The Covenant of Water

1936, Saint Bridget’s

Philipose rushes out to the verandah as his stomach rejects its contents. The spices and acid burn his throat. He washes his hands and rinses his mouth under a downspout from the roof. His nails have black outlines of blood. He cleans in a frenzy.

When he looks up, a monstrous face is inches from his, leering at him. The apparition has holes for nostrils, and unseeing eyes, though it cocks its head as if it hears his breathing. Philipose’s scream emerges as a choked gurgle. The ghoul stumbles back at the sound, more frightened than he is.

He must get out of this place. He must get back home. But where exactly is he?

The leper or watchman they first met, and who tried to turn them away, gives him the answer, but Philipose can’t believe it—surely not. Another leper, coming up beside them, confirms it. They notice his surprise at how well they know the roads. “There’s nowhere we haven’t walked! Did you think we go by bus? Or ferry?” Their laughter is macabre. His only interactions with lepers have been to drop coins into tin cups; who knew they were intelligent, capable of speech? His walk home will be circuitous because the main Pulath bridge is washed out. It’s a five-mile detour in the wrong direction, and then he must backtrack for perhaps ten more. No buses come by the leprosarium. His heart sinks. To think he was worried about being late for school! It could be very late before he gets home.

The doctor comes looking for him. “Philipose, yes? My name is Digby Kilgour, by the way. Can you translate for me?” They go back inside to the boatman, who stands soothing his silent yet crying baby. “Tell him that I’m hopeful we can take that tube out in twenty-four hours. It’s best he stays here till then.”

The boatman says, “What choice do I have? I’ve lost my boat. Lost my livelihood. But so what? I have my son, don’t I?”

Dr. Kilgour notices Philipose’s restlessness, his anxiety. When Philipose explains, Digby says, “We’ll get you home. You saved a life today.” He says he expects a friend named Chandy to return in the afternoon from his estate in the mountains—by car. The doctor reassures him that Chandy’s driver will get him back.

It’s a long wait, more so because he declines Digby’s offer of food or drink, fearing contagion. The sun is out, the sky cloudless, as though the morning downpour was a bad joke. He finds a shady spot in the orchard, and when he can’t hold out any longer, he draws water from the well and scoops mouthfuls from the bucket, trying not to touch the edges. The heat bakes the whirls and ridges of mud on the driveway into a hard crust.

It is midafternoon when a car pulls in. The large, well-to-do man driving it steps out and goes to the bungalow where Digby disappeared. Philipose sounds out the name on the badge on the car: “Chev-Ro-Lett.” The word is familiar. It has a sense of motion, a snap at the end. It sounds the way he imagines America to be: a land of hard-working, ambitious people like the inhabitants of Tisbury or the Vineyard of Martha. This car is like a wealthy man who shed his finery to work alongside his pulayar in the mud. The fenders are gone, exposing its wheels and its innards, and it is as mud-caked as Coconut Kurian’s bullock cart. A hook juts out from the prow. The front passenger seat is being used to haul some kind of motor sitting on a tarpaulin. A metal platform is welded to the rear of the car, holding petrol cans, rope, a block and tackle . . . and a dark, squatting figure who regards him indifferently. Philipose would have missed the man but for the whites of his eyes flashing when he blinked.

Digby emerges with Chandy, who speaks to Philipose in Malayalam and asks him where he lives. “All right, don’t worry, monay. We’ll get you home. Wait here. I’ll be back.”

But it’s five by the time Chandy finally returns, freshly bathed, his beige silk juba shimmering, his starched mundu a blinding white. A gold watch slides loosely on his wrist, its color matching the State Express 555 cigarettes in his paw. Philipose sits in the back next to a girl in a white-and-blue school uniform. She has shiny black hair parted in the center and pigtails hanging over her ears. Chandy’s daughter, no doubt. She smiles at Dr. Kilgour, who waves at her. She’s a few years younger than Philipose, but her direct manner and the frank way she studies him make her seem older. It makes him even more self-conscious: he has never had occasion to sit this close to a girl other than Baby Mol.

The rumble of the engine reminds Philipose of the roar of the river. Once they are moving, windows wide open, he leans his head out. The wind blows his hair off his forehead and pulls his cheeks back into a smile. This is his first-ever car ride.

Chandy’s voice is equal to the engine. “So, monay,” he says over his shoulder. “Doctor said you saved that kutty’s life. Are you some sort of saint in disguise?” He turns to grin at Philipose, a gold tooth flashing under a bushy mustache.

“Doctor’s hands on top of mine showed me what to do.”

The daughter’s fingers glide over the expanse of seat between them. Philipose watches in disbelief as they approach. Then her fingers are on top of his, pushing down his digits one after another, as though she’s playing the harmonium. Before he can react, she takes her hand back, the experiment having concluded. She picks up a notebook.

“Monay?” Chandy says. Philipose freezes. Did Chandy think he reached for his daughter’s hand? “Is the baby cured?”

“Not yet. Doctor said the diphtheria makes a poison that affects the nerves and the heart. But he said with any luck baby will recover.”

“Elsie had diphtheria. You remember, molay?” She looks up, interested. “You were six. Just a sore throat. We didn’t even know it was diphtheria till the following week, when we took you to the doctor because every time you drank water it came up through your nose.” He laughs, a big brassy sound, and Elsie smiles at Philipose. “Turned out that your palate couldn’t close. The nerve was damaged temporarily. Like a stuck valve.”

