At home Karuthamma had seen her father and mother working hard and practicing economy in everything. She had learned some things about how to make a home prosperous. After Palani had gone she thought of the home they planned to build for themselves.
That day she made not one but two curries. She felt closer to Palani and so she waited for him full of anxiety until the boats came back.
They returned with a haul of sardines such as they hadn’t had for a long time. Palani got some thirty rupees as his share. They had cleaned the net and spread it to dry when Ayyankunju said to his mates, “why not go to Haripad today and dine there?”
Everyone thought it was a good idea. They had made plenty of money. The goddess of the sea had blessed them. Then what was wrong in celebrating a little? Only Palani said nothing.
“Well, Palani, you haven’t said anything.” Veluthakunju said.
“What are you saying? When his new bride is waiting for him with rice and curry, he would prefer to go home and sit by her side and eat,” Andukunju said, teasing Palani.
“That would be wonderful for four days,” another fisherman said. “After that there will be no food at home and even if there is, it will not taste the same.”
When everyone had bathed, Veluthakunju asked, “are you coming, Palani?”
“Yes, I shall come too,” Palani said.
Yet he wasn’t altogether happy. Everyone walked toward the road and together they took the bus to Haripad.
Karuthamma waited for a long time. When Palani did not return, she went out on the seashore to look for him. She could see that every boat had come on shore. There wasn’t a boat out on the sea. And there was no one on the beach either.
A few moments later Andi’s wife, Paru, came to the beach.
“Why are you standing here staring at the sea?” She asked Karuthamma.
“For no reason,” Karuthamma said shyly, “Just standing and looking.”
Paru understood what was the matter.
“You must be looking for your husband. They have all gone to Haripad. Today they have made good money, child.”
On Karuthamma’s seashore too, such things used to happen. There the fishermen want to Alleppey. But Karuthamma had thought that Palani would not go anywhere that day.
For a while Karuthamma and Paru talked. Karuthamma’s mind was uneasy. These habits had to be changed. If they had the money he was spending at Haripad, there were a number of things they could put together for the house. Such thoughts vexed Karuthamma.
“When your husband returns from Haripad, he will bring his new bride fine clothes and silk,” Paru said.
“But, sister, we haven’t pots and pans in the house,” Karuthamma answered. “We have hardly two pots.”
Paru, who was older, said. “What house has all these things? You look out for such things during the Chakara season, my child! Then, when the sea goes barren, you can sell some of them.”
A stray dog was walking all round Karuthamma’s hut trying to get in. Karuthamma hurried home.
Karuthamma wondered whether she should sulk and refuse to talk. She had no desire to play a game. She wanted to bring home to him her resentment, but she didn’t know how Palani would take it. So she put on a new kind of smile.
“Did the boat come on shore only just now?” She asked when he returned.
“No. But look,” Palani said, without realizing the implication of her question.
He gave her the parcel.
“When you fish in those parts, do you net fine clothes?” She asked, unpacking.
He laughed. She too laughed.
He had brought a lovely piece of cloth with gold borders. Karuthamma unfolded the cloth and looked at it. It was magnificient. Palani told her what it cost. Veluthakunju, Velayudhan, Kochuraman, Ayyapan and he had each bought such pieces of cloth. Velayudhan’s child was ill that day, and Velayudhan’s wife had gone to Paru for help because she had no money for medecine. Similarly, Ayyappan’s house was going short that evening. But they all received fine pieces of clothes!
“When you haven’t pots and pans in the house, why do you want to go in for all this finery?” Karuthamma asked, laughing.
He burst out laughing, not understanding the meaning of that question.
“Do you know why I bought you this fine piece of cloth?” He said.
“Why?” She asked.
“To go to the festival of Ayilyam1 at Mannasarla. Put it on now. Let me see.”
1 Ayilyam: a seasonal festival.
Palani looked at her. There was desire in his eyes. That look was directed at her finely formed breasts. She turned round. Then his eyes were fixed on her shapely back.
Palani took a step forward.
“I am covered with perspiration and dust,” she said.
Was it wrong to have bought that piece of finery when they had not enough pots and pans in the home? It was his wish. He wanted to see his wife finely dressed and made up. Life isn’t merely a matter of essentials, of furnishing one’s home properly and putting by money. It has another side to it, too.
Karuthamma was not accustomed to such an attitude in her own home. But she realized the pleasure it would give her husband to see her finely dressed and made up, and she was happy. She would chide him no more for having been extravagant. His arms closed round her in a tight embrace. And in a moment they were one. They stood lost in each other’s arms, their eyes half shut.
