Mari, The Fisherman

Far, far away where the low sky mated with the sea, roses were beginning to bloom. The sea lay as smooth as glass, the air was still. At this early hour of dawn the Triplicane Beach presented a scene of quiet liveliness; dragging the logs of wood to the shingly shore and lashing them together, fishermen were busy launching their catamarans.

The sun half peeped over the rim of the sea and the waters grayed. One catamaran alone lay amid the pebbles unlaunched as yet. Beside it stood a fisherman, now looking at the sea and now with an impatient toss of his head to where the sands ended and the Marina Pavement ran. Presently two forms were discernible on the sandy level, moving forwards in evident haste. One was a lad of about nineteen, tall and lithe, and the other a boy of six who kept a continuous dog-trot by his elder's side. They reached the shore.

"Mari," now cried the fisherman standing by the catamaran, "you are late again. What made you so?"

In answer Mari only scratched his head and smiled.

"See," the former continued pointing to the waters, "they are, all gone. We are left behind as usual."

"As usual!" echoed Mari becoming vocal at last, "and as usual, Kali, we will be blessed with the heaviest haul."

In a trice Kali's asperity was gone; smiling genially on his younger brother and affecting seriousness, he cried, "You lazy, lazy loon."

No more was said between the two; with a word to the boy to go home to mother and not roll like a mad puppy on the sands, the two were soon on the bosom of the deep, their Catamaran leaping and dancing waywardly till slowly it got under way. The boy watched them disappear like a speck, as he had done every morning, with a new and growing interest in that strange land beyond the sea where he, too, would go when he was grown up like his father and uncle; then turning , he set off at a quick run.

(2)

Before a hut, a little apart from the huddle of tumble-down fishermen's huts on the western bank of the Buckingham Canal, the boy stopped. Everything around it was trim and tidy; a torn sail, tanned by the sun and the sea-wind, lay in a part of the front yard, and near it an old net, all in a pile, through whose sides here and there white threads showed furtively–obviously in the process of mending. On the sail a black dog had made himself a warm bed. As soon as he saw the boy, he got up wagging his tail, and the little master, pleased with the welcoming sign, got on his for a ride, and as a preliminary, administered with his fist a blow on his head which brought from the animal a sharp yelp. Hearing the dog's cry, a woman came out of the hut, and, at the sight before her, burst out laughing.

"You will kill the poor thing; you naughty, naughty child," cried she, "and then with whom will you play?"

"I won't kill him," said the boy shaking his head.

"Then get down from his like a dear and run in to eat your food. Fishes fried and. . . ."

The fond mother had to break off in the pleasure of seeing her son roll like a lump of flesh into the hut.

Andayi, Kali's wife, was, at the time the incidents of this story took place, twenty-two years old. Of medium height, with a face plumpy in its contours, and sharp eyes suggesting intelligence, and complexion black as ebony, she shone with qualities that go to make a full and voluptuous beauty. She was an exemplary house-wife and shrewd business woman; in the fish-market she always sold well and to advantage, which prosperity was a matter for the envy of other garrulous fisher-women. Verily was she called the queen of the fishmarket; even Karuppayi, her formidable rival in the market, whose vocabulary of ‘fine’ words was credited to be the richest in the whole kuppam¹ was tongue-tied before her quiet and queenly bearing. Virtuous in wedlock, she united tenderness with devotion for her somewhat sentimental husband. She never allowed her darling son to mingle with the little ragamuffins of the kuppam, nor her husband and brother-in-law to move very freely with men who made regular pilgrimage to the pot-house at eventide. So some of the fisherfolk called her a virago, and the two brothers, asses. But these spiteful remarks were made behind their s only, and such people are no better than cowards.

(3)

The white blazing noon slowly mellowed into evening and a gentle breeze murmured through the cocoanut glade in which the cottages lay. Andayi had, by now, collected fuel for the kitchen-fire, done a little marketing and got everything in readiness for supper.

Taking a wicker-basket and carrying her boy on her hip, she now walked towards the beach. Reaching there, she awaited her men's return.

One by one the fishermen rowed ashore after the day's hard toil. There, at a distance, a crowding of brown sail was sighted; anon it was furled and the catamaran was lost to view, but presently again, it leaped forward like a dolphin through the foaming billows,–thus mounting and dropping amid the undulations, one by one the catamarans glided into the strand.

