He stands in the kitchen doorway and looks as Unni used to. ‘Annamol Chacko,’ she tells the exhaust fan. ‘You and your nine daughters come to visit your son, Ousep, when we are living in Kottayam. I am eight months pregnant with Unni. Still I make tea for all of you. And you say I am too learned to make good tea. And all of you laugh.’
Thoma has never understood why this moment means so much to his mother. Criticism of tea is hardly a matter that should affect a clever woman like her. But Unni did tell him one day that in the words of some women there was great injustice that only other women could decipher. ‘It is not about the tea, Thoma, it is never about the tea.’
Thoma has a hazy memory of his grandmother, who used to visit every summer. He remembers her as a tiny woman with the face of a pony and cruel eyes that had an opinion about all
that they saw. And she was usually in a white blouse, shrouded in an expensive white cloth that had a cross pinned on it. Below the waist she was bound tightly by another white cloth that was bunched behind her like a bird’s tail. ‘Like a hand fan to cool her arse,’ Unni said. She used to come by the night train from the village with her silent husband, who carried on his shoulders at least two jackfruits and all the fearless flies of Kerala. For some reason, she always walked ahead of him.
Unni said that their mother’s enemy was their enemy, so Thoma decided to hate his grandmother, even though she appeared to love him very much. There was a reason why it was easy for Thoma to dislike her. In the first few minutes of her arrival, Mariamma would cane Thoma’s legs for no good reason, then take him inside to kiss him and say she was sorry. She never hit Unni, probably because he was one of those people nobody wants to hit, or maybe she treated him differently because he was older than Thoma. Though, sometimes, she did chase Unni with a broom in her hand, both of them laughing. It disappointed Thoma that his mother, who was usually very kind, would behave in this puzzling manner with him every time Grandmother visited. But Unni told him one day that it was a Village Tradition. One way of insulting the mother-in-law was to beat up your kids in front of her. He was probably right because Annamol was deeply affected by the caning and it could not have been out of love for him. She would look sadly at the floor and weep with an occasional shiver of her nostrils.
Thoma is amazed at the telepathy of women. How miraculous it is for one woman to do something weird and another woman to extract its intended meaning. One morning, his mother told him, ‘Thoma, when I am old I’ll go to an old-age home so that I am not a burden on you.’ Thoma could not
understand why she was saying this when there was a lot of time to decide the matter. But then Unni told him, ‘That message was not for you, Thoma. It was meant for Annamol Chacko. Mother is hinting to the old woman that she is a bloody nuisance.’
Thoma is glad he is not a woman. He is not good at deciphering clues and if he were a woman he would go through his entire life missing all the insults hurled at him by other women. Which is not such a bad way to be, when you think of it.
Despite everything, Annamol continued to visit every summer of Thoma’s life, until he was seven. He would always remember the dawn when he woke up to her terrifying screams. She was in the bathroom by the time Thoma arrived but the door was not locked. He opened the door nervously and the sight of an old woman wailing at the mirror was so terrifying that at first he did not see what was wrong with her. Then he realized that most of her hair was gone. Someone had cut her long silver hair when she was sleeping. The whole day she sat in a corner, her head covered, looking wicked, holding her broken hair in her fist. Father was not in town that day. He was in Sriharikota to report the launch of an Indian rocket. Mother was silent that day, but not unhappy. Finally, Annamol told her husband, ‘I want to leave.’
The old man was sitting cross-legged in just his underwear, a lit cigarette in his hand, elbows resting on his thighs, his whole body glistening with sweat.
‘I want to leave,’ she said again.
‘India is about to launch a rocket,’ he said.
‘That’s all very nice, but Annamol is happy to take a train,’ she said.
‘You don’t understand, woman, the government says that
people should remain indoors because the rocket can fall anywhere.’
So Annamol left in the night, after the newsreader announced that the rocket had fallen safely into the sea. When she was at the door she raised a hand and flung a fistful of air at Mariamma. ‘I curse you,’ she said. ‘As I cry, so shall you.’ Mariamma looked up at the ceiling and mumbled a Hail Mary. Grandmother stared hard and said, in a whisper that had the hiss of a snake, ‘Mary can’t save you. Just because men like virgins, it does not make them gods.’
