The Covenant of Water

1945, Parambil

It’ll be gone by evening, darling! That’s what he should say. Instead, he hesitates long enough for the rooster to crow again. “That tree?” he says. The false note in his voice sickens him.

Her gaze retreats. Her smile crumples like that of a child offered sweets only to have them snatched away. In a planet divided into those who keep their word and those who just speak words, she’s given her body to one of the latter.

“It’s all right, Philipose—”

“No, no, please, dear Elsie, let me explain. I’ll cut it down. I will. I promise, yes. But will you give me some time?”

“Of course,” she says. But already he feels the fissure, the seam in their union. If only he could step back. Or if only she’d made another wish.

“Thank you, dear Elsie. Here’s the thing . . .”

His story “The Plavu Man” struck a peculiar chord with some readers. A few people make pilgrimages to see this plavu, believing that his story is real and that this is the very tree described, and nothing Philipose says will change their minds. Others write to him, care of the newspaper, requesting their letters be placed in the tree, tucked into its hollow—their words are addressed to the departed soul they are trying to track down. All this prompted his editor to commission a photo of Philipose in front of the tree.

“The photographer comes soon. Meanwhile, I will also get Shamuel’s blessing. You see, he’s often told me the story of his father and my father planting this tree when they cleared the land. This was the first. When I was a boy, Shamuel showed me how. We dug a hole, put one giant chakka inside, intact. From the hundred seeds inside that crocodile skin, twenty sprouts pushed up. Any one of them could have been its own tree. But we weaved them all together, forced them to be one mighty plavu.” He has said too much, he knows.

From the kitchen, he hears pots rattling. A raucous crow calls to its mate, Look at our idiot friend, opening his mouth when it should have stayed shut.

“Don’t worry. Don’t ask Shamuel. You don’t need to—”

“Elsie, no! Pretend it’s gone. Consider your wish fulfilled. Ask me something that I can do right now, ask me—”

“It’s all right,” she says more gently than he deserves, hunching her shoulders into her nightgown, corralling her breasts. “I don’t need anything else.” She rises, tall and proud, fastening the buttons from top down until the dark triangle of her womanhood and the gleam of her thighs are just a memory.

She pauses at the doorway. Filtered by the plavu leaves, the light through the window illuminates those gray-blue irises that glint like graphite.

“But Philipose? Please . . . please keep your word about my art?”

He hears her faintly outside chatting with Baby Mol, and then with Big Ammachi and Lizzi, their voices bright, happy, hers low-pitched, easier to discern than theirs.

The photographer has come and gone, and weeks and months pass. Every night in the sleepy aftermath of their lovemaking, Philipose tells himself he’ll make secret arrangements with Shamuel so his beautiful wife might wake in a pool of light and find that her husband is a man of his word. Elsie doesn’t seem to ever think about the tree. It never comes up. But Philipose can’t get it out of his head.

The radio spills jazz by a duke from America named Ellington. Philipose sits up close to it, Elsie sketching beside him. He peeks to see what’s being born on the page: it’s him, bent over the radio, his hair falling into his eyes. A shiver runs through him—pride in her, but also a disquiet that he struggles to name. The sketch flatters him—strong lines for his jaw and delicate ones for lips that are full and sensuous. But whether she knows it or not, she’s captured his confusion, his secret fears. He, a flawed mortal—not Emperor Shah Jahan or a genie after all—is dwarfed by her talent; he’s no longer sure of himself, searching for the right way to be with her, to be worthy of her.

Inspired by her, Philipose works harder than ever. But work is her resting state, as unconscious as breathing, while he, by comparison, wields his pen too selectively, even though his subject—life—is always there. His art, so he tells himself, is to give voice to the ordinary, in memorable ways. And by so doing, to throw light on human behavior, on injustice. But he simply can’t produce in the way she does.

In their lovemaking she sometimes surprises him by rearranging his limbs, asserting herself so completely that he feels like one of Baby Mol’s dolls. It’s thoroughly arousing. Once sated, she’s gone from the world, present only in breathing flesh as he untangles himself. Observing her unconscious form, the disquiet surfaces again: was he the paper, the stone, the charcoal stick, which satisfied her vision of that night’s desire? When he takes charge, she gives herself so completely that his doubts vanish . . . only to surface later, a nagging suspicion that a part of her is hidden from view, a locked ara whose key he’s not entrusted with. Is he imagining this? If he isn’t, then only he is to blame: his impulsive promise about that stupid tree is the cause. He cringes whenever he thinks about this, and it festers within. He should take an axe to the tree.

