The Covenant of Water

1951, Parambil

Without the nightly disembodied radio voices, without a newspaper, without even such news as the fishmonger carries, they feel like the last humans left on earth. A terrified Decency Kochamma wades from household to household, shouting for the inhabitants to repent if the village is to survive. A bare-chested Philipose stops her from crossing the threshold of his house. He informs her that the families all agree that if Decency Kochamma alone were to sacrifice herself to the river, the magnitude of her sins are such that God would be appeased.

When they’ve all but given up, the monsoon tapers to a stop. It’s still two weeks before the newspaper resumes delivery. They learn that hundreds have drowned, thousands are displaced, and cholera and dysentery are rampant.

When the post office reopens, Philipose is nervous, because it means Elsie could soon leave. His pride won’t let him ask her, and besides, he’s never alone with her again. Late that night, his bamboo spoon scrapes the bottom of his opium box. The sound is as chilling as a ship’s keel striking rock. All night he rubs menthol balm over his body and groans with pain. The next morning, he rides and walks his bicycle to the opium shop, passing through slimy fields of mud, and gagging on the stench of dead fish that were marooned by receding water. Three fidgety old men wait outside the opium shop, sniffling and scratching. I’m not like them. Philipose struggles to corral his restless hands. Krishnankutty opens late and without apology. The sole opium licensee in the area has nummular scars of smallpox on his cheeks and dotting his bulbous nose. One eye drifts off, daring the customer to guess which to address. Krishnankutty uncovers the motherlode—a shiny lump the size of a man’s head, its moist surface like the sweat-sheened back of a laborer, and giving off a musty, repulsive stink—and cuts a wedge . . . but then feels a sneeze coming on. He rubs vigorously above his lip, while the rudderless globular tip of his nose flies back and forth, until the sneeze is averted. The balance beam on his scale has hardly settled before he wraps the piece in newspaper and tosses it at his customer. Philipose bites his tongue, loathing himself for swallowing such indignities. Once outside he quickly rolls a pill thrice his usual dose. He gags on its bitterness, but his shrieking nerves sob in relief.

Soon the gnawing body aches and the belly cramps are gone. The clenched fist that was his heart now opens. He smiles at strangers who eye him warily. Already, whole volumes are shaping themselves in his head, itching to be written down. Some might imagine the black pearl is the source for such inspiration, but that’s absurd. The ideas are always there! But pain is the padlocked door, the stern gatekeeper locking them inside. The little pearl merely frees them, and his pen does the rest.

Approaching the house, he hears an odd hammering sound. Elsie in her smock, forearms coated in dust, pounds on a stone in her studio. But what a stone! It’s the size of a bullock, but broad at one end and tapered at the other. How did it find legs to get there? Shamuel and his helpers must have dragged it in from outside. And those tools: the mallet, big chisel, and the rasper? The blacksmith, no doubt. It pains him to think that she converses more with Shamuel and the blacksmith than with him. But the feeling passes when he realizes that the ambition of this undertaking means she’s staying! He stands, mesmerized, watching her swing the heavy mallet with practiced, masculine strokes, her hips swaying to the rhythm. She’s so absorbed in her task that not even a stampede of elephants would distract her. He retreats to his room to work, inspired by her example.

He intends to join the family for lunch, if not for dinner . . . but he drifts off. It’s midnight when he wakes up. The house is still. He randomly opens a page in his bible, The Brothers Karamazov. Even when he isn’t paying attention, the feel of the words, the cadence, and the reentry into the dream in Dostoevsky’s head are soothing. He reads: God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a fault from a woman you love. “Chaa!” he says and puts the book down. For once, Dostoevsky’s tone is contrary to his mood.

The next morning, Elsie is neither in the kitchen nor in her workspace. When he goes to the room where the three women sleep, Baby Mol stops him, finger to her lips. “You can’t go in.”

“What? It’s nearly ten. Is she not well?”

