Amballore House (8 page)

However, Number-Six never forgave Thoma for making the family beggars in the streets of life. It was an irony of fate that Thoma’s only nonchild, Number-Six, was up in arms against him, whereas his legitimate children largely were at peace with him; staging a war against Thoma never occurred to them. As time went on and as Thoma became weaker and weaker and the children became stronger and stronger, confrontation between Thoma and Number-Six became more frequent.

It was in 1980, three years after the family settled down in Amballore, that Thoma went downhill with his health. Arthritis came visiting him and his movements became constrained. He could hardly walk and therefore, was confined to a chair or a bed. He was taking medication for high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar. He was a diabetic, and heart problems ran in the family. He was struck with a stroke that paralyzed part of his body. He developed a hunchback in his old age.

Mathettan, Annamma’s husband, living across the back fence of the Amballore home, visited Thoma often and chatted with him. They were old friends. He was also making sure that Thoma was well looked after by his children.

As per phone conversations Mathettan had with Josh who was living in Canada, Number-Six picked fights with Thoma often. He ceaselessly criticized Thoma for the reckless way he lived in his
youth, causing the orphaning of his family. Fingers were pointed at him for giving away his fortune to his siblings, thereby making him unable to support his immediate family, Ann and the children. Mathettan was concerned, because Number-Six started withholding essential medicine from Thoma to punish him. Sometimes, food was withheld. Poor Ann could not do anything to redress the wrong-doings; she was afraid of Number-Six. Therefore, she contacted Mathettan who contacted Josh who contacted Number-Six and talked over things.

One day, while Mathettan was visiting Thoma, an altercation broke out between the father and son, Number-Six.

Thoma was a disabled man by now, fragile and weak, and confined to a wheelchair. He used a cane to get around, and used it to walk regularly in the neighborhood to get the blood flow going, and to get badly-needed exercise.

“Get out of your chair and get some exercise,” Number-Six demanded the old man. Thoma sat there, ignoring him, and continued his conversation with Mathettan. Number-Six did not like being ignored. He grabbed Thoma’s cane.

Thoma was mad. No one touched his cane and he considered it rude for someone to do that—it was a sign of disrespect as far as Thoma was concerned.

Thoma stood up, fighting his old legs which prompted him to sit down. He took few steps towards his son, until he was face-to-face with him. Thoma pushed his son, and told him, “Don’t touch my cane! Put it back.” The frail man was mad. He had resentment towards Number-Six for starving him recently. The rude act of snatching his cane added insult to injury. Thoma moved back to his wheelchair and took seat.

Ann was helplessly watching the altercation, hoping it would not precipitate into some serious fight. But she was wrong.

Number-Six said, “What if I don’t?” He then started swinging the cane. Thoma steered his wheelchair out of the way. But his son persisted. The cane struck Thoma. Mathettan sprang into action, and grabbed the cane from Thoma’s cruel son and retrieved it to its
usual place.

Number-Six left the area and started attending to the usual household tasks. This time, he walked to the backyard, and headed to a coconut palm tree to pluck some coconuts for dinner. He often used to perform such a task and other needed chores to help out Ann in preparing meals. Everyone thought that that was the end of the quarrel. Mathettan continued to chat with Thoma. Ann rubbed some coconut oil on Thoma’s forehead that by now sported a small bump.

Thoma saw Number-Six climbing the palm tree close to the outhouse in the backyard. He suddenly stood up, as if by supernatural force. The man in the wheelchair started walking inexplicably, abandoning his wheelchair behind him! He became revitalized like a resurrected Jesus and he walked as if he were a drunken corpse from nearby Saint Joseph’s Church’s cemetery, taking a hurried walk after having sneaked out of the grave! The figure Thoma cast, that of a hunchback tottering towards the outhouse, was like something taken out of a Malayalam horror movie. He continued moving towards the outhouse. While Mathettan and Ann were looking on in disbelief at seeing the disabled man walking, half thinking maybe he was headed to the outhouse, he lurched forward. The concerned Ann followed him, just in case, not sure what he was up to, prepared to catch him in case he collapsed and hurt himself.

