The Covenant of Water

1943, Cochin

The war effort has every tailor in Cochin stitching uniforms, and they turn away Uplift Master and Philipose as the two of them scramble to outfit Philipose for college. One tailor suggests they try Jew Town. So they walk past the spice market, gawking at the mountains of pepper, cloves, and cardamom inside the high-ceilinged godowns. They stop to watch an ancient ritual: a buyer squats before a seller and grasps his hand; the seller throws his thorthu over their hands. With silent finger signals that are centuries old and don’t require a shared language, offer and counteroffer fly back and forth under the wiggling thorthu, hidden from the other buyers.

A tailor in Jew Town has the ready-made clothes they want, while from a dry goods store they purchase a metal trunk, bedroll and bedding, leather sandals, blue laundry soap, white body soap, and toothpaste. “No more green-gram shampoo or powdered-­charcoal toothpaste, my friend!” Uplift Master says cheerfully, trying his best to buoy the younger man’s spirits.

Big Ammachi’s fervent wish had been that her son would study medicine; his saving the life of the boatman’s baby was God showing him his calling. But Philipose felt God was showing him quite the opposite: that he had no stomach for sickness or for disease. He’d been squeamish before that event, but ever since he would faint at the sight of blood if he didn’t quickly sit down. It didn’t help Big Ammachi’s argument that the boatman’s baby died six months later from a diarrheal illness. If her son had a calling, had one passion, it was for words on a page, and the magical way they could transport him and his listeners to faraway lands. “Ammachi, when I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time I’ve lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school. Ahab, Queequeg, Ophelia, and other characters die on the page so that we might live better lives.” It bordered on blasphemy, but he had her blessing to study literature. He had applied to the prestigious Madras Christian College—the place Koshy Saar studied and taught—and he had the old man’s letters of support. He was ecstatic when he was admitted. But in the two weeks preceding his departure, Big Ammachi and Uplift Master noticed that Philipose’s excitement gave way to apprehension; he seemed withdrawn. Uplift Master had tried his best to reassure him.

At three in the afternoon Uplift Master and Philipose take a rickshaw from their lodge to the train station. The Cochin heat and humidity are so stultifying that houseflies lose altitude and tumble to the floor. Shop boys sit heavy-lidded after lunch, as unmoving as the cement barriers in the harbor. The city will come to life again only in the evening, when it is cooler.

But on the platform of the new Ernakulam South station, the imminent departure of The Mail creates its own whirlwind. Porters wobble down the platform with headloads of luggage, their faces strained. A Romeo, garland in hand, hurdles over a cart, sprinting to say his goodbye. The Anglo-Indian engineer, a toe on the footplate, leans out to examine his smoke plume with the eye of an artist mixing colors, and in anticipation of pulling the release chain.

“First whistle,” says a cheerful Uplift Master. He stands on the platform outside the bogie, looking wistfully through the bars into the third-class sleeper. Philipose, seated inside by the window, was first in his compartment; the seven other passengers are settling in.

Uplift Master whispers, “By the time you reach Madras tomorrow morning, you’ll be one big happy family, I tell you.” Philipose doesn’t hear him and raises his eyebrows quizzically. Master speaks louder. “I said, I’d give a lot to come with you the whole way. Big Ammachi offered . . . but Shoshamma . . .” He pushes aside the memory of her frown. “You’ll have so much fun!” He thumps the side of the carriage as if it were a beloved bullock. “You know I never slept better than on a train.”

Uplift Master is in pants and a collared shirt—Philipose has never seen him in this formal garb—with a handkerchief folded into a rectangle and parked inside his collar to protect it from sweat. “Second whistle is late,” the older man says, checking his watch. Just then, they hear the crunch of hundreds of boots, and the platform is soon thick with Indian soldiers marching past, rifles and kit in hand. The silent, tanned, fierce-looking men barely register their surroundings. A third of them are bearded, turbaned Sikhs. The Fourth Infantry’s Red Eagle insignia is stenciled on the trunks in the carts that follow. “Aah, no wonder,” Uplift Master says. These men were rushed to British Sudan and fought for the liberation of Abyssinia from the Italians; they have seen death and brought it about. The Fourth is headed to Burma, where the Japanese are advancing. The war that seemed so abstract in Parambil is suddenly all too real, etched on the faces of these brave men.

