The Covenant of Water

1950, Gwendolyn Gardens

When Digby pulled up to his club on that September afternoon, it looked like Victoria Terminus. Cars lined the side of the driveway, and suitcases were piled under the portico. It was the start of Planters’ Week ’50, and that year, for the first time, Digby’s club—Tradewinds—had the honor of playing host.

Back in 1937, when he and Cromwell took over Müller’s Madness, a serviceable ghat road was ambition enough. The road was completed just as tea and rubber prices soared, allowing the consortium with Franz and the other partners to quickly recoup its investment by selling off pieces of its nineteen-thousand-acre purchase. Soon, estates blossomed around Gwendolyn Gardens. By 1941, Digby and the other estate owners together built Tradewinds and hired an experienced club secretary who, from his first day, lobbied UPASI—the United Planters’ Association of South India—for the privilege of hosting the weeklong annual meeting. That honor kept going back to the older established clubs in Yercaud, Ooty, Munnar, Peerumedu . . . Until this year.

Digby, as a founding club member, felt obliged to be visible. He parked himself on a sofa in the large drawing room, looking out of the picture windows that showcased the hills. On any other day, a bearer would materialize within seconds. Now the poor souls, dressed in unaccustomed turbaned splendor, ran around like harried hens.

Since Independence in 1947 and the departure of many white estate owners, Indians made up the majority at this gathering. Yet to Digby’s amazement, the tenor of Planters’ Week was unchanged. The cup challenges in cricket, tennis, snooker, polo, and rugby were more intense, and the beauty pageant and the dances bigger than ever. Indian national pride was at its height, but the educated, moneyed class, and certainly the ex-military officers, inevitably had English language and culture deeply enmeshed with their Indian ones.

A gust of wind sent a broad-brimmed straw hat with a blue ribbon rolling onto the manicured lawn. Digby watched its progress. A figure stepped out to retrieve it. He expected to see a sun-shy planter’s wife, not the dashing, tall Indian woman in a white sari who appeared. Her thick rope of hair, draped in front of her right shoulder, shone against her brown skin. She was striking, without a touch of lipstick or face powder or a pottu, her arms lanky and bare. Retrieving the hat, she looked up, directly at Digby. He felt a jolt, as if she’d thrust her hand through the glass. Her haunting eyes, like those of a seer, slanted down to a sharp nose; Digby felt himself falling into their void. Then she vanished.

When he could breathe again, he felt the scents of perfume and cigarette smoke and the cacophony of voices close in on him.

“High Range was scrimmaging at the gymkhana all day. The buggers want that trophy. They—”

“I left my tails behind. Silly of me. Ritherden must have a spare—”

Digby stumbled out, feeling as if he’d seen a ghost. Had he imagined her? He heard his name being called. Was that too his imagination?

He turned to see Franz Mylin, two drinks in his big hands, coming from the bar, now packed two deep with brown and white bodies. “Did I give you a shock, Digby? We dropped off our things at your bungalow and came straight down to find you.”

“Franz! I didn’t expect you till much later.”

“Lena’s out by the courts. I say, Digs, I hope you won’t mind, but we’ve brought a guest. What’re you drinking? Here, hold these,” he said, not waiting for an answer.

“It’s my club, you know. I’m supposed to be—” but Franz was already diving into the crowd at the bar. Digby stood with a gimlet in each hand. Astonishingly, Franz was back almost at once with two more drinks, grinning mischievously. “These might have been for those young pups, but they were distracted.”

Once outside, Franz dropped his voice. “Digby, did you ever meet Chandy’s daughter? Elsie?”

So she wasn’t an apparition. “Yes!”

“Lena’s trying to get the poor girl’s mind off the tragedy—you know how Lena is.” Seeing Digby’s puzzled expression, he said, “You heard, surely?”

“About Chandy’s passing?”

“No, no . . . Have a snort first. You’ll need it.” Digby, clutching icy drinks, felt his body turn cold as Franz recounted the horrific death of Elsie’s child the previous year. Elsie’s fathomless look on the lawn was branded into his brain. “. . . so she fled the house, left her husband.”

Digby whispered, “That poor girl! And still people believe in God?”

“Terrible business,” Franz said. “Chandy’s the one who brought Rune up to our hills, you know. We knew Elsie as a little girl. Went to her wedding. She’s in bad shape, Digs. She won’t want to be part of all the Planters’ Week golmaal, but Lena thought it would be good to get her away.”