Even when they were having supper from the same plate, Karuthamma’s eyes were half closed. Her face was radiant in a very special way. He made a ball of rice with his own hands and fed her.
“Goodness, this is too big for my mouth.”
It was true. It was a morsel of food prepared by the strong hands of one who was accustomed to battling the furies of the sea. He made it smaller. She in turn prepared one and fed him.
“Oh, I can hardly feel this morsel in my mouth,” he said.
And they laughed, playing such a game. Karuthamma, who meant to chide him for his extravagance, said, “now I must have a silk blouse and a good piece of lower cloth.”
When the desire and the excitement of the moment had subsided, Karuthamma returned to earth. She had to organize the course of their life. It was her right to know what his share of the takings was on that day.
“What was your share today?” Karuthamma asked.
“I made some thirty rupees.”
“What have you left of it now?”
“There is a packet over there,” he said casually. “Count it and see.”
Karuthamma opened the packet and counted. Only two rupees were left. He had spent twenty-eight rupees that day. The number of things they could have bought with it! But she didn’t have the heart to say that.
She put her hands on his shoulder and sat leaning on him.
“Is it all right if we have a small, one-room cottage, one room serving as kitchen and bedroom and all?” She asked.
“No,” Palani said quite definitely.
“The what else do we need?”
She was pleased that he had some ambition. She laughed happily and said that she would make the homeless Palani without kith and kin into a prosper boat owner. She had made up her mind to make him into somebody.
Palani was willing to be improved by her. Then, she said, he must accept her suggestions and advice.
“You mustn’t waste all the money you make,” she said with a captivating laugh.
Then she pressed her hands on either side of his cheeks and continued, “I won’t let you do it.”
“Don’t you want me to get myself a cup of tea or a snack?”
Oh, for that she would make allowances.
“What will you do when we have children?” She then asked him seriously.
He didn’t grasp her meaning. What is one to do if you have children?
“When - they will just grow up,” he said.
She described the need for a disciplined and organized life to him, as if she were talking to a little child who knew nothing and thought of nothing. To acquire a boat and net of one’s own- wasn’t that the ambition of all fishermen? Wasn’t that Palani’s ambition, too?
“If all the fishermen on this seacoast thought like that, the whole seacoast would be full of millionaires. Why is it that everybody doesn’t think like that? He asked.
She answered it by another question.
“But why shouldn’t we think like that?”
Palani described a belief current among fishermen.
“A fisherman cannot save. This is because he makes his money at the cost of millions of lives. He makes his money by cheating and catching innocent beings moving freely in the sea. To look upon those millions dying with their eyes open was nothing to those who saw that sight every day. But you cannot save money made at the cost on innocent lives. It was not possible. Otherwise, why should fishermen starve?” He said.
This was not only Palani’s belief. This was a belief shared by fishermen all along the long, long coast over hundreds and hundreds of years. Karuthamma knew of it, but her own father refuted it. Today she saw a new meaning and force in her father’s dissention. But she was not sure enough of herself to argue with Palani.
“Why should a fisherman save? This wide expanse is his wealth. What is it that it doesn’t contain? If he doesn’t save, the goddess of the sea is there to take care of him,” Palani said.
“That is something you must experience.”
Karuthamma thought of her father and her mother, of the way they acquired their boat and net. Suddenly she felt a flush of shame. How did they get their boat and net? Poor Pareekutti was ruined in the process.
“Are you saying all this with your father and mother in mind?” Palani asked.
It seemed as if his face had changed.
“You learned all your greed from them,” he continued. “Everybody is asking when we are going to visit them.”
All the womenfolk also had been asking Karuthamma this question. She had no answer for them. After the wedding it was not right that she had not been called to visit her father. But she doubted that it would happen.
“You saw my mother lying ill, about to die, when you left,” she said. “Who is going to take me there?”
After a moment, with a little spirit, though smilingly, she asked, “After we arrived here as a newly married couple, has any one of your friends invited us? That is the custom, isn’t it?”
“Didn’t you know it from the beginning-that there was nobody to invite us? Then why were you sent away as you were?” He said with annoyance.
Karuthamma’s face fell. Palani was losing his temper. He did not stop.
He had no one. There was no one to make him happy, and no one to weep for him even if he were drowned in the sea. And there was a girl gone bad who had to be sent away. That was how she was thrust upon him. That was what everyone said.
It was a terrible retort. A girl one bad. How could she bear it? And yet it was true. It looked as if the guilt which lay smoldering inside her had taken concrete shape. This was her husband shouting the truth to her face two days after the wedding!
