So I grew up with Grandmother and all my cousins. After my father died, his father put away the lineage story into a shoe box and then took to visiting the river. He would stare at the water, at the strange and shifting reflections. Then he would come home and say nothing. Yohan’s father was always having to look after the family business: pepper. I grew up with the raw green beads of pepper, and the rain which fell on the twine and leaves. Yohan’s mother was a very gentle woman, but she never had time for me, having seven of her own. Leelamma and Yohan were older than me by five and three years each, but even so, they were my companions. Then when I was eighteen they got married and went to live in their own houses. Leelamma still came to visit us, but these visits were getting more and more infrequent. Her mother-in-law fell ill, there was too much work.
‘Leela, you’ve forgotten me.’
‘Anna, how can you say that?’
‘Why don’t you come home, then?’
‘How can I? I’m married now. People will think I’m unhappy if I keep coming home.’
‘Are you happy?’
‘You’ve seen Issac. What else could I be?’
‘Yohan never comes to see me, now that he’s built a house.’
‘Why don’t you go over, then?’
‘Mariam doesn’t like me. She leaves me in the outside rooms and goes away.’
‘That is right. You hang around Yohan too much. You’ve both grown up now.’
‘But I love him. We’ve always been friends.’
‘He’s married now. And he’s not your brother. You’re his father’s brother’s daughter. People talk.’
‘Won’t it ever be the same again?’
‘No.’
It was on that day that I wrote to Job, Father’s second brother. I sent him an old photograph of Father and Mother and a new one of myself. Twenty-one days later I got a reply. It was on a postcard, and it came from somewhere in Switzerland. He was there on business. Marcella was in Rome where they had a flat. His writing was small and cramped and he closed his letter with the words, ‘We have space. Stay with us.’
In my community, those who are far away always return. My grandmother’s grief lay in that Job, having married a foreigner, would never come back to her. ‘Even if it’s only to lie in the mud next to us, it would be enough, but now he’ll never come.’
I was surprised by Job’s invitation and showed it to Ammachi. She made me explain it to her. Then wiping her eyes with the edge of her gold-embossed shawl, she said, ‘Let him come here and take you.’
She seemed to have lost her rancour against Job’s attachment to the ‘Englishkarti.’ She was eighty-five years old now, her eyes blue grey with age. She had never recovered from the loss of my parents, and now that death came close, she wanted me to be settled. For her it seemed perfectly reasonable that Job should come, and that I should be in his care.
‘He is busy, and besides he’s only asked me for a holiday,’ I said, hesitatingly.
‘No. Job wants you to live with them.’
It was impossible arguing with Ammachi, so I let it rest. Soon after Job came home.
He was only thirty-seven years old, and looked like Yohan. For the ten days that he stayed in the ancestral house he quarrelled with Ammachi. It was terrible.
‘You didn’t bring the Madame?’
‘Marcella,’ Job said softly.
‘What kind of name is that? It’s not in the Bible.’
‘It’s a good name.’
‘She is not good, I know.’
‘You haven’t even met her.’
‘Cigarettes.’
‘She is very gifted. She is well-known in her country. Who cares what you think in this backwater.’
‘And her legs. Everyone in the street sees her legs.’
‘What about your mother? We all saw her breasts.’
‘She had children, she had once provided milk, she was ninety-five. How can there be shame then?’
‘My wife is an artist and a good one.’
‘Does she bring any money?’ Ammachi’s eyes were suddenly alert.
‘Mother, stop it. I’m going.’
‘Take Anna. After I go no one will give her rice.’
‘She has her inheritance.’
‘And what was it that fed her, clothed her and educated her for all these years?’
‘You Nazarenes, you followers of Yeshu Christu, have you never heard of love?’
‘What can I do? Abe controls the business. He says there is nothing for her.’
‘I’ll take her with me.’
Ammachi got up, and held Job’s hands and kissed them.
At the end of the month of June – ceaseless rain – Job and I left for Rome. I was so excited, I had dark shadows under my eyes from not sleeping for almost ten days. The whole village turned out to see us go, and anxious faces peered in at us when the taxi’s wheels churned in the deep sea sand. The river is on the east, the sea is close by, on the other side.
Father George, my teacher, looked in through the glass. He was desperately trying to say something.
‘Don’t forget your prayers, Anna,’ I finally heard, as I lowered the pane.
‘No, I won’t forget.’
‘Don’t forget your Malayalam. Have you taken the Gundert?’
Job asked, turning back to look at me, ‘What on earth is the Gundert? And I must buy you a box. You have a tin trunk? I didn’t even know they still existed.’
‘It’s a dictionary. The Gundert is an English–Malayalam dictionary. Father George is afraid I’ll forget to read and write the mother tongue.’
‘Write every week. Don’t forget the algebra,’ the old man shouted once more.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Meet Father Agnello. A Catholic, but a good man. Holy.’
It started to rain. I saw Yohan. He was looking at Mariam and smiling. He looked towards me and waved. The taxi began to move, and then through a blur of tears, I saw Yohan open out a large black umbrella and Mariam stood close against him.
Marcella was wonderful. She was older than Job, and the love between them was so tangible I was forever surprised by it. Job stopped speaking Malayalam to me, and I was forced to learn Italian. My English was very good, because Father George had a degree in literature, in philosophy and in theology from Cambridge. He had been our parish priest for twenty years – unusual for our sect where priests were constantly transferred. It was he who had educated me, and by the time I was sixteen I had read almost everything that he had. The Russians were indecipherable to me, and Father said that I would have to wait till I was thirty before I could begin. I sometimes told Yohan what I read and he would look strangely at me. His eyes were narrow and black, and his cheekbones so sharp that they jutted through his skin.
‘You don’t even know how to cook.’
‘Shall I translate Aristotle’s Politics for you?’
‘That’s all very well. You had better marry soon, Anna. You have charm, but no beauty. Your father died too early. You can’t even cook or sew. You’re thin like your mother – she almost died when she gave birth to you.’
‘Yohan,