Digby followed Franz. He’d never forgotten Chandy’s ponytailed daughter, a serious artist even then. He’d never forgotten the solemnity with which she’d taken on his “drawing therapy,” as Rune had called it. It had unlocked his brain and his hand, jolted him back into the world of the living.

He’d often thought of her. He was sure she’d made good use of Gray’s Anatomy, the gift he’d walked over to her fourteen years ago when he left Saint Bridget’s. He’d expected great things of her but still was pleasantly surprised to read of her medal in a Madras art show. Now she was the wounded one. What did one say in the face of that kind of loss?

When Lena saw Digby, she stood, arms thrown wide. He hugged her, not letting go. There were two women in his life who’d seen him at his absolute worst: Lena and Honorine. Each had in her own way saved him.

Elsie stood up politely, watching them. White wasn’t the color of summer alone, he thought. It was the color of mourning.

“Digs, do you remember Elsie?” Lena said. Elsie’s eyes mesmerized him once more. He received Elsie’s long, slender hand in both of his, recalling the girl who wedged a charcoal stick between his fingers and bound her hand to his with a ribbon from her hair. How effortlessly they’d skated over the paper, breaking the shackles that imprisoned him! Now he felt time dissolve, the intervening years collapsing. She’d caught up to him. A grown woman. He ought to speak, ought to let go of her hand, but couldn’t do either. His mute grasp conveyed his indebtedness, and now his anguish for her.

The vacant, bottomless eyes had found focus, returning her to the present, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smile. He felt overcome by a premonition of danger ahead for her, as if she were in peril of falling off the edge of the world.

They took their chairs. There was an awkward silence. Franz said, “Well, cheers, Digby. Here’s to old friendships and to new ones—”

“Renewed ones,” Lena said.

A couple came over to greet the Mylins, who rose. Elsie glanced at Digby’s hands. He extended his right hand, flexed the fingers, and she smiled sheepishly, caught in the act. She studied it carefully, reconciling it with what she remembered. She nodded in approval and then looked steadily at him. He couldn’t look away, didn’t need to. Seventeen years Elsie’s senior, at that moment he felt they were equals. He was an expert on violent, tragic loss; now she had joined his ranks. He knew a simple truth: there was never anything healing one could say. One could only be. The best friends in such times were those who had no agenda other than to be present, to offer themselves, as Franz and Lena had done for him. Digby tendered himself silently.

After a while he spoke. “A few years ago, I saw your paintings at the art exhibition in Madras. I should have written to say how splendid they were.” He happened to visit Madras while the exhibits were still up. Elsie’s work had all been sold, but on the day of his visit he learned that one buyer had withdrawn and so Digby acquired the painting. It was a portrait of an overweight woman in her fifties or sixties, seated, empress-like, in a chair, wearing traditional Malayali Christian garb of white chatta and mundu, her large gold crucifix on a chain sitting atop her delicate kavani. Her hair was pulled back into a bun so severely that it appeared to lift up the tip of her nose. The viewer saw something discordant and pretentious about her pose, a disingenuousness in her smile and in her eyes. The power of the painting came from the model’s unawareness that the canvas gave her away.

“I met my painting again in your living room just now,” Elsie said, smiling. He waited, but there wasn’t more.

“What’s it like to see your work long after you let it go?”

A fleeting trace of pleasure crossed her face, an emotion that hadn’t found purchase for a while. She considered her response. “It was like . . . running into myself in the wild.” She laughed, a hollow sound. “Does that make any sense?” He nodded. Their voices were low. “After I got over the surprise, I was pleased with it. Usually, I want to fix things. But I was satisfied . . . I also knew that the artist was no longer the same person. If I did it again, it might be quite different.”

She looked down at her hands, which were quite still in her lap.

Digby said, “Art is never finished. Only abandoned.” She looked up surprised. “So said Leonardo da Vinci,” he added. “Or maybe Michelangelo. Or maybe I made that up.”

Her laugh was delightful to hear, like a solemn child tricked into revealing her playful side. Digby laughed too. When one lived alone, the loudest laughter went unwitnessed and therefore was no better than silence.

Elsie was, he thought, without blemishes on the outside. Flawless. Her scars, her burns, and her contractures were all on the inside, invisible . . . unless one gazed into her eyes: then it was like looking into a still pond and gradually making out the sunken car with its trapped occupants at the bottom. You’re not alone, he wanted to say. Elsie met his gaze and didn’t look away.