His mother walks by and says, “Shhh!” Has everyone gone mad? When Elsie pounds on a stone for hours, that’s somehow all right, but now he’s too loud? He opens his mouth to protest but Big Ammachi puts her fingers on his lips. “Keep your voice down,” she says, smiling. “She needs the sleep of two people. That’s how it was when I was carrying you.”

He stares blankly at her.

“Chaa! Men! Always last to notice,” she says, pinching his cheek before heading to the kitchen with a verve she hasn’t shown for ages. His knees go weak. Since that one night that they were intimate he has hoped that Elsie might come after the others slept, her lips curved into that temple dancer’s smile of desire. But she has not. And yet God—their God, not his—had decreed once was enough! A baby! A second chance! They’ll start anew. Why didn’t she tell him? He goes to his room to wait for his wife to wake up.

He falls asleep and is woken by the sound of chisel on stone. Standing in the doorway to her workshop, he sees the fine hairs on her forearms outlined in dust, glistening like silver wires in the light; there’s a patina of dust on her forehead. She does a slow dance around the rock, shifting her weight from hip to hip. Watching her, he thinks, The God who failed us is making amends, making overtures after urinating on our heads. He feels such lightness. The weight of disappointment is lifted and—

A new thought follows, an idea so exciting, so outrageous, so full of joy and redemption . . . No, he won’t let himself say it aloud. Not yet.

He appears at dinner to the surprise of all. Elsie rises to bring him a plate, but he stops her. “I ate earlier.” He didn’t. Big Ammachi sighs and goes to the kitchen to get him yogurt and honey—that is what he subsists on. When he’s alone with Elsie he says, “I heard!”

She tries to smile. Then, without warning, her face crumples and she’s fighting back tears. Of course, he understands: the blessing of a new child is also a reminder of their loss.

Two days later, Baby Mol announces from the crowded bench where the ladies gather now as a ritual, “Baby God is coming.” Elsie, fresh after her bath, braids Baby Mol’s hair. Big Ammachi waits for her to finish, holding a cup of hot milk for Elsie.

Ten minutes later, Philipose’s very first teacher, the kaniyan, lopes up the path, sweating from his walk, his sanji across his chest. “Who sent for that fellow?” Big Ammachi says, shooting a jet of tobacco juice in his direction, inadvertently revealing the bad habit she pretends not to have.

“I did,” Philipose says.

The kaniyan’s polished shoulders are miniatures of his bald head, a trinity that speaks of a lifetime of avoiding manual labor. Someone had mischievously told Baby Mol that the wen was a baby god living atop the kaniyan’s head.

“Coming on a Wednesday?” Big Ammachi grumbles. “Of all people, he knows it’s inauspicious. Even a leopard cub won’t leave its mother’s womb on a Wednesday.” She retreats to the kitchen. The kaniyan follows her there, his hand resting on top of the door frame, catching his breath while asking Big Ammachi for “something” for his thirst, hoping for buttermilk or tea. Scowling, she gives him water.

Squatting down on the muttam before Baby Mol’s bench, the kaniyan pulls out his parchments from the sanji. Big Ammachi wanders back. The kaniyan traces a square in the sand with a stick, then divides it into columns and rows, muttering, “Om hari sri ganapathaye namah.”

Big Ammachi twists the crucifix on her necklace and glares at Philipose; he ignores her and puts a coin in one of the squares. He doesn’t know why his mother is annoyed; isn’t this the man she entrusted to teach him his letters? Now she acts as though his Vedic future-telling is nonsense, yet moments before she invoked inauspicious times. Shamuel, heading out, a folded sack on his head, squats to watch.

The kaniyan singsongs the parents’ names, recites their stars and birth dates from memory, and then asks indirectly about Elsie’s last monthly. She’s taken aback. Undeterred by her lack of response, he mutters in Sanskrit, counting on his digits and casting a glance at Elsie’s stomach; his finger wanders over his astrological charts, then he scribbles with a metal stylus on a tiny strip of papyrus leaf. He lets it curl back into a tight cylinder, ties it with red thread, and recites a slokum before handing it to Philipose, who all but rips it open in his impatience. It reads:

THE ISSUE WILL BE A BOY

“I knew it! What did I tell you? Your Lord be praised,” Philipose says, in a voice that even he realizes is unnaturally loud. “Our Ninan reborn!”

