The Covenant of Water

1944, Parambil

Broker Aniyan is a dignified man, his steel-black hair shooting back at the temples, giving him a sleek, aerodynamic look, his manner unhurried. Aniyan means “younger brother”; the pet or baptismal names he carried have long vanished. He neither smiles nor acts surprised when Philipose recounts the story of meeting Elsie on the train, though he does look over at Big Ammachi.

To Philipose’s surprise, Aniyan knows exactly who Elsie is, and that she isn’t married, “as of day before yesterday.” The Saint Thomas community is tiny by comparison with the Hindus or Muslims in Travancore and Cochin, but it’s still in the hundreds of thousands and scattered over the world. Brokers like Aniyan must be walking repositories of house names and family trees, dating back to the original converts.

“Well,” Aniyan says, “I’ll approach the Thetanatt side—Chandy, that is. If he’s interested, and since you’ve seen the girl already, no need for pennu kaanal.” He’s referring to the “viewing of the girl” by the prospective in-laws, an event the boy doesn’t always attend.

“I still want a pennu kaanal,” Philipose says.

Aniyan’s expression doesn’t change. In his line of work his face must reveal nothing, no matter the provocation.

“If Chandy is under the impression that you are yet to see her, then . . . it’s possible.”

“And I wish to talk to her,” Philipose adds.

“Not possible.”

“I insist.”

There’s a slight distention of the serpentine veins on Aniyan’s temples. He smiles faintly, rising. “Let me present the proposal to Chandy. That’s the first step.”

“Look, Anichayan. I’m going to marry her. Think of it as being both the pennu kaanal plus the engagement. Then surely it’s all right to say a few words.”

“The engagement is to fix the marriage. Not for talking with the girl.”

Aniyan reports back by the end of the week: Chandy is interested. They can proceed to the pennu kaanal.

But Big Ammachi has a question. “Did they ask about JoJo? Or Baby Mol? About water—”

Aniyan raises an eyebrow. “What’s to ask? A tragic accident causing a drowning. That’s not like lunacy in the family. Or fits. That I’ll never hide. And Ammachi, believe it or not, there are more Baby Mols in our community than you might imagine. It’s not an impediment to a matrimonial alliance.”

Big Ammachi turns to Philipose. “If this marriage comes about, you’re to tell Elsie everything, you hear? No secrets.”

Aniyan watches this exchange, waiting. He says, “So . . . Ammachi, you and one or two senior relatives will come to the Thetanatt house. Aah, and you may come too, monay,” he adds as an afterthought. “Barring any obstacles, that day can be the engagement, and we’ll fix wedding date and dowry—”

“I want some time to talk privately with Elsie,” Philipose says.

Aniyan looks to Big Ammachi but sees he’ll get no help there. “Well, maybe after prayers and tea . . .”

“Privately?”

“Aah, aah, privately, certainly. But with everyone there.”

Big Ammachi sits on an impossibly long, white sofa in the Thetanatt house, clutching the gold-trimmed cup and saucer. Framed photographs of the deceased hang side by side, high on the wall and angled down. It’s a trend that she finds ghoulish. Chandy’s late wife looks down. Beside her is the reassuring portrait of Mar Gregorios by Ravi Varma. She addresses the saint: Tell me it’s the right thing we’re doing.

“Ena-di? What you muttering?” Odat Kochamma says crossly. “Drink your tea.” The old lady is thrilled to be invited as one of the elders, along with Uplift Master. She’s not in the least cowed by the house or the occasion; she pours the steaming tea into the porcelain saucer (“What else is this for?”) and blows on it. “Aah, good tea, that much I will say!”

Broker Aniyan neither eats nor drinks, his face as still as standing water, while his eyes sweep the room, cataloging future prospects, even if they are presently infants.

