She hesitated, wondering how to address him. When he realized she was still standing outside, he turned around and walked to the door. His tongue felt dry, stuck to the roof of his mouth. He broke out into a sweat.

‘I need a vathichuppullu,’ she said, asking for a matchstick.

He was unfamiliar with the term, so he could not understand what she said. Nonetheless, he was eager to give her whatever she wanted. But what did she want? Wondering if he had heard her properly, she repeated her request. But he still did not understand her. Was she asking for some cold drink that was available in this town, but one which he clearly did not know about? There were such drinks in Kunnoor. Could that be what she was asking for? He tried hard to figure out what it was she was asking for. She, in turn, wondered if he was playing with her. But it did not seem like he was.

Quickly, she ran to her house and returned with the empty matchbox. He could not help laughing when she showed it to him.

‘You need a matchstick?’ he said, and quickly went back inside and reappeared with a matchbox.

She took it from him and hurried home. Had she said something wrong? What had she said? He had used another term for ‘matchstick’. Did he say ‘theekkuchi’? No, he’d said ‘neruppukkuchi’. Until then, she had not really heard him speak. She had overheard him chatting with Periyasami, but not very clearly—often it was not possible to distinguish his voice from Periyasami’s. Occasionally, she had heard him chase away the dog that tried to huddle close to the cot while he slept under the beech tree, and shoo away crows. If anyone asked him a question, he would reply with a nondescript ‘Hmm’. From all that she had a vague sense of how he sounded, and that he had a deep voice. But when he actually spoke to her that day for the first time, she noticed a certain softness within his heavy timbre. Could such a deep voice contain such softness? Now she was too shy to even step outside the house. How would she look at him?

It must have been four in the afternoon. Through the door she had kept ajar, she heard him calling out to her. Now she could recognize his voice. She opened the door wider. She kept her eyes lowered, too shy to look at him directly. But he looked straight at her now and said, ‘Vathichuppullu?’

She started laughing uncontrollably. She kept chuckling even after she shut the door. She had never laughed like that ever before.

She had marked that day in her heart. Nothing could match the happiness she felt that day when she spoke to him for the first time. Since then, whenever he wanted to make her laugh, he made an innocent face at her, and said, ‘Vathichuppullu’. It made her burst into laughter.

Recalling that moment now, she felt certain that if she stayed with him, that happiness could—and would—last.