Achakunju and other friends extricated Chemban Kunju from Chakki’s body. They had to perform the ritual rites. The Headman of the village came. The question of sending word to Karuthamma arose.
“Have you sent somebody to the girl?” Someone asked.
The words reached Chemban Kunju’s ears. Even in his sorrow and misery, he shouted his answer.
“No. No need for that.”
Chemban Kunju maintained that it was Karuthamma who killed Chakki.
The entire gathering was silent for a while, weighing the fairness of the accusation. The Headman finally expressed his opinion.
“She saw her mother lying prostrate and still left her. Let her go,” he said.
Only Panchami called out for her sister. But who was to heed her?
Pareekutti stood aside like one outside the community. He felt sad that the burial had to take place without Karuthamma. But what right had he to interfere in their affairs?
Yet Pareekutti had pledged his word to Chakki. He had to do something. He was Karuthamma’s brother.
That night he could not sleep. At midnight he got up, locked the curing yard, and walked along the seashore.
By the early hours of the morning Pareekutti reached the Trikunnapuzha shore. From a fisherman who had come out to go to sea he inquired where Palani lived. The fisherman, Cochunathan, who had been to Nirkunnam for the Chakara season, recognized Pareekutti.
“Why are you searching for Palani now, Kochumuthalali?” He asked.
That question worried Pareekutti a little.
“Palani’s wife’s mother is dead,” he said.
Kochunathan knew Chemban Kunju and Chakki. He praised Chakki for a while. Then he asked Pareekutti an uncomfortable question.
“Why do you have to bring this news, Kochumuthalali? Aren’t there fishermen there?
“They decided there no need to send the news to Palani and his wife. And that is why I came,” Pareekutti said, uncomfortable explaining his presence to a stranger.
Pareekutti described what took place there after Chakki’s death. Even then Kochunathan’s question had not been answered satisfactorily.
“And why should you, Kochumuthalali, walk all night for that?”
The only real answer was that Chakki had made him Karuthamma’s brother. But if he went into that part of the story, he would have to explain the rest of it. How did Pareekutti come to be made a brother of a fisherwoman? Pareekutti struggled, lost for answer. Finally he said he had come because he couldn’t bear to see such heartless behaviour. Kochunathan, agreeing, told him where Palani lived.
When all the boats had gone out to sea, Pareekutti went to stand before Palani’s house. The little house was silent.
Pareekutti’s tongue failed him. His throat went dry. He stood for a while before he could call out.
“Karuthamma.”
No one answered. He called again.
“Who is it?”
Pareekutti recognized Karuthamma’s voice.
“It is I, Karuthamma,” he said.
“What do you mean, I?”
“Don’t you recognize my voice?”
“ Who?”
I-I Pareekutti.”
There was a long silence, a heavy silence.
“Karuthamma, I have serious news for you.”
As if her heart would burst, Karuthamma cried, “even after I left my home, you won’t leave me in peace.”
“No-no. I won’t open the door,” she continued in a moment.” I don’t want to see you.”
She was crying. Her words went straight to Pareekutti’s heart. But he had to tell her the news before he went away.
“Please open the door,” Pareekutti begged. “I know that you are married now, but I must talk to you.”
“I won’t see you,” she said helplessly.
“Please don’t speak like that,” Pareekutti said sensibly. “We have to meet again, Karuthamma. We must talk.”
“No-never. Never. He has gone to sea, to the stormy, high sea!”
Again a long silence.
“Karuthamma.”
Like one completely beaten she answered.
“Yes.”
“I am your brother.”
“ Brother?”
He had given their abiding relationship a new form and a new name without destroying it. She felt as if she were a drowning man clutching at a straw.
“Yes, Sister. I am your brother,” Pareekutti said. “Your mother has asked me to look after you as if you were my sister.”
“My mother?”
“Yes. Open the door. Let me tell you.”
Karuthamma lighted a lamp, opened the door and came out. How was he to tell her the sad news? It came out in its cruelest form.
“Karuthamma, Chakki is dead.”
Karuthamma cried out loud in her anguish. By the time the neighbors arrived, Pareekutti had gone.
The neighboring women tried to comfort her. They couldn’t believe the news. Even in the middle of that unbearable sorrow she wouldn’t tell them who brought the message. The women thought that she probably dreamed it.
After she had cried for hours, Karuthamma herself began to doubt the news. Perhaps it was the wickedness of her desperate lover. If her mother were dead, would they not send her a word of it?
Her husband was out at sea. She must give him food on his return. A wife’s sense of duty forced her to her household work. Somehow she cooked rice and curry as usual, hoping every moment that her husband would come home.
Palani came on shore earlier than usual.
Karuthamma told him, crying bitterly. Karuthamma saw on his face a kind of expression she had never seen before.