Uplift Master strokes his mustache with his thumbnail. He sees Philipose unconsciously imitate him, though in his opinion the nineteen-year-old’s downy shadow is better off shaved than shaped. But who can blame him? A man without a mustache is exposed and vulnerable, like an unbaptized child, the soul still in jeopardy.

“By the way,” Uplift Master says, “keep this letter just in case. It’s to my friend Mohan Nair. He’s the man to see in a pinch. He runs Satkar Lodge, near Egmore Station.” Philipose puts it away. Uplift Master sighs. “Oh Madras . . . how I miss it! Marina Beach, Moore Market . . .”

Philipose has never heard this note of regret before. “Why did you leave?”

“Why indeed, eh? I had a good job, pension fund . . . But doesn’t every Malayali dream of coming home? My father had no land to give me. When Shoshamma inherited the Parambil property, it was our dream come true. A blessing.”

“For us too,” Philipose says quietly. “My mother always says so.”

Uplift Master waves this off, but he’s pleased. The carriage jerks. Master reaches in and squeezes Philipose’s shoulder. “We’re all so proud! Someone from Parambil going to Madras Christian College. You’ll be the very first in our family to get a degree! It’s as if we’re all going with you on this train. God bless you, monay!”

Master walks alongside; the carriage is moving at a snail’s pace; he’s chagrined by the look of dread on Philipose’s face. “Don’t worry, monay. All will be well, I promise!” He waves long after his ward’s hand is no longer visible.

Uplift Master wants to weep, wants to run after the train. His being feels fractured in two and it has nothing to do with Philipose. One half, the better half, pines to jump on that train and resume his life as a clerk in What-Was-Once-The-Old-East-India-Company. The other half, a solitary figure with slumped shoulders and pants that he can no longer button, stands despondent on the deserted platform, only a stray dog to keep him company, unable to imagine going home.

When he closes his eyes, he can smell the leather binding on the ledgers of What-Was-Once-The-Old-East-India-Company (a name he prefers to “Postlethwaite & Sons,” which knots his tongue). For a poor fisherman’s son, educated only to high school, to have been a clerk there was a towering achievement. He and Shoshamma were happy in Madras. Like all Malayalis, they fantasized about buying a property back in God’s Own Country one day, returning to the lush green land of their birth, with a backyard bursting with plantain and kappa. On Fridays he and Shoshamma would go to Marina Beach, sit on the sand, lean on each other, and even hold hands. When the lottery vendor’s cart came by, they bought a ticket and said a prayer. Inevitably, once they got home, they’d make love, Shoshamma’s hair smelling of the salt breeze and jasmine.

When Shoshamma inherited the property, there was no debating what they should do. They had won the lottery. He resigned, they took leave of their friends, and they moved to Parambil. Village Uplift keeps him busy, but he misses the bustle of the Madras office, misses the brokers and agents—British and native—who came and went. He was a cog in the engine of global commerce, and he’d recount to a rapt Shoshamma the stories of the day. Of course, he never mentioned Blossom, the Anglo-Indian stenographer with the flowery frocks with tight bodices who had a special smile for him. Blossom unlocked a door in his imagination. Oh, the things his mind conjured up! When he was intimate with Shoshamma, he sometimes imagined Blossom saying naughty things in his ear, because with Shoshamma their intimacies took place in sepulchral silence. Now, at Parambil, even Blossom has faded. A fantasy far from its source is hard to sustain, just as winning the lottery doesn’t bring happiness forever.