Big Ammachi eyes Chandy, their gregarious host, talking to Uplift Master. Why my Philipose? Her son is a gem, of course, a most eligible groom, and he’ll inherit Parambil, which at one time was nearly five hundred acres. But it doesn’t compare to Chandy’s estate, which she’s told is some hours away and is reported to be several thousand acres of tea and rubber, in addition to this, the ancestral house, and other properties he has elsewhere. His wealth shows in the furnishings of the house, and in the two cars outside, one of which is sleek, with a long prow and a finned tail, glowing like a sapphire under the portico, while the other, which is parked on the side, is the one that brought Philipose home years ago, a vehicle stripped to its skeleton and with a platform jutting from the back. Chandy could have sought the scion of another estate owner for Elsie, or a doctor, or a district collector. Perhaps he just took to the schoolboy Philipose he first met—he called him a hero then. The schoolboy has made a name for himself with his writing. Or else Elsie (who has yet to emerge) was just as insistent as Philipose on this match. She sighs, gazing at her son, looking so handsome despite his nerves, sitting tall, his thick hair forming waves off its center part, the white juba highlighting his fair complexion.

After prayers, more tea and palaharam are brought around by a young girl in a sari, Elsie’s cousin, who then ushers Philipose out to one of two benches on the broad verandah, leaving him in view of all the guests through the open French doors. At once, three ancient ammachis from the Thetanatt side, their ears sagging with gold, rise and follow. Every pleat of their mundus’ fantails is ironed to a knife-edge, belying the curve of their spines, and their chattas are so stiff with starch from being soaked in rice-water that they might splinter as the ancients heave themselves onto the second bench. They adjust their gold-brocaded kavanis to doubly conceal their bosoms.

A frowning Odat Kochamma sets down her saucer with a clatter and heads out, her bowlegged gait making her trunk sway side to side. The ammachis eye her advance with alarm. She squeezes onto their bench, making good use of her elbow, saying, “Plenty of room. Move over.” Odat Kochamma picks up a halwa from the plate the young girl brings around, sniffs, then wrinkles her nose, dropping the halwa back and waving the girl off emphatically, rejecting it for the others as well. The ammachis’ mouths gape in protest, but Odat Kochamma ignores them and loudly clicks her wooden teeth. The ammachis must peer past their cataracts and past Odat Kochamma to see Philipose. Their voices are unnaturally loud because they’re hard of hearing.

“Speak to the girl, is it? What for? Just show up at the ­wedding—that’s all he needs to do!”

“Aah, aah! Whatever he wants to say, there’s a lifetime to say it, isn’t there?”

“Ooh-aah. Why not he saves some words for when he’s old? Words at least he’ll still have when all else stops functioning!”

Their shoulders shake with laughter; gnarled hands cover their toothless grins. Odat Kochamma pretends she doesn’t hear them. She winks at Philipose before she lets out a fart, then glares accusingly at her seatmates.

Philipose feels every eye on him. The air is so thick he can trace letters in it with his finger. Indoors, his mother looks ill at ease, dwarfed by the long sofa that doesn’t allow her feet to reach the floor. He notices heads and eyes turning, voices faltering: Elsie must have emerged. He rises, wiping his face one last time with the kerchief. His heart pounds so loud that Elsie can follow the sound to its source.

She’s even more beautiful than the woman he remembers from the train cubicle. He’s struck dumb, unable even to say hello. They sit side by side. Her coral-and-blue sari forms a serene backdrop for her hands, which are unadorned, not even a bangle. Her fingers sweep off her knuckles in long lines, like the brushes and pencils they wield. He’s intoxicated by the scent of the gardenia in her hair.

He clears his throat to speak, but then sees her toes peek out from under the sari’s edge and his words vanish. He’s back on the train, her soles flashing before him as she climbs to her bunk.

His vocal cords seem frozen. Oh, Lord, is this what it means to have apoplexy? He reaches for his hankie, but dips into the wrong pocket; his fingers emerge with a one-chakram coin, the image of Bala Rama Varma on top. He holds it out to her, and then the coin vanishes. He displays his hands, front and back. Please examine carefully, ladies and gentlemen; satisfy yourself that nothing is concealed. He reaches for her ear, producing the coin and putting it in her palm.