Big Ammachi is smitten with her daughter-in-law. It delights her to see the couple so happy, her son so preoccupied with his bride. Before the marriage, he had conveyed to his mother what is now self-evident: Elsie wouldn’t be taking over the household. She was a serious artist. Big Ammachi had acted annoyed. “Who said I need anyone to take over? What am I supposed to do if I hand over everything? How many times can I read your column without burning a hole into the paper?” She’s quite content for Elsie to do whatever she chooses. Elsie chooses to be in the kitchen often, seated on the low stool, happy to sift through the rice for stones, laughing at Odat Kochamma’s chatter and listening intently to Big Ammachi’s tales. Big Ammachi’s affection for Elsie grows each day. Since Elsie’s mother died young, who was there to tell her these stories, call her molay, comb her hair, or send her for her oil bath? Big Ammachi does all that and more. Wherever Elsie goes, her tail, Baby Mol, accompanies her. Lizzi, Manager Kora’s wife, is there a lot; she and Elsie quickly bond like sisters.

Elsie approves the ashari’s plans. Construction begins. Their bedroom (once his father’s bedroom) is enlarged to thrice its size. A third of it becomes Philipose’s study, with bookshelves on two walls and an alcove for the radio at the back, while the remaining two-thirds is an enlarged bedroom. For Elsie’s studio, they pour cement to make a patio that stretches out twenty-five feet from the back of the extended bedroom. A peaked roof, tiled and not thatched, covers bedroom, study, and patio. A knee-high brick-and-cement wall encloses the patio; it will keep out cows and goats but allow lots of light. It has a broad hinged gate at the back. Rollup coir shades on all three sides of the patio can be lowered to block the sun or to keep out rain. The driver from the Thetanatt house delivers Elsie’s supplies: stretched linen; stacks of half-finished paintings; containers of brushes, pencils, and pens; wooden boxes with paint in tubes and in tubs; easels; carpentry tools; and barrels of turpentine, linseed oil, and varnish. The scents of paint and turpentine soon become as familiar in Parambil as the aroma of frying mustard seeds.

Big Ammachi overhears Decency Kochamma request Elsie to paint her portrait (“in oils, like Raja Ravi Varma”). Elsie demurs. Perhaps in the future. She adds politely that she trusts Decency Koch­amma understands three things: the artist is free to depict her the way she chooses; the model never sees the work until it’s finished; and the portrait belongs to Elsie unless it is being commissioned. With every word, Decency Kochamma’s mouth sags further. Only Big Ammachi’s presence keeps the woman from saying something cutting. She stalks off, red-faced.

The long chats between Lizzi and Elsie evolve either by design or by accident into Lizzi being the first model. Philipose only wishes he could overhear their extended conversations. He has noticed that Lizzi has been sleeping at Parambil for two weeks now, but he didn’t think anything of it until Uplift Master tells him that Kora has absconded. A creditor discovered that Kora had forged land documents he used for a loan; the originals are with another lender and that loan is also in arrears. “Maybe running away was the best plan,” Master says. Philipose marvels that Lizzi’s face gives away nothing. She’s not said a word of this to anyone and no one brings it up with her. Just as news of Kora’s vanishing gets out, Philipose gets a special preview of Portrait of Lizzi; Lizzi’s poise comes across in it; her comfort, her sense of belonging to Parambil are also evident. He’s startled to read in the portrait what he missed on the live model: Lizzi’s anger, undoubtedly related to the mess Kora is in. Philipose is there when Lizzi gets to see the finished work; she doesn’t move for so long that Philipose worries. He and Elsie withdraw. When Lizzi finally emerges, her face shows a new resolve. Silently, she gives Elsie an affectionate hug, nods to Philipose, then heads home.

The family will never see her again. They learn the next morning that Lizzi vanished in the night. Big Ammachi is distraught; she has lost a daughter. “I had told her she could stay with us forever. This is her home. She didn’t say goodbye to me because she couldn’t lie to me about where she was going. I suppose she felt it was her duty to go to wherever he is hiding.”

