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Oh dear! Oh dearohdear!
“I didn‟t know you did pineapple slices!” she said. “Sophie
loves pineapple, don‟t you Soph?”
“Sometimes,” Soph said. “And sometimes not.”
Margaret Kochamma climbed into the advertisement with
her brown back-freckles and her arm-freckles and her flowered
dress with legs underneath.
Sophie Mol sat in front between Chacko and Margaret
Kochamma, just her hat peeping over the car seat. Because she was
their daughter.
Rahel and Estha sat at the back. The luggage was in the boot.
Boot was a lovely word. Sturdy was a terrible word. Near
Ettumanoor they passed a dead temple elephant, electrocuted by a
high tension wire that had fallen on the road. An engineer from the
Ettumanoor municipality was supervising the disposal of the
carcass. They had to be careful because the decision would serve
as precedent for all future Government Pachyderm Carcass
Disposals. Not a matter to be treated lightly. There was a fire
engine and some confused firemen. The municipal officer had a
file and was shouting a lot. There was a Joy Ice Cream cart and a
man selling peanuts in narrow cones of paper cleverly designed to
hold not more than eight or nine nuts.
Sophie Mol said, “Look, a dead elephant.”
Chacko stopped to ask whether it was by any chance Kochu
Thomban (Little Tusker), the Ayemenem temple elephant who
came to the Ayemenem House once a month for a coconut. They
said it wasn‟t
Relieved that it was a stranger, and not an elephant they
knew, they drove on.
“Thang God,” Estha said.
“Thank God, Estha,” Baby Kochamma corrected him.
On the way, Sophie Mol learned to recognize the first whiff
of the approaching stench of unprocessed rubber and to clamp her
nostrils shut until long after the truck carrying it had driven past.