The asthmatic man wobbled on. Instead of entering the outhouse, he approached the said tree and looked up. By this time, Number-Six had reached the top of the tree. Wheezing uncontrollably, he shouted loudly to Number-Six: “You are a curse to my family, you son-of-a-bitch.” He tried to shout very loudly, invoking all his strength, but his voice turned very feminine at that critical moment. Number-Six looked down, not sure where the loud feminine voice was coming from, sure it was not from Ann. He then saw Thoma at the bottom of the tree, pointing his finger at him accusingly, and shouting something which he could not hear. Number-Six threw a coconut at Thoma, but missed the target.

Then suddenly, as if seized by a demonic power, Thoma started
shaking the tree! He shook the tree like a maniac, as if possessed by some demonic power. Ann got hold of him to restrain him, but unbelievably, the fragile man threw her off him. “The man has gone crazy; the devil has entered him; help me,” Ann screamed at the top of her voice. Number-Six was watching the unbelievable drama unveiling far below him and held on to the tree for dear life.

“Thoma, don’t do that! It is your own son on the tree top,” Mathettan shouted at Thoma and started running to the scene to restrain Thoma from the dangerous mission he was after with a religious fervor, but it was too late. Thoma managed to shake his sixth son off the palm tree before Mathettan arrived.

At the same time when Number-Six took the fall, Thoma collapsed due to exhaustion. Ann and Mathettan carried the distraught Thoma to his chair. He was still shaking violently.

Thoma turned back while being carried away from the crime scene and shouted to his son, “You are not my son, you son of a bitch.” The voice that came out of him was garbled because of the raging anger and because of his previous stroke that made his pronunciation less articulate.

Ann was surprised to hear Thoma’s declaration to her son and realized how true it was.

Number-Six, fortunately, did not die, even though he could very well have, having taken a giant fall. He fell inside the outhouse. An ambulance was called. Paramedics came, accompanied by fire fighters who hauled Number-Six out of the outhouse with a crane. He was lucky he did not drown in the brown stuff. The scene of Number-Six covered in shit was enough to trigger a wisecrack from Thoma, who told his son, in spite of the gravity of the situation, “You have now proven that you are full of shit, just as I have always suspected.”

The crane lifted Number-Six up and set him on the ground. He was hosed down with an industrial-strength water jet. Only after thorough cleaning did the paramedics dare approach him to take him to the emergency division of Amballore Hospital. Number-Six broke his right leg, which had to be amputated. He became one-
legged ever since.

5
THE MARCH OF OWLS

Ann’s ceaseless efforts to steer Thoma to the ways of God and church are the talk of Amballore even today. She even went to the extent of vowing to Saint Joseph that Thoma would carry the cross during the church’s Good Friday function called “Way of the Cross,” a procession conducted through Amballore’s streets. She vowed to the saint that Thoma would be the cross bearer if their firstborn was a boy.

This happened in 1941 in Amballore when the couple was staying there in their ancestral home, before their departure to the rental house in Mannuthy.

Her prayers were sanctioned. Their firstborn was indeed a son. They named him George after Thoma’s father, Vareed. After George was born, Thoma was obligated to walk through Amballore’s streets carrying the cross throughout the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross. This was a tiring and humiliating experience for Thoma, who had shied away from church activities as far as anyone could remember.

The spectators of this religious function, including kids in the street, laughed loudly to see an atheist carrying the cross. The contrast between his way of life and the ideals underpinning cross-carrying, which included supreme sacrifice and selfless love was stark. Little girls giggled during the solemn ceremony. The priest had to hush them up to preserve the sanctity of the function. The men and women admired the courage and strength of Thoma to carry the heavy cross. However, they agreed among themselves that Thoma was hardly the man to emulate Jesus. If he were a church-attending, God-fearing, exemplary citizen, they would have appreciated his gesture. But this was a far cry from such a situation; his walk was nothing but a caricature of the legendary fourteen-station trek of Christ, etched in people’s memories.