Elsie is in tears, feeling that the portrait somehow triggered Lizzi’s departure. Philipose says, “If it did, it was for the best of reasons. I think Lizzi saw herself for the first time in your work, saw her own strength. She has known for some time that Kora can’t make his life work or provide reliably for her. Yes, she could have stayed here. But she chose to go to Kora for one reason only: not to be the dutiful wife, but because Lizzi has decided to take over the reins, be head of the house. Kora will be so grateful, and he’ll agree to her terms or be lost forever All thanks to your portrait.”

Elsie listens, wide-eyed. “Is this one of your Unfictions?”

“No. It’s simply the truth that you captured. Don’t you see it? Well, I do. You forget that I’ve had the experience of being sketched by you. Believe me, it gives the model a profound insight into who they really are.”

In the wake of her departure, the relatives come to see Portrait of Lizzi. Philipose watches them do just what Big Ammachi did: stare for a long time, drawn into a silent dialogue with themselves as much as with the subject, and emerge subdued. The portrait perhaps helps each viewer come to terms with Lizzi’s disappearance. But it also makes them understand something Philipose already knows: Elsie is an artist of the highest rank. Not like Raja Ravi Varma, but so much better, a painter with her own vision. Elsie’s portraits make Ravi Varma’s work look flat and lifeless, despite the theatricality of his compositions.

In June of that year, Philipose ruptures the evening quiet with a cheer that brings everyone to the radio. “Nehru is free! After nine hundred and sixty-three days in prison! It’s the acknowledgment by the British that it’s over.”

Philipose stays glued to the radio late into the night. America, Ireland, and New Zealand broke free from Britain in the past. He pictures Brits in the remaining colonies—Nigeria, Burma, Kenya, Ghana, Sudan, Malaya, Jamaica—sitting by their radios, nervous, because Britain is soon to lose the jewel in the crown, and the sun that never sets on the British Empire is about to do so. Negotiations for a free India are already underway. The road ahead is treacherous because Jinnah and the Muslim League want a separate homeland for Muslims, who make up almost one third of India’s population. Jinnah doesn’t trust the Hindu-dominated Congress Party.

Elsie is reading when he climbs into bed. He says, “How did a small island wind up ruling half the globe? That’s what I want to know.”

She puts down his dog-eared copy of The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. It has consumed her at bedtime for days. “What I want to know,” she says, “is the effect this rascal Tom had on the young boy who read this book.”

“Well,” says Philipose, “as a matter of fact—” but she silences him by covering his lips with hers. He fumbles for the light switch.

In August, in the space of three days, atomic bombs level Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A hundred thousand people die in an instant. The Parambil family gathers to stare at the paper’s montage of photographs from both cities. Of all the grisly war images seen at Parambil, nothing compares to this.

Later Philipose finds Odat Kochamma staring at the newspaper by herself, tears trickling down her cheeks. He puts his arm around her. She pretends to push him away while leaning wearily against him. “I may not read, but I understand more than you think, monay. You think I’m sad? Wrong! These are tears of joy. I’m happy that I’m old, so I’ll be spared what’s coming. If we can kill each other so easily, then that’s the end of the world, isn’t it?”

He takes down the map montage that covers one wall. War had become a guilty hobby, but he can no longer bear the human suffering cataloged on that map. Elsie watches him, silent. “There are better things I want to remember about the last few years,” he says. “I came home to Parambil where I belong. I became a writer. But most of all, you came into my life. Those are the things to memorialize.”

A letter arrives from Chandy saying that he’s moving up from the Thetanatt house in the plains to the bungalow for the summer; he invites them to visit. Elsie is excited. “It will be so humid here, while there we will have morning mists over the garden . . . You can write. I can paint. We can go for walks, play tennis or badminton. Horse racing too on weekends, if you care to go. You have to see the estate. Everyone is dying to meet you.”

“Well . . . that sounds wonderful.” But the truth is her every word is making him anxious. He feels giddy and breaks out into a sweat.

“We’ll pick a date, and I’ll ask my father to send the car, and—”

“No!” he says. Elsie’s shocked expression embarrasses him. “I mean, let’s think about it. Yes?”

