The Covenant of Water

1936, AllSuch Estates, Travancore-Cochin

Digby’s memory of the inferno, of Celeste twirling in the flaming silk sari like a child playing dress-up, of the smoke searing his windpipe as he screamed out to her, of the shattering sound of doors kicked down and hands pulling him out, melts into the agony of his hospitalization. He’s bandaged and sedated, but through the haze of morphia, the fire rages on; for five more days it burns. He sees Celeste’s face, masked in melting fabric, contorted with fear, as he battles to get to her. His nostrils are filled with the stink of a butcher shop, of hair singed off an animal’s carcass. When he coughs, he hacks up particles of soot; the hoarse voice that screams out her name is no longer his. Mind and body have parted ways. The terrible pain is still less than what he deserves. He has no clue to the extent of his burns. The savage, life-threatening injury is to his mind, strewn around like shattered china, no longer recognizable as Digby from Glasgow, Digby the faithful son, Digby the single-minded medical student, Digby the surgeon with the good hands.

Every face that hovers over his bed—Honorine’s, Ravi’s, Muthu’s, and the probationer’s whose harelip he repaired in a previous life—pierces him with shame. Shame for disappointing them. Shame because he is Digby the adulterer, Digby the murderer. Shame hounds his waking. He wants to crawl to a cave where light cannot penetrate, where he might be spared the gaze of others, especially that of his forgiving friends. If only he could leave the human race and become the earthworm he deserves to be. His friends despair at his mental state.

On the sixth day after the fire, while it is still dark outside, he rises. Wincing with pain, he takes off the bandages. Under the glow of a bulb that stays on all night, he catalogs his wounds. The back of his right hand frightens him: from the wrist down to the knuckles the anatomy is laid bare, the shiny ribbons of the tendons are displayed, framed by blackened flesh. Were it not for the dark eschar forming on the surface, it would look just like an illustration in his Gray’s Anatomy. It is painless, and therefore must be a third-degree burn—the deepest kind—taking the cutaneous nerves with it. During the fire he must have reflexively made a fist, exposing the dorsum of his hand and sparing his palm and fingers. On his left, he has burns of both palmar and dorsal surfaces, the skin a fire-engine red, oozing and blistered, and the fingers like sausages, twice their usual size. These must be first- and second-degree burns, the nerves intact, and thus excruciatingly painful. The skin here will one day regenerate, albeit with scarring. The same cannot be said of the right.

He is naked. His back hurts. He must be burned there too. He moves haltingly to the mirror, the room spinning, trying not to scream from the pain. Who is this singed creature without eyelashes, eyebrows, or hair, and with ears swollen like the cauliflower appendages of a pugilist? A half-human, half-stegosaurus bald-eyed creature stares back at him. It speaks: Y’er half-broiled already, might as well finish yirsel off. No righteous testimony for you, not with her blood on your hands. No pity, ye laughable fool. Hearts will bleed for the poor widowed Claude, but not for you. Get away! Run!

The sky lightens. He eyes the prone figure on the mat in the corner. “Muthu,” Digby whispers, and Muthu rises at once. “Muthu, please, I beg you. I can’t stay here.”

In bare feet, and wrapped in one sheet in lieu of all the bandages, he slips out with Muthu. The rickshaw ride is excruciatingly painful. At a travelers’ lodge near Central Station, the fellow at the desk gawks at the ghostlike guest who might possibly be white. Muthu hurries out on Digby’s errands.

By evening, Digby, in fresh bandages, and a loose shirt and mundu, is stretched out in the baggage car of the Shoranur Express. On this run, Owen Tuttleberry isn’t locomotive driver but escort, swallowing his disquiet. A tearful Muthu stands forlorn on the platform. Owen says, “If my missus knows I fibbed to her, she’ll give me a great big jhaap across my cheek. No doubt she thinks I’ve got a dame on the side.” Owen hides his disappointment; Claude Arnold, who killed Jeb, will get away because the blessed star witness was shacking up with the butcher’s wife.