Mariamma looked at the ceiling again and she whispered, ‘My Lord, my God, there are Protestants among us, it seems, forgive them their sins.’
Thoma has not seen his grandmother since. She was not present at Unni’s funeral. None of the relatives had come. The funeral was a day after he died; there was not enough time for people to come from Kerala.
Thoma wonders whether on a vast field far away Annamol wags a finger at a jackfruit tree and accuses his mother of cutting her hair. Grandmother probably still does not know the truth.
It was Unni who had cut her hair. He was just fifteen then but he was brave, he was always brave. The night Annamol left, he said with terrifying hatred in his eyes, ‘Justice for our mother, Thoma. The worst thing that can happen to a person is a tragedy that is also funny. And that has happened to Grandmother.’
Every time Mariamma spoke to the walls, Unni used to listen very carefully, usually standing out of sight, staring at the floor, hands on his hips. When Thoma came to him to chat, Unni would raise a finger asking him to shut up. It was very
important to Unni that he heard every word that she uttered. It was as if he were trying to piece together a riddle from the strands of her many conversations with herself. Some days, when Mother seemed particularly disturbed, he would go to her and crack a joke about the way she was or stand beside her and imitate her perfectly. Or he would make her tell him the family stories that lurked behind every grouse, and she would become very happy as she told him her stories. Sometimes she would laugh in the middle of her tales and say, ‘You are like a daughter, Unni.’
He once pointed out a fact that Thoma might not have figured out on his own. It might appear that their mother’s grouses were endless and the persons who once harmed her numerous, but the truth was that there were not more than a dozen names she uttered, and against every name she repeated the same set of two or three incidents. It comforts Thoma that there are not too many bad things that happened to his mother when she was young. And that if you had the time to do the maths you could actually arrive at the exact number of grouses she has. He hopes there is a way he can calm her forever and make her a woman, like any other woman, who does not talk to the walls.
Mariamma is a bit louder than usual right now and he knows that everybody on the floor and even below can hear her. At some point, as always, she catches him looking at her. She wipes her tears and lets out an embarrassed chuckle. Swings her arms in the air like a wrestler before a bout and says, ‘I was just exercising, Thoma. Don’t worry. I’m just letting off some steam.’ She begins to march like a soldier now, swinging her arms. ‘Left, right, left, right,’ she says, trying to make him laugh. She gives up, leans against the kitchen counter, and smiles in an ingratiating way. She probably wants him to
leave so that she can let off more steam. Thoma decides to make her laugh. He feels a cold fear in his throat because what he is about to do is risky. He has never tried this before, though he has thought of it many times.
‘Jesus is sitting with his disciples for the Last Supper,’ he says.
‘What did you say, Thoma?’
‘There is a really foul smell in the air. Jesus looks a bit worried. He says, “Tonight one of you will betray me.”’
Mariamma searches for something on the floor. Thoma is surprised that his mother has lost interest in his joke so fast.
‘Judas gets up holding his nose and says, “It was Jesus, it was Jesus.”’
Mariamma finds the broom in a crevice above the gas cylinder.
‘You didn’t get it?’ he says. ‘It was Jesus who had farted and Judas betrayed him.’
‘I got that much, you little rat,’ Mariamma says, and charges at him with the broom.
He flees, wondering why the joke sounded so funny when Unni used to tell it. Mariamma runs behind him, screaming, ‘That’s all this house needs, another God-abusing fool.’
Thoma runs to the bathroom and shuts the door. He screams from inside, ‘I was only trying to make you laugh.’
‘I don’t need help to laugh, I don’t need help to cry. Don’t you know that?’
‘I won’t try again.’
‘Open the door.’
‘No.’
‘I have put the broom down.’
‘No.’
‘What you should be doing, Thoma, is having your books in front of you. We have to do something about your marks.’
‘I pass in all the subjects all the time, don’t I?’
‘That’s not enough, Thoma. That’s not enough. You have to score in the late nineties. Otherwise there is no hope for a boy in this country. I ask you again, do you want to become a writer?’
‘No.’
