The Covenant of Water

1950, Parambil

Ninan has been dead six months, and Elsie gone from Parambil for just as long, husband and wife having turned on each other, when Big Ammachi and Uplift Master travel to the Thetanatt house in their somber finest. The last time Big Ammachi was in Chandy’s house was six years ago for the engagement. On that visit, the room had echoed with Chandy’s booming laughter. Now, the poor man is in a coffin in the center of the room, wreaths of jasmine and gardenia around him. His earlobes and the tip of his nose are turning dusky. If he were alive, he’d object to the cloying scents of the flowers and to being discreetly splashed with eau de cologne to mask the odors. Big Ammachi finds herself once again seated on the long white sofa in Chandy’s house, her feet dangling awkwardly off the floor, wishing Odat Kochamma were seated beside her as she had been the last time.

Lord, in just six months how many funerals have you had me attend? If there’s to be one more, make it mine. First, you took Baby Ninan. Let’s not talk about that. Then Odat Kochamma. Yes she was old. Either sixty-nine or ninety-six. “You pick,” she’d say. “It’s one or the other. Why do I need to know?” But did she have to die on a visit to her son’s house? We prayed and slept in the same room more nights than I’ve slept with any soul other than Baby Mol. You should have let her be with me when you took her. After that you came for Shamuel’s wife, clutching her belly one day and dead before we could get her to a hospital. Enough, Lord. You’re all-powerful, almighty, we know. Why don’t you sit down and do nothing? Pretend it’s the seventh day for the next few years.

Oh, it’s pure blasphemy, but she doesn’t care. She’s like an aged rubber tree that no longer oozes in the wake of the tapper’s blade, emptied of tears though not of feelings—or so she thinks. But tears come anyway when she hears the women singing “Samayamaam Radhathil.” On the Chariot of Time. That dirge is entwined with the memory of her father’s death—the worst day of her life—and reinforced by every loss that has followed. The chariot’s wheels are always turning, bringing us closer to the journey’s end, to our sweet home, to the Lord’s arms . . . But Lord, some, like JoJo and Ninan, just got on board. What’s your hurry?

Earlier, when she arrived at the Thetanatt house, Elsie flew into her arms, her body shaking with sobs that would not stop. All she could do was wipe the young woman’s tears away and kiss her and hold her. “Molay, molay, Ammachi feels your pain.” It had been six months since Big Ammachi had seen her daughter-in-law—Elsie had left right after the funeral. Big Ammachi was shocked to see how thin she had become, her hair suddenly white at the temples; it was such a troubling sight in one so young.

Big Ammachi had desperately wanted to say, Where have you been, molay? Do you know how much Baby Mol and I ached for you? There was so much to tell her daughter-in-law, things Elsie might have wanted to know, such as that Lizzi had finally written, but without a return address, to say she has had a baby boy . . . but of course this wasn’t the occasion. Instead, Big Ammachi had held Elsie, and sat with her on this sofa for the last two hours because Elsie wouldn’t let go of her hand; the poor girl looked like a haunted child that was trying to find a place where life could not inflict more pain. And so Big Ammachi offered herself; she offered her arms, her hands, her kisses . . . and her willingness to be wounded. Isn’t that what mothers did for their children? What else was a parent to do?

In the cemetery, as soon as the casket is lowered, Uplift Master says, “We must leave, Ammachi, if we’re to get back tonight.” Elsie clutches her mother-in-law’s hand, weeping, not wanting her to go. Big Ammachi says, “Molay, I’d stay but for Baby Mol . . .” She wants to add, Won’t you come back with me? Parambil is your home. Let your Ammachi care for you there . . . But of course, with so many guests at the Thetanatt home, Elsie has to remain, and it would be an unkindness to ask. Moreover, the rift between Elsie and her son is so great, it’s unlikely her pleading will make any difference.

On the bus ride home she gazes in wonder at endless paddy fields, at a leper sitting on a culvert, and into houses in whose dim interiors she sees an old man reading, two girls playing, women cooking . . . Families living their lives, no one spared the pain. All these people will one day be shades, just as she too will be buried and forgotten. So rarely does she travel away from Parambil that she forgets that she’s the tiniest speck in God’s universe. Life comes from God and life is precious precisely because it is brief. God’s gift is time. However much or however little one has of it, it comes from him. Forgive me, Lord, for what I said. What do I know? Forgive me for thinking that my little world is all that matters.

After a short boat ride, they walk home from the jetty. She thanks Uplift Master. She sees Parambil ahead, a faint silhouette against the sky, just as she saw it as a bride half a century ago. No lamp has been lit, and no bulb turned on, which only deepens her annoyance with Philipose.

When the messenger arrived with the news that Chandy had suddenly passed away at his estate, she’d hurried to tell Philipose. “You must go. Be with your wife,” she had said. “Then maybe, after a few days, you can bring her home.” He’d been reading in bed, his pupils tiny pinpricks. He’d laughed. “Go? Go how? I can’t stand up for long, let alone walk any distance. And why should I go with my crutches and sit there like a pimple on her forehead that she doesn’t want? She blames me. I am to blame.” He was now so guilt-ridden that whenever she scolded him, he welcomed it. She’d given up and asked Uplift Master to accompany her. “My son has become a knife that can’t slice, a fire that can’t warm a pot of coffee.”