Franz and Lena Mylin, and Cromwell, their driver, meet the train at dawn, having motored down from AllSuch in darkness. They lay the drugged, senseless fugitive out on the back seat, and place his carry bag of bandages, salves, and opium on the floor. He moans but doesn’t speak on the three-hour drive up the winding ghat road. AllSuch has a separate guest cottage. They ease Digby into the bed. He sleeps all day.

In the late afternoon, Lena and Franz knock. Digby opens the door, a bedsheet draped over his head and body as he stares with pinpoint pupils at the man in khaki shorts, shirt, and slippers standing behind the couple.

“This is Cromwell,” Lena says. “He’ll be here to help you with whatever you—”

“I’ll manage!” Digby snaps. Recognizing his rudeness, he says, “Forgive me,” and hangs his head. He owes them an explanation. The shame, he says simply, was more painful than the burns. He had to escape Madras. Their hospitality is a godsend. He begs them to tell no one he is here. “One day I’ll repay you. I need some supplies. Tweezers—finest you can find. And fine scissors. Spirit for disinfection. Whisky for the spirit. More rolled bandages like this. Petrolatum. And razor blades.”

Up in the mountains, without faces to reflect his shame, he can think. Already a thick black crust has formed on the back of his right hand. If he doesn’t remove this eschar it will become rock hard before eventually falling off, and the body will fill the hole with granulation tissue, turning it into a thick, leathery scar that forever imprisons the tendons. He begins as soon as the tweezers arrive, picking at the eschar, using the razor blade when needed, until the tendons and muscles show cleanly. The deadened nerves make it painless only to a point: at the edges, the tissue bleeds and the pain is intense.

He moves furniture for what he must do next if he is to have some hope of retaining function of his right hand. He omits his dose of opium to stay sharp; his left hand must do his bidding. Wedging the front of his right thigh between the dresser and the table’s edge, he pushes up a ridge of skin—his “donor site.” After cleaning with spirit, he shaves off a gossamer-thin piece of skin, the size of a button. He screams as the blade slices. The pain is exquisite, unbearable. He downs a slug of whisky. The tweezers shake in his fingers as he picks up the wafer of skin then lays it on the raw surface of the back of his right hand, teasing it out flat. Over the next hour, his hosts hear his periodic screams, as though a slow revolving torture wheel cuts him on its every turn. He declines help when they call out. They leave food outside his door and Cromwell keeps vigil. Digby’s hope is that these “pinch” skin grafts, like a cluster of tiny islands, will take root, grow out, and fill the space. It’s hardly a standard operation. A surgeon should never be his own patient, nor substitute whisky for ether.

The next day Digby limps out of the cottage. Cromwell materializes like a shadow behind him. “I must walk,” Digby says. Each day he increases the length of the walk, sticking to level footpaths through shaded forests of rubber trees; nature soothes Digby. He keeps Franz and Lena at bay, ashamed to converse with them beyond that first confession. He tolerates Cromwell. With him he has no history, nothing to live up to. Subtly, Cromwell directs the twice-a-day walks, leading Digby to different parts of the estate each time.

Three weeks after Digby’s arrival, Cromwell tells Lena, “Doctor much sad. Not moving.” Lena finds Digby shirtless, seated on the steps outside the guest cottage. His expression of utter despair makes her shiver. Silently he displays the back of his right hand: a dark, blotchy lava pit. She doesn’t know what to make of it, other than the owner looks ready to cut it off.

“Lena,” he says after a while. “I’ve accomplished nothing. My tendons are still imprisoned.” She cannot help herself; she needs to touch him. She selects his shoulder, where the skin looks normal. He shudders but doesn’t pull away. “Oh, Lena, what’s become of my life?”

She stays with him, holding him to her, offering him her presence, conveying to him that he isn’t alone. At last, she says, “Digby, look at me. You said no visitors. That you’d leave if anyone came to see you. Please, I must tell you of a friend who comes up from the plains to the mountains on weekends. He’s a surgeon. He specializes in hands.”