringing disgrace on the family. I was forbidden to leave my hut. All my jewellery was taken. Only by bribing a servant with the golden waist chain hidden under my sari was I able to send a message to my father in Cochin. He rescued me and I had some days, such happy days, in my father’s house again, but he has called Shivaraman Nair and they had long discussions. My father offered money and I was permitted to return.”
    â€œWhy did you have to return? Why not stay with your father?”
    â€œAh,” she sighed. “If only it were possible. Cochin is so much freer than Trivandrum. It makes me sad, Juliet, that you are living in this city instead of Madras or Cochin, and you are thinking all India is like this. It is difficult to explain our South Indian ways. But now I am frightened. How can I enter the estate? If I am seen in this garment it will soon be known about the bazaar. To be seen in public is bad, to disgrace myself as a Muslim is much worse. If I remove this