The Covenant of Water

1950, Parambil

Like a vengeful God, the real monsoon arrives soon after Elsie; it punishes them for being taken in by the pretender. Torrential rain and typhoon-force winds bend the palm fronds into peacocks’ tails before snapping them. Wind rushing through the windows makes the eerie sound of someone blowing over the mouth of an amphora. The electric pole crashes down, silencing the radio. Shamuel ventures out and returns shocked: past the burden stone is a new lake with no sign of its far shore. The legendary floods of 1924 caused destruction all over Travancore, but never troubled Parambil. Now the swollen stream where Big Ammachi bathes threatens the huts of the craftsmen and the pulayar. The river spills its banks, washes away the jetty, and for the first time in Big Ammachi’s memory, it can be seen from the house, stalking the dwelling that her husband made certain was out of its reach. By the fifth week, their awe at nature’s violence gives way to dejection. The land begs for mercy. There’s no vocabulary for their deepening sense of isolation. The newspaper hasn’t graced the house since the monsoon began.

Big Ammachi worries about Elsie, who spends hours pacing the verandah, even at night, studying the sky, looking desperate like a mother who left her baby unattended across the river. There was a time Elsie could be so engrossed in her drawing that she wouldn’t know if the roof blew away. Elsie planned a short visit, but all the same, why this hurry to leave?

Once Philipose realized that Elsie only came to visit Baby Mol and had no plans to stay, he withdrew, gave up any attempt to interact with her. He rarely sees her; for him the distinctions between day and night are blurred because of his little pearl, and he is increasingly a nocturnal creature. A few times he sees her patrolling the verandah, staring out at the rain as though if she looked long enough it would stop. He almost laughs when he hears her outside his window ask Shamuel if there is any way to mail a letter. The old man says the post office is submerged. Philipose is tempted to call out, You’re a good swimmer, Elsie. Why not deliver it in person?

One night he wakes just before midnight and, out of habit, he pushes aside the curtain and peers out. He makes out a figure perched on the verandah ledge, knees drawn to chest, a stone woman, an apparition perhaps, staring at the sheeting rain. His stomach knots with fear till he recognizes Elsie. Her face, cast with shadows, looks so altered, so burdened. Seeing her weeping, he feels pity despite himself. He sits up to go to her . . . but then stops. His presence might be no comfort; it might make it worse. She’s become a stranger. He knows nothing about her life in the last year. But he’s puzzled. Why such anguish? Why is it so important to leave? What is it, Elsie? This isn’t about Ninan, surely.

He must have dozed off, because when he opens his eyes, the sky is lighter. Did he imagine Elsie? He looks out and she’s still there, her back to him, bent double over the low wall, retching. This time he hurries out. Seeing him, she straightens up, sways, and he grabs her before she falls. He guides her to Baby Mol’s bench. She sits hunched over, clutching her belly. He brings her water. “Elsie, my Elsiamma, tell me. What is it?”

Her expression as she looks at him is so full of suffering, of torment, that it sends a shiver through him. Instinctively he holds her to him, comforts her till the spasm eases. For the briefest moment he’s certain she’s about to confide in him, to unburden herself. He waits . . . He sees her change her mind. She drops her gaze. “Maybe it was the pickle . . .” she mumbles.

He lets go. No pickle ever produced this grief. He says, “It didn’t trouble me.”

“You’ve hardly had a meal with us,” she says, her voice hoarse.

“I know . . . I work and sleep at odd hours.”

Unconsciously, he copies her posture: hunched forward, looking down. His right ankle is swollen; the left is askew, a permanent state. Her feet are as he remembers them, more tanned perhaps, the toes more flexed. An image of their feet side by side at the engagement comes to him. A chasm separates that memory from this moment. He breathes in her new scent that is utterly foreign. At one time their bodies shared the same fragrance, a function of the water, the soil, and the food of Parambil. Baby Ninan’s hair, he still remembers, had a sweet, faint, puppy-dog odor on top of the family scent.

Elsie looks out with the hopelessness of a condemned prisoner. She shakes her head. If he hadn’t been staring at her lips, he would have missed what she said: “I never planned to stay this long.” Again, her eyes fill up.

Her words wound him. The rain picks up, as though voicing his frustration with her. How can they heal if not together? At last, he says, “It isn’t just Baby Mol who needed you here.” His misshapen foot twitches of its own volition.