“Geography is destiny,” his boss, J. J. Gilbert, loved to say. Uplift Master thinks it should be “Geography is personality.” Because the Madras Shoshamma who bathed, chewed a clove, put on a fresh sari and jasmine in her hair before he returned from office, gave way to the Parambil Shoshamma, who wore the shapeless chatta and mundu. Gone was the sight of her bare midriff peeking between sari and blouse, or the way those garments accentuated her breasts and buttocks. In Madras they were occasional churchgoers but now Shoshamma insisted they attend every Sunday and she instituted evening prayers. She was as loving and playful as ever, but she began meddling in affairs of business that she had always left to him. It was small things at first, like countermanding his orders to their pulayan. Then, not long ago, he returned from Trivandrum to find Shosh­amma had sold their entire coconut harvest to the trader Coconut Kurian. Uplift Master was stunned, hurt, and angry, but held his tongue. He decided to punish her with silence. The very next day, an anti-hoarding edict passed, and coconut prices plummeted, catching Coconut Kurian and others flat-footed, while thanks to Shoshamma, they made off extremely well. That was luck and it didn’t excuse her actions. That night in bed, maintaining his silence, he reached for her out of habit. Many nights, indeed, most nights, and certainly on Saturday and Sunday, they were intimate. She had always taken up the customary position and he’d assumed that meant willingness, if not eagerness on her part. But that night when he tugged gently at her hip, she didn’t roll over. He tugged again. “Is that all that’s on your mind?” she said, in her playful, sleepy voice, her back to him. “After two children, surely we can be done with this.”

He sat up, stung by words that were not foreplay, but no-play! Did she mean she’d suffered his lovemaking all these years? Breaking his silence, he addressed her backside indignantly. “What? All these years I take the initiative to fulfill my conjugal duties as it says in Corinthians, and now my reward is to be characterized as a lascivious man?” She didn’t stir, which infuriated him. “If that’s how you feel then mark my words, Shoshamma, I will henceforth not initiate intimacy!” She turned slowly to study him, alarmed by this threat—or so he imagined. “Yes, I vow before Mar Gregorios that I will never initiate. From now on, Shoshamma, you must initiate.” She looked astonished, then she smiled sweetly and said, “Aah. Valare, valare thanks.” Many, many thanks. Her using the English word “thanks” only made her sarcasm more wounding. She turned back and went to sleep.

At once he knew he’d made a horrible mistake: Shoshamma had never initiated. With her new Christian propriety, she never would! He hardly slept, while she slept the sleep of the sinless. In the morning she brought him coffee and smiled. If she felt remorse, he saw no sign of it. His self-inflicted celibacy now extending over a year is like a preview of death. With time his feelings for her harden, but his desire is intact. In sleep he’s led down carnal paths. In his waking hours all his energy goes to Village Uplift.

Now, as the train carrying one part of him pulls away, Uplift Master feels himself unraveling, and his heart is so heavy. Can Village Uplift alone sustain his spirits? Even if the maharajah one day bestows on him a formal title, will it ease the pain? Is the best part of his life already over?

Outside the station, his eye is caught by a sign nailed to a palm tree by a canal. A crude arrow sits beneath the hand-drawn letters: കള്ള്. Kall-uh. Toddy. He walks along the canal in the arrow’s direction, the water shimmering green, until he sees the shack slouching in tall reeds, with the same sign, like a pottu on its forehead. In the dark interior, he drinks alone, a first. A man fulfilled at home has no reason to be in a toddy shop. He takes a long pull from the bamboo gourd. There’s nothing new about toddy. But on this afternoon, to his astonishment, the cloudy white liquid turns into a magical elixir that restores his equilibrium, eases his distress. It’s as if a rock the size of an elephant has been sitting on his chest, ever since that regrettable night with Shoshamma. Now, in the gloomy shop, through the medium of toddy, the stone slides off. He realizes at that moment that he has fallen in love, and that not every love affair requires a second person.