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By Root 1252 0

fine. Eat, do eat”—this when it was just the three of them at the table, with Durai waiting behind the kitchen door. “We can't let them get away with it all. There is money to be made in coir. Rope, you know, or matting. We deserve, we earned it, I'll say, and by golly we are going to have it,” and on he went, barely stopping to swallow, the crumbs spraying from his lips. Fothergill tried valiantly to connect Justifus's thoughts, to give his superior's scattered remarks a spine, a thread of meaning. Justifus began to rub one thigh, then the other, fidgeting, glancing down with irritation as if the dog were underfoot, but of course she never came into the house when Justifus was around. By the time pudding was served the leg rubbing was so furious that Thomas had to ask, Please, sir, what is wrong.

“I have fur on me legs, son. Keeps me from feeling, it does. Ruddy nuisance.” His father struggled to rise, almost upsetting the table in the process. He stumbled out, grabbing sideboard and wall, his feet sticking like magnets to the floor. Thomas remembered Fothergill's look of consolation as the boy saw the guest to the door.

Jan. 20,

My darling son,

My temperatures were 36.7, 37.2. 37. 8, 37.3. I threw out the 38.6 because I didn't believe it. They roll our beds out to the porch, and back in at night. In and out. I'm not even allowed to go the lavatory. TOTAL BED REST, though the huge effort this requires seems to be against the idea of rest. I find it difficult to believe that on this porch, with the mist outside and the air so cold, that a body can generate a temperature over 36 degrees. No wonder we are called warm-blooded animals.

She had circled a splotch on the page and captioned it with “My tears, as I cry for you, my darling boy.” In each letter Hilda told him that he must be brave, and be patient.

TIME FOR THOMAS was no longer divided by days and nights or seasons. Time was a seamless yearning for his mother.

They say I have not made any great improvement but that I should be glad I am no worse …

He went through the motions at school. She exhorted him to pray, told him that she prayed every hour and that God listened and prayer never failed. He prayed constantly, convinced that at the very least the prayers kept her alive.

I know God did not mean to keep us apart, and soon he will bring us back together.

ONE DAY, Thomas woke to find his pillow moist. When Sebestie lit the lamp, there was the mark of the beast: a fine red spray on his pillow, a strangely beautiful pattern. Sebestie wept, but he was overjoyed. He knew this meant he would see his mother again. Why didn't he think of this sooner?

Two barefoot stretcher bearers in crisp white drill met his train in Ooty. They took him directly to Hilda's cottage. He climbed into her narrow cot, into her arms. He was eleven years old. “Your coming is the best and worst present I could ever have,” she said.

Gray and shrunk to her bones, she was a shadow of the mother he once knew. Her playfulness was gone, but then so was the reciprocity it might have found in this gangly son of hers whose eyes were haunted and ringed by worry lines. They sat side by side on the porch of their cottage, their fingers intertwined like dried roots. In the early morning they watched the tea pickers float by on the footpath, their feet hidden in the mist, their lunch pails creaking with every step. During the day only the nurses interrupted their solitude to take their temperatures and to bring tiffin and medications. By dusk, when they saw the tea pickers head home, it was time for sleep.

Since Hilda had no wind, he read to her. She wept with pride at his precocious fluency. The cane-bottomed lounge chairs had large armrests and a writing palette made of the same teak. Here they penned letters to each other, put them into envelopes, and sealed them; after lunch they exchanged envelopes, tore them open, and read their letters. They prayed at least three times a day. In the most bitter cold they remained outside, bundled up.

At first Thomas was light-headed from the altitude.