His words give her pause. She looks at him anew. “I’m sorry,” she says, brushing at her eyes. “It was hard to remain here after Ninan . . .” Perhaps it occurs to her that he didn’t have that choice, because she adds, “But I didn’t escape anything. It was still there with me. Every moment. As it must be with you. I knew Baby Mol needed me. Big Ammachi needed me . . .” Her voice drops to a whisper. “You needed me. But I couldn’t.” She puts the glass down. “I’m going to lie down, all right?” Her hand grazes his shoulder, apologetically, if not affectionately.

Two days later, Philipose sees the sun refract through orange clouds, giving the land an ethereal glow. It’s gone in seconds, but by then he’s in a frenzy, mounting his bicycle and pedaling furiously. He nears the end of the driveway, weaving around puddles, picking up speed, exhilarated—

When he opens his eyes, his vision is obscured. Even a lover of soil doesn’t choose to embed his face in it. How long was he unconscious? Rain hammers down. He turns to one side. A pair of bare feet approach, fair at the ankles and painted bronze with mud below. Elsie helps him sit, then slowly rise. “I don’t know,” she says when he asks what happened. “I happened to look out and saw something on the ground. Then you moved.” Skin is gone on his elbow. His left knee throbs. His shoulder aches. He leans heavily on the crooked bicycle as they head back in silence, both of them drenched. He feels for the box in the waist of his mundu, relieved that it’s there. He needs it badly, but not in front of her. Suddenly he bursts out, “Elsie, we can start again. Build a new house elsewhere on the property. Or move away.” She doesn’t look at him or answer. After a while he says, more to himself than to her, “How did it get this way? It’s all my fault.” Rain, or tears, or both streak down her face.

In his room—once their shared chamber—he hurriedly rolls a pearl, an extra-large dose for the pain in his knee, his shoulder, his ankles, his head . . . and his heart. After bathing, he drifts off, floating in a womb, bumping gently off cushioned walls. He stirs when he feels rather than hears the creak of the wardrobe beside him. It’s Elsie, her back to him, retrieving her old clothes after bathing. Usually, she sends Baby Mol on this errand, but he knows Baby Mol is under the weather. A thorthu corrals Elsie’s wet hair, and the damp mundu wrapped around her torso leaves her shoulders and legs bare. She’s tiptoeing out with her bundle when, impulsively, Philipose grasps her hand. She looks startled, a mouse caught in a trap. He lets go.

“Elsie . . . please. I beg you. Sit a moment.” She hesitates. She shuffles closer, then gingerly sits on the edge of the bed. “I want to thank you,” he says, taking her hand again. Her gaze stays on the ground. The simple act of cradling her fingers brings him comfort. “But for you, a bullock cart might have rolled over my head. But for you . . .” His voice breaks. “It’s my fault. Did I already say that?” He gently reaches for her chin and lifts her face up. “Elsie. Forgive me.” Her expression startles him. The mouse looks uncomprehendingly at the trapper asking forgiveness. Is she registering what he’s saying? She turns her face and her lips move. “Elsie, I can’t hear you.”

“I said, I’m the one that needs forgiveness.”

He laughs, an awkward sound. “No, no, my Elsie! No. The world knows my dignity is gone. My legs are gone. My son is gone. My wife is gone. But as far as who did wrong, that’s mine. Don’t rob me of the only thing that I own.” He sits up, wincing, and puts his arm with the skinned elbow around her. Pain doesn’t matter. His tone is jocular. “Elsie, you were born forgiven. Can we get back to this wretch, please? He needs forgiveness, mercy.”

He doesn’t register that she’s not responding to his attempted humor. The despair he saw the other night is cast permanently over her features, and it wounds him. If it heals him to hold her hand, surely it heals her too? The mundu’s knot at her chest is coming loose. He can’t make himself look away. He’s embarrassed by the surge of blood in his pelvis. No, that wasn’t my purpose at all when I asked you to sit, I swear by the monsoon god. But desire has its own vocabulary, more cogent than words his tongue might shape; despite him, it comes to the forefront.

Feeling a flood of tenderness, he embraces her. She doesn’t stop him. The thorthu slips from her hair, and when she reaches up to catch it, the knotted mundu comes fully undone. I didn’t make that happen. It’s the universe, or fate, or the god of mundus and thorthus, the god of misunderstanding, the god I don’t believe in. She clutches at the mundu, but his hand gently stays hers. He kisses her cheek, then her eyelids. She trembles, her face so sorrowful that it pierces him. He wants only to console her, but he’s also overcome with a familiar awe, the old wonderment that this exquisite woman is his wife. Lord of disappointments, lord of sorrows, tell me, why bless me only to take away? He feels her body enlarging before him, and his too—is this the doing of his black pearl? Her lips are fuller, the hollow at her throat that he so loves is wider, the dark areolae larger—all her most sensual features exaggerated and growing under his gaze.