His picture appeared in the Amballore Times with the caption “Atheist Carrying Cross.” He became an instant celebrity.
After this remarkable incident in their younger days, Thoma forbade Ann from submitting any vows to be performed by him in private or especially in public. That memorable Good Friday was his last straw.

“Next time, you will be the one carrying the cross,” he warned Ann.

***

Ann’s prescription for Thoma’s malady of being a disaster of a man was religion. She was convinced all along that Thoma could have been rescued from the shipwreck that he caused, stranding his family in midocean, if only he embraced religion. Even though Thoma proved himself to be a failure of a man, Ann knew in her heart of hearts that her husband would have fulfilled his obligation to his family if only he could, and that “if only he could” would have materialized if— and only if— he prayed daily.

“If only he could” was what she thought of him when life threw insurmountable challenges and he miserably failed to address them. Ann used to wake up in the middle of the night and pray. Those prayers were more like critical conversations with God rather than signs of submissiveness in front of him. She blamed the Almighty for bleeding courage out of a man and making him a weakling.

“You should have given him a break, dear God,” she prayed to God.

God, in his turn, consoled her by reminding her that he was giving both of them a break in the evening of their lives.

“God works in mysterious ways, my daughter,” God told Ann.

She talked loudly to God during those postmidnight encounters. She blamed the heavens for the misery sent their way. She held him accountable for arraying gathering clouds in their lives, while giving no resourcefulness in combatting them. Her loud prayers would wake up Subashini from her sleep. The parrot would join Ann in her prayers.

“Give us peace, God,” Ann prayed.

“Give us peanuts, God,” Subashini paraphrased. She loved peanuts.

This loud chanting of two females would wake up Thoma, and he would instruct Subashini to keep quiet.

“Shut up, you nitwit,” he told Subashini.

Subashini thought this was Thoma’s own version of midnight prayer.

“Shut up, you nitwit,” the bird prayed.

“You shut up, not me,” Thoma said to the parrot.

“You shut up, not me,” the parrot repeated after Thoma. The bird repeated him faithfully, as if she was the second fiddle, as if she provided anaphora to Thoma’s poetic lines.

There was no way he could win over Subashini in the art of tit for tat, and therefore Thoma backed down and went back to sleep.

***

Thoma never went to church, except to attend important milestones in his life, such as his wedding, his children’s baptisms, and, on rare occasions, to attend the midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. He was once referred to in the Sunday sermon as a bad role model for the upcoming young generation in Mannuthy, steering them toward a way of life devoid of Jesus. Thoma was incensed by this public insult and decided to confront said priest. He planned to meet the holy man in church in the presence of all the devotees, to settle the account.

According to witnesses in the church, Thoma walked into the church when the priest was receiving confessions, sitting in the confessional cubicle adorned with wire mesh windows on both sides. Some parishioners claimed that Thoma was drunk at that time and was beside himself, seething with rage and his vendetta toward the holy man. He grabbed the priest and dragged him out of the confessional stand, declaring loudly that he, Thoma, was a decent man, minding his own business. He rebuked the priest for insulting him in the public, for putting him to humiliation.

A deep silence descended upon the pious crowd of the church at this scene, because of the sheer outrageousness of this unexpected
act and because of the widespread feeling that a holy man was being attacked in his own abode, the holy church. Amid the pin-drop silence he created, Thoma bellowed to the priest, “You had no business insulting me in public. I need an apology. I lead a hard life. I lead an honest life. I don’t need a stamp of approval from you,” Thoma blasted.

The priest was so taken aback that he could not think of how to respond to Thoma. He knew he had to be careful of what he said to him, because everyone in the church was watching him. Before he could respond, Thoma pulled the holy man out from his confessional stand and occupied the stand himself, asking the priest to confess his sins to him.

This role reversal took some parishioners by surprise; some of them were trying to suppress the laughter rising uncontrollably from the pits of their stomach, and yet others were worried enough to call church security.

The security officers dragged him out of the confessional stand. “I am a decent man,” screamed Thoma as he was carried forcefully from the stand. Thoma later claimed that even though he could not extract a confession from the priest, his dramatic action advertised to the world that he was a decent man.