The Covenant of Water

1950, Gwendolyn Gardens

That night his bungalow was alive, with four of them populating it, the rooms all lit up, and the red block-print Jaipur tablecloth like a blazing campfire around which they gathered. They lingered around the table once dinner was cleared, the conversation and laughter and drinks flowing. Elsie stayed silent but seemed soothed by their voices.

The next morning, Elsie didn’t appear for breakfast. Lena and Franz left for the opening session. Digby stayed back. When she emerged at eleven, she drank tea, declining the eggs and sausages. “You went to a lot of trouble,” she said apologetically. She had washed and loosely braided her hair, and she wore a light-green sari. The shadows under her eyes suggested the night had been difficult. Perhaps all her nights were so.

“No trouble at all.” He noticed her studying the crudely shaped buns in the skillet. “That’s bannock. Franz ate enough to shingle a roof, but he left you a few. It’s an old Scottish recipe, just flour, water, and butter. Cromwell and I lived on it when we camped nearby, while we tore down Müller’s old house. It had too many ghosts. I’d make bannock in a skillet over the campfire. Here, just try a wee piece,” he said, topping it with butter and marmalade. She put it in her mouth and nodded approvingly.

“I like the big windows all around,” she said. “Great light.” He was enormously pleased by her approval. She took a second helping and put honey on it. He wanted to say that the honey was from his estate, but he didn’t want to break the spell. “Shouldn’t you be going to the meeting?” she said softly, in her low-pitched, distinctive voice.

“I won’t be missed. I don’t sit on committees like Franz and Lena.”

“Gwendolyn Gardens?” she said, while chewing. “The name of your estate—”

“My mother,” he said simply. For an instant, his mother was in the room, looking on approvingly. Elsie nodded. Digby was thinking of the portrait they drew together. His maw. Another time perhaps he might tell her.

“Elsie, I thought . . .” He hadn’t thought at all; he was making it up, a surgeon with gauze over a probing finger, looking for a tissue plane. “Might you please take a walk with me?”

He led her into the west estate, through a corridor between high grasses where after the rains two species of butterfly, the Malabar raven and the Malabar rose, came to visit—but never together. His conceit was to think of them as his, as his creations. In answer to his silent plea, a Malabar rose flew before them, the vivid red of its slender body underscoring its coal-black wings. Digby stopped in his tracks and Elsie ran into him, her softness meeting his bony back. The Malabar rose was sleek, streamlined, with dark swallowtails on the wings that to Digby were like the engine cowlings of a plane. She drew closer to look.

A line of tea-pluckers, chattering away, came toward them, and the butterfly took flight. The women turned bashful and silent. Digby thought an earthy and vital life force rose off them like steam as they threaded past. Elsie seemed to drink them in. They hid their smiles with their loose, trailing headcloths, and politeness kept their eyes down. Digby, hands together, murmured, “Vanakkam,” since his workers were Tamilians from across the state line. Elsie’s hands rose too. The women responded eagerly, in bright voices, cloths falling away to reveal shy smiles as they slipped by, now stealing glances at Digby’s beautiful guest. Elsie watched them as they disappeared into the sun.

“The light up here . . . is so special,” she said. “As a child I thought it was because we were closer to heaven. I called it angel light.”

They cut uphill, following an old elephant trail. The bungalow was at five thousand feet, and they’d climbed five hundred more. His breath was short. Should he have warned Elsie? He didn’t turn to see how she was doing. Let her be. That had been Cromwell’s remedy for Digby when he’d landed with his burns at the Mylins’ guest cottage at AllSuch. To silently lead. To let nature do all the talking.

They were panting when at last they came to the outcrop of white rock pushing out like a hand giving its blessing to the valley below. It stood out from the brown rocks. The tribals called it the Chair of the Goddess. On its tabletop, petitioners had broken coconuts, left flowers, and smeared sandalwood paste. Digby handed Elsie his flask and she took eager gulps, her face shiny with effort, not taking her eyes away from the breathtaking view.

Whenever Digby stood here, he imagined he was perched on the goddess’s belly and sighting down past her thighs to the verdant, widening valley between her knees that turned to dusty plains at her distant ankles. He hoped Elsie felt it worth the climb.

Before he could warn her (and who but a child would need warning?), she strode out to the table’s edge, pausing there like a diver on the high board. Step back! He bit off the words, terrified that he might startle her. In all the years he’d come here he’d never dreamed of getting that close to the edge.

He inched forward on Elsie’s left so she’d be aware of him. He forced himself to stay outwardly calm while battling the adrenaline surge, the fear within. Surely she heard his breathing, because he heard hers, saw her shoulders rise and fall, her scapulae wing out and return with each breath. Very slowly she leaned forward and looked over her toes, tantalized by the invitation that lay below. He stopped breathing. A breeze lifted the pallu of her sari so that it streamed off her shoulder, a green flag.