How much pleasure their bodies used to give each other! No matter what else was happening, that never failed them. This could be the balm they need to make the unbearable bearable. After their loss, they never gave themselves the chance to weep on each other’s shoulders. They’d turned viciously on each other instead. He sees it all, sees what they should have done. He runs his fingers through her wet hair, hair so thick it always felt like a living thing separate from her. He gently draws her down to lie on the bed. Not forcing her. He sees the door is wide open, so he rises slowly, painfully, and limps over to bolt it. Her head is turned from him, her thoughts far away, as though she has forgotten his presence, but as he approaches, she looks at him, taking in his scabbed, scarred body, an artist’s gaze, but not free of curiosity and concern.

He climbs onto the bed. Her pupils are the opposite of his: large and bottomless. Her feet against his feel callused and rough, not the creamy, delicate feet of memory. She’s been going barefoot, a sure sign of a husband’s neglect. He kisses the hand that shields her breasts, and his lips encounter a hard ridge on the side of her index finger. He can imagine her working her fingers to the bone in her pain, plying her brushes day and night to reshape a world that has gone crooked. Her complexion is pale and patchy. He feels more remorse at further evidence of his neglect. “Oh, Elsie, Elsie,” he says, his heart breaking. “This is mine to make right, to make whole.” She doesn’t seem to understand, but it doesn’t matter, as long as he does. They are perfectly matched, he thinks, both of them weathered by grief and time. And what is time but cumulative loss?

His lips are on hers, but hesitantly. He doesn’t want to force himself on her. He will stop if it distresses her. But weren’t kisses what always resurrected them? A kiss can never say the wrong things. He wants to laugh, recalling their clumsy first kisses, pressing lips together as though sealing flaps of an envelope. They became experts. But she has forgotten. It’s for me to remind her. My duty to resurrect those lips and open our hearts. He does so tenderly, and he imagines she responds. Yes, he tells himself, there was movement in her lips—not passion, but that will take time.

He cups her breasts, circles the nipples with his fingers. He can hardly contain himself. Her eyes are closed, tears leaking from the corners, and he understands, because how can this not remind them of Ninan? She doesn’t resist, nor does she reach for him as in the days of old. It’s all right, my love. It’s all right. I’ll do all the work. Isn’t this what we need? The balm of Gilead, the cure for what ails us.

It used to be that when their two bodies were in motion, they became like the ecstatic temple carvings of Khajuraho, pivoting this way and that, sheets falling to the floor. But there’s time for all that, he thinks as he takes the upper berth. This is not about his need, only his desire to convey his love, his caring. Slowly, gently he probes, explores, touches, and when he feels her readiness, he enters. Now they are one body. He moves for them both. And at once, despite his best intentions, he experiences the rise and the surge, the selfish need, the born-again feeling, and hears her name rise in his throat, speaks it so urgently that for the first time she opens her eyes, and out of the black holes of her pupils a nameless other looks back—but he is too far gone, and he collapses into her, and inside her, the only woman he’s ever been with and will ever be with. What counter to death is there than this? This is forgiveness, this is the end of solitary mourning. Joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy are the weeds and flowers of their Eden, and it will outlast the mortal blooms of this world.

After a time, he does not know how long, their still and private orchard quakes, and she moves from under him. His eyelids are as heavy as rowboats as she sits up and reaches for her mundu. He’s floating off, sated, his heart at ease, the barrier between them dissolved. He experiences déjà vu seeing her on the edge of the bed, her back to him, her arms raised as she corrals her hair, twisting it around her palm and then into a knot, her elbows forming the points of a triangle that frame her head, the curve of her beaded spine echoing the inward curve of her waist, the outward curve of her buttocks. She turns to him, doesn’t meet his gaze but puts a hand on his chest, her eyes closed, head bowed, as though praying over him, staying that way for a long moment. She stands and he knows that next she will delicately wipe the damp mundu between her legs . . .

Except she doesn’t. She fastens the mundu and picks up the folded clothes she’d set down. At the mirror, she pauses to see that she’s covered. Her reflected eyes meet his, and he smiles drowsily, this too a reenactment of their old ritual. But a stranger stares back at him, a soul already departed from this world but granted a backward glance at her former life. She pads out without a word.