And soon, "holding acquaintance with the waves," Kali and Mari came. Andayi stood up, her face lit with a smile and eyes agleam with welcome. The men smiled in response. Yes, they had the great big luck that day. Three big fishes in addition to the usual smaller ones! The wicker-basket teemed with the treasure of the tide, and the devoted wife sent a silent thanksgiving to Mari Amman² for their opulence which seemed to grow day by day.

While the two brothers were unlashing the catamaran and depositing the detached logs on the dry sands, a crowd had collected around the basket–some desirous of purchasing the fishes, but most for a mere look at them.

"Two rupees for the whole lot," cried a neatly dressed middle-aged man who had come with his wife and children bent on pleasure to the sea-side.

"And eight annas," cried another of the same class.

"Three," cried the former triumphantly.

"Three-eight," coolly said the second.

"Four."

"Four-eight."

"Five."

And the middle-aged man won. Through this wrangle for buying, Andayi was too jubilant to speak; she knew it would come to five rupees–such things had happened twice or thrice before. She received the white and welcome currency note and held it a while between her fingers, a lovely banneret waving her triumph; then pulling out a tiny bag (a receptacle for money as well as for betel and nut) from her waist, put it therein, and thrust the bag into its original place, satisfied with the rich gain the quick sale of the fishes had brought. Then joining the men she retraced her way to the hut.

"The fishes are snatched away from her hands whilst we have to sell them in the market-place to persons who chaffer, and not infrequently at a loss," remarked one of a group of fisher-women standing on the shore.

"Pooh-pooh," sniffed another who was none other than the formidable Karuppayi, "she was dancing before the purchasers."

"Oh, why be jealous of her? She is born lucky," cried a third.

"And she is non-interfering, and pleasing in her speech," chimed in a fourth.

"Cease your chatter," bellowed Karuppayi, "soon, you will be calling her Mari Amman."

"What are you talking about?" now broke in a deep-toned masculine voice. "Even if all the fishes at the bottom of the sea were to come in the net in one haul, you will not be satisfied. You, women, are a grumbling lot."

"And all the fishes at the bottom of the sea will not slake your thirst for toddy," snapped Karuppayi turning round briskly.

The women laughed. And Vallathan, her partner, found his wit nipped in the bud.

"Andayi has sold her fishes for five rupees," cried Karuppayi, her sides splitting with envy, "do you know that?"

"Hm," grunted Vallathan.

"And what have you brought this evening? Nasty little fishes that will not fetch even eight annas a hundred!"

"Hear her! Ha! Ha! Ha! He! He! He! Hu! Hu! Hu!"

"And those big, big things they have netted!"

"They will never do it again, dear," murmured Vallathan to his wife, suddenly checking his laughter. And a sinister look came over his rugged and weather-beaten face.

(4)

In the kuppam, Vallathan was the most noisy fellow. He was a vulgar swearer and a veritable drunkard; in the pot-house one night after a heady drink, he had actually paddled on the floor and fished with his cloth. On another occasion, the drink had led him to cry piteously for upwards half-an-hour on the shoulder of the old woman who sold boiled Bengal gram in the toddy shop, and between his sobs, he had called her his darling wife promising her that he would no more drink. He thought he was a mighty wit and a clever woman-charmer, but his amiable spouse had given him little opportunity to charm anyone. But the brave fellow had persevered and triumphed sometimes without very much danger to his skin.

And confident of his powers, he had turned at last to Andayi. That virtuous woman was at first pained to see him behave clumsily to her and had kindly and silently ordered him to keep away; and when he had persisted, scolded him in vexation, and finally, in swelling indignation and contempt, had broomed him and set the dog on his heels.

"You shameless ass," she had cried, " the next time you step in here, I will ask my husband" to twist your neck like a cock's. I am with child, and in trying to outrage me in this, my holy state, you will go to the nethermost depths of hell."

And he had laughed a malignant laugh and said threateningly, "I will make it fatherless, the little thing that is cutting a caper in your accursed belly."

(5)

At first she was frightened at his words and wanted to tell all about the man's shameless advances and her own wrathful repulsion to her husband, but, on further thoughts, she deemed it wise not to do so, as that would only be bringing open hostility. Karuppayi was a bitterer foe than her husband; her jealousy at their affluence was a smouldering fire which only needed a scandal concerning her to fan it into a leaping flame. That termagant would turn the whole thing to her advantage and say that she, the seeming virtuous Andayi, tried to noose her husband, but he, the devoted Vallathan, knowing her to be a strumpet fled from her pestilential touch. So she communed with herself in this sorry situation and tried to maintain a calm, an almost jovial, exterior.