Philipose is acutely aware of Elsie. He has the urge to touch her thick, glossy hair. The thought makes him flush. He feels her studying him, which makes him even more self-conscious. He focuses on the houses flying by, and on the sense of speed that feels more immediate than in a bus. Chev-Ro-LETT.

When the familiar roofline of Parambil comes into view, he fights to keep his composure, because the sight unexpectedly moves him. For the last two years he has itched for adventure, wanting to roam like Joppan, except farther afield. But this morning had almost been his last on earth. By all rights he should have drowned. Not even leprosy or diphtheria compares to the danger of riding the swollen river. The moment he jumped clear of the dugout, the moment his feet touched solid ground, he knew he’d cheated death. But he hadn’t felt safe till this moment of seeing Parambil. He’d always imagined that as an adult he’d live in a bustling city far away from here, a place full of life. Only now has he grasped just how vital Parambil is to him, as necessary as his heart or his lungs. One leaves home at one’s own peril.

Bullock carts, horse-drawn wagons, handcarts, and an elephant have come up this driveway, but never a motorized vehicle. Philipose sees many figures on the verandah. The extended family must have gathered because they feared the worst. On seeing the car, they freeze, like a family of sloth bears surprised in the forest. He sees the silhouettes of the twins, Georgie and Ranjan, holding hands, and the slim figure of Dolly Kochamma next to the shorter figure of his mother and the much shorter Baby Mol. Off by itself is the larger, lumpier outline of Decency Kochamma. A solitary figure holds vigil in the muttam. Shamuel.

Big Ammachi watches her son descend from the running board, but she cannot move. Only when he runs to her can she break her paralysis. She hugs him, feels his flesh. “Monay, monay. Is it really you? Are you hurt? What happened?” She clutches her throat to express her agony, saying, “Ammachi thee thinnu poyi!” I swallowed fire!

Baby Mol, hands on her hips, looks cross and smacks him on his leg. But then she leaps into his arms, her tongue out, laughing. Even Decency Kochamma crushes him against her bosom, where he feels smothered in Cuticura powder mingled with sweat as her crucifix pokes his cheek. Shamuel stands there, happy tears running down his face. Philipose puts an arm around him. “Shamuel, I’m all right.”

He learns that they retraced his route to school; Shamuel found the umbrella and the discarded banana-leaf wrapper. They searched the banks of the waterway, fearing the worst. His mother says, “Tomorrow we will go to Parumala church. I made a vow to visit and give thanks there if God brought you back.”

Philipose worries that Parambil must look shabby to someone like Chandy, who drives a Chevrolet. But Chandy makes himself at home as though he’s a long-lost cousin and not the messenger of God who brought back the missing son. “Ayo, kochamma,” he says in his booming voice, addressing Big Ammachi, “this boy of yours is a real hero, did you know?” He regales the assembled family with a much-embellished story, speaking with such authority that even Philipose, who was there, starts to believe his version. But Chandy’s true genius is that he manages to leave the lepers out of the tale. He ends with “Kochamma, this is a sign from the Almighty that your son must become a doctor, is it not? What a gift.”

Philipose feels every eye on him. He forces a polite smile to his face but inwardly he shudders. He has never had the least desire to be a doctor. If he had, the morning’s events would have cured him of such a notion.

The women help Big Ammachi organize refreshments in the kitchen. In their absence, Georgie makes the “little” gesture with thumb and index finger, and inclines his head, which Chandy reciprocates with his own minute head tilt and eyebrow twitch. The twins vanish and return with morning toddy, which, by this late hour, has fermented sufficiently to give it a kick like a goat. Philipose is surprised by the feast that emerges from the kitchen: appam fresh off the griddle, meat stew, freshly fried ooperi—plantain chips—mango thera, fish fry, and roast chicken. He understands that the food came from the surrounding houses in anticipation of a long vigil and the possibility of terrible news.

When it’s time for the visitors to leave, Chandy calls out, “Elsie, where are you?” Baby Mol responds from the verandah, “She’s with me!”

They find Elsie on Baby Mol’s bench, her legs tucked under her pleated blue skirt, sketching away, while Baby Mol stands behind her on the bench, her pudgy hands adding Baby Mol ribbons to Elsie’s pigtails. Strewn around them are sketches that Baby Mol asked for: a beedi maker, an elephant, one of her dolls . . . the figures are skillfully rendered. Elsie rolls all the sketches into a scroll and secures it with one of Baby Mol’s ribbons.

“Chechi,” Baby Mol says, as if Elsie is the older sister, though Baby Mol is old enough to be her mother, “Povu aano?”

“Yes,” Elsie says. “I must go.”

“Will you come back soon?”

Elsie’s side-to-side head gesture says she will.

Baby Mol reciprocates with the same, saying, “Poyeete vah.” Then go-and-come-back.

Later, at Baby Mol’s request, Philipose unties the scroll. The first sheet is a portrait of someone familiar: a boy in profile, his face to the wind, eyes half-closed, hair swept off his forehead and sailing behind him. He’s never seen himself through the eyes of another; it’s so unlike the person he greets in his mirror. He marvels at the economy of the lines around his nostrils and lips, allowing the viewer’s imagination to complete the shading. Elsie has captured the sense of movement, of speed. In the way she rendered his eyes, the tilt of his eyebrow, the anxious crease in his brow, she’s recorded for posterity the madness and terror of a day like no other, a day that could have been his last. And though she doesn’t know it, she’s captured his burning and naked need to be home.