Five pairs of eyes look aghast at him. Elsie gasps. Big Ammachi says, “Deivame!” God Almighty! and crosses herself. Shamuel pats his head to confirm the sack is still there and leaves. Baby Mol glares at Baby God. “Come,” Big Ammachi says to Elsie. “Let’s leave this foolishness.”

Philipose’s elation is dampened by the women’s discourtesy. Don’t they see they just witnessed prophecy at its best? His conviction is unshaken: the child in Elsie’s womb is Baby Ninan reincarnated. This is vindication for the torment he’s been through, for the recurring nightmare in which he lifts a lifeless body off the branch, and runs on broken ankles, runs nowhere. The oblivion of opium cannot stop the hounds of memory from pursuing him. Oh, but now those hounds must flee with their tails between their legs. Baby Ninan is coming back!

The weeks and months pass, and Elsie labors steadily on her great stone. She leaves its widest and heaviest end untouched, but just behind it a neck emerges, then the rosary of the spine flanked by shoulder blades. By and by, Philipose understands that it’s a woman on her hands and knees. She may be turning to glance over her shoulder, although he can’t be sure because the face is hidden in the broad end of the stone. Her full breasts hang down and her belly is gently convex to the earth. One hand is planted on the ground. The other arm disappears into the rock just beyond the shoulder. Is the arm signaling defiance? Surrender? Is it reaching for something?

On a night that he will later wish he could erase, while the household sleeps, he goes to Elsie’s studio to examine the Stone Woman, running his hand over her. This has been his practice for countless nights. His mind picks at her like a riddle. The previous week he used a tape measure and confirmed his suspicion: she is one-fourth larger than life. Surely a deliberate choice. The four-to-five ratio paradoxically makes her more lifelike. Is she kneeling over a mat and sifting rice for pebbles? He’s seen Elsie on all fours in such a pose, playing with Ninan, teasing him by letting her hair fall over his face. He’s seen Ammini, Joppan’s wife, play with their new daughter the same way. Yet the torque of the Stone Woman’s neck, the position of what is surely her emerging chin implies she might be looking back. An invitation? Might the still-hidden arm that reaches forward be clutching the headboard, bracing her body as her lover enters her? When will Elsie finish the face? The waiting is unbearable and making him anxious.

He returns to his room, takes his pen out, but first rolls a pearl to settle himself. Only after he swallows it does he recall he just dosed himself minutes earlier.

Elsie, I circled your Stone Woman tonight, just like the achen circling the altar. Three is his limit, but his rituals of witchcraft don’t constrain me. Elsie, please, who is this Goddess crawling backward out of a stone womb? Is it you? Also, if this is a birth, nature agrees that headfirst is best. Tell me she’s coming out, not going back in. What truth will her face reveal about you, my darling, or about us? I’ve waited weeks for you to finish that face! Every night I go in hoping this is the night. In the old days, when our minds were as connected as our bodies, I could just ask you. Elsie, Ninan is coming. Ninan returns. As parents we really should be closer . . .

He closes his eyes to think, pen in hand. He dozes off, head on the desk, oblivious to the thunder shower outside. This is neither the small rains nor the monsoon, just capricious weather. Half an hour later he’s suddenly awake and terribly agitated. He had the most vivid dream! Such a luscious, brilliant, and meaningful dream. He looks down and he’s aroused! In the dream the Stone Woman turned her head to him. She beckoned him. He saw her face clearly! Her expression revealed a profound truth about . . . about . . . he slaps the side of his head. Truth about what? It hovers, there just beyond recall. He groans and scrapes another pearl.

His legs carry him to Elsie’s studio, but he’s forgotten his slippers. Sharp shards of sandstone prick his feet. He confronts the sculpture. “Listen, I saw your face already in my dream. I’m asking for just once more . . . why hide? Are you frightened? What is it?”