“It was I who killed my mother,” she cried.
Without the least compassion he asked, “who came here to tell you?”
She struggled for an answer. He looked at her searchingly.
“That Kochumuthalali,” she said.
“Was that boy sent here by your father?” Palani asked. “They could not get a fisherman for this in your village?”
How could she answer him? It wasn’t the time to argue about the rights or wrongs of the situation. Some sus-piction had been planted in Palani’s mind. She didn’t know what.
“Let us go,” she said.
“Where?”
“To Nirkunnam.”
Palani twisted his lip in a smile. She realized that he had decided not to go.
“My mother, the one who gave birth to me, is dead,” Karuthamma said.
Even that did not move Palani. Karuthamma said that her mother loved Palani like her own son. Her mother had done no wrong. She had followed Palani, leaving Chakki, at the request of her mother.
“I swear by the goddess of the sea, when I hesitated to leave my home, it was my mother who asked me to go with you,” she said.
She fell at his feet, clasped his feet and cried. He stood there like a statue.
It was Chakki who first made Palani aware of a mother’s affection. It was such a woman who had died. Didn’t her death touch Palani?
“Together my mates brought me and left me on shore,” he said, obviously upset.
“Wasn’t it to help you to go to Nirkunnam?” Karuthamma asked.
“That was what they said. But that is not the truth.”
“Then?”
“Kochunathan saw Pareekutti coming,” Palani said after a moment. “Pappu has been talking vicious lies all over the village- so, so…”
His voice choked and he stopped. He swallowed hard before he could continue.
“They have children. That is why they left me on shore.”
Karuthamma understood everything. Even that had happened.
“Do you suspect me?” She asked him.
He was not able to say anything either way.
“After coming here to tell you this, where the devil did that fellow go?”
“I didn’t see him.”
“Why did he drag himself here?”
This was the time to tell him everything. But she couldn’t find the words.
“What did he tell you?” Palani asked.
“That my mother is dead.”
By now the story was all over the seacoast. It might be true that the old woman was dead. Everyone knew that Chakki was bedridden, that it was doubtful she would ever be better. But was it necessary for Pareekutti to bring the news?
“He was embarrassed. That I saw.” Karuthamma said.
Pappu had a lot more to say. He said Karuthamma and Pareekutti galavanted about the Nirkunnam seacoast night and day.
“At night he would sing. Then she would go out to him.” Pappu said. “That was why I kicked up a row about the wedding.”
Everybody was sorry about one thing. Palani was a good man. Why did he have to get a girl like that?
“Then how can we take him out to sea?” someone else asked.
If Palani’s home was not a clean one, anything might happen to the boat on which he worked.
Yet no one was prepared to go so far as to say for certain that his house was defiled. Who could say that every home in the village was without blemish, just because nothing untoward had happened to any of them? But there was a general feeling of suspicion. There was something wrong on that extraordinary day when Palani had taken the boat out to mid-sea. What Pappu said upset everyone’s thoughts. Still, many felt that the girl was a good girl.
In Palani’s home the state of indecision continued. Karuthamma begged him to go with her so that she could at least see her mother’s body and ask for her forgiveness. In the anguish of her sorrow she asked him with the rights of a wife. But he was silent. Karuthamma wept in her helplessness.
Palani sat with a faraway look in his eyes, his peace of mind gone. Until his marriage he had gone through life without a worry. Wherever he was, was God’s own world.
Later, when Karuthamma approached him with food, he said, “I am not hungry.”
“Why?”
“Why did Pareekutti come?” He asked.
Karuthamma spole out the stark truth.
“If you ask me why, I shall tell you - to ruin my life, what else?”
She was ready to meet the challenge now. She had the courage for it now.
“What is he to you, Karuthamma?” Palani asked quietly.
She sat down to tell him all. What did it matter where she started?
“We brew up on the beach together as children.”
So she began to tell her story. Palani sat listening to it without expression or malice. His quiet and the seriousness of the situation frightened her. Partway through the story, she stopped.
“Do you believe what I tell you?” She asked anxiously.
Palani told her he believed it. She was telling her husband the story of her love. There was nothing unbelievable in it, although she was painting herself in somewhat unsavory colors.
But Karuthamma found that as much as she wanted to she could not tell him everything. The story did not move smoothly. She could not tell him about the money, not about the song Pareekutti used to sing. Nor could she speak of the last farewell. She said everything else. She wondered if Palani knew that she held back some things. It was difficult to say.
“I have no brother,” she said. “He is my brother now.”
It did not seem to impress him.
“So what they all say, that you were packed away from Nirkunnam, is true, isn’t it?” Palani asked after he had heard her out.
To that she had only one answer. She gave her word that she would live on that seashore for the rest of her life as became a good fisherwoman.