“No. It’s simply the truth that you captured. Don’t you see it? Well, I do. You forget that I’ve had the experience of being sketched by you. Believe me, it gives the model a profound insight into who they really are.”
In the wake of her departure, the relatives come to see Portrait of Lizzi. Philipose watches them do just what Big Ammachi did: stare for a long time, drawn into a silent dialogue with themselves as much as with the subject, and emerge subdued. The portrait perhaps helps each viewer come to terms with Lizzi’s disappearance. But it also makes them understand something Philipose already knows: Elsie is an artist of the highest rank. Not like Raja Ravi Varma, but so much better, a painter with her own vision. Elsie’s portraits make Ravi Varma’s work look flat and lifeless, despite the theatricality of his compositions.
In June of that year, Philipose ruptures the evening quiet with a cheer that brings everyone to the radio. “Nehru is free! After nine hundred and sixty-three days in prison! It’s the acknowledgment by the British that it’s over.”
Philipose stays glued to the radio late into the night. America, Ireland, and New Zealand broke free from Britain in the past. He pictures Brits in the remaining colonies—Nigeria, Burma, Kenya, Ghana, Sudan, Malaya, Jamaica—sitting by their radios, nervous, because Britain is soon to lose the jewel in the crown, and the sun that never sets on the British Empire is about to do so. Negotiations for a free India are already underway. The road ahead is treacherous because Jinnah and the Muslim League want a separate homeland for Muslims, who make up almost one third of India’s population. Jinnah doesn’t trust the Hindu-dominated Congress Party.
Elsie is reading when he climbs into bed. He says, “How did a small island wind up ruling half the globe? That’s what I want to know.”
She puts down his dog-eared copy of The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. It has consumed her at bedtime for days. “What I want to know,” she says, “is the effect this rascal Tom had on the young boy who read this book.”
“Well,” says Philipose, “as a matter of fact—” but she silences him by covering his lips with hers. He fumbles for the light switch.
In August, in the space of three days, atomic bombs level Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A hundred thousand people die in an instant. The Parambil family gathers to stare at the paper’s montage of photographs from both cities. Of all the grisly war images seen at Parambil, nothing compares to this.
Later Philipose finds Odat Kochamma staring at the newspaper by herself, tears trickling down her cheeks. He puts his arm around her. She pretends to push him away while leaning wearily against him. “I may not read, but I understand more than you think, monay. You think I’m sad? Wrong! These are tears of joy. I’m happy that I’m old, so I’ll be spared what’s coming. If we can kill each other so easily, then that’s the end of the world, isn’t it?”
He takes down the map montage that covers one wall. War had become a guilty hobby, but he can no longer bear the human suffering cataloged on that map. Elsie watches him, silent. “There are better things I want to remember about the last few years,” he says. “I came home to Parambil where I belong. I became a writer. But most of all, you came into my life. Those are the things to memorialize.”
A letter arrives from Chandy saying that he’s moving up from the Thetanatt house in the plains to the bungalow for the summer; he invites them to visit. Elsie is excited. “It will be so humid here, while there we will have morning mists over the garden . . . You can write. I can paint. We can go for walks, play tennis or badminton. Horse racing too on weekends, if you care to go. You have to see the estate. Everyone is dying to meet you.”
“Well . . . that sounds wonderful.” But the truth is her every word is making him anxious. He feels giddy and breaks out into a sweat.
“We’ll pick a date, and I’ll ask my father to send the car, and—”
“No!” he says. Elsie’s shocked expression embarrasses him. “I mean, let’s think about it. Yes?”
Traces of her earlier smile cling to her lips, unwilling to give up hope. Surely someone who takes fervent notes while listening to the radio, who reads even at the dinner table, who orders more books than the shelves can hold, surely such a man would be eager to explore new territory, experience new things.
“Philipose . . . It’s good for us to leave Parambil now and then. See a bit of the world.” As an afterthought, she adds, “Good for our art.”
“I know.” But if he knows, then why is his heart pounding, and why this terrible feeling of dread, as though he cannot breathe? Going to Madras, brief as his stay there was, gutted him. He had to come home to reclaim himself, to reconstruct his being. But not until this moment when Elsie spoke about leaving did he discover that the very thought of it would evoke a terror akin to drowning. Parambil is his solid ground, his equilibrium, and all else feels like water. And it isn’t just the going away to far mountains; the rituals of clubs, parties, races will mightily challenge his hearing. People who’ve known Elsie since she was young will be judging him, which only compounds his fears.
Elsie stands there waiting for an explanation. His fears are irrational, and he’s ashamed. He simply cannot admit them to her without diminishing himself, without sounding like a weakling, a complete failure as a man and husband. His thoughts are bouncing around his brain, hurting his head.
“Let the world come to us,” he hears himself say at last, and it sounds haughty and harsh. Elsie flinches. It was a silly thing to say, and he knows it. But having said it, he’s cornered. There is no retreat. “I have everything I need here. Don’t you? I visit every place in the wide world through the radio.”
The woman he adores stares at him as though she doesn’t recognize him.
“Philipose,” she says after a while, her voice quiet, so he has to focus on her lips. Her hand reaches out tentatively, like a child about to pet a beloved dog who is behaving strangely. “Philipose, it’s all right. We’d be going by car. No boat, no rivers to—”
This allusion to his other handicap further shames his shrinking, retreating, anxious self, and an ugly defensive and reflexive response bubbles out before he can pull it back. “Elsie, I forbid it,” says someone he doesn’t recognize, someone using his lips and his voice. The words sound awful as they leave his tongue. “I forbid you to go.” There. He’s done it.
Her hand recoils. Her features become still. He watches her retreat to that place that’s closed to him. She turns away while saying something he misses. “Elsie, what was that?”
She squares herself to him, her head held high. The words he reads off her lips and that also arrive at his ear are without malice, without rancor, with nothing except sadness. “I said that I’m going to see my father.”
That night, his wife doesn’t come to bed. When he looks for her, he finds her sleeping on the mats with the three others, something she has done only when Baby Mol is unwell and pleads for it. His pride won’t let him wake her or risk waking his mother. At dinner, when Big Ammachi asks him what is going on, he pretends not to hear.