The Covenant of Water

1932, Parambil

Six years after tracing his first letters with the kaniyan, Philipose has yet to master a skill more vital to him: swimming. He refuses to concede defeat. Every year when the flood waters recede, he tries again. Joppan, who is more comfortable in water than out, perseveres the longest in trying to teach him. But the day comes when Joppan refuses to accompany him to the river, and not just because he works all day. It’s the first falling-out between the two friends. Philipose persuades Shamuel to go with him because he has vowed not to go alone.

When Philipose went off to primary school, Joppan enrolled with him. Shamuel didn’t approve but couldn’t say so to Big Ammachi. What did a pulayan boy need with letters? Then, after third standard, Joppan witnessed a barge adrift in the new canal near Parambil. It got wedged and took on water. The boatman was unconscious from drink. Somehow Joppan pried it free and then, by himself, poled it down to join the river and on from there steered it to the jetty in front of the godown of its owner, Iqbal. The grateful proprietor offered Joppan a job and he took it. Big Ammachi was furious with Shamuel, as though it were his fault! The job is a good one. Still, Shamuel wishes the boy would just work at Parambil instead. After Shamuel’s time, Joppan could take over from him. Wouldn’t that be the natural thing to do?

“Do you think this is the year I master it, Shamuel?” Philipose says as the two of them head to the river, while the nine-year-old windmills his arms, rehearsing a new stroke that he’s convinced will keep him afloat. Shamuel doesn’t reply, hurrying after the “little thamb’ran” just as he once scrambled to keep up with the boy’s father.

At the dock, the two boatmen are counting flies. One fellow’s front incisors jut out like the bow of his canoe, his upper lip draped around them. The sight of Philipose pulling off his shirt rouses the men from their lethargy. “Adada! Look who’s back!” the toothy one says, his gestures as languid as the slow river. “The Swimming Master!” Philipose doesn’t hear them. With his eyes wide open, pinching his nose, he takes a deep breath and jumps in. That much he has mastered: with his lungs full he will always pop up, though he only tries this in the shallows. And he does pop up, his glistening hair sheeting over his eyes like a black cloth. Now, his arms thrash wildly: his attempt at “swimming.”

“Eyes open!” Shamuel shouts, because he knows from his years with the thamb’ran that this confusion with water is always worse with eyes closed. But the boy doesn’t hear him. Joppan believes Philipose is hard of hearing, but Shamuel thinks the little thamb’ran, unlike the big one, hears only what he wants to hear.

“It’s shallow, monay,” the toothy boatman calls. “Just stand up!” The frenzied flailing stirs up mud and spins Philipose in circles, first on his belly, then on his back, then he heads down, white soles flashing. Shamuel has seen enough and jumps in and rights him like a jug that’s been knocked over.

The boatmen clap, which pleases Philipose. Despite his eyeballs parting ways from each other, he grins victoriously, pausing the celebration to retch and disgorge the mud he borrowed from the river. “I think I was nearly almost halfway across this time, wasn’t I?” he sputters.

“Ooh, aah, more than halfway!” the toothy one says. The other boatman laughs so hard he loses his beedi.

Philipose’s face falls. Shamuel leads him home, shouting over his shoulder, “Why you fellows need oars when your tongues can do the job?” He looks nervously at the boy, who is unusually silent. He did not inherit his father’s taciturn nature. Could it be the little thamb’ran is discouraged?

“I’m doing something wrong, Shamuel.”

“What you’re doing wrong is getting into the water, monay,” he says sternly. He’ll be firm even if Big Ammachi isn’t. “Your father doesn’t like to swim. Do you see him near the water? Be like he is.”

Without being aware of it, Shamuel speaks of the big thamb’ran as if he’s working in the next field over. After all, the artifacts of his master’s life are all there and call out to him: the trestle, the pickaxe, the plow, the fences their hands dug together, every field they plowed, every tree . . . How could the thamb’ran not be around?

