The Covenant of Water

1936, Saint Bridget’s

Saint Bridget’s suffers through the last days of summer, the water in the well hovering inches above the silt bed. Rune motors up the ghat road to Chandy’s estate in the mountains, trailing a plume of dust. In the fourteen years since he arrived at Saint Bridget’s he has become part of their family. When they decamp from the Thetanatt house to the spacious estate bungalow for the summer, Rune often goes for the weekend. In the space of three years, Chandy and Leelamma had a son, then a daughter. The boy was born temperamental, and at twelve, to Rune he still seems that way. The little girl, Elsie, is the opposite, and she adopted her bearded “Uncle Rune” right away. Life drastically changed for the children just five months ago, when Leelamma contracted typhoid. She seemed to be defervescing, but then she suddenly collapsed with severe abdominal pain. Chandy rushed her to Cochin, where surgeons discovered that a typhoid ulcer of her intestine had perforated; she died on the table. For the children it was as though the scythe that swung through their house the month prior, taking away their beloved grandmother, had, on its backswing, cut down their mother. Rune swore to make the three-hour drive every weekend in the summer to keep a close eye on the family. They are barely coping.

By comparison, the years have been kinder to Rune. He built himself a small bungalow near the front wall, on the edge of the property, with its own entrance, separate enough from the leprosarium so his outside friends can visit easily. Saint Bridget’s has an official car, gifted by the Swedish Mission, to complement the ancient Humber that Rune drives. Thanks to their poultry, the small dairy, the vegetable garden, and the orchard—all run by the flock—they are self-sufficient with excess to sell or give away. But not even a starving beggar will let his lips touch what comes from a leprosarium. The exception is Saint Bridget’s plum wine, thanks to Chandy. On the first day of Lent, Chandy, alone in the estate, found himself tremulous once more, at risk of a convulsion. To reduce temptation Leelamma had removed all liquor from the bungalow. But a few dusty bottles of Saint Bridget’s plum wine escaped her notice; one glass cured Chandy’s tremulousness. Chandy decided that, given its saintly origins, it could be consumed through Lent. He bought it by the case now. It caught on with the estate crowd, especially the ladies, because it was mild, delicious, and (so Chandy swore) “medicinal.” Rune carries four cases in the car on this drive.

The children are asleep when Rune arrives at the Thetanatt bungalow, but Chandy waits for him. Chandy says Lena Mylin left a message for him; she and Franz want to see Rune the next ­evening—it is urgent. The planters and their families in the region—Chandy’s friends—are now Rune’s friends too.

Before retiring, Rune smokes a last pipe on the verandah, taking in the night sounds. The misty veil above him parts to reveal stars, the sky so low he feels he can extend a hand and touch the robe of God. He’s at peace. The chest pains that trouble him he is quite sure are angina, but he accepts this with equanimity. He’s living his faith, his amalgam of Christianity and Hindu philosophy. Medicine is his true priesthood, a ministry of healing the body and the soul of his flock. He will go on as long as he’s able.

After a full morning with the children, and bridge in the afternoon, Rune heads to AllSuch at sunset. As he turns in to the Mylins’ mile-long driveway, he glimpses an apparition: a white man in a checkered lungi walking rapidly, bandages on his hands. Rune is startled: it’s like sighting a leopard that has strayed into a human enclave.

In their living room, Lena recounts a story that begins with a surgeon saving her life with an emergency operation in Madras and ends with her and Franz sheltering the surgeon in their guest cottage. They had sworn to keep his presence a secret—till now. Franz sits silent.

Rune walks over to the guest cottage with a bottle of plum wine. He finds its occupant—the apparition from earlier—in the screened-in sunroom, a cashmere shawl over his head and shoulders, his hands exposed. The sight of the young surgeon, perhaps in his late twenties, moves Rune. He feels he is encountering a comrade in arms, a fellow soldier, fallen on the battlefield. Whatever Rune had planned to say has evaporated. Wordlessly, Rune finds two glasses inside, pours, and sits next to the silent stranger. The verandah cantilevers out over a steep slope. As he gazes down, Rune feels a disequilibrium, the sense of standing on a precipice. Below him the tea bushes run in neat, parallel rows, as though a giant comb has been dragged across the hillsides.

