His gut coils and an equine shiver pushes out hair follicles: The magnified proportions, the posture, the attitude—it’s all Elsie.
He stumbles to his room, and in a frenzy, he studies the catalog under the table lamp. The index lists this figure as “#26, Artist Unknown.” The catalog is for an estate sale of the contents of the Adyar house of an apparently wealthy Englishman and “Orientalist” who’d amassed a collection of Indian paintings, folk art, and sculptures. The Madras auction house of Messrs. Wintrobe & Sons presides. He pores over each page, studying the other items. He sees nothing else that is Elsie’s. Conceivably this statue could be a work of Elsie’s from before they were married. Or when she went away after Ninan’s death. But his gut says it isn’t.
He returns to the cover. The rough, untouched stone where the face is buried is deliberate. He breaks into a sweat, feels an urge to claw at the paper, break open the stone to reveal the face.
He paces, unable to sit, trying to make sense of what makes no sense.
We never found a body. In its absence, we presumed.
He was barely present when Elsie drowned, lost in opium fantasies of reincarnation, and then sinking into recrimination. When he returned from the forest after Shamuel, Joppan, Unni, and Damo had carried him away, he was clearheaded and sober. He’d held Elise’s clothes to his face, the ones she’d left on the bank. He inhaled her scent, the new scent that was hers when she returned from being away so long. The fragrance of suffering. He’d never wanted to accept that she willingly gave herself to the river, took her life, because if that were so, then he knew he’d driven her to it. No, it was an accident. In his nightmares he stumbled onto her decomposed body far from Parambil, picked apart by crocodiles and wild dogs.
But in all these years, he’d never ever considered a possibility other than her drowning; he’d never pictured a scenario in which her living, breathing self still existed in the same universe as his, still practiced her craft. She had cause to run away from him. But from her own child? No, surely not.
Oh, Elsie. What kind of beast were you married to if the only way you could pursue what mattered to you was to sacrifice Mariamma?
The auction is to take place the day after next. The catalog might say “Artist Unknown.” But two decades of newspaper work have taught him that what is unknown is often just undiscovered.
He must go to Madras. For all these years that city has been synonymous with his failure. Not even his daughter being there could entice him to board a train. The thought of it still made him feel breathless and break into sweat.
But he will go. He must go. Not just for answers, but to make amends.
The next morning, the Manorama’s Cochin office manages the impossible. Standing at the reservations window a few hours later he collects his ticket. He’s shaky, his palms sweating. He addresses his body: We’re getting on the train and that’s final. Back at the Malabar Hotel, he pens a letter to Mariamma.
My darling daughter, I’m boarding the train to Madras soon. I will be there by morning. I’ll probably get there before this letter is delivered. But you did say that after all these years if I did show up without warning you would die of shock. Hence, these words to say I’m on my way. I have much to tell you. The voyage of discovery isn’t about new lands but having new eyes.
Your loving Appa
In the afternoon, when it’s time to board, he sees his name on the typed list glued to the carriage; it brings back memories of standing on this very platform with Uplift Master. It’s as though his whole life has yet to unfold; he has yet to meet that adventurous girl in tinted cat’s-eye glasses who is to be his wife; Big Ammachi, Baby Mol, and Shamuel are alive; and Ninan and Mariamma are unborn, waiting for the summons to appear . . .
He climbs aboard like a seasoned traveler, with nothing but the soft briefcase that holds his notebook, shaving kit, and a change of clothes. “Most welcome,” he hears himself say magnanimously, helping a woman push her trunk under his bench. The train jerks forward. He laughs with the others as a kochamma yells from the platform, “And don’t forget to wash your own underwear, kehto! Don’t give it to the dhobi, you hear?” The college boys in the next cubicle shout, “What is there, ammachi? Let him be! For dhobi’s itch you simply scratch, that’s all!”
The journey is off to a rollicking start. His new cubicle friends debate whether it’s better to order dinner in Palakkad or wait till Coimbatore, as though life rests on such small decisions. He’s astonished to hear himself offer an opinion, pretending to have experience. You coward! he thinks. The fuss you made for years about visiting Madras! All you needed was for Elsie to come back from the dead.
At dusk, the lush Malabar slopes of the Western Ghats quiet the passengers, mute their conversations. He stares out, lost. If you changed, Elsie, I did too. I learned to be steadfast. I walked my daughter to school every single day till she forbade me. I read stories to her every night. Thank God she’s a reader, and there’s nothing she likes better than to be buried in a book. Wednesdays I decreed were Carnatic music night from All India Radio, but she preferred opera on the BBC—such awful sounds. Oh, Elsie, how much you missed of our daughter’s life! I never accomplished very much in my life, I’ll be the first to admit. But what accomplishment could be bigger than our daughter? You need say nothing to me. You owe me nothing. Elsie, I’m coming to say I am sorry. To say, I wish I could rewind the thread of our lives. I was someone different then. I’m someone else now.
As they enter the first of the tunnels, the feeble compartment lights give the bogie a ghostly glow, and the train’s hammering on the tracks is amplified into a roar.
I never stopped thinking of you. The way you looked when I first met you, and met you again, and our first kiss . . . I talk to your picture every night.
But Elsie, Elsie—what is the meaning of this statue? Could this be from the year you were away? If not, does it mean you live? Perhaps I preferred to think of you dead, so I didn’t have to face how awful I had been. But Elsiamma, if you’re alive and hiding, then hide no more. Let me see you, show me your face. There’s so much to say . . .
Soon the train will cross over a river on a long trestle bridge that he remembers from so long ago, remembers with a shudder, because it had shaken him. He’d looked out of the window because the rhythmic clatter of the wheels on the track had changed to a high-pitched whir, and when he peeked out, they seemed to be sailing over water, with nothing holding up the train. His young self had almost fainted. Best he be asleep when it happens.
He climbs up to his berth—the topmost—and stretches out. In the confined space, the sight of the ceiling inches from his nose reminds him of a coffin. He shuts his eyes and conjures up Mariamma’s face. She has made up for his thwarted ambitions, his loneliness, the imperfections of his earlier self. We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill.
He’s drifting off when he’s called back by a sharp crack coming from another carriage, followed by a jolt that travels through his bogie. He feels himself rising free of the bunk. This is strange! The cubicle is turning around him. He observes a child suspended in space, while an airborne adult slides past. The compartment explodes with screams and the squealing of metal. He’s thrown up against the ceiling, except the ceiling is the floor.