One of the ancient ammachis brings a hand to her mouth, as if she’s just witnessed a rape. “Did you see that?” The others did not.

“Aah, he did something! Putting this here-there!”

“It was magic,” Philipose says at last, conquering speech. His words come out in English, not a deliberate choice, but a good one, as it turns out, if they want privacy. Elsie takes Philipose’s hand and turns it over.

“You have nice hands. Hands interest me,” she says in English. It was English they had spoken on the train too. He remembers her voice. Its slow, seductive timbre requires him to watch her lips carefully. “I noticed yours the first time I saw you.”

“And I yours when you traced that snuffbox,” he says.

He notices a fleck of green paint on her palm. His skin tingles where she touched him.

“I have notebooks filled with drawings of hands,” Elsie says. He asks why. “I suppose because anything I draw or paint begins with my hands. Sometimes I feel my hand leads and my mind follows. Without a hand I’d have nothing.”

“I have a notebook on feet,” he says. “Feet reveal character. You could be a king or bishop and adorn your hands with jewels. But feet are your unadorned self, regardless of who you proclaim yourself to be.”

She leans forward to look down at their bare feet. She slides a foot alongside his. Her second toe, reaching just beyond her great toe; her clear, luminous nails; and the wavy undulations of the joints all speak to her artistic nature, he thinks. His foot dwarfs hers. Her skin brushes his.

The watching ammachis are close to being apoplectic. If they possessed a whistle, they’d have blown it now. “Ayo! First putting hands. Now touching feet! Can’t this wait?”

Elsie suppresses a giggle. “You hear them?”

He hesitates. “I can’t quite make out every word. But I have a good idea.” English was a brilliant idea.

“Philipose?” she says, as though trying his name out, and looking directly at him. The sound thrills him. “You asked to talk to me?” She’s smiling.

He’s lost in her smile and late to respond. “Yes, yes, I did! I broke all kinds of rules by asking. Yes, I wanted to talk. Honestly, may I tell you why?”

“Honestly is better than not-honestly.”

“After we . . . After the train . . . I hoped. I mean, it felt like fate that after all those years we were on the same train, the same cubicle, same bench, same . . . We parted too soon. Ever since, I . . . daydreamed about marrying you. But I was someone who wasn’t going to finish college. Bent and broken. I worked hard and I’m not bent or broken anymore, and that’s when I asked for Broker Aniyan. The thing is I remember on the train you said to Meena you weren’t ready for marriage. Elsie, I want this. I wanted to be sure that . . . that you want it too. That it’s not being forced on you.”

She considers this. Then she turns and smiles, wordlessly conveying, Yes, I want this.

“Oh, thank God! I feared your father would want someone like . . . someone more—”

“I wanted this. You.” It’s as though she just kissed him. He feels himself tumbling into her gaze, into the explosion of browns, grays, and even blues of her iris. He wants to leap up in celebration. He grins at Odat Kochamma, who winks back at him. She slips off the bench, tossing the tail of her kavani over her shoulder and into the faces of the ammachis. With her nose held high, she rejoins Big Ammachi, grabbing a piece of halwa on her way.

He says, “I’m so lucky. Why me?” Now she’s the mute one, uncharacteristically reticent. “Is it a secret?”

She says, “Secrets tend to be hidden in the most obvious place.” He’s flattered. It’s the last line from his first Unfiction, “The Plavu Man.” “You really want to know, Philipose? Shall I tell you, honestly?” She’s teasing, but then she turns serious. “It’s because I’m an artist,” she says simply. He doesn’t quite understand.

“You mean like Michelangelo? Or Ravi Varma?”

“Well, yes, I suppose . . . But also not like Ravi Varma.”

“Then like who?”

“Like me.” She’s unsmiling. “If Ravi Varma had been born a girl, do you think he’d have been free after marriage to study with a Dutch tutor? Or to exhibit in Vienna? Or to travel all over India? He bought a press in Bombay. A smart move. That’s why his prints are everywhere. He met and painted all the famous beauties of his day, the maharanis and mistresses. Got close to one or two of them.” Is there nothing she won’t say? thinks Philipose with admiration. “Philipose, what I mean is that if Ravi Varma had been a woman, there’d be no Ravi Varma.”