‘Then what do we do about your marks, Thoma? I can’t afford tuition. I can teach you but I am not good at teaching kids.’
‘I don’t understand anything when you teach me.’
‘So what do we do about you, Thoma? Come out, first.’
‘I will work hard. Don’t worry.’
‘I was thinking, Thoma. Maybe we should ask Mythili again.’
‘Don’t do that. She has not come here since Unni did what he did. She has become like the other people. She does not like us any more.’
‘Don’t say that. Nobody dislikes us.’
From the way her last sentence ends, Thoma realizes that she is probably crying. He begins to cry, too. Both of them stand on either side of the shut bathroom door and cry as silently as they can.
‘Why did Unni do it?’ he asks. ‘Of all the people in the world, Unni.’
‘That’s what even I ask myself every single moment of my life. Of all the people in the world, Unni.’
Thoma opens the door and steps out. He wants to stand next to his mother and hug her with one hand, without feeling her breasts, the way Unni used to hug her. But then Unni was tall and strong. He would hug her with one hand and lift her off the ground.
‘Don’t cry,’ he says.
‘You don’t cry,’ she says.
‘I’ve stopped.’
‘Then I’ve stopped, too.’
‘What is it that Father has found? People say he has found something about Unni. He is meeting Unni’s old friends again.’
‘I’ve heard,’ Mariamma says. ‘But your father is not telling me anything yet.’
‘Why isn’t he telling us?’
‘He is not telling anyone what he has found, that’s my guess.’ ‘Why, do you think …’
‘I don’t know. But sooner or later he has to tell me. Your father wants to tell me. He is just waiting for the right time.’
‘You really don’t know why Unni did what he did?’
‘I don’t know, Thoma. I don’t know what got into Unni that day.’
‘People say he had a lot of sorrow in his heart.’
‘We know that’s not true.’
‘Will I become like him? Will I decide to jump off one day?’
‘Don’t talk like that, Thoma. Have you ever felt like doing something like that?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘I am telling you the truth.’
‘Now don’t think about all this. These are not happy thoughts.’
THE DAY HER SON died she was woken up at dawn by a dream. She does not have the gift of reading meanings in her dreams but she believes it was an omen. At least that much respect she expects from the supernatural. What she had seen was a memory
from her childhood, an uncorrupted memory without any magic or the other inventions of sleep. An old wound that does not have a clear perpetrator, like the other wounds of childhood.
She was twelve years old when it happened. She was sitting in a coracle with her mother, both of them looking away from the potent groin of a man in a loincloth who was rowing the boat. She remembers the man only as a pair of powerful dark legs; from the waist up he was merely sky. The river was wide. It was calm and forbidding, and the air was still. She wanted her mother to speak, say something loving or even ordinary because of what had happened earlier in the day, but this was not a woman who talked to her children unless it was essential. She was a farmer not given to small talk, who managed a vast land almost by herself because her husband was a good-natured simpleton whom everybody tried to fool. So she was the one who walked among the bleeding rubber trees and monster rocks, heckling labourers, murdering serpents, and some days driving away sand poachers by raising a sudden army of young men. But she did not speak much to her children, daughters especially.
Mariamma was being returned to her foster home downstream, to the ancient blue house of her mother’s sister. She was only two when she was donated to the aunt because her mother had eleven other children to feed. Mariamma was the youngest, and by the time she had arrived her mother had probably grown tired of pretending to love so many. Mariamma visited her mother once every two months. She was happiest when she was with her, and every time she had to leave, as she walked down the hill to the banks of the river and sat in the coracle that would take her to her guardians, she was miserable.
The bank approached, and behind the raised coconut grove the tiled roof of her foster home was now visible. The boat
headed towards the high stone wall, startled as always by the submerged rocks. It stopped a few metres from the steep flight of red stone steps that led up to the rear of the house. She struggled to get out of the boat. The black legs, they might have had hands too, but they were not allowed to touch her. She waded through the water with footwear in hand, and jumped on to the foot of the moist steps. When she turned to look at her mother, the boat had already left with her. Mariamma waited; she hoped her mother would turn back at least once to look. She stood there as the boat slowly floated away so far across the river that a human face had no meaning.