The Stone Woman is silent. A bolt of lightning illuminates her. The spray of rain that blows in from outside makes her skin look moist and alive. More flashes of light animate her arms and legs. She’s writhing, fighting to extricate her head! Could he still be dreaming? That stone vice imprisons her in a cowl of rock. Is Elsie her cruel jailer? Or is the Stone Woman none other than Elsie?

The next flash followed by thunder makes her terror unmistakable. He must act! Hold on, my darling! I’ll free you. I’m coming! The next thing he knows, the biggest mallet is in his hand and raised high. It’s heftier than he imagined, unbalanced and head-heavy. It descends with much more force than he’d intended, bouncing off the stone, sparks chasing it, and a shock wave surging up his elbow. On its rebound, as though with a mind of its own, the mallet strikes his collarbone, and he hears the crunching of bone. He screams as pain blankets his neck and shoulder. The mallet clatters on the floor. His left hand instinctively grabs his right and presses it to his chest, because the slightest movement of his arm or shoulder causes excruciating pain in his collarbone. He squirms in agony. His thudding heart is louder than the rain. I am, he thinks through the fog of pain, quite certainly awake. He’s certain his screams and the falling mallet have woken the household. A minute passes. No one comes.

He’s horrified to see that he’s not only failed to free the Stone Woman, but he’s ensured that no face will ever emerge. The wedge he struck loose has left a crater where eyes, forehead, nose, and upper lip could have been.

He staggers to his room, his collarbone throbbing and sending out bolts of pain with any movement of his right arm, even a wiggle of his fingers. The only way he can minimize the pain is with his right arm pressed to his chest, by his left hand. In the mirror he sees the angry swelling and the irregularity in the contour of the bone. One can go through life with no awareness of the collarbones other than they sit above the chest like a coat hanger. Then an act of stupidity brings them acutely to one’s attention. With great difficulty he fashions a sling. The effort leaves him drenched in sweat.

Soon it will be morning. He can’t let Elsie see what he’s done. How can he expect her to understand when he barely understands himself? If it isn’t murder, it’s manslaughter, but in any case, there’s a body to dispose of. He returns to the patio and hides Elsie’s collection of mallets and her chisels behind the bookshelves in his room.

He waits on the verandah in the predawn for Shamuel. The previous night’s storm has littered the muttam with dead leaves and palm fronds. At last Shamuel appears, standing there like a dark totem, naked from the waist up. The beedi scent Philipose associates with the old man clings to him, just like the threadbare plaid thorthu that was wrapped around his head when he walked over but is now draped over his shoulder out of respect for the thamb’ran. Shamuel’s mundu is half-hitched and his kneecaps are pale saucers. He’s all gray now, even the eyebrows, and there’s gray in the depths of his pupils too.

“Quite a rain last night,” Philipose says. He knows he’s a disappointment to this man who has loved and served him since he was born. The old man studies his sling, sees the bruising. “Let’s see, Shamuel . . . today . . . remember to take rice to the mill for grinding.”

“Aah, aah,” Shamuel says automatically, though he ground the rice the previous week.

“And ask the vaidyan to come by.” Then before Shamuel can ask why, he adds, “But before all that, get some help and move that stone that Elsie is working on.”

“Aah, a—” Shamuel catches himself. “You mean the big woman?” So he’s seen her evolution too.

“Yes. Please move it first thing. Don’t wait,” Philipose says, trying to sound casual, rising from his chair. “Drag it out of sight, maybe by the tamarind tree. But do it soon. She’ll work on it again after the baby comes.”

Philipose goes inside at once, leaving Shamuel standing on the muttam, scratching his chest.

In half an hour, Shamuel returns with two others, coiled ropes in their hands. Philipose is thankful that Joppan isn’t in the group. They approach from the outside of the semi-enclosed patio that is Elsie’s studio. They circle the Stone Woman, their feet impervious to the stone shards. Philipose watches discreetly. What do they think of the figure? Does art seem like a terrible indulgence? Especially since art has become labor for them now. They drag away the defaced stone.

Later, the vaidyan comes by. Philipose has little faith in his tonics and pills, but the man knows his fractures. It turns out that the sling Philipose fashioned is the treatment for this fracture. He must keep it on for three weeks at least.