Karuthamma covered her face with her hands and wept piteously. Her whole body shook with her sobs.
“This is not what I think or say. This is what the others say,” Palani told her gently. “It is that Pappu who started it all.”
Thus for the first time after their wedding, there were tears in their home. There were efforts at reconciliation, but for a time a cloud had darkened their happiness.
“I-I shall never bring disgrace to your seacoast,” she said between sobs.
She would never behave or live in a way in which her husband would hate his homecoming. She would never cause the sea to rise into waves large enough to engulf the houses. Poisonous sea snakes wouldn’t crawl on the coast. Nameless sea monsters wouldn’t crawl on the coast. Nameless sea monsters would not raise their heads and gape their mouths open in the storm. She would live like a good fisherwoman. A hundred times she begged him to believe her. But he said nothing. What she could she do but rest her head on his broad chest and let the tears melt his heart?
“Why do you keep asking whether I trust you or not? When I hear this, it seems you yourself have your doubts,” Palani said.
Another sting went straight to her heart. Did he have the faintest idea of her great secret? It was possible that wicked gossip would have told him all kinds of things!
After that she was silent. During the night she was tormented by doubt. Whether he knew her secret or not, wasn’t it best to tell him the whole truth? If she spoke the truth, wouldn’t he forgive her? It was better for her to tell him the whole truth than that he should be told by others all kinds of distorted stories. But how could she say it?
This was a crisis in their lives. She must make a decision. Should she say, “I loved a man”? Would a husband have the patience to hear that much? Or should she begin, “In my childhood I had a friend.” No, that wouldn’t do either. If she started the story like that she might say a lot of things intoxicated by the memory of those days. She might praise Pareekutti. He might conclude that she still loved him. Should she say that Pareekutti courted her by his curing yard? No-never. Then she would have to describe Pareekutti as a bad man. A heinous low man. He did nothing to her by the curing yard. He made no approaches to her. Karuthamma saw before her mind’s eye the picture of Pareekutti, helpless, desperate, his eyes wet. In the dark she could see this picture vividly. She had ruined him in every way. There was nothing that he wanted from life. Even at seventy- five he would sit by the seashore and sing that song. And singing so, he would die. She saw him. He lips moved to say something to him. She forgot herself. She hardly realized that her husband was lying by her side. The woman in her brought out the words.
“I love you,” she said. The sound of her voice shocked her.
“What are you saying?” Palani said. “That you love me?”
Karuthamma was thoroughly wakened from her reverie.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Whom do you love?” He asked.
She spoke a lie.
“My husband.”
The early morning cock crowed. Calls could be heard on the seashore. It was time to go to the boat.
Palani was a little late that day and it had never happened before. The boatmen had to wait for him.
“That is always so. When you are newly married, you are late in getting up,” Pappu joked.
It wasn’t a good joke. Palani didn’t like it.
“Shut up, Pappu.”
“Why do you want to pick a quarrel with me?” Pappu asked.
Palani didn’t answer. He was afraid that Pappu might have something more to say. Perhaps about Karuthamma.
The boat was launched and moved westward, Palani at the helm. There were no signs of fish anywhere. Boats dotted the water here and there. No nets had been cast.
Palani made straight for the west with short brisk strokes, the sinews of his body tingling with uncontrollable energy. The sea didn’t seem wide enough for him. The oar seemed too light. He rowed hard with brisk strokes, kicking high with his feet.
When the boat had gone so far that they could not see the shore any more, Andi asked, “where are you taking this boat?”
Everybody stopped rowing. Yet Palani did not stop, and the boat charged forward. He appeared to be possessed by the devil. The horizon was his limit.
“You, dog, just because you have no one---“Kumaru said nervously.
Kumaru jumped at Palani.
“You drown yourself if you want to. You have brought home a bad woman and now you must drown yourself in the sea. That is your fate. But we have families and children.”
Pappu took the oar out of Palani’s hands. He made Palani sit near Andi and turned the boat around.
Palani kept quiet, tired after the strain. After a while he took an oar. They returned to where the other boats were and cast the net.
That day they caught almost nothing. Palani’s boat got a few little fishes. Their share was only a rupee and a half each.
“What happened to you, Palani?” Pappu asked while they were washing themselves.
Everybody was anxious to know that. He had seemed almost inhuman. He used to steer the boat with great speed and power, but he had never before behaved like one possessed.
“I don’t know, I just forgot myself,” Palani said.
“We all have children, son,” Andi said.
Kumaru spoke up.
“Palani should not be allowed the helm any more. He will drown us in mid-sea.”
Everybody agreed. Some devil had possessed him. That was certain.