Whenever he recalls his churlish behavior over Elsie’s desire to visit her father’s estate, he cringes. “That wasn’t me,” he says one day and for no reason when Ninan is in his grandmother’s arms and the two of them are alone. He smacks the side of his head. “That was someone else, Elsie. A stupid, fearful child who took dominion of my body and my senses. That’s the only explanation I have.” She regards him indulgently.
Every now and then Philipose looks out the bedroom window and is reminded of his failed promise. The photographer came and went, and the Ordinary Man column is now graced by a grainy photograph of Philipose in front of the tree; Shamuel had no objection at all to the tree coming down. Yet somehow the plavu still stands. Thankfully, Elsie seems to have forgotten.
The lump of blue clay that came into the world so precipitously makes up for lost time. His incessant movements and precocious Malayali inquisitiveness leave them all convinced that he instigated his premature arrival; he must have scaled the walls of his confined watery jail, looking for the exit. Now on the outside, he resumes his exploration. Baby Ninan’s life mission is very simple: UP! When in their arms, he wants to climb onto shoulder or neck, using their ears, hair, lips, or nose for a handhold. He jumps readily into the hands of any suitor, but what he really wants is locomotion and height. His mother’s chest is home, but even the succor of the nipple is trumped by the thrill of being bounced, swung, or tossed up high, even if it makes him gasp and hold his breath. He laughs and kicks his legs to signal, “Again!”
One day, without fanfare, Elsie enters her studio and she’s back at her easel whenever the baby allows. Philipose notices her last landscape losing its connection to reality: How can the water in the paddy field be ginger colored, or the sky lime green? Toy clouds line up like boxcars. This exaggerated primitive style is somehow pleasing. Also, giving in to Decency Kochamma’s pleadings and her promises she will abide by the artist’s condition, Elsie embarks on her portrait. Whenever Philipose sees the formidable lady seated and posing, he is convinced she sees herself as a Mar Gregorios, missing only crosier, vestments, and sainthood.
Ninan is uninterested in walking except as a means to climb. Why use two limbs when we have four? is his philosophy. Four allow one to ascend. Soon, the dull thud of a tiny body landing on an unyielding floor is an all-too-common sound. A brief silence is followed by a short-lived wail, more indignation than pain, then the climber starts up again. Shamuel says, “He’s like his grandfather, part leopard.”
Big Ammachi knows that he’s like his grandfather and his father in another way: water poured over his head disorients Ninan, sends his eyes bobbing to one side then drifting back to the midline only to hammer sideways again. He has the Condition.
Big Ammachi summons both parents to her room and, mirroring the motions of her late husband, uncovers and spreads out the “Water Tree”—her name for the genealogy. At the time of their marriage, Philipose had told Elsie about the Condition. She hadn’t been concerned and besides, she’d heard a little bit about it already. “Every family has something,” Elsie had said. What was it in her family? “Drink. My grandfather. My father. His brothers. Even my brother.”
Now Big Ammachi guides Elsie through the genealogy. “You’ll just have to be careful with Ninan around water. You won’t have to teach him to avoid it. He won’t want anything to do with water. Unless he’s like your husband who kept trying to swim—thank goodness at some point he gave up.” Philipose says nothing. He worries about his son’s safety in a way he never worried about his own.
Nearing midnight on August 14, 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s voice comes through the radio, the most exciting words to emerge from it in its existence to date. Earlier that day, Pakistan was born. “Long years ago,” Nehru says in an Englishman’s English, “we made a tryst with destiny. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
But India’s awakening proves bloody. Twenty million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs are forced to uproot themselves from the lands where their families have lived for generations. Muslims stream to the newly formed nation of Pakistan, while Hindus and Sikhs who find themselves no longer in India, head there. Trains packed with refugees are set upon by gangs of the opposite religion. Bloodthirsty mobs crush infants’ skulls, rape women, and mutilate men before killing them. Life or death for a man and his family teeters on the presence or absence of a foreskin. Philipose remembers his train journey back from Madras and Arjun-Kumar-Railways, the snuff-sniffer, marveling at how all religions, all castes got on so well inside a railway compartment. “Why not same outside train? Why not simply all getting along?”
In South India, particularly in Travancore, Cochin, and Malabar, they do get along. The violence to their north feels as though it’s happening on another continent. Malayali Muslims, whose bloodlines reach back to merchants from Arabia who scudded to the Spice Coast in their dhows, have nothing to fear from their non-Muslim neighbors. Geography is destiny, and the shared geography of the Spice Coast, and the Malayalam language, unites all faiths. Once again, the fortress of the Western Ghats, which has kept invaders and false prophets at bay for centuries, spares them the sort of madness that leads to genocide. In his notebook Philipose writes, “Being a Malayali is a religion unto itself.”
Just before Baby Ninan is two, a wax-sealed envelope arrives for Elsie, forwarded from the Thetanatt residence. Portrait of Lizzi has been accepted for a National Trust exhibition in Madras. Her eyes light up with pride.
Philipose says, “I didn’t know you were competing!”
“There wasn’t any point to mentioning it. I’ve submitted since I was fourteen. My father’s tea broker and friend in Madras submits for me—he likes my work. But it’s always been rejected, till now.” She looks at him mischievously. “This year, instead of ‘T. Elsiamma’ I asked him to submit it as ‘E. Thetanatt.’ ”
“That made the difference?”
She shrugs. “The judges are all men. They think I’m a man. In any case I have to send more pieces to accompany the Portrait of Lizzi. I don’t have much time.”
“Well . . . Elsie, that’s wonderful. I’m so proud,” Philipose manages to say.
She hugs him, squeezing him so hard that it takes his breath away. Belatedly, he realizes that he should have hugged her first.
He’s happy for her, but ashamed to recognize that this news rattles him. Is it that she’s used her maiden name? But it’s not that. He thinks of all the rejected manuscripts he’s grumbled to her about, and the way he would mope around for a few days. Meanwhile Elsie doesn’t think her rejections are worth mentioning.
He sees her still gazing dreamily at him, her thoughts far away. Uncharitably, he tells himself that she’s picturing her work in the show and getting first prize. But he’s wrong.
“Philipose, there’s no requirement for the exhibitors to be there. But what if we go to Madras together for the opening. Spend some time, just the two of us. Big Ammachi can care for Ninan. Won’t it be exciting to take the train again in the other direction?”
He turns visibly pale, unable to conceal his distress. Sweat beads on his brow. She notices. He comes clean. “Elsie, I promised to come with you to the estate. Any time. Or any other city. Just say so. But Madras? My heart is racing just to hear the word. It affects me bodily. It’s the city where I was defeated, humiliated, sent packing.”
“Me too, Philipose. That’s why I was on that train. But this time we’ll be together.”