She turned her face to the sky, which bathed it in angel light, her expression radiant, her eyes silvery and glinting. He followed her gaze and saw a raptor rising on a thermal.

Elsie had raised her hands a few inches away from her sides, palms up as if to receive a blessing, or in imitation of the raptor. Digby had yet to breathe. He thought his heart would stop. He was a step behind her. If he tried to grab her and missed, he’d send her over. If she fought, they’d both plunge to their deaths. He called on the Goddess of the Chair, on any god listening, begged them to set aside the petitioner’s disbelief, his contempt for all gods, and preserve this bereaved mother’s life. Silently, he pleaded with Elsie. Please, Elsie. I just found you. I can’t lose you.

After an eternity her left hand reached tentatively back to him, and his right shot out to meet it, as if hands knew what heads didn’t. Their fingers locked around each other’s. He walked her back from the treacherous edge. One step, then another. He turned her to face him, their exhalations and the breath of the valley all one now. Her legs shadowed his in a tango snatched from the edge of dying. Her body trembled.

He was certain she’d imagined stepping off, that she’d intended to shame God, shame that shameless charlatan whose hands stayed behind his back when children fell from trees, when silk saris caught fire; she’d imagined sailing out with outstretched wings just like the raptor, gathering speed and reaching that place where pain ended. He was suddenly furious with her, shaking with anger. How do you know you go to a better place? he thought. What if it’s a place where the horror that haunts you repeats itself every minute?

Elsie stared at him, reading his thoughts as tears rolled silently down her cheeks. With his thumb he wiped them, smeared them on her cheekbones. He stepped down from the tabletop first. Then, as she tilted to him, her hands on his shoulders, he lifted her clear by her waist, as if she were no heavier than a feather . . . and then he held her tight, clasped her to him out of anger, out of relief, out of love. I’ll never let you fall, never let you go, not as long as I live. She buried herself in Digby’s chest, her shoulders shaking as he pressed her to him, muffling her terrible, wrenching sobs.

Walking back, they were unburdened. Elsie, if you step away from death, that means you’ve chosen life. If there was a Malabar raven to see, he wasn’t looking. Nature had spoken enough that day. It was Digby Kilgour’s turn, and he couldn’t stop.

He told her about his school tie, biting into his mother’s neck. When he spoke of his love of surgery, it was in the language of a man mourning the death of his one and only. And then he described another death, that of his lover, Celeste, an agonizing death by fire. As a boy he’d found it puzzling that the word “confessor” applied both to the one who listened and the one who admitted their sins. Now it made sense, because the two were one, clutching each other’s hands, bound together without need for hair ribbons or charcoal sticks. Even when the path forced them to walk in single file, neither could let go, nor could he cease his story. He described his months of despair, the many times despair returned, and his desire to end it just as she had wanted to end her own. “What stopped you?” she said, speaking for the first time.

“Nothing stops me. I turn a corner and there it is again, the choice to go on or not go on. But I have no confidence that ending my life would end the pain. And pride keeps me from choosing to leave as my mother did. She had people who loved her, who needed her. Me. I needed her!” The last words were like an explosion.

He was silent for a few steps. Then he stopped walking altogether. He turned to her. He’d thought of Elsie often; he knew she’d grown up, married, and yet the image enshrined in his mind for so many years was that of the ten-year-old schoolgirl who unlocked his hand, a schoolgirl whose talent for art, whose genius was so evident. The grown woman before him, now in her midtwenties, orphaned, robbed so cruelly of her child, feels to him like someone altogether different. If this is Elsie, then she’s erased the seventeen years that separates them. Perhaps shared suffering did that. “Elsie, that portrait we drew in Rune’s bungalow, our hands bound together? That beautiful woman was her. That was my mother’s face the way I needed to remember it. Seeing the image we made together on paper released me from the grotesque death mask I’d carried around for so long in my head, the last image I had of her. Elsie, what I’m trying to say is you restored me. I’ll always be in your debt.”

She clutched both his hands, his mangy and mismatched paws, but still functional, doing everything they possibly could. She probed the ridge of raised scar on his left palm, the mark of Zorro, pressed down on it. She manipulated each finger like a clinician, determining the limits of its extensibility—a clinical exam, but by an artist. Then she lifted his hands, first one, then the other, and pressed the palms to her lips.

The next day she slept late but emerged looking rested. She sheepishly showed him a blister on the ball of her foot.

“What was I thinking? I shouldn’t have let you walk that far in sandals.”

He unroofed it with iris scissors, then powdered it with sulfa. She looked on, interested. “Does that hurt?” he asked. She shook her head. He put a pressure dressing over the fiery-red oval.

