The Covenant of Water

1934, Madras

“Aa’ never seen so many uniforms in the city,” Honorine says. She and Digby are in the New Elphinstone Theater, taking refuge from a blazing sun. The Saturday matinee crowd is a sea of regulation haircuts and khaki. “Here I was hoping Longmere would be me last posting. If it’s war again, they’ll drag we from the Civil Branch to the military. Of course, I’ll do me part. But the world’s gone mental, if you ask me. Japan invading China? What if they decide India’s next? Not to mention them Germans, the new chancellor. I don’t trust him, me.”

“It feels inevitable when you read the papers—war, I mean.” Digby was astonished to learn that a million Indian soldiers had fought in the Great War, and as many as one hundred thousand had died. Editorials opine that if Indians are to be conscripted into the British Indian Army to fight again, they won’t settle for anything less than freedom in return.

“Inevitable? God, na divven’t say that!” She scrabbles in her large wicker bag. She gives up, then snatches the kerchief Digby proffers and dabs her eyes. “I lost my older brothers in that war. It was the death of me poor mam. These politicians? They’re all gadgies, Digby,” she says bitterly. “If women were in power, you’d not see us sending lads to their death.”

If there’s war, Digby will be posted to a military unit. He recalls Professor Alan Elder in Glasgow saying that war was the only proper school for surgeons. It’s not a thought Digby will share with Honorine.

The triple feature ends with City Lights. Chaplin’s physical comedy has them convulsing in laughter. The wistful sweetness of the story—a tramp who falls in love with a blind girl and raises money for an operation to restore her sight—is the ideal antidote for the talk of war.

They emerge after what seems a lifetime. Though it is dusk, it is blisteringly hot, the air still. Instantly, Digby feels sweat beading on his lip and his brow. Despite the smells of frying vada from a roadside stall, the heat has erased his appetite.

“Marina Beach,” Honorine says decisively to a jatka driver whose long, betel-nut-stained teeth resemble those of his nag; neither man nor horse is enthusiastic about moving.

“Chaplin redeems all men,” Honorine says, her mood improved. “True love wins the day. I’d take him back to mine if I could.”

“Not much of a conversationalist though, is he?”

“And that’d be the blessing of it and all!” Honorine says.

On Wallajah Road, the horse whinnies, picking up its pace. The driver sits up. Honorine closes her eyes and inhales. Digby feels the first stirrings of hunger.

By such subtle signs, like an orchestra tuning up, the daily event that is central to life on the Coromandel Coast announces itself: the evening breeze. The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring. It pushes through on a broad front, up and down the coast; unhurried, reliable, with no slack until after midnight, by which time it will have lulled them into beautiful sleep. It doesn’t know caste or privilege as it soothes the expatriates in their pocket mansions, the shirtless clerk sitting with his wife on the rooftop of his one-room house, and the pavement dwellers in their roadside squats. Digby has seen the cheery Muthu become distracted, his conversation clipped and morose, as he waits for the relief that comes from the direction of Sumatra and Malaya, gathering itself over the Bay of Bengal, carrying scents of orchids and salt, an airborne opiate that unclenches, unknots, and finally lets one forget the brutal heat of the day. “Yes, yes, you are having your Taj Mahal, your Golden Temple, your Eiffel Tower,” an educated Madrasi will say, “but can anything match our Madras evening breeze?”

The sandy beach that comes into view is so wide that the blue of the ocean is a narrow ribbon melting into the horizon. They’re coming to the very spot where the British got their first toehold in India in the form of a tiny trading post, the forerunner to the East India Trading Company. By the 1600s, the depot needed a military fort—Fort Saint George—to store the spices, silk, jewelry, and tea bound for home, and to keep these goods out of the hands of local warlords, and the French, and the Dutch. The city of Madras blossomed on either side of the fort. Digby is becoming more familiar with the city, exploring it by bicycle, and puzzling out its neighborhoods. The old “Blacktown” near the fort changed its name to Georgetown when the Prince of Wales came to visit. Anglo-­Indians cluster in Purasawalkam and Vepery, while foreigners choose Egmore or the fancier suburbs of Nungambakkam. The Brahmin enclave is Mylapore, while the Muslim population is concentrated in the vicinity of Gosha Hospital and Triplicane. He and Honorine have arrived at Madras Marina, conceived of by a former governor with the improbable name of Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff. The grand promenade runs for miles in either direction.