After a time, Rune moves the lamp over, turns his chair to face this stranger, and puts on his spectacles. He supports the younger man’s forearms in his hands. The spectacle of these ruined tools of a surgeon’s livelihood fills Rune with sorrow. This is, after all, his own nightmare, though in his dream the culprit is always leprosy. He is overcome. He takes a deep breath. The journey the two of them embark on together must begin with love, Rune thinks. To love the sick—isn’t that always the first step?

He gives Digby’s forearms a meaningful and sustained squeeze while looking him in the eye. The young man is startled. He’s like a wild animal, Rune thinks; his instinct is to snarl, to pull back . . . but Rune holds his gaze and his forearms. He hopes this man will see in Rune’s eyes not pity but recognition, warriors fighting shoulder to shoulder against a common foe. The seconds pass. The young man blinks furiously, then is forced to look away. The normally voluble Rune has managed—by his silence, by his touch, by his presence—to convey a message: Before we treat the flesh, we must acknowledge the greater wound, the one to the spirit.

Rune tries to digest what he sees. The back of the right hand is a mosaic, with islands of paper-thin, crinkly skin dotting a thick scar that has contracted, cocking the wrist back. Rune pushes, but there’s little give. The fingers are curled, imprisoned talons because the tendons are frozen. Gently, Rune slides Digby’s lungi up from the shin to expose the right thigh, revealing coin-sized scabs—a good guess. They testify to a desperate surgeon trying to treat himself. What but shame would drive him to try such a stunt?

The left hand is in better shape, the damage confined to the palm, where a thick, leathery scar runs across the palm like a stripe; it has ruler-like edges—clearly Digby had grabbed some kind of superheated object. The contracting scar puckers the palm, drawing the fingers down into a beak. Digby’s ears and cheeks have flaking, discolored skin from superficial burns. The linear scar at the corner of the mouth must be an old story, unrelated to this one.

Rune hands Digby his wine, then, meditatively, he loads and lights his pipe.

“Will I ever operate again?” The voice is like dry twigs cracking underfoot.

So, Rune thinks, we can speak. Rune’s eyes narrow. He considers his answer, puffing away. “Your left, I will do right away. I have a trick to release the scar on your palm. It will be functional. Your right . . . ? Well, it was a good try, covering it with those grafts.”

“And . . . ?”

“And, my friend . . .” Rune refills his glass, gesturing to Digby to taste his. He does. “Digby—may I call you that? Have you heard of Cowasjee’s nose?”

Digby stares at Rune as if at a madman. Then he nods. “Yes.”

Rune is impressed. Cowasjee was a cart driver for the British. He was captured by Tipu Sultan’s army in a battle with the British in the eighteenth century. Tipu’s men cut off Cowasjee’s hand and his nose and set him free. One can live without a hand, but nothing is more disfiguring or shameful than a hole in the face. Since the British surgeons could do nothing about his appearance, Cowasjee vanished, only to return a few months later displaying his new nose. He’d been operated on by the bricklayers in Poona, who practiced a seventh-century technique passed down from Sushruta, the “father of surgery.” The bricklayers made a wax nose—a hollow pyramid—to fit over the hole in Cowasjee’s face. They removed this mold, flattened it out, and put it upside down at the center of Cowasjee’s forehead to serve as a template. With a scalpel they traced an incision on the forehead around this template, save for the bottom, where the eyebrows met. Dispensing with the template, they undermined and lifted the forehead skin into a flap, hinged between the eyebrows. Swinging it down, they sewed it to the edges of the nose hole, with small sticks to keep the nostril holes patent. It healed well, since it had an intact blood supply from its attachment near the eyebrows. True, it was a bit floppy from no cartilage, but air could pass, and more importantly, his looks were restored. A British surgeon reported this technique in a journal.

“Is that what you have in mind for me? A flap?” Digby says.

Rune parries with his own questions. “Why did it take us in the West centuries to learn a technique that was right under our nose? What else don’t we know, eh, Digby? What else?”

“Dr. Orqvist. Please. What do you propose?”

“Call me Rune, please. Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit,” Rune says, pointing heavenward. “I propose that you come to Saint Bridget’s. We’ll leave in the morning. But it’s contingent on one thing.”

Digby looks anxious. “What?”

“Tell me you like our plum wine.”