“My darling,” Philipose says. He wants to please her, but his throat feels as though it is closing, and sweat is pouring down his face. “I’m so proud of you. Please understand, I’ll go anywhere else with you. Kanpur, Jabalpur, Any-pur. Just not Madras.”
“It was just a thought,” she says. But the sad note in that husky voice catches in him like a fishhook, shaming him. The antidote to shame is indignation, righteous anger. Fortunately, this time he pushes it down; he knows those emotions aren’t justified. He’s fearful of returning to Madras, and he can’t hide it. But he’s more fearful of losing her, fearful that she’ll outgrow him.
That night, atypically, Ninan climbs onto his mother’s chest and stays put, glued there, his legs curled up till he falls asleep, reminding his parents of the time he lived bound to that spot. Elsie says, “It would have been a shock for him if I was away even for a night. I would have missed him too.” She looks up at Philipose mischievously. “Would you have missed me if I had gone alone?”
“Terribly! And I would have tortured myself with jealousy imagining you sniffing snuff with a stranger. I would probably have jumped on the next train to join you.”
She smiles. She looks down at Ninan. “Well, if we’d gone, at least we’d have missed him together. And we could have replaced painful memories in that city with new ones.”
Philipose says, “I know. But let’s visit some other city first. Save Madras for when I feel more resilient.”
Six weeks later, when he comes to bed and turns out the light, Elsie says, “My father’s driver brought a letter today when you went out with Uplift Master. The Portrait of Lizzi won the gold medal at the Madras exhibition. And the Decency Kochamma portrait got Honorable Mention.”
He sits bolt upright. “What? Only now you tell me? I must wake Ammachi, I must—” She puts a finger on his lips. She insists it can wait till morning.
The news is in the Indian Express the next day. The Express reporter asks why it has taken so long to recognize this artist’s skill. By using a name that didn’t reveal her gender, she won the gold medal. But was this not the same Elsiamma, and some of the same works that were rejected the previous year by the same judges? (The reporter’s source is Chandy’s friend and Elsie’s ardent champion: the head of the tea brokerage in Madras and the man who submitted her work.) Three of Elsie’s paintings sold on opening day. Portrait of Lizzi commanded the best price at the auction. The following day, the Malayalam papers quote the Express story.
When Ninan is three, Uplift Master speculates that the boy is a budding Congress Party politician because he regularly visits every house in Parambil. He loves pickled tender-mango preserves but eats whatever is proffered, his appetite so astonishing that others wonder if they starve him at home. Fortunately, he has no desire to swim. His eyes are on the heights: the top of the wardrobe, the top of the haystack, the center pole of the roof. His highest ascent to date is Damodaran’s back, lifted there by Damodaran, who handed him to a waiting Unni. The holy grail of all ascents is off limits for the prince: the fruiting top of the palm where the tapper makes his living. Emulating his heroes, he sports a cloth belt, tucked into which is a desiccated bone and a twig that stands in for a knife. He has a young pulayi in tow; her only job is to keep him as close to sea level as she can. On a memorable evening the family sits on the verandah and watches in astonishment as Ninan scales the verandah pillar, his soles flat against the smooth surface like a lizard’s feet, while his hands gripping the back of the pillar provide counterpressure. Before they can react, he’s grinning down at them from the rafters.
One morning, when Philipose returns from the post office, he finds Elsie in bed, an anxious look on her face, and her skin burning to the touch. He sponges her with cool cloths to bring the temperature down. For the next few days, the high fever doesn’t abate, which suggests to the family that it is typhoid. At some expense, Philipose hires a car and brings a doctor to Parambil from an hour away; he confirms that it is typhoid. There’s no specific treatment, he says, and reassures them that Elsie should get better.
Philipose alone nurses his wife, waving off help. He discovers that he’s at his best—they are at their best—when she depends on him as she does now. Shouldn’t love always be this way, like the two limbs of the letter A? When she’s absorbed in her work, and isn’t leaning against him, he feels off-balance, unstable.
By the third week of the illness, she rallies. Philipose helps her with a proper bath, after which she’s so weak that he carries her back to bed. She clutches his hand, doesn’t let go. Her finger runs into the depression at the back of his thumb between the wrist tendons. Her face breaks into a silly grin. “Sniiiiifffing only,” she says, stroking the hollow of the “anatomical snuffbox.”
“Exactly two sneezings will be there,” he says. “Unless it is more.” She laughs silently. He kisses her forehead. He feels a surge of tenderness and a strong urge to articulate his inchoate emotions. But that, he knows, is when he is most dangerous to himself.
She asks about Ninan, whom they have kept away from her for the child’s safety. “He climbed on top of Decency Kochamma’s goat shed and plucked her mangoes,” Philipose reports. “She was not happy. She said he was goat above the waist and monkey below. Not flattering to either of us.” Elsie laughs, then winces. Her belly is tender. She opens her eyes to look at him. He leans his head against hers so that they’re looking cross-eyed at each other, grinning like silly children.
What name can he give to this energy swirling in the room, binding them together. If only he could bottle this elixir that illness has made so potent. Is it possible to love her more? Or to feel as valued as he feels now? What to call it but love? A little later, tears well up in her eyes. Is she thinking of her mother, claimed by this same illness when Elsie was not much older than Ninan? He has a frantic need to comfort her.
“What is it? What can I do for you, Elsiamma? Tell me. Anything—”
Idiot! You did it again! He’s embarrassed. On the verge of speech, she gives up. He waits. The vitality that was in the room vanishes, leaving sadness in its wake.
She looks out the window.
“Okay.” He sighs, theatrically. “I promise. The tree will go. No more excuses.” Her eyes close. Was that what her gaze through the window had meant? In any case, he has made a promise. Again. He won’t let her down.
On the first of June that year, 1949, the household is tetchy. Raw, exposed nerves are a pre-monsoon symptom afflicting all on India’s west coast. Columnists write crotchety pieces that rework prior crotchety pieces about this irritability, whose only cure is rain. The monsoon always arrives on June 1, and here it is the fifth already. Farmers clamor for the government to act. Mass prayers are organized. In Mavelikara a woman cuts off the head of her husband of twenty-five years. She said that she found her husband’s cheeriness and talkativeness unbearable, that something in her snapped.
During this period, with little work for the pulayar, Philipose gives Shamuel the order to cut down the tree. The old man listens to the instructions and walks away puzzled.