Along the marina and facing the sea is a succession of massive edifices, built for the ages. Freed by distance from the constraints of Whitehall, it appears to Digby that the architects indulged their Oriental fantasies, building these sculpted temples to the Empire. He and Honorine dismount by the University Senate Building. Its tall minarets appear to have mated and given birth to a brood of junior spires all crowned with snowcaps. Digby sees Renaissance, Byzantine, Muslim, and Gothic elements all battling each other in one structure. It’s meant to fill the natives with awe, Digby thinks. Like the Singer clock tower.

“I should hate these buildings,” Honorine says. “But I’ll miss them when I leave, I will.”

Digby is puzzled. Honorine has lived longer in India than in England.

Seeing his expression, Honorine laughs. “Oh Digby, I love this city. Love living here. But the country’ll be free soon. I divven’t talk about it because it’d be heresy, wouldn’t it? Of course, if the Indians lets us stay, I will.”

They make an odd pair, strolling barefoot in the sand: the lumbering, gray-haired woman on the arm of a gaunt, younger man whose dark hair has a reddish tinge, as though he’s rubbed henna into it. His scar makes him look boyish. They sit gazing out to sea. Three fishermen squat in the shadow of a catamaran, smoking, their backs to the water.

“I’m embarrassed how little I knew of India when I signed up,” Digby says suddenly. “All I thought about was getting surgical ­experience—­as if the Indian Medical Service existed to serve me.” He must raise his voice over the roar of crashing waves. “I doubt I’ll get used to the privileges I have here. I fear what might happen if I did.”

A young couple strolls past, pressed against each other. The jasmine in the woman’s hair leaves a perfumed trail. Matron regards them and sighs. “What are you doing hanging round old Honorine, Digby? You know my nurses all have you in their sights.”

He laughs self-consciously. “I’m not quite ready for that. Too complicated.”

“Ah, yes, well, you’re safe with me.”

“I meant—”

“The thing about my Anglo-Indian girls, Digby, my nurses, and the secretaries? They’re at the short end of the stick. Some may look whiter than you or me, but a fat lot of good that does. They imagine if they were to marry someone like you, they’d become British. But the truth is you’d have a hard time bringing them into the Madras Club. And your bairns would still be Anglo-Indians and face the same obstacles. You have a wounded air about you, pet, and yer a canny surgeon. Makes you attractive. Be cautious, is all I’m saying.”

Digby laughs nervously, thankful that in the twilight she can’t see him blush.

“Nothing to fear, Honorine. My solitude is a state I’ve gotten used to. It feels safer than . . .” He can’t bring himself to utter the alternative.

Honorine’s face shows sadness, or is it pity? “Forgive her, Digs. Let her go.”

For a moment he’s at a loss. She’s the only person in Madras to whom he’s volunteered the story of his mother’s death, the hard years before and after. Secrecy lives in the same rooms as loneliness. His secret—and his failing—is that after his mother’s betrayal, he cannot risk love.

“I have, Honorine.”

“Ah, well,” she says, looking out to sea, the breeze blowing her hair back. “It’s not me you have to convince, is it, pet?”

Before Christmas, as Digby is about to head home, Honorine rushes into his ward, a tall, stocky white man in tow. “Digby, come with us. This is Franz Mylin. Doctor Arnold admitted his wife two days ago. She’s not doing well.”

Mylin is built for rugby, with a huge neck and upper body. He is carrot-topped, and at this moment his face, contorted with anger, is also red. They head upstairs while Honorine recounts the essentials, couching her words for the husband’s sake: the Mylins just returned by steamer from England and on the last three days of the journey, Lena Mylin developed abdominal pain and vomiting that became worse. On disembarking they came directly to Longmere. Claude Arnold’s admitting diagnosis was dyspepsia. “That was thirty-six hours ago,” Honorine says.

Mylin bursts out, “He barely touched her when she came in. Haven’t seen him since! She’s just been lying there, getting worse by the hour.”

The British ward is empty but for the birdlike figure of Lena Mylin, lying very still in bed, her breathing rapid. Strands of dark curly hair are glued to her forehead. She watches Digby’s approach with apprehension. Franz says, “Please don’t jar her bed. The slightest movement makes the pain worse.”