Philipose peels away to desultorily kick an ola ball. Shamuel heads to the kitchen.

“Did he get any farther this time?” Big Ammachi says.

“Farther down in the mud. He buried his head in the riverbed like a karimeen. I dug mud out of his ears and nose.”

Big Ammachi sighs. “Do you know how hard it is for me to let him go to the river?”

“Then forbid him!”

“I can’t. My husband made me promise. All I can do is hold him to his vow not to go alone.”

Later she finds Philipose sitting with his ball in the shade of their oldest coconut tree, poking at an abandoned anthill with a twig. He is downcast. She sits with him, ruffles his hair.

“Maybe I should try to go up,” he says softly, pointing to the top of the tree, “instead of . . .”

What is it with men needing to go up or down, turn bird or fish? Why not just stay on the ground? He looks at her so intensely it makes her shudder. He believes I have all the answers. That I can protect him from the disappointments of this life. “Up is good,” she says.

After a while, the boy speaks. “Did you know my father climbed this tree the week before he died? Shamuel says he cut down tender coconuts for all to drink that day!” The animation in his voice is returning, like a parched shrub uncurling after the rain. Thank God he didn’t inherit his father’s silence.

“Aah. Well . . . he almost fell—”

“Still, he managed to go all the way to the sky,” the boy says, standing and putting one foot into the wedge cut on this side of the bark, gazing up as he visualizes this feat, looking to where the tree ends, and where the firmament begins.

“Aah, that’s true . . .” she says.

But it isn’t true. Evidently Shamuel hasn’t told Philipose what really happened. Her husband had stopped climbing in the last year of his life. But a week before he died, some impulse sent him aloft. The tree was as familiar to him as the bodies of the two women who bore him children. Decades ago he’d cut the wedges that serve as footholds. It wasn’t the tree but his strength that betrayed him and he was stuck a quarter of the way up. Shamuel climbed after him, a loop of coir strung between his feet, jackknifing himself up till he reached the thamb’ran. Shamuel touched the thamb’ran’s foot and got him to slide it down to the next toehold. “Aah, aah, that’s it. It’s nothing for you, isn’t it? Now the other . . . and slide the hands down.” She could only breathe when he was back on earth, the only place those feet belonged now. “I cut down tender coconuts for you,” her husband said to her, pointing vaguely behind him, but there were no coconuts. “Aah. I’m very happy for that,” she replied. They walked back into the house hand in hand, not worrying about who was watching.

Philipose brings her back to earth. “I may not want to climb that tree just yet. It’s a bit high for me, isn’t it?” She detects the rare note of caution in her son’s voice.

“For now, it is.”

“Ammachi, if he was strong enough to climb this tree . . . then why did he die?”

He catches her off guard. By her feet, red ants carry off a leaf, absorbed in their labor. If she dropped a pebble on them, would they see it as a natural calamity? Did they talk to God, or answer impossible questions from their children?

“The Bible says we live three score and ten if we’re lucky. Seventy years, that is. Your father was close. Sixty-five. I’m much younger than him. I was thirty-six when he died.” She sees worry in his face and knows he’s doing the arithmetic. “I’m forty-five now, monay.”

Her son puts a thin arm around her and hugs her. They stay that way for a long while.

Abruptly he turns to her and says, “I’ll never be able to swim for a reason, isn’t that so? My father also couldn’t swim for a reason.” The expression on his face is no longer that of her nine-year-old. In admitting defeat he looks older, wiser. “What is the reason, Ammachi?”

She sighs. She doesn’t know the reason. Perhaps he might be the one to discover the reason. How wonderful if his stubborn determination turned into a quest to cure the Condition! He could be the savior of future generations. He could spare his children from what he suffers. For now she can only name it for him, describe the havoc it has caused this family since ancient times. Perhaps she will hold off on showing him the genealogy—the Water Tree—so as not to frighten him with visions of an early death. She takes a deep breath. “I will tell you what I know.”