Elsie breakfasts on plump, steamed idli, white as clouds. Then under Big Ammachi’s watchful eyes, she applies warmed dhanwantharam kuzhambu to her entire body. Every vaidyan has his own formula, but the base is sesame and castor oils, and nightshade roots. An hour later she bathes, scrubbing off the oil with green gram powder. Before her mother-in-law lets her go, she drinks hot milk infused with brahmi and shatavari roots. It’s eleven when Elsie arrives at the patio, tying an apron over her sari. Philipose is waiting. He stands, swaying from fatigue, sleeplessness, and opium.

She turns slowly from the emptiness of the patio to regard him.

“Elsie, I can explain. I put your statue safely away. Just until after our son is born.”

A fly hovers in front of his face and the mere thought of swiping at it is enough to trigger pain.

She observes his sling, the ugly blue swelling, and the bony deformity with curiosity and even concern. Then she turns back to what is no longer there. She bends down to pick up the fragment that broke off when the mallet did its work. He kicks himself for leaving it there. Holding it at arm’s length she turns it this way and that, trying to picture its origin. He wishes she would just explode at him, say what he deserves to hear.

“It was an accident, Elsie,” he blurts out. “I had a terrible nightmare.” This isn’t at all what he meant to say! “I was convinced she wanted to escape. I think I was still dreaming when I came out here. I wanted to free her.” He waits, expecting the worst.

“So, you meant well.” Her voice is flat. Not sarcastic. Not anything.

She understands! Thank goodness. “Yes. Yes. I’m so sorry. Elsie, after our son is born, I’ll bring it back. Or get you ten other stones if you like,” he says.

“Our son?” Elsie says at last.

It’s a blessing that she doesn’t want to talk about the Stone Woman anymore. “Yes, our son! He was complaining,” he says, trying for a humorous tone. “He was saying, ‘Appa, I’m looking forward to coming back into the world, but all this pounding is driving me crazy!’ ”

Elsie says, “You’re so sure it’s a son.”

It’s not a question. He laughs nervously.

“Have you forgotten the kaniyan’s visit? This is our Ninan reborn!” His voice catches when he says the name, and the expression on her face flickers. A ghost has walked between them.

“God is penitent, Elsie. God asks for forgiveness. God wants to give us reason to believe again. God gives us Ninan back so we can heal.”

She looks at the stone fragment in her hand, as though uncertain what to do with it, then places it on the ground carefully, like a sacred object. She looks suddenly weary. When she speaks, it’s without rancor, and perhaps there’s even compassion for the man she married.

“Philipose, oh, Philipose, what happened to you?” Her gaze makes him feel he’s shrinking before her, becoming the size of the stone fragment. “All I wanted,” she says, “was your support so I could do my work. But somehow you always seem to think you’re giving it to me even when you’re taking it away.”

THE ORDINARY MAN COLUMN: THE UNCURE

by V. Philipose

Stop anyone on the road and once they see that it’s not money, or their last plug of tobacco, but a story that you’re after, they’ll happily tell you the legend of their lives. Who doesn’t want to recount the bad karma, the backstabbing that stood between them and greatness, kept them from being a household name like Gandhi or Sarojini Naidu? Or wealthy beyond belief like the Tatas or Birlas? Every Malayali has such a personal legend and I assure you, it is complete fiction. Invariably a Malayali also has two other tales in their possession, as constant as their belly button: one is a ghost story, and the other a cure for warts. Dear Reader, I am a collector of wart cures. I have hundreds. If you want to scare yourself collecting ghost stories, that’s your business, is it not? So, whatever you think of my collecting wart cures, kindly keep it to yourself.