But courage within oneself, under such tense circumstances, cannot last long. And a moodiness was becoming visible in her face. Her husband, poor soul, thought this the languidness due to her growing motherhood, but soon thinking that all was not well with her, asked her one night, "What's troubling you? Something seems to weigh upon your mind."

"Nothing, nothing," she replied with a faint smile. "What's there to trouble me when you are here to protect me, and your loving brother to help you? But sometimes I think you will be venturing far into the boisterous waters, and I will not see you any more."

"fisherman's wife to fear of the sea!" he said laughing, "you are trying to shield the real cause of your trouble. And you do not seem to be half as radiant as you were before."

She sighed and with an abruptness that almost startled him said, "Don't oh, don't be too friendly with Vallathan. He seems to be some fierce bird of prey; there is such evil light in his eyes."

"You of all to feel so absurdly fearful! In what way can he harm me?" And he laughed again heartily which dispelled her gloom somewhat.

"In the evenings at the shore," she continued, "I have seen him watch you strangely."

" My fishes!" he broke forth, "they interest him more than I."

At this point footsteps were heard outside, and Kali came out of the hut.

"You are late for supper Mari, lad," he said. "Quite unusual with you. You ought not to have done it all at once, the blackening of the new fishing-line. Half of it you should have kept for tomorrow, I told you so."

"That was not what detained me," he replied, and his voice trembled.

Thinking all was not well with him, Kali came close to his brother, and, in the doubtful light of the crescent moon that peeped through the cocoanut trees, saw a streak of blood across his face.

"You've hurt yourself," he cried taken a, "tell me how." And he called aloud to his wife to bring a light.

"No, no," sobbed Mari, "I can't. It is wicked, too wicked."

"What is wicked, brother? What has come over you that you should behave so strangely, you who are such a sensible and plain-spoken lad?"

"Tell her to go in," he whispered pointing to his sister-in-law, "she must not hear."

Andayi was gone no sooner than she came, but she had seen blood in her brother-in-law's face and heard enough of his whispered words to make her heart flutter like leaf in the wind. Had anything dreadful happened?

Mari told all. While blackening the fishing cord, he had heard Vallathan and two other fellows talking scandal about them. They had laughed riotously after Vallathan's remark: "That is why he is not marrying. Her tenderness to her husband's brother is something more than that of a sister-in-law, and Kali, poor ignorant ass, is blind to things happening under his very nose." And he had called Mari by foul abusive names at which, stealing from behind, he (Mari) had aimed a heavy blow on the slanderer's shoulder with the paddle. It had missed and Vallathan had wounded him with the fish-hook. But Mari had shown that he was not a coward.

(6)

So scandal was already in the air. Kali felt that he was wantonly insulted and was grieved beyond measure that his virtuous wife's name should be on the babbling tongues of drunken rascals. But he did not want to make matters worse by any impetuous act of his; he was for tempering violence with conciliation. So, approaching the scandal-monger, he said with a calmness that surprised himself: "Will you bear to hear anybody talk ill of your wife?"

The bluntness of the question rather irritated Vallathan and he replied, "It's my wife's business, not mine."

"But when you talk dirt of another's wife, it is her husband's business to tie your tongue. Do you know that?"

"You don't know how to tie a catamaran. Learn it first and then think of tying men's tongues."

"You are witty, friend, and clever too, but you bark like a despicable cur."

Vallathan's lips twitched, his nostrils dilated like those of a horse and he cried, passion choking his utterance, "You also want to taste of my fish-hook?"

"Cool down, cool down, Valla," suavely rejoined Kali, which only exasperated the other all the more, "as if I have no fish-hook! Toddy has addled your head and good Karuppayi has rather soured you. Why did you hurt my poor brother?"

"Hurt him! I would have killed him," shrieked Vallathan. "But I spared him for your wife."

No man, however patient, could brook such stark insolence, and Kali began to feel a strange fire burning within him. Kind reasoning with this unmitigated scoundrel was doing injustice to a sense of justice within himself, and he said slowly and with a shivering deliberateness, "You have a tongue that would blacken even Mari Amman's virtue, and I am going to cut off that tongue, You have a heart that is rottener than the rotten fish pecked at by crows by the sea-side, and I am going to scoop out that heart. If you want to save these, mend your ways."

At this, Vallathan spat on the ground in withering contempt and let out a volley of vulgar oaths and vulgarer abuse, and shaking his fist at Kali's face, cried, "I will kill you for what you have said. I will kill you" And he thought of Andayi's brooming him and her dog barking at his heels when he ran a race for life one evening and escaped battering against a cocoanut tree.