That statement alone speaks of peritonitis from an abdominal catastrophe, which Digby’s exam confirms: the right side of her belly is rigid. He registers her dry tongue and parched lips and the tint of jaundice in her eyes, and her clammy skin. When he asks her to take a deep breath while he gently probes below her ribs on the right side, she winces and arrests her inhalation. Her inflamed gallbladder has met Digby’s fingers. He doesn’t mince words. “I’m pretty sure a stone is obstructing your gallbladder and now it’s distended with pus.” He avoids the word “gangrenous,” so as not to alarm them further. “It’s urgent we operate.”

“The bastard called it seasickness!” Franz says bitterly. “Where is he? This is criminal!”

In the theater, as soon as Digby opens the abdomen, he sees what he feared: a distended, angry-looking gallbladder with dusky patches of gangrene. There’s your dyspepsia, Claude. He makes a small hole in the engorged sack. A sludge of yellow pus, green bile, and small pigment stones spills out onto the gauze pads and into the suction apparatus. He unroofs as much of the gallbladder as he can, leaving only the part stuck to the liver. He avoids the cystic duct where the gallbladder empties. Dissecting there with all this inflammation is hazardous. Lena’s tissues bleed vigorously. Before closing the belly, he leaves a rubber drain near the liver bed. After surgery Lena Mylin looks very pale and has low blood pressure. Digby hurries to the “blood bank”—a closet with a refrigerator, really—where, using typing serum, he establishes that hers is B blood group, a rare one. The blood bank is his innovation, one of the areas in which they are ahead of the other city hospitals. After a pint of blood, Lena’s blood pressure rises and color returns to her face.

“Whose blood was that?” Franz asks.

“Mine,” Digby says. His blood group makes him a universal donor. Luckily, he had two units of his own blood in storage for just such a need. “I’m going to give her a second bottle.”

Digby keeps vigil with Franz. By morning Lena is clearly improved. He learns that the Mylins have an estate on the other coast, near Cochin. Franz’s face relaxes when he describes their home of many years in the Western Ghats, where he grows tea and spices. “You must come and visit, Doctor Kilgour.”

At noon Digby returns to find Claude Arnold at the foot of the bed, examining Lena’s chart while Franz stands there, arms crossed, glowering, bursting to speak. Lena’s face is averted.

“Well,” Claude says, registering Digby’s presence, “Dr. Kilgour saved the day, it seems—” and with that he slips past Digby and walks out before they can react. Digby pacifies an apoplectic Franz.

Later, when Digby emerges from the ward, Claude appears from his rear. He must have waited behind a pillar. If Digby imagined that Arnold might be sheepish, or even grateful to his junior, he’s quickly disabused of that notion.

“You should have just put in a drain and come out. Nibbling away pieces of the gallbladder? Hardly standard practice.” Claude’s back is turned to the ward entrance and he misses Franz Mylin emerging to loom just behind him. “I call that irresponsible and foolhardy, Digby.”

Before a stunned Digby can think of a rejoinder, Claude once again walks away. But this time, with an oath, Franz lunges and slams a meaty hand on Claude’s shoulder, spinning him around. Claude’s supercilious expression is replaced by one of surprise and fear. Digby leaps between them as Franz swings, so the deflected punch hits Claude’s chest. Arnold flees. Franz roars at the retreating figure of Longmere’s chief surgeon: “Come back, you fucking coward! Who are you calling irresponsible? You’re not half the surgeon Kilgour is!” The words echo on Claude’s empty ward. For the rest of Lena’s stay, Claude stays away.

Lena turns out to be the more sociable and talkative half of the couple. She knows every probationer’s name and they cannot do enough for her. The drain is out in three days, and ten days after her surgery, she is ready for discharge.

When it’s time to say goodbye, Franz grasps Digby’s shoulders and squeezes; the big man is too moved to speak.

Lena takes Digby’s hand. “Digby,” she says, surprising him by using his first name. “How can I repay you? You saved my life. We’ll be offended if you don’t visit us at the estate. You need a holiday. Please promise you’ll come?” Digby’s sputtering reply isn’t convincing. “Digby,” she says, “do you have relatives in India?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh, yes you do. We’re blood now.”