The Covenant of Water

1935, Madras

Digby vows not to think of her. He thinks of her all the time. She’s chiseled in his memory like a rock sculpture; his thoughts about her survive a rainy season that didn’t deserve the moniker, a typhoon that did, and a “spring” that was over in a blink. He can still smell the surf, taste the chutney sandwiches, and conjure up Celeste’s face as she dozed, a face that hints at what she has endured even if the scars are less obvious than his.

He has one consolation: Esmeralda. So far she has lived up to Owen’s billing of being a “cent-per-cent reliable gem!” She has many idiosyncrasies, but she rewards the patient owner. On weekends she escorts him to new vistas, probing the edges of the city: Saint Thomas Mount, Adyar Beach, and even Tambaram.

Though his range has expanded from his cycling days, his circle of friends remains small: Honorine, the Tuttleberrys, and Ravichandran. Lena Mylin writes Digby chatty letters; she’s recovering well and Franz sends his best. She sends an enticing photograph of their guest cottage at AllSuch estate, where she says Digby can paint and relax. He has promised to make the trip the next summer, when Madras becomes unbearable.

Digby and Honorine are the Tuttleberrys’ guest at the Railway Institute’s Fall Ball, which Jennifer says is a “not-to-be-missed” event—and it appears that no one in the Anglo-Indian community has. The gray-haired papas and nanas and the infants nod off in corners, oblivious to Denzil and the Dukes on stage playing everything from swing to polka. A sultry female crooner joins them for “April Showers” and “Stardust.” Digby watches a middle-aged couple navigate the packed dance floor; they’ve been married for so long that their bodies have left impressions on each other.

Jennifer drags Digby to his feet, ignoring his protests. “I’ll teach you, no worries,” she says. “It can’t be as hard as surgery.” Digby would much prefer a gastrectomy. “Drive with your hips,” she says encouragingly.

Her brother Jeb’s arrival with a small entourage of good-­looking mates creates a stir. “The Prince of Perambur honors us tonight,” Jennifer says, furrowing her brows. At once, a young woman scrapes back her chair and flounces out of the hall, her parents and siblings trailing behind her, all glaring at Jeb as they exit. Jeb stands aside—humble, polite, eyes on the concrete floor. Jennifer shakes her head and says to Digby, “Mary and Jeb were an item from the time they were both in knickers. Even gave her a ring. Then this month my brother ditches her just like that. I’m still mad.”

Back in his seat, Digby watches Jeb float about the room like a man running for office, offering a wave to Denzil and the Dukes, who acknowledge him like royalty. He walks past Jennifer, who snubs her brother, but then he sneaks up behind her and lifts her off the ground and onto the dance floor. Denzil and the Dukes strike up a cha-cha-cha; every eye is on brother and sister as Jeb expertly leads with just the faintest pressure on the tips of his fingers, driving with his hips. Digby is envious of a skill he knows he’ll never possess. He’s struck again by the contrast between Jeb’s blue eyes and brown hair and Jennifer’s coal-dark eyes and black bob, a finger curl on the left. With a sari, red dye in her hair-parting, and a pottu on her forehead, she could pass for a Tamilian lady, while Jeb could be a tanned Englishman, freshly returned from a summer in Italy.

Jeb releases his grinning sister by spinning her into her chair, only to zero in on a demure young beauty in a striking white gown with oversized red roses painted all over it and cut to show generous cleavage. But no—it’s the girl’s oversized mother he’s after. In his high-waisted slacks and white shirt with tuxedo frill, Jeb is like a matador expertly leading Auntie across the floor, acting awed by Auntie’s hidden talents as she proves that twenty years ago she was a hot number . . . and all the while Auntie’s demure daughter grows nervous in her seat, because she knows what Digby only now sees: that from the moment Jeb walked in, it was all misdirection, all smoke and mirrors, because the die was cast, there was only one girl in the world for him, and it was Auntie’s lovely daughter in the white, rose-decked gown, it was love-at-first-sight-my-dearest-darling, and forget the cock-and-bull you heard about me, just bloody slander by that chutney Mary and her Charley-Billy-po-po-gunda brothers, such up-country folks, just stories, rubbish, frogs stuck in a bucket trying to pull down the brave soul who wishes to see the world . . .

Digby is only mildly surprised to learn from Owen that Jeb’s new girl is named Rose. He can’t help thinking how Celeste would love the intrigue and the spectacle. But Celeste is a daydream, while flesh-and-blood women in clouds of perfume flash past him, calling him to adventure with their eyes. An hour later, when Digby and Honorine take their leave, the dance is going strong.

Digby motors at an easy pace, the only pace Esmeralda is capable of with a sidecar passenger, which is only slightly faster than a bicycle. The sea breeze is nourishing, cleansing. Digby slips his goggles up over his forehead and Honorine’s hair flies about behind her as she grins.