He understands her point, but not how it relates to him.

“Philipose, you’re an artist too.” It’s flattering to hear this. “You can spend most of your day on your art. There’s no one to tell you not to write, or when to write. Marriage won’t change that.”

He can’t argue with that.

“My father had others in mind from the moment I got back. A boy in the estates … another who owns textile mills in Coimbatore. I refused. I thought that of all the men I might marry, you would take my art, my ambition seriously.” Her expression is grave as she recounts this. “I’m well provided for. My father isn’t pushing me out. But if something happens to him, everything except my dowry, I mean everything goes to my brother. That’s how it is with our community, isn’t it? It’s unfair but that’s how it is. If I were unmarried, I’d have no home to belong to after his time. That’s why he was so anxious to have me married. For my future.”

“Men are under pressure to marry too. To please family.” He’s thinking of Joppan.

“Yes, but after marriage, no one will say, ‘Philipose, put aside your writing. Your duty is to serve your spouse and her parents for the rest of your life. Manage the kitchen, raise the children.’ ” She adds, with a hint of bitterness, “My brother will have the life I should have had. I hope he makes good use of it.”

They glance in the brother’s direction. His belly swells under a fine double mundu; his face is puffy, with dark circles that will soon be permanent under his eyes. He could pass as his father’s gluttonous understudy, and for the same reasons, but only at a younger age: cigarettes, and too much brandy. But the face lacks Chandy’s humor, his humanity and vitality. Feeling their gaze, the brother looks over with flat, soulless, eyes. There’s no love lost between the siblings, Philipose thinks.

Elsie moves her head closer to him. “I’m only telling you because you asked. It’s hard to explain how much a girl loves her father. Getting married is the best gift I can give him. Then I become your worry. I thought, if I must marry, who will respect me as an artist and allow me to be what I think I was meant to be? I thought you would.”

He’s flattered. But her words are also a little deflating. Where is love? Where is desire in this explanation? She reads his thoughts. “Listen, if what I said disappoints you, I’m sorry. This is just the pennu kaanal. You can say you came, you saw, and it’s not for you. You can call it off. Or I can. You did ask. So I’m telling you honestly.”

Such brutal honesty! Would he ever have had the courage to say what she has said?

“Elsie, the last thing I want to do is call it off—”

“When I drew you that morning on the train, I thought I saw into your heart. I was no longer the schoolgirl who rode in that car with you. And you were no more the brave boy who saved that child. I saw a man struggling to find his way. You’ve found your way—I see it in your stories. When the proposal came, I was happy. I thought, here’s someone who sees the world the way I do. Who hungers to interpret it as I try to do. Tell me I didn’t get that part wrong.”

“No. You got that right. Just so you know, I don’t want to get married for the sake of being married. I want to get married to you. And when we are married, I’ll do everything to support your art. How could I not?”

She’s pleased. “You’re sure? Your dear mother is hoping that I’ll take over the kitchen, keep the keys to the ara, make a good fish curry. She’ll be scandalized when the fishmonger comes and I don’t know mathi from vaala—”

“Wait, you don’t? In that case—” He pretends to stand. Her wing-like eyebrows shoot up and then she bursts out laughing, a lovely bell-like sound. The perfect line of her teeth, the sight of her tongue, the back of her throat make him dizzy. “Elsie, as long as you laugh like that, I won’t care. I promise you. You’ll have the same time and opportunity to pursue your art as I have to write. You don’t know my mother yet, but she’s a gem. She’ll understand.”

“Philipose . . .” she says softly, grateful, dropping her head, and sagging against him. He leans back against her, supporting her weight, the ancient ammachis be damned. His arm where it touches her is on fire. His heart leaps, his pulse pounds, not in fear or panic but in recognition of having found what it sought. He’s proud of himself. The Ordinary Man has managed something extraordinary.