Her fear subsides. Hesitantly, she reaches for the offering. She’s surprised that the nostrils look so human, fringed by paler freckled skin, as delicate as a lip, yet as nimble and dexterous as two fingers; it snuffles at her chest, tickles her elbow, then traces a path to her face. She suppresses a giggle. Hot exhalations puff down on her like benedictions. The scent is something out of the Old Testament. Noiselessly, the trunk withdraws.
She turns to find she has a startled witness. Two-year-old JoJo sits staring over Thankamma’s midriff, his eyes wide. She grins, rising, impulsively beckoning him and lifting him to her hip, and they head outside, following the apparition.
She senses spirits everywhere in Parambil, just as in any house. One paces outside on the muttam. The darkness flickers with invisible souls as plentiful as fireflies.
In a clearing by a towering palm, hovering over a stack of coconut fronds, the retinal glow of an eye sways like a lamp in a breeze. As her vision adjusts, a mountain of a forehead emerges, then languidly flapping ears . . . a sculpture carved from the black stone of night. The elephant is real, not a ghost.
JoJo absentmindedly encircles her neck with one arm, his fingers clutching her earlobe, comfortably settled on her hip as if he’s never known any other. She wants to laugh; just yesterday, she was the one clinging to Thankamma. They stand still, two half-orphans. The spirits take their orders from the jasmine-giver and retreat into the shadows that yield to the dawn.
In her short life she’s seen temple elephants worshipped and pampered with treats; she’s seen logging elephants lumbering through villages on their way to the forest. But surely this beast blocking out the stars is the world’s biggest elephant. To watch its leisurely chew, the graceful dance of the trunk as it folds leaves into a grinning mouth, soothes her.
On the elephant’s leeward side, just beyond the mud bund that creates a moat around every coconut tree to keep water and manure from draining away, a man sleeps on a rope cot.
Her husband’s elbows and knees jut from the sagging wooden frame. In the posture of his powerful left arm, curled to make a pillow for his cheek, the fingers gathered to a point, she sees echoes of her jasmine-bearing visitor.
CHAPTER 4
A Householder’s Initiation 1900, Parambil Inside the kitchen, the packed-earth floor feels cool on her soles. The walls are dark from smoke, and they enfold mouthwatering scents; she is immediately at home in this shady sanctuary. Thankamma, bent over, blows through a wide metal tube, her cheeks ballooning as she coaxes the overnight embers in the aduppu back to life. Of the six brick slots in this raised hearth, pots are sitting on four. She marvels at how fast Thankamma moves for a big woman, her hands a blur, feeding dry coconut husks under the pan with the frying onions here, and flattening embers there so the rice can now simmer. Thankamma pours the bride coffee brewed in milk and sweetened with jaggery. “I made puttu,” she says, pushing a spongy white cylinder of steamed rice flour out of its wooden mold and onto her banana leaf plate. For JoJo she mashes it with banana and honey. She’s warmed up the beef fry—erechi olarthiyathu—and the fiery fish curry—meen vevichathu—from the previous night. “Isn’t the fish tastier in the morning? That’s the beauty of this clay pot! Treasure it and never use it for anything but meen vevichathu, all right? Every year, your curry will get better. If there’s a fire in my house and I must choose between my husband and my clay pot . . . well, all I can say is he’s lived a good life. The curries I will make in my pot will ease my widowhood!”
Thankamma’s laughter rings out. The bride sits dazed, cross-legged, contemplating her first breakfast at Parambil: it is lavish, and more nourishing than what she and her mother ate in a week.
“Your husband ate standing, as usual. He’s already gone to the field.”
Thankamma insists that a bride should do nothing but let herself be spoiled. She tries, but it is against her nature. She watches Thankamma’s fingers, trying to keep track of the ingredients they toss into the curries, but it’s hard when there are never fewer than two dishes being made at the same time. Thankamma’s hands must have a memory of their own, she thinks, because their owner pays no attention to them as she chatters away. JoJo drags her away, proud to be her guide, walking her through every room, forgetting he just did it two hours before. The house is L-shaped, one limb being the older, original house, sitting well off the ground on a high plinth, and constructed around the strongroom, or ara, in which a family’s wealth—money, jewelry, and paddy—are stored. A cellar sits below the ara, while an unused bedroom and a large pantry flank it; next to the pantry is the kitchen. A narrow outer verandah connects everything. The newer limb of the house is lower to the ground, with a broad, inviting verandah on three sides. It has a sitting room that gets little use, then two adjacent large bedrooms—her husband’s and the one she, JoJo, and Thankamma sleep in—and another room that is used as a storeroom.
Old and new limbs embrace a rectangular muttam, or courtyard, surfaced with yellow, gold, and white pebbles hauled from a riverbed. Each morning a pulayi woman, Sara, sweeps the muttam with a stick broom, leaving a fan-shaped pattern as she clears away dead leaves while evening out the pebbles. The muttam is where mats are rolled out to dry boiled paddy, where clothes hang on a line, and where JoJo kicks his ball.
After lunch, she, JoJo, and Thankamma take long naps. Her husband never naps and spends most of his time outdoors working the land. When she catches a glimpse of him in the fields, he’s always accompanied by a few pulayar, standing out from them because of his height, and because compared to theirs his skin looks fair. In the evenings, Thankamma puts her feet up and the three of them sit in the breezeway outside the kitchen, as the older woman tells endless stories while spoiling JoJo and her with treats from the cellar. Belatedly it occurs to her that Thankamma’s stories are a form of instruction. She tries to recall them at night when she lies down to sleep, but that’s also when homesickness clutches at her insides, and her every thought turns homeward. Thankamma’s affection is so reminiscent of her mother that it can accentuate her sadness. She allows herself to cry only when she’s certain everyone is asleep.
On her second morning, when they hear the fishmonger’s yodeling cry in the distance, Thankamma asks the bride to hail her. Five minutes later the woman is outside the kitchen, the scent of the river clinging to her. Thankamma helps her lower the heavy basket off her head.
“Aah, and this is the bride!” the fishmonger says, brushing scales off her forearms and squatting down. “For her only I brought special mathi today.” She removes the sackcloth covering the basket as though uncovering precious jewels.
Thankamma sniffs a sardine, squeezes it, then slaps it down against its mates. “Just for the bride, is it? Keep it if it’s that special. What’s under that cloth? Aah! See that! Who’s that mathi for? Was there another marriage I didn’t know about? Give it here! Not a word!”
The next day, the bride sees Shamuel pulayan crossing the muttam, straining under a headload of coconuts in a wide basket. Thankamma had pointed him out as Parambil’s foreman and her husband’s constant shadow; Sara, who sweeps the muttam, is his wife. Shamuel’s family has worked for them for generations, Thankamma said; his forebearers were probably indentured to the family in ancient times, before that was outlawed. The pulayar are the lowest caste in Travancore, rarely owning their own property, even their huts belonging to the landlord; the sight of them is enough to pollute a Brahmin, who then must take a ritual bath.