Traces of her earlier smile cling to her lips, unwilling to give up hope. Surely someone who takes fervent notes while listening to the radio, who reads even at the dinner table, who orders more books than the shelves can hold, surely such a man would be eager to explore new territory, experience new things.

“Philipose . . . It’s good for us to leave Parambil now and then. See a bit of the world.” As an afterthought, she adds, “Good for our art.”

“I know.” But if he knows, then why is his heart pounding, and why this terrible feeling of dread, as though he cannot breathe? Going to Madras, brief as his stay there was, gutted him. He had to come home to reclaim himself, to reconstruct his being. But not until this moment when Elsie spoke about leaving did he discover that the very thought of it would evoke a terror akin to drowning. Parambil is his solid ground, his equilibrium, and all else feels like water. And it isn’t just the going away to far mountains; the rituals of clubs, parties, races will mightily challenge his hearing. People who’ve known Elsie since she was young will be judging him, which only compounds his fears.

Elsie stands there waiting for an explanation. His fears are irrational, and he’s ashamed. He simply cannot admit them to her without diminishing himself, without sounding like a weakling, a complete failure as a man and husband. His thoughts are bouncing around his brain, hurting his head.

“Let the world come to us,” he hears himself say at last, and it sounds haughty and harsh. Elsie flinches. It was a silly thing to say, and he knows it. But having said it, he’s cornered. There is no retreat. “I have everything I need here. Don’t you? I visit every place in the wide world through the radio.”

The woman he adores stares at him as though she doesn’t recognize him.

“Philipose,” she says after a while, her voice quiet, so he has to focus on her lips. Her hand reaches out tentatively, like a child about to pet a beloved dog who is behaving strangely. “Philipose, it’s all right. We’d be going by car. No boat, no rivers to—”

This allusion to his other handicap further shames his shrinking, retreating, anxious self, and an ugly defensive and reflexive response bubbles out before he can pull it back. “Elsie, I forbid it,” says someone he doesn’t recognize, someone using his lips and his voice. The words sound awful as they leave his tongue. “I forbid you to go.” There. He’s done it.

Her hand recoils. Her features become still. He watches her retreat to that place that’s closed to him. She turns away while saying something he misses. “Elsie, what was that?”

She squares herself to him, her head held high. The words he reads off her lips and that also arrive at his ear are without malice, without rancor, with nothing except sadness. “I said that I’m going to see my father.”

That night, his wife doesn’t come to bed. When he looks for her, he finds her sleeping on the mats with the three others, something she has done only when Baby Mol is unwell and pleads for it. His pride won’t let him wake her or risk waking his mother. At dinner, when Big Ammachi asks him what is going on, he pretends not to hear.

The days that follow feel awkward. But silence still feels better than confessing. Besides, how does one rationally explain irrational fears? He tries on a new persona each time he’s around her, the way a man might try on a new shirt or grow a mustache, hoping the world (and his wife) will perceive him differently. Nothing works, though. It’s on the tip of his tongue every moment they are together to say, “Forgive me, I’ve been an idiot.” But a belligerent voice inside him warns against it, or else he’ll be making concessions for the rest of his married life. How long can this feud go on?

Not much longer, as it turns out, because Baby Mol, sitting on her bench, announces that a car is coming. A half hour later, the estate car and driver pull up. Elsie must have written home. She hands a stack of canvases to the driver and returns to their room for more. Philipose follows, furious, disbelieving, conflicted, the blood pounding in his ears. She’s putting a hairpin in her locks while gazing out of the window at the plavu—

He seizes on it. “Look here,” he says. “This is all because of that damn tree, isn’t it? I’ll take care of it, I told you. But in case you forgot, I forbade you to leave.” She turns calmly to regard him, but she doesn’t seem surprised or affected by his words. He waits. She’s silent, gathering her brushes and combs. Her reaction deflates him. He stands there, feeling sillier by the second.

“Stay in this room then until you change your mind,” he says, in too loud a voice, and storms out, slamming the lower half of the split door, but since the bolt is on the inside, he must reach over and slide it into place. He’s only looking more stupid: the jailer leaving the keys on the inside. He stands there, breathing heavily, and turns around to find his mother in his face. She came running at the sound of slamming doors and his raised voice. He tries to step around her, but Big Ammachi won’t budge till he explains. He mumbles disjointedly about the tree . . .