“Digby, don’t you need to go to the meeting?”

He considered his answer. “I’d rather be with you,” he said at last, not looking up. It was the truth. She didn’t question him. They had a new way of being with each other.

Instead of taking her on a hike, he led Elsie to his indulgence: three curving terraces carved from the steep slope like an outdoor amphitheater, just in front of the bungalow. A sweet perfume met their nostrils. Digby’s beloved rosebushes were planted along each terrace, like a colorful audience dressed in their play-going finery, looking down on the valley. He walked her as though past an honor guard, introducing her to the palette of discrete scents, beginning with orris, his favorite, which smelled like violets; then a clove-scented rose; then nasturtium. “I breed for scents more than for color.”

They sat down. Elsie turned to point to a stone obelisk at the end of one terraced row. “What’s that?”

“Ah, the Usher. He was meant to be a dancer. But the stone cracked.” Her presence beside him animated Digby, made these insignificant artifacts of his life significant. “Michelangelo said every stone has a figure locked in it. This,” he said, patting the bench on which they now sat, looking back at the roses, “this stone I thought was elephant. But I was wrong. Its destiny was bench.”

She laughed and stood up to examine it.

“Digby,” she said, and he heard the eagerness in her voice. “Where did you make these?”

Once a curing shed, his studio held stacked canvases, old welding equipment, and a fire curtain but no acetylene; in one messy corner, the floor was ridged and stained with concrete drips.

In his third year at Gwendolyn Gardens, after the ghat road was finally complete, he’d been overcome by a profound melancholia during the big rains, with little desire to leave his bed. Cromwell would have none of it. He made Digby rise, dress in rain gear, and trudge to the fields in the steady downpour, to the far side of the estate, where runoff from the slope threatened to overflow the irrigation sluice. They dug drainage ditches. Later, Cromwell brought him to the shed. “He put me to work splitting wood. ‘Be useful,’ he said. I cut enough for three monsoon seasons. I noticed one of the logs take the shape of a toy soldier. I tried to refine it. I ended up with toothpicks. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was using my hands. Rune used to quote from the Bible: ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.’ Cromwell doesn’t know the Bible, but he’s discovered the same principle. From wood, I moved to limestone. But I didn’t have the patience and I moved to watercolors again.”

“Digby,” Elsie said. “Since Ninan’s death, I’ve had the urge to use big tools. Like a sledgehammer, a bulldozer . . . or dynamite.”

“Are we still talking about art?”

“I want my hands to do big things. As big as this view. Bigger.”

He left her in the studio. Looking back from the door, he was pleased at her transformation. She was in a canvas apron, bandana, and goggles, standing before a limestone slab, swinging away with the mallet while her left hand moved the chisel. Her strokes had quickly become decisive, opening a seam, letting a sizable chunk topple free without a second glance. Already, the top of the slab formed a rough cylinder. She threw herself into it with an animation, a controlled fury he hadn’t expected.

When he returned from UPASI in the late afternoon he could hear the hammer ringing. She didn’t notice him at first. Fine dust coated her hair and every inch of exposed skin. When she removed apron, goggles, and bandana, her face was transformed, having shed its terrible weariness. They walked up to the house together.

She looked at her hands. “Digby, you’ve repaid your debt to me now, you know,” she said.

The next few days he attended what was left of Planters’ Week; but he skipped the evening social events.

On the eve of his guests’ departure, Digby knocked on Franz and Lena’s door. Lena’s voice told him to come in. The couple had changed into evening regalia and were ready to return to the club. Franz was standing, while Lena, seated on the edge of the bed, was transferring things to a small purse. Their faces were turned to him expectantly. Seeing his expression, they became very still.

Digby felt blood rising in his neck. “Lena? Franz . . . ? If . . . If Elsie wants to stay here then,” he stammered, “I’m happy to bring her back when she’s ready. To you. Or wherever she needs.” He was sure his face was red now. “The thing is . . . You see what a difference it’s made. I mean the sculpting.”

“It could be more than sculpting, Digs,” Lena said.

A silent signal passed between wife and husband. Franz went out, thumping Digby on the shoulder as he left.

Lena said, “Digby, have you asked Elsie what she wants?” He shook his head. She chose her next words carefully. “Digs? I don’t know what’s best for her. And yes, I do see. It’s miraculous. She’s found a reason to go on.”

“Yes, Lena! The thing is—”

“The reason might be you, Digs.”

Digby sat down heavily on the bed beside her, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Lena put her arm around him.

“Digby, are you in love with her?”

The question was shocking. His tongue moved to deny it at once. But this was Lena, his “blood sister,” as she was wont to say. He stared at his hands as if the answer lay there. Slowly, he straightened up. He met her gaze.

