At Parambil two days later, when Mariamma returns with her father’s body, she and Anna Chedethi cling to each other like two drowning souls. Anna Chedethi is more than blood: she is now the last surviving member of her family.
Joppan is right behind Anna Chedethi, his face stony as he clutches Mariamma’s hands, his eyes dark embers as though he’s plotting vengeance against a God who took his best friend. Neither Anna Chedethi nor Joppan has any idea why her father got on the train.
She barely recognizes the bag of bones who comes forward to console her: it’s Uplift Master. Her father was his only supporter after the scandal around his employee’s embezzling funds, though it turned out it was the bank that had suffered most, and the Hospital Fund was largely intact. Master had judged himself more harshly than anyone else. Still, he’s the man for moments like this: the needs of others, the need to organize and execute the funeral, give him purpose. “My heart is broken, molay,” he says. He moves off to talk to the driver of the van bearing the coffin.
At the church the next day, there are so many faces she doesn’t recognize, admirers of the Ordinary Man who’ve come to offer condolences. A woman who in appearance could be a sister to Big Ammachi, but bent over and with a cane, says, “Molay, we laughed with your father and cried with him for a quarter century. Our heart breaks for you.” She squeezes Mariamma to her bosom.
Mariamma carries a secret that none of the mourners can know: Her father’s body in the casket has had all its viscera removed; the abdomen and thorax are just a hollow shell. Uma took his entire spine out en bloc as well, inserting a broomstick in the gutter left behind. Those who earlier viewed the open casket never saw the long incision at the back of his head, running from ear to ear, just under the hairline. His scalp was peeled forward and his calvarium opened to remove his brain. Then skull and scalp were restored. A brain autopsy would not normally have been done in the setting of a disaster and with so many victims, especially if the lungs showed he had drowned. However, Uma will personally conduct a brain autopsy on this victim. But no autopsy will explain why her father got on the train.
He is to be buried next to his father; Big Ammachi; Baby Mol; JoJo; and his beloved son, her brother, Ninan, in the red soil that nurtured them and that they loved. If her mother’s remains are ever found, she too will lie here. As will Mariamma herself.
She wonders what Big Ammachi would say about her son’s body not being whole. The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible. Did her grandmother believe that literally? Perhaps she did. If God can raise the decomposed, then God can surely reconstitute her father, even if his mortal remains are divided and on opposite coasts.
The coffin is lowered. Dirt rattles on the lid with a note of such finality that she discovers a new reservoir of tears. Later, back in the house, the extended Parambil family gathers: all the adults she knew as a child, many of them quite aged now. The twins are old men, even more alike now in their bent-over state than when they were younger, with matching canes and receding hair. Decency Kochamma isn’t there; she’s bedridden, in her late eighties, devoid of reach or venom. Dolly Kochamma is the same age as her co-sister; she has some wrinkles but somehow looks and moves like a spry fifty-year-old as she bustles back and forth helping Anna Chedethi bring out the food. Mariamma sees the faces of children she grew up with, some barely recognizable as adults. Missing are the faces of two who might have brought her some comfort: Lenin and Podi. In the Saint Thomas Christian tradition there is no graveside eulogy, but now, with the burial over, those gathered in the house look at Mariamma expectantly before Achen says a prayer. She stands, hands clasped together, bravely facing them. It comes to her that it’s only when one’s father and mother are both dead that one stops being a child, being a daughter. She has just become an adult.
“If Appa could see you now, he would be overwhelmed with gratitude. For your love for him, and for the way you have supported me in my grief. My father had so much love for Ninan, and so much love for my mother. But he never got the chance to love them for as long as he wanted. He poured all that love into me, more love than most daughters experience in many lifetimes. I was blessed. I thank each of you for being here, for giving me strength. I’ll try to go on. We must all go on. That’s what he would have wanted.”
The morning of the funeral, her father’s beloved newspaper runs his column for the last time. Under his photograph and byline the only words are: The Ordinary Man, 1923 to 1974. Beneath that, the column is empty, only a thick black border framing the void.
CHAPTER 72
The Disease of von Recklinghausen
1974, Madras
Mariamma writes to let Uma Ramasamy know the date of her return. Uma replies by telegram: Bring the genealogy you mentioned. I have something to show you.
Two weeks after the funeral, Mariamma boards the overnight train from Punalur—not the route her father took. In her berth, she cannot sleep. She finds the suspense unbearable. Why didn’t Uma just say what she’d found?
She arrives in Madras in the early morning and freshens up in the hostel. By eleven o’clock she’s in the gloomy and unnerving Pathology Specimen Room, waiting for Uma. The hundreds of preserved specimens on the shelves, used by examiners to quiz students in the viva voce in anatomy, pathology, and every clinical specialty, stare at her.
Uma arrives, hugs Mariamma, then holds her at arm’s length to study her, ensure she’s in one piece while she struggles for the right words. She gives up and just hugs Mariamma once more. “Is that it?” Uma says at last, wiping her eyes, looking at the poster-sized sheet rolled into a tube.
“That’s a copy. The original is falling apart. And it’s in Malayalam. I translated all the writing that I could decipher.”
Like keepers of the faith, they pore over the lives of Parambil. Mariamma summarizes what she knows: the crucifix over wavy lines is for those who drowned; wavy lines without a crucifix indicate an aversion to water. The annotations suggest that in the fifth or sixth decade of life some of those with the Condition staggered or had dizziness. There are several references to deafness. And three mentions of weakness of one side of the face, including in her grandfather.
Uma says, “I don’t see a simple Mendelian pattern of inheritance. Striking that it affects men more than women!”
“Well . . . maybe not. Since women marry and move away, there’s little record of them after that. They belong to another family from then on. It’s as though marriage makes them disappear.” Like my mother, she thinks.
“Thank you for bringing it. Immensely helpful.” Uma sits back. “So . . . Mariamma, on the general autopsy, there were no injuries sufficient to have caused your father’s death . . . He drowned.” She waits for Mariamma to absorb this. But for the Condition her father might have swum to safety.
After a while, Mariamma nods for Uma to go on. “Before I performed the brain autopsy, I spoke with Dr. Das from neurology, told him what I knew. He was with me when I removed the brain. We saw something. The truth is I almost missed the crucial finding. It was subtle, and it helped to have your story and to have Das there. Let’s go to the Brain Room and I’ll show you,” she says, rising.