“It’s all roses for Jeb,” Digby shouts over his shoulder, the image of the white swirling gown covered with red roses still vivid. He wants to talk about Celeste, but of course he’s never mentioned her, or the excursion, never uttered her name to another.

Honorine laughs, shouting back, “Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn’t last.”

Well, Jeb surely knows that, Digby thinks. But does Rose? And if beauty is in the ephemeral, what about the beautiful things you can’t have? Perhaps that kind of beauty does last forever.

The arrival of the dog days of summer marks the start of another year at Longmere; Muthu notes the occasion on the kitchen calendar.

As Digby passes the operating theater anteroom, blotting away the stinging sweat with his kerchief, he recognizes a patient on a gurney. The man’s blue eyes and faintly tanned skin make him appear British, a rare sight when it comes to surgical patients at Longmere.

Digby glances up at Claude’s surgical list to see just one name there: Jeb’s.

“It’s nothing,” Jeb says, embarrassed to run into Digby. “A bloody abscess.” He points to an angry red bulge in his neck. “Thought I’d get it drained by Dr. Arnold. Claude’s a keen sportsman, you know. Comes to every match we have in town.”

“How long have you had it?” Digby says, when he really wants to say, I wouldn’t let Claude remove a tick off my backside. He peers at it closely.

“Oh, months and months, I’d say. But now the bugger’s a nuisance.”

When Claude’s orderly arrives to take Jeb into the theater, Jeb waves a jaunty farewell.

Months and months? It gnaws at Digby. Then it begins to alarm him.

He sends a probationer to ask Honorine to come to the theater if she can. He changes into theater garb and goes inside to take a second look. The chloroform has taken hold and Jeb’s eyes are closed. The swelling is red, angry—looking very much like an abscess. Perhaps I was wrong, Digby thinks. But when he puts his fingers on it, it isn’t warm, as an abscess should be. It is, as Digby feared, pulsatile, lifting and spreading his fingers with each heartbeat.

“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Kilgour,” Claude says, coming up behind him, scrubbed and gowned, just as Honorine slips in clutching the mask to her face. It’s well before noon, yet Digby thinks he can smell the metabolites of alcohol. “Aren’t we working you hard enough on the native side? Come to have a look-see?” If there’s a smile, it’s hidden by Claude’s surgical mask, and certainly not visible in the eyes.

“Oh, sorry. It’s just that I know Jeb,” Digby says. “A friend’s brother. I happened to see him in the anteroom.” He lowers his voice. “I’m wondering . . . I’m concerned, Dr. Arnold. Could this be an aneurysm and maybe not an abscess?”

Claude’s eyes turn cold. The naked hatred in them shakes Digby. For a moment Digby wonders if this is about Celeste, but the only sins he’s committed are in his head.

Claude recovers. “Nonsense, laddie,” he says. “Surely you’ve been here long enough to know an abscess when you see one. It’s turgid with pus. The vessels behind it are transmitting their pulsation. We’re in the tropics. Pyogenic abscesses are more common than acne.”

His words aren’t slurred, but carefully enunciated. Claude could be right.

“It’s just that it isn’t warm . . .” Digby says. “Maybe a small needle first might clarify—”

“It’s a pus-filled abscess,” Claude says flatly. “I was opening these things when you were learning to finger-paint! Just stand back and watch.”

Dr. Claude Arnold slices into the swelling with his scalpel before the antiseptic has dried. Pus wells out, thick and creamy, and Claude turns to Digby and is about to say, “You see?” but in the next instant a jet of blood, a bright arterial spray, strikes Claude in the head. He springs back, stunned, but doesn’t move fast enough because on the next beat it catches him again, a surging spout, timed to every beat of Jeb’s heart.

Claude knocks over a stool in his retreat. Digby steps forward, grabbing surgical towels with his ungloved hands to put pressure on the aneurysm, because that is indeed what this is: a focal weakening of the carotid artery wall. Honorine lets her mask drop and steps up to help.

Claude’s cut is so long and deep that compression doesn’t stanch the breach in the dyke. The pads turn red, as do Digby’s fingers; blood drips off the table and pools on the floor. Digby calls for a suture on a needle holder. Already, Jeb’s face has turned a ghostly white. When Digby pulls the towels away, blood is pumping less vigorously from the ragged tear. He stitches the vessel crudely, but by then Jeb’s heart has stopped because there’s no longer enough blood to pump. The patient has exsanguinated. Jeb’s eyes are half open and Digby feels their gaze is fixed on him as if to ask, Why did you let him do it?

The sound of the stool crashing to the floor has summoned everyone within earshot. A small crowd stands in the theater studying the grisly tableau. “Well, I’ll be damned!” Claude says from six feet back, breaking the long hush in the theater.

Claude is almost as pale as Jeb, save for the blood on one side of his face. Every eye is on Claude Arnold, a pathetic sight.

“The bloody thing would have killed him anyway,” Claude says. “No harm done,” he mumbles, stumbling out.