Baby Mol has divined already that her mother is back without Elsie. She retreats from her bench to her mat. Big Ammachi hears her sniffles. Baby Mol so rarely cries.

Big Ammachi lights the lamp. Philipose hobbles out of his dark room, squinting like a civet cat. He’s down to one crutch. The broken right ankle has healed, but the shattered left heel remains painful. No one quite understood how badly he’d hurt himself leaping from the plavu after retrieving Ninan’s body, not till the next day when his ankles looked like Damo’s, even the same gray color, but twisted. The unbearable pain of losing Ninan was compounded by physical pain.

He slumps down on Baby Mol’s bench. Big Ammachi sits by him, willing him to ask about Elsie. Instead he absentmindedly roots around the tucked-in end of his mundu, like a monkey searching for lice, till he finds the tiny wooden box. She notes that his nails need trimming as he pries the lid open to reveal the wafer of opium. Every household has such a box, the old person’s panacea for backaches, insomnia, and arthritis. Big Ammachi used it for her husband’s headaches. She wishes she’d never given it to Philipose. Her son has become an opium eater.

He’s preoccupied, scraping with the bamboo toothpick to get a curl of opium, then rolling it between his fingers, an annoying back and forth to shape a shiny black pearl. When she was a child, that pearl had looked beautiful to her when her grandmother ate it. Once, her grandmother had let her lick her finger; the vile bitter taste made her retch. She’s tempted to slap it out of the hands of her once-handsome son, but it’s already in his mouth. He says, “Ammachi, can you bring me a little yogurt and honey?” She gets up before she says something terrible. Let him get his own yogurt.

A few weeks after Chandy’s funeral, she writes to Elsie again. Her letters thus far have gone unanswered, but she needs to convey to Elsie that her beloved Baby Mol’s breathing is worse than ever. Baby Mol’s real sickness is her wounded soul. She hardly eats, saying she’ll eat when Elsie comes back. Big Ammachi writes, “When people she loves leave, it’s a kind of death. I beg you to visit.” She leaves out so much in the letter. Lizzi has written again, but without a return address—she doesn’t want her whereabouts known apparently. Lizzi says that while pregnant, she had an accident in which the baby’s hand escaped from her belly. Miraculously, the baby, named Lenin, was born healthy. Nor does Big Ammachi mention Philipose disappearing one day, then returning with a new bicycle, having skinned his chin, his knees, and his elbows in learning to ride. The purchase was triggered by Joppan refusing to buy opium for him, saying he must stop. After Ninan’s death, Joppan had stayed with Philipose for weeks, sleeping in the same room. Now, because of the opium, they have fallen out. Big Ammachi suspects the bicycle’s only purpose is to allow her son to purchase his own opium from the government shop by the church. None of this does she mention in her letter to Elsie.

Baby Mol’s condition deteriorates further. In desperation Big Ammachi writes a last letter, a short one—it seems futile to keep writing.

Dearest Elsie,

I pray this gets to you. Baby Mol is dying. Call it starvation or heartbreak, they are really the same thing. As one mother to another, I beg you to visit. All Baby Mol says is “Where’s Elsie?” If you come, she’ll eat. Then she might live.

Your loving Ammachi

Philipose sits shaving on the verandah, the mirror propped on the ledge. The sun is out. The so-called monsoon petered out after it started, proving to be an impostor. In the mirror’s reflection Philipose sees a figure coming up the path. A beggar, he thinks. No, it’s a woman in a white sari, carrying not even an umbrella. She’s tall, pale, gaunt, and beautiful. His heart cavorts. A wave of gooseflesh covers his arms.

Is he hallucinating? If this is Elsie, why isn’t she in the Thetanatt car? From the fog of memory he recalls Shamuel mentioning a collapsed culvert, changing the road to gushing stream. Only foot traffic can cross by clambering over a log fifty yards up.

Mouth agape, his face soapy, Philipose stares at the wife he hasn’t seen for a year. At times he’d imagined she never existed, that their life together was a dream. Memories crash down on him now: the schoolgirl, the bride he brought home, their first night, the cursed tree . . . He sits paralyzed, like a stone sculpture. Not ten minutes before, Baby Mol, who hadn’t risen from her mat for days, appeared at his elbow, saying, “Visitors are coming!” If he’d paid attention he could have bathed, put on a singlet and a fresh mundu.

Elsie stands there like the goddess Durga, her gray-opal eyes on Philipose. He worries about his appearance: the flat spot at the bridge of his nose from one bicycle fall, the cauliflower ear from another. The ground unfairly beckons his left side. Her faint flowery scent reaches him, one so different from what he remembers.

“Elsie!” he says, razor in his hand. El-sie. Two syllables standing in for his joy, their shared sorrow, and the forgiveness he seeks even if he’s unable to forgive himself. Being bereft of speech now is a blessing—words have never served him with her.

“Philipose,” she says. She looks past him and her hollowed-out face lights up as Baby Mol waddles into her chechi’s arms, chortling. Elsie sets her down, shocked at seeing cheekbones that were never visible, or Baby Mol’s blouse hanging off the collarbones. Big Ammachi emerges hearing auspicious sounds and embraces Elsie, saying simply, “Molay!”

Philipose looks on with envy. The most important women in his life are one frieze of black tresses, white sari, gray hair, bright ribbons, and a turmeric-stained chatta. They disappear into the kitchen. In the mirror he sees the Ordinary Man’s gaping mouth ready to catch flies.