“I want some time to talk privately with Elsie,” Philipose says.
Aniyan looks to Big Ammachi but sees he’ll get no help there. “Well, maybe after prayers and tea . . .”
“Privately?”
“Aah, aah, privately, certainly. But with everyone there.”
Big Ammachi sits on an impossibly long, white sofa in the Thetanatt house, clutching the gold-trimmed cup and saucer. Framed photographs of the deceased hang side by side, high on the wall and angled down. It’s a trend that she finds ghoulish. Chandy’s late wife looks down. Beside her is the reassuring portrait of Mar Gregorios by Ravi Varma. She addresses the saint: Tell me it’s the right thing we’re doing.
“Ena-di? What you muttering?” Odat Kochamma says crossly. “Drink your tea.” The old lady is thrilled to be invited as one of the elders, along with Uplift Master. She’s not in the least cowed by the house or the occasion; she pours the steaming tea into the porcelain saucer (“What else is this for?”) and blows on it. “Aah, good tea, that much I will say!”
Broker Aniyan neither eats nor drinks, his face as still as standing water, while his eyes sweep the room, cataloging future prospects, even if they are presently infants.
Big Ammachi eyes Chandy, their gregarious host, talking to Uplift Master. Why my Philipose? Her son is a gem, of course, a most eligible groom, and he’ll inherit Parambil, which at one time was nearly five hundred acres. But it doesn’t compare to Chandy’s estate, which she’s told is some hours away and is reported to be several thousand acres of tea and rubber, in addition to this, the ancestral house, and other properties he has elsewhere. His wealth shows in the furnishings of the house, and in the two cars outside, one of which is sleek, with a long prow and a finned tail, glowing like a sapphire under the portico, while the other, which is parked on the side, is the one that brought Philipose home years ago, a vehicle stripped to its skeleton and with a platform jutting from the back. Chandy could have sought the scion of another estate owner for Elsie, or a doctor, or a district collector. Perhaps he just took to the schoolboy Philipose he first met—he called him a hero then. The schoolboy has made a name for himself with his writing. Or else Elsie (who has yet to emerge) was just as insistent as Philipose on this match. She sighs, gazing at her son, looking so handsome despite his nerves, sitting tall, his thick hair forming waves off its center part, the white juba highlighting his fair complexion.
After prayers, more tea and palaharam are brought around by a young girl in a sari, Elsie’s cousin, who then ushers Philipose out to one of two benches on the broad verandah, leaving him in view of all the guests through the open French doors. At once, three ancient ammachis from the Thetanatt side, their ears sagging with gold, rise and follow. Every pleat of their mundus’ fantails is ironed to a knife-edge, belying the curve of their spines, and their chattas are so stiff with starch from being soaked in rice-water that they might splinter as the ancients heave themselves onto the second bench. They adjust their gold-brocaded kavanis to doubly conceal their bosoms.
A frowning Odat Kochamma sets down her saucer with a clatter and heads out, her bowlegged gait making her trunk sway side to side. The ammachis eye her advance with alarm. She squeezes onto their bench, making good use of her elbow, saying, “Plenty of room. Move over.” Odat Kochamma picks up a halwa from the plate the young girl brings around, sniffs, then wrinkles her nose, dropping the halwa back and waving the girl off emphatically, rejecting it for the others as well. The ammachis’ mouths gape in protest, but Odat Kochamma ignores them and loudly clicks her wooden teeth. The ammachis must peer past their cataracts and past Odat Kochamma to see Philipose. Their voices are unnaturally loud because they’re hard of hearing.
“Speak to the girl, is it? What for? Just show up at the wedding—that’s all he needs to do!”
“Aah, aah! Whatever he wants to say, there’s a lifetime to say it, isn’t there?”
“Ooh-aah. Why not he saves some words for when he’s old? Words at least he’ll still have when all else stops functioning!”
Their shoulders shake with laughter; gnarled hands cover their toothless grins. Odat Kochamma pretends she doesn’t hear them. She winks at Philipose before she lets out a fart, then glares accusingly at her seatmates.
Philipose feels every eye on him. The air is so thick he can trace letters in it with his finger. Indoors, his mother looks ill at ease, dwarfed by the long sofa that doesn’t allow her feet to reach the floor. He notices heads and eyes turning, voices faltering: Elsie must have emerged. He rises, wiping his face one last time with the kerchief. His heart pounds so loud that Elsie can follow the sound to its source.
She’s even more beautiful than the woman he remembers from the train cubicle. He’s struck dumb, unable even to say hello. They sit side by side. Her coral-and-blue sari forms a serene backdrop for her hands, which are unadorned, not even a bangle. Her fingers sweep off her knuckles in long lines, like the brushes and pencils they wield. He’s intoxicated by the scent of the gardenia in her hair.
He clears his throat to speak, but then sees her toes peek out from under the sari’s edge and his words vanish. He’s back on the train, her soles flashing before him as she climbs to her bunk.
His vocal cords seem frozen. Oh, Lord, is this what it means to have apoplexy? He reaches for his hankie, but dips into the wrong pocket; his fingers emerge with a one-chakram coin, the image of Bala Rama Varma on top. He holds it out to her, and then the coin vanishes. He displays his hands, front and back. Please examine carefully, ladies and gentlemen; satisfy yourself that nothing is concealed. He reaches for her ear, producing the coin and putting it in her palm.
One of the ancient ammachis brings a hand to her mouth, as if she’s just witnessed a rape. “Did you see that?” The others did not.
“Aah, he did something! Putting this here-there!”
“It was magic,” Philipose says at last, conquering speech. His words come out in English, not a deliberate choice, but a good one, as it turns out, if they want privacy. Elsie takes Philipose’s hand and turns it over.
“You have nice hands. Hands interest me,” she says in English. It was English they had spoken on the train too. He remembers her voice. Its slow, seductive timbre requires him to watch her lips carefully. “I noticed yours the first time I saw you.”
“And I yours when you traced that snuffbox,” he says.
He notices a fleck of green paint on her palm. His skin tingles where she touched him.
“I have notebooks filled with drawings of hands,” Elsie says. He asks why. “I suppose because anything I draw or paint begins with my hands. Sometimes I feel my hand leads and my mind follows. Without a hand I’d have nothing.”
“I have a notebook on feet,” he says. “Feet reveal character. You could be a king or bishop and adorn your hands with jewels. But feet are your unadorned self, regardless of who you proclaim yourself to be.”
She leans forward to look down at their bare feet. She slides a foot alongside his. Her second toe, reaching just beyond her great toe; her clear, luminous nails; and the wavy undulations of the joints all speak to her artistic nature, he thinks. His foot dwarfs hers. Her skin brushes his.
The watching ammachis are close to being apoplectic. If they possessed a whistle, they’d have blown it now. “Ayo! First putting hands. Now touching feet! Can’t this wait?”
Elsie suppresses a giggle. “You hear them?”
He hesitates. “I can’t quite make out every word. But I have a good idea.” English was a brilliant idea.
“Philipose?” she says, as though trying his name out, and looking directly at him. The sound thrills him. “You asked to talk to me?” She’s smiling.