(7)

The idea of setting fire to their hut first crossed the ruffian's mind, but when it began to take shape he wished he had not thought of it, for fire in one hut meant fire in the whole kuppam.

So he thought of another plan and seemed to derive a grim satisfaction from it.

The day for putting his plan into execution came at last.

Though the morning had dawned pleasantly, changes were being noticed in the mid-day sky. It was growing dull like a vapour-blown mirror and in the east fleecy clouds were gathering into black banks.

Before these vagaries of Nature turned into warring elements, fishermen were rapidly rowing towards the shore.

Kali and Mari had gone a little farther than the others; in that part of the watery expanse their catamaran floated solitarily. Seeing the changes in the sky, Kali said to his brother, "Mari, a storm seems to gather. We shall paddle ashore quick. I don't see another catamaran anywhere near."

"Yes," replied the younger one, "they are all gone, I think."

Scarcely had he said so when he espied to his left, at a fishingline's cast, a catamaran buoying up. "There is one to keep us company," he exclaimed.

It came nearer, and the brothers saw Vallathan. "Oho," cried the fellow jovially, "I'm lucky indeed. In the foul weather that seems to threaten, I was a little afraid being alone. Now I have found he1p."

The brothers wondered at the absence in him of the least sign of enmity towards them; they thought he was trying to be good at last and wanting to be friends with them.

"We too are lucky, Valla," said Kali happily, "row nearer so that we can hitch the two catamarans together. That will be safer."

"No, no. I am safe enough by being near you."

"Then let it be."

They rowed on. Kali cut jokes with Vallathan and talked to him freely" amid the wild foam's glee," but Mari could not bring his mind to trust the fellow who had mongered such detestable scandal and hurt him wantonly. Was he up to any mischief? Why had he come alone? Why was he thrusting his friendship on them? Why had his brother not asked him anything about this change of behaviour? These were the thoughts that were recurring one after another in his mind. And he was on his guard accordingly.

The waves were becoming wilder and wilder, and the gloom gloomier. There was an hour's row more to the shore.

"Look!" cried Vallathan suddenly pointing towards the harbour, "smoke, thick, thick smoke and flames too!"

Kali and Mari simultaneously stopped paddling and turned their eyes thither, but the latter, with the intuitive consciousness of coming evil, as sudden turned round and in one fleeting moment saw Vallathan's face convulsed uglily and murder shining in his eyes. He had dropped the oar and was poising over his head a big granite stone–the weight that is usually kept in the catamaran to maintain its poise on the waves–ready to hurl it on his head. Mari screamed a wild scream; Kali turned startled and what he saw the next moment froze him with glacial horror; the stone had come hurtling down on his brother's head and precipitated him into the wild turmoil of the waters. A crimson patch spreading and fading as sudden where he sank told Kali that the fall of the stone had proved fatal. The sound of a well-known laugh, fiendish in its malignity, coming cleaving through the waves now galvanized him into life; with a hoarse cry of maddened grief he turned and looked at Vallathan, and even as he looked a mountainous wave poised Vallathan's catamaran on its champing and chafing crest; the lashes unfastened, the detached logs spun recklessly; and clawing his hands violently into the air, the murderer disappeared amidst a smother of seething foam. The tempest howled, the billows roared and in that swaying tumult of wind and water a passionate cry was heard: "I owe my life to you, my dearest, dearest brother."

* * * *

The sea refused to deliver up the dead.

While walking along the beach one evening, now a couple of years ago, I happened on Kali mending his fishing-net on the sands. There was such an air of sad forlornness about him, and to my remark that he was getting more and more to look like his flat paddle, he lifted a pair of very melancholy eyes upon me and said: "It is so ever since the lad went."

He then turned towards the Marina Pavement as if to look for the lad's approach as of old; I wondered to see his face suddenly brightening. And wondering I looked in the same direction and saw a woman coming towards us skirting the Aquarium, with a child on her hip and an urchin by her side. Kali rushed forward, almost snatched the child from her and holding it between his hands ran towards me.

"Little Mari," he said, his face expanding into a joyous smile whilst the sturdy two-year-old kicked at his chest with the force latent in a tamer of the sea.

Andayi stood a little away watching with pride the rebelliousness of little Mari.

"Very like him. Very like him. Is he not?" Kali cried, hugging the child to his bosom.

The fisherman's child-like delight, sacred in its simplicity, went straight to my heart. The image of his noble and affectionate brother, which he seemed to see in the babe, had proved a lasting solace to him!

1Fishermen's quarters.

2 The Goddess of the fisher-folk.