The boys laugh. The toddlers, who don’t understand, laugh loudest of all.
“Ha!” the blacksmith’s daughter says huffily. “It’s not so little then, is it? If you ask me, his trunk looks more like a Little-Thoma than that funny thing.”
There’s a silence as the children consider this question. The brother turns to examine the goldsmith’s two-year-old grandson, a bow-legged, befuddled, and potbellied baby who has one finger in his nostril; all of them now study this little fellow’s uncircumcised, puffy penis that ends in a wrinkled pout; then they compare it to Damodaran’s trunk.
“I suppose it does,” the blacksmith’s boy says.
Damo’s swaying trunk seems to exist independently of its owner, its movements decidedly human. While his forefoot pins down a coconut branch, the pincer tip of Damo’s trunk strips off the leaves in one graceful stroke. He smacks the bundled leaves against the tree to rid them of insects, then folds them onto his lip. As he chews, his trunk swings back down, but then, like a restless, playful schoolboy, he snatches the towel off Unni’s shoulder and waves it like a flag before Unni snatches it back.
“If only my Little-Thoma could do all that his trunk does,” she overhears the blacksmith’s boy say, “I’d reach up and pluck mangoes or even coconuts.” She watches JoJo listening intently, one hand discreetly feeling between his legs. She slips away, hand over her mouth, waiting till she’s out of earshot before she collapses with laughter.
That evening she serves her husband the meen vevichathu. He nods approvingly after tasting it. It will soon be five years, but she still worries about her cooking.
“As I was making it, Damo came and put his eye to the kitchen window.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Do you have ghee rice I can take to him tonight?” His expression is like JoJo’s asking for another raw mango.
“But he had one bucket when he came,” she says.
“Oh, did he? Well, then . . .”
“But I can get more.”
He looks pleased. He clears his throat. “Damo’s never gone to the kitchen before. Means he likes you,” he says, looking up with a shy, teasing glance. She sets the newspaper down and heads to the kitchen to prepare the ghee rice.
Yes, I know Damo likes me. He came to greet me on my birthday. I know what he’s thinking. It’s you whose thoughts I never know.
When she returns with the ghee rice, her husband ignores it. With his eyebrows he invites her to sit; he places a tiny cloth bag with a drawstring on the table before her. She pulls out two huge, heavy gold hoop earrings, intricately worked on the outside but hollow within, otherwise their weight would tear through the ear. A filigreed nut hides the post and screw. She stares in disbelief. Is she truly the owner of these kunukku? So that’s why she’s seen the goldsmith trudging back and forth over the last month. All her life she’s admired kunukku. They don’t go into the fleshy part of the ear, but through the curling rim on top where it thins out like the lip of a seashell. She’ll need to pierce the cartilage and then enlarge the hole by packing it with areca leaves until it’s big enough to accept this thick post and screw. Many women wear just the post and screw; on special occasions when they connect the hoops, they project out from the ear like a cupped hand.
Unlike many brides who come with jewelry as part of their dowry, all she has is her wedding ring, the tiny gold minnu that he tied around her neck in the ceremony, and two small gold studs that were hers when her ears were first pierced at the age of five.
She can’t believe he remembered her birthday when he had never done so before. Now she’s the one with no words. Her husband never picks up the paper but as a farmer he’s acutely aware of dates and seasons. In the distance she hears leaves smacking against a tree, the sound of Damo feeding. Not for the first time she wonders if the two giants are in league.
When she can bring herself to meet his gaze, her husband is smiling. He leaves without a word, taking the bucket with him; he’ll sleep on the cot next to Damo while Unni heads home to visit his wife.
When Damo is at Parambil, the ground vibrates with his movements. The sounds of his feeding—the snapping of branches, the crushing of leaves—soothe her. But a few days later, Damodaran returns to the logging camp; like the thamb’ran, he’s happiest when working. In his absence the quiet of Parambil feels exaggerated.
That night, just as she’s drifting off to sleep, her husband appears. She sits up, alarmed, wondering if something is wrong. His frame fills the doorway, blocking out the light. His expression is calm, reassuring. All is well. He holds the tiny oil lamp in one hand and now he extends the other.
She eases free of the sleeping JoJo, takes the proffered hand, and he pulls her to her feet effortlessly. Her fingers remain coddled in the nest of his palm as they step out. This is a new sensation, to be holding hands; neither of them lets go. But where to? They turn into his room.
Suddenly the hammering of her heart is so loud that she’s sure it echoes under the rafters and will wake JoJo. Blood surges into her limbs, as though her body knows what’s about to happen even if her mind is five steps behind. At that moment she cannot know that the nights when he comes silently and leads her away will come to be so precious to her; she doesn’t know that instead of her lips quivering, her body trembling as it does now, instead of her insides turning cold and her legs threatening to buckle, she’ll feel a surge of excitement and pride, a longing when she sees him standing there, his hand extended, wanting her.
But what she feels now is panic. She’s sixteen. She has some notion of what’s supposed to take place, even if that knowledge is inadvertent and from observing God’s other creatures in nature . . . but she’s unprepared. How exactly does it happen? If she could have brought herself to ask that question, whom might she have asked? Even with her mother it would have been so awkward.
He gently guides her to stretch out beside him on his raised teak bed; it doesn’t escape him that she’s frightened, shivering, on the verge of tears, and that her teeth are chattering. In lieu of spoken reassurances, he gathers her to him, one arm under her head, enfolding her, holding her. Nothing more. They lie this way for a long time.
Eventually her breathing slows. The warmth of his body stops her shivering. Is this what the Bible meant? Jacob lay with Leah. David lay with Bathsheba. The night is still. At first, she hears only the hum of the stars. Then a pigeon coos on the roof. She hears the three-note call of the bulbul. A faint scuffle in the muttam and soft padding sounds must be Caesar chasing his tail. Also a repetitive drumming that she cannot place. Then it comes to her: it’s his heartbeat, loud, and almost synchronous with hers.
That low-pitched, muffled thud reassures her, reminds her that she’s in the arms of the man she married almost five years ago. She thinks of the quiet ways he’s attended to her needs, from arranging for the newspaper to escorting her to church for the first time, and now walking her to the boat jetty every Sunday. He expresses his affection indirectly in those acts of caring, in the way he looks at her with pride as she talks to JoJo, or as she reads the paper to him. But on this night during dinner he conveyed his feelings directly but wordlessly through precious earrings that are the sign of a mature woman, a wise wife. This moment could have come at any time in the last few years, but he waited.
After a while, he lifts his head up to look into her face; he raises his eyebrows and tilts his head questioningly. She understands he’s asking if she’s ready. The truth is she doesn’t know. But she knows she trusts him; she has faith that if he brought her here it’s because he knows she’s ready. For once she doesn’t look away; she holds his gaze and peers into his eyes, seeing into his soul for the first time in the four years she has been his wife. She nods.