“What nonsense! Cut the stupid tree down. It’s an eyesore,” she says. She shoves him aside, reaching over and opening the door. Before she steps inside, she turns to him, lowering her voice. “And don’t you see she’s pregnant? How silly of you not to go with her!”

He watches helplessly as his wife is driven away.

Over the next week he has time to get accustomed to the shock of Elsie being pregnant, of her absence, of his idiocy. Baby Mol refuses to talk to him. Big Ammachi’s anger fades as she sees him moping around the house. “It’s good for her to see her family. I wish I’d had that chance as a young bride. If Elsie’s mother were alive, Elsie would have gone there to deliver anyway. As much as you like home, you need to get out more, for her sake.”

He wants to go to his wife, but he has no idea whether she’s in the Thetanatt home or up in the bungalow in the estate—a place he has never been. He writes long penitent letters to both places and waits. A fortnight later, Elsie writes him a short, formal note, making no reference to his letters. She lets him know that she’s in the estate bungalow in the hills and plans to stay there another week before returning with her father to the Thetanatt house in the plains. Nothing else.

A week and a day later, he travels to the Thetanatt house for the first time since the engagement. Mercifully, the servant says Chandy and his son are away. He sits in the airy living room on a small sofa, facing that too-long white settee that has more legs than a centipede. One of the framed photos high on the wall is a memento mori: the family posed around an open coffin. A six- or seven-year-old Elsie, eyes glazed, stands next to her brother—how did he miss this? It compounds his remorse.

When Elsie emerges, her beauty, the sight of her takes his breath away. She sits across from him on the sofa. If he’s been sleepless and fraught during this brief separation, she looks rested, as though being apart has suited her. Pregnancy brings a ripeness to her face, and a deep tan to her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. She’s wearing the same coral-and-blue sari she wore at her engagement—is that a good sign? She looks at him without anger, without anything, the way she would look at a gecko on the wall, wondering what it will do next.

“Elsie, I’m sorry.” She says nothing. He’s mortified to recall sitting on the verandah with her at their engagement and promising he understood and would support her desire to be an artist. And he did! He has. He does. Yet here he is.

He tries again. “And we’re going to have a baby! If I’d only known!” She doesn’t reply. He sighs. “Elsie, I was wrong to behave as I did. Like a bullock kicking over the loaded cart.” His words seem to sadden her, and perhaps to soften her expression. “Elsie, are you feeling well?”

She shrugs and presses her lips together. He wants to rush over and hold her.

She glances down at her waist. Nothing shows. “My stomach twists . . . I can’t stand the smell of paint. I’m doing charcoals. But it did me good to be with my father in the bungalow. To see old friends.”

“Elsie, you should see the studio. The ashari finished the beautiful teak cabinets for your supplies. I put them all away. It looks so nice.”

He doesn’t say that in the process he’d understood just how prolific she’s been. It made him feel like a pretender. His few inches of musings are published in a regional newspaper in a regional language, even if it has a huge circulation. “Elsie, please understand, after Madras . . . things that take me out of my routine make me feel unsettled, anxious, especially meeting a lot of new people, worrying if I’ll hear what they say. When you told me about your father’s invitation, at that moment, my heart was racing, I felt faint. But the worst thing is I was so ashamed, too ashamed to tell you the truth, so—”

“It’s all right, Philipose,” she says. She looks at him with pity and perhaps even affection. He’s exposed himself before her. His turmoil, his confusion are the most real things about him. He’d imagined that once he explained, she might come home to Parambil. But now he sees that if he loves her, he must accept anything she decides to do. Still, if only she’d let him sit by her, hold her hand.

The maid brings two glasses of lime juice on a tray that she sets before Elsie. The woman steals a curious glance at Philipose. Elsie brings the two glasses over and sits by him. He sighs, his relief so evident that it must move her. Whenever they sat this close there was a magnetic pull that made them touch, they couldn’t help it. Perhaps she feels it because she leans against him and smiles. He reaches for her hand, and their fingers intertwine. A groan escapes him as the agonies of the last month ease.

“Elsie, forgive me,” he says. “I love you so much. What am I to do?”

She looks at him with affection, but still wary, still with some distance. “Philipose . . . You can love me just a little less.”