The two sisters met in a deep embrace. How long they stood like that neither knew. Both were in tears. When her plans failed, Panchami made straight for Trikunnapuzha. Where else could she go?
Palani stood watching the sisters. The baby he carried laughed happily and made gurgling sounds.
“Who is this, Panchami?” Palani asked. “How did you come?”
Before answering, Karuthamma took the baby. She went happily into Panchami’s arms.
“It is your aunt, my child” Karuthamma said.
Panchami smothered the baby with kisses. She had been dreaming of this meeting.
Karuthamma wanted to ask many questions, and Panchami had a lot that she wanted to tell Karuthamma. But Palani did not care to hear it. He hated the idea. He couldn’t bear to hear the name of Nirkunnam. Panchami was a poor helpless little girl. She was innocent. But where did she come from? What news had she brought and about whom? To Palani, Panchami was a dark shadow that had entered his home to taint the course of Karuthamma’s true life with everything that he hated. What were the questions Karuthamma would ask? Who were the persons she would want to know about?
Palani became dejected. Again in that home a dark shadow had fallen. The cheer had gone out of the house. The baby, who hardly ever cried, now began to cry.
Karuthamma couldn’t ask a thing, or say anything. She felt suffocated. She had to wait to speak until Palani was not there. She wasn’t getting such a chance. With mounting resentment Karuthamma became upset about every little thing that happened in the house. And so did Palani. Husband and wife were on the verge of a quarrel.
“You are heartless, Karuthamma!” Panchami said gently.
“Why do you say that?”
“You haven’t once asked about Father.”
“ Quiet. Palani will hear,” Karuthamma said.
In the evening Palani said he would go out early to sea. He strung up the hooks with baits. Karuthamma made his supper early. That was a relief. As dusk was falling, mother and child stood watching him go out to sea. The baby lifted her little hands and waved. She did that every day, and Palani always waved back to her from his boat. But that day he didn’t wave back. The boat sped westward. He was stroking hard.
Panchami gave Karuthamma all the news. The death of their loved mother, how she entrusted Panchami to the care of Nallapennu, how her mother wanted her father to marry again.
“Yes. And one day Pareekutti Muthalali came to see Mother.”
Karuthamma changed the subject. Her heart was beating wildly.
“Why, don’t you want to hear about that?” Panchami asked.
Karuthamma said, as if she had not heard that question, “why didn’t you let me know when Mother died?”
“Everyone said that that wasn’t necessary.”
“ Everyone?”
“Yes. Everyone spoke ill of you. They said you had acted cruelly, that you were not capable of love, but were heartless.”
Then she spoke of her stepmother. As she related that story, she told Karuthamma something else too.
“We have lost our boats and nets. We mortgaged them to Ouseph because we needed the money. Stepmother gave the money to her son.”
They had lost their boats and nets. Karuthamma saw in front of her eyes the sight of her father in command of the boat, the boat speeding like a bird over the crest of the waves. Her father and mother had toiled for that all their lives. She, too, loved that boat. And now it belonged to someone else. She had no more to do with it. Karuthamma again wept.
“How will Father live now?” She asked.
“I don’t know.”
More than everything else that news cut right into Karuthamma’s heart. What pained her even more was the casual way in which Panchami said it. She didn’t seem to worry how their father would live. She made light of it.
Karuthamma forgot herself and said, “how heartless you!”
“ Why, what is the matter?” Panchami asked.
“You left without a thought as to how Father will live. And you didn’t even take leave of him. Who has Father left now?”
“Let us not go into that. What did you do yourself?”
What Panchami said was true. How could she blame Panchami? But there was a difference. She left her father and mother because she had no choice. Panchami’s case was different.
“If you hadn’t left them, none of these things would have happened,” Panchami said. “You could have stayed back and looked after the home as Mother used to do.”
Old memories came crowding on Karuthamma. She wondered what might have happened if she had not left her home. Would everything have been all right in that case? Poor Panchami. She understood nothing.
The talkative Panchami continued. “When you got a husband, you forgot yourself and followed him out of the house.”
“No, it wasn’t so.”
The words rushed out of Karuthamma, her heart full of pain. But her words did not make sense. They came out as if she cried out something in her agony. She should have said clearly that it wasn’t because she was infatuated with her husband that she followed him, not because she felt it her duty to go with him, come what may. But how could she say it, living with Palani, who risked his life on the seas for their daily bread? The truth was that she left her home to save herself. She didn’t follow her husband as Panchami described it.
And in the course of her talk Panchami gave her the news of how her father’s mind was deranged.
“That fat woman said that you were gadding about the seafront with a Muslim boy and brought ruin on the seafront,” she said angrily. “And poor Father went out of his mind.”
Karuthamma sat there petrified. Everything went dark. So even now that was the talk of the seafront. Even her proud father had come to know it.
Panchami talked on, coming to Pareekutti’s affairs. She described his pitiable story.
“He has nothing left,” she said. “He is starving. And he wanders about on the shore. One would think he is mad. Such a shame.”
Karuthamma hadn’t asked to hear that story, nor did she stop Panchami from telling it. Of course, she was anxious to hear it. She saw again the little boy in his yellow shirt with a cap and scarf, hanging on to his father. And the red shell that she had given him that day. A precious life had been destroyed. Without realizing it, she asked Panchami, “does he still sit on the boat steps and sing his song?”
“Yes. Sometimes he does sing,” Panchami said.
Did Panchami know the meaning of that song? No, she had no chance of knowing it.
“Does he see you sometimes?” Karuthamma asked.
“Yes, occasionally.”
“Would he then ask for news of me?”
Karuthamma’s voice was quivering with emotion.
“He used to smile when he saw me.”
And suddenly they heard a voice which seemed to come from nowhere, a voice distorted with pain and anger and contempt.
“OH NO, PANCHAMI, HE WOULD ASK FOR NEWS OF KARUTHAMMA.”
Palani stood before them. Panchami and Karuthamma jumped up.
Karuthamma’s secret was out.