“Oh God, Digs. Well, she may be in love with you too. She’s so fragile, though. And vulnerable. And don’t forget she’s already—”

“Lena,” he interrupted, not wanting to hear the word she was about to utter. “Even if I was, even if I am . . . Even if I do love her, what does it matter? I don’t want . . . I’m not expecting it to lead to something. I’m forty-two, Lena, a confirmed bachelor. I’m seventeen years her senior. But if staying at Gwendolyn Gardens helps heal her wounds, I can offer her that, at least. She’s rediscovering herself by working. It might be her salvation.” Lena merely looked at him, not appearing to listen. “Lena. If you’re worried that I won’t be a gentleman, I promise—”

“Oh Digby, just stop.” Her eyes were moist. She stroked his cheek, then gave him a gentle kiss. She said softly, “Don’t promise. Just be you. Be good. Be true. And don’t be a gentleman.”

Elsie worked all the next day in the studio. He stayed out of her way. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. They were alone.

He left it as late as he could to fetch her to dinner. As he approached the shed, he couldn’t hear the clink of her mallet. Panicked, he ran the last few yards. He found her seated outside on the bench, watching the sky turn pink.

He sat next to her, out of breath but trying to conceal it. She smiled at him but looked incredibly sad. How stupid of me. Did I expect a sculpture to erase her memory? She leaned her head against his shoulder.

After a quiet dinner, both of them picking at their food, he said, “I want to show you one of my favorite paintings before you sleep.”

He led her to the loft off the second floor and then up the ladder to the roof, where he’d set up two reclining cane chairs. He tucked a shawl around her against the chill. The cook had left a flask of hot tea, laced with cardamom and whisky. Gradually, as their eyes adjusted, the ink-black coat of night revealed jewels embroidered in the cloth. Then, after more time, the lesser stars appeared, like shy children peering around the cloaks of their parents. Above them, Orion stretched his bow. They were silent for a long time. He saw her trace a finger across the sky, as though the rising plume of the Milky Way flowed off her fingertip. She seemed to be in rapture, staring up, speechless.

He handed her the cup and poured.

“As a child in Glasgow,” Digby said, “I’d go to the rooftop if the skies were clear—that wasn’t often, mind. I could find the North Star. That consoled me. My fixed point. After my mother died, I couldn’t believe in God. But the stars? Still there. In the same place. They made the idea of God inconsequential. I come up here in summer when the nights are clear. I look up for hours. Sometimes I wonder if this life of ours is a dream. Maybe I’m not really here at all.”

“If you’re not here, then I’m in your dream,” Elsie said. She said quietly, “Thank you, Digby. For everything.”

The next morning, he found her cross-legged on the carpet in his library, the sun streaming through the tall windows and through her hair. One of his folio-sized art books stood propped open before her.

“Digby!” she said, looking up. The pleasure in her voice gave him a catch in his throat. He sat down next to her. Together they stared at the photograph of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. “Look at the angel and Saint Teresa. Next to each other but separate. But all from one piece of stone. See the flowing fabric, the movement? How? How did he look at the stone when he began . . . and imagine this?” Her voice had become hushed. “He made it for this space in the church, with the sun pouring in from a skylight in the dome. It’s pure magic. Oh Digby, if I could go to Rome tomorrow, I would.”

“You can, Elsie.” Let’s go. She stared at him. Then she laughed. But she saw he wasn’t smiling. Slowly, tears welled up in her eyes.

He rose and returned with two cups of coffee. Elsie said, “Yesterday I tried to correct what I should’ve left alone. One side of the stone fell away.”

“Oh! I’m sorry to hear.”

She smiles, amused by his expression. “It’s all right, really. Whatever saint was locked in that stone was different from the one I had in mind. We must get rid of it. I’m sorry I wasted a good stone.”

“Nothing doing. I’m keeping it. When you’re even more famous, everyone will want your first sculpture. But I won’t sell. And by the way, Gwendolyn Gardens sits on a mountain of limestone. I’ll take you to the quarry. You can pick what you like.”

Elsie resumed her work, this time with a larger, oblong stone. Digby only saw her at breakfast and at dinner. The cook took lunch over, but she hardly ate.

After dinner, their routine now was to climb to the rooftop, staying till the chill drove them inside. How much longer would the nights be clear? Digby always insisted on descending the ladder first, helping her off the last rung, holding her hand till they were outside her bedroom door, when he wished her goodnight. Every night, as he headed back to his room, he said to himself, Be prepared, Digby. She might float off as suddenly as she arrived. Be prepared.

One night, wispy clouds marred their view, followed soon by thicker ones, obscuring the stars. Stubbornly, they lingered, until fat raindrops drove them in. The ladder was slippery. Outside her room he said goodnight, but she held on to his hand. She walked backward, leading him into her room, closing the door behind them. Be prepared, Digby.