Why wart cures, you ask? Am I covered in warts? No. But I had one on this finger when I was a little boy. Naturally, I felt it was because of a sin I’d committed. Instead of telling my mother, I ran to my childhood friend, an older, confident fellow, my hero. He shared his secret cure: fresh goat’s urine before it hits the ground, applied just before sunup. Brother, you please try to find goat piss other than on the ground. Sister, your goat may piss all the time and look at you insolently while splashing your leg, but just try to catch some in a coconut shell in the dark without getting a head butt, or a kick in unmentionable places. Anyway, I managed. That’s its own story, but I managed . . . and the wart fell off! When I told my friend, the rascal fell to the ground laughing. He’d made it up! But I had the last laugh, did I not? The cure worked.

Families pass down wart cures like they pass down secret recipes. “Cut off an eel’s head and bury it. As it rots, so will the wart.” “Go to a wake and discreetly rub the wart on the corpse.” “Walk for three minutes in the shadow of someone whose face is covered with smallpox scars.”

That’s why I came to see DOCTOR X. (That’s not his name, but it means I’m not telling you.) His specialty is warts. His name was on his board, followed by the letters: MD(h) (USA), MRVR. Such a board you would expect to be nailed to a pukka building with tile roof, not a shack next to a tire-puncture stall, with a gutter carrying smelly water in front of it. A shirtless man in a dirty mundu stood grinning outside. I asked, Where is Dr. X. He said, I am he. Naturally, I asked about all those letters behind his name. He said the MD(h) stood for Medical Doctor Homeopathy. I said, Aah, so you attended Homeopathy College? (Between you and me, I was suspicious.) He said, Oh yes! Right here in my home I studied the British Pharmacopeia, 1930. I have it by-hearted. Ask me anything! I wanted to say, Surely you know there is a newer edition. Instead, I said, How is studying the Pharmacopeia connected to homeopathy? He said, If there’s dilution, why not? Dilution is critical! Aah, I said. What about the USA after the MD(h)? (He didn’t look like a man who had traveled far from above-mentioned smelly gutter.) Oh that, he said, means Unani, Siddha, and Ayurveda. All three are systems of medicine in which I have a great interest, he said. You could say I specialize.

The nerve of this fellow! Brother, I said— He interrupted me. Call me Doctor, please. Aah, Doctor, then, don’t you think people might confuse those letters with United States of America? Stop! he said, putting his hand out, like a policeman. Let me remind you that Unani, Siddha, and Ayurveda are ancient practices that existed before America. I dare Churchill or anyone to say otherwise. Aah, I said, let that be, but what about the MRVR? He said, It’s for the Latin, Medicus Regius Vel Regis, or Physician to Royalty. I said, Wait! Did you treat someone at Buckingham Palace? No, he said. I successfully prescribed a purgative to a severely constipated man who was the sixth cousin of the previous Travancore Maharajah—all other treatment had failed. Instead of dilution, this time I went for concentration. I used cascara, senna, mineral oil, milk of magnesia plus my secret ingredient. I said, Does that work? (I had a personal interest because which of us doesn’t struggle with constipation?) Aah! My friend, he said, laughing in a distasteful manner and dropping his voice. Does it work, you ask? Let me put it this way: If you happen to be reading a book when you take this medicine it will rip the pages right out of the binding! Anyway, my patient was very grateful. Therefore, I consulted the Malayalam–Latin dictionary to add MRVR to my name.

Aah, I said. Enough about that. I didn’t come to talk about your signboard. I’m a collector of wart cures, of which there are legion. Yes, yes, he said, most agreeably, and moreover, he added, the common ingredient to all the cures is belief. When a cure works it’s because the patient believes. When the cures are elaborate it’s easier to believe. That’s human nature. Fair enough, I said, because for once I agreed with him. So, I said. Tell me, what do you do for your wart patients? He held out his hand. I asked, What’s that? Put money there, please. If a patient cares enough to put money in my hand, that means they have faith. Then my cure is sure to work.

I took my bicycle off the stand, ready to leave. I don’t have warts, I said. I’m asking as a journalist. He said, You are sadly mistaken—I diagnosed warts the first moment I saw you. Where? Show me! Aah, but your warts are all on the inside, as you surely know. His hand was still held out.

Dear Reader, don’t judge me harshly. Tears of understanding sprang to my eyes. I put money in the doctor’s hand. Doctor, I said, I am desperate. And I believe.