The Ceremony of the Corner

““Tuy father, art thou better than he? Or wiser?”

She had refused the word when they flung it at her, but it rankled like a thorn in her soul, and again and again she felt the hurt of it. And one day, pitifully lonely, she seemed to walk back through the years to the hour when she first realized her father had indeed gone, never to return.

It was just eleven days after his death, and the Ceremony of the Corner had begun. She saw it now, felt it, lived in it, was part of it again.

* * * * *

The doors and windows of the long, low living-room are shut. The air is heavy with a smothered smell of frankincense. There, in the dimly lighted corner, is her father’s muslin scarf outspread. On it she sees his little, dear, own things, his brass betel-box, his betel-nut parer, and a morsel of lime. She sees his books too, some of paper, some of palm-leaf strung in a frame. His gold rings are there, and his silver waist-chain, his sandals and umbrella. Is that not his step in the house? Will he not open the door and come in?

But no, it is only women who are coming. Mimosa sees them, all her women relatives to uttermost degree; for this is the Women’s Festival; no man comes near it.

Now the room is full to the doors. It is very hot and stuffy. Each woman has a leaf in her hand.

The doors are opening. Pressing through the throng come Mimosa’s elder sisters. They are spreading the feast for the Dead. Rice-cakes, piles of knobbly sugar-balls, curly honey-cakes, slabs of sticky, luscious gum, nutty lumps of moist sugar. All except the rice-cakes are oily. Mimosa smells the oily smells. Sesame and cocoanut mix with the castor-oil that feeds the wicks afloat in shallow cups in the tall brass lamp. Through these mixed smells come little whiffs of frankincense.

Now by the flickering yellow light Mimosa sees the women gather in a tight knot round the white scarf in the corner. They are looking at the little intimate things, and their hearts are moved.

Mimosa is crying quietly. The sandals and umbrella — why does he not need them for this journey? Where has he gone?

Now one takes a censer and burns sweet spices

ye in it, and drops incense on the flame, and slowly censes the offerings. And each woman shakes down her hair and, dipping her leaf into the incense, lights a morsel of camphor and touches her brow and breast and eyes with the ashes. And she marks, each woman on her forehead, Siva’s sign.

And they chant the death dirge, swaying backwards and forwards till they are exhausted.

Mimosa, tears falling fast, hair in masses down her back, sways with them, chants the death dirge too, cries to the father perhaps not yet out of reach.

Then, with a quick change of feeling, the women spring up, and Mimosa with them, dazed as she is and startled; with them she twists up her hair in a deft knot, picks up a fragment of sweet or cake, goes out with the others to the courtyard.

Now the clear blue is above them, and about them the usual things of the day. They toss their sweet things in the air, and call Ka, ka! and the crows flock down pleased and noisy and commonplace, and the wild frenzy of a moment ago is as a dream when one awakes.

A little apart Mimosa stands, dazzled by the bright light and the noise and the crows’ clamour. And her mother pours into each outstretched sa7i handfuls of the good things from that scarf in the corner, and the Ritual of the Corner is over. * * * * *

Mimosa drew a deep breath. Why had she been so long away? She shook herself impatiently, the day’s work must be done, she must come back to it. But still she stood among the shadows. The spell of the drone of the dirge was upon her. She was breathing still the heavy air, smelling the incense and the oils, seeing through the bluish smoke the flicker of yellow light, the white cloth, the brown and golden cakes and sweets, and the dear familiar things, feeling the clutch of them at her heart. Drugged by the scent of the frankincense, she was one of those swaying women still, chanting the dirge of the dead.

As one writes, one is there oneself. Such experiences are unforgettable. Where there is real sorrow, it is as if love, longing, a wistful wonder, pity, sympathy, and almost awe and fear — for the things of the dead bring him almost back — like so many strings of a delicate instrument, lie exposed for the play of unseen fingers. The women seem to spread their very being bare to the influences of emotion. And then the dramatic change, the sudden releasing of a too taut string, the run out into the open and the light-hearted tossing of the food to the vociferous crows, the simple, sensible turning from the clouded mysteries of death and grief to the commonplace of pleasant food — who that has shared it could forget? Back to their homes the women go, laden with sweets for the children there, and all is good and normal again. Only the sorely bereaved mourn still. For them the pain is a devouring thing that cannot be appeased.

But of the meaning of it all they hardly seem to think. No one troubles to tell them that the throwing of food to the birds, like the laying of a ball of rice on the dead mouth, is for the nourishment of the subtle body which is all that now remains between the departed and absorption in the universal soul. All the women know is that somehow the dead are helped, for a faith in life after death continues imperishable in the human heart, and they trust their dead live somewhere. But Mimosa, coming slowly back from that hour of memories, longed to know more, to be sure; ached in every fibre for her father; above all, yearned, burned with desire to know if indeed he had turned to her own true God at last. He had passed with only that one unexplained word: ‘‘I go to the Supreme.’’

Could it be that he had accepted the truth, though at the very threshold of death? ‘‘O father,’’ she had almost cried, and then stopped, knowing nothing of any such appeal, and turning to the ever-living Father she rested her heart on the knowledge of a love that she had proved and could lay hold upon, undismayed by unanswered questions. ‘*‘ You know all these matters, my Father, to You are not all such things perfectly known? And as for me, I cannot leave You. No, not even if my own mortal father did not know You, can I leave You. You are known to me, my Father. And will You not take care of us, these my children and me?’’