The Covenant of Water

1937, AllSuch

Franz and Lena host a New Year’s Eve dinner for their closest circle; the occasion is bittersweet, as it is also Rune’s birthday. Chandy is detained in the plains, but the regulars—the Kariappas, the Cherians, Gracie Cartwright (but not Llewellyn), Bee and Roger Dutton, the Isaacs, the Singhs—are seated around Lena’s dining table, forearms resting on the damask cloth, the candelabra lighting their faces as in a Rembrandt painting. They toast Rune with plum wine and remember him with tears and laughter.

Digby is there too, having come three weeks earlier to occupy the guest cottage at AllSuch once more. He bears no resemblance to the shrouded, charred creature who sequestered himself in the Mylins’ guest cottage from all but Cromwell until Rune took him away. This time he is with Franz and Lena for every meal; he has driven with Franz all over the estate, observed him in the tea-tasting room, and accompanied him to the weekly tea auction. At other times he has ridden with Cromwell on horseback, learning the intricacies of tea plucking, of harvesting cardamom and coffee. Early every morning he sketches in a disciplined way for an hour, seeking to restore fluidity, if not grace, to his fingers. His plan is to return to Madras and stay with Honorine—but the Mylins insisted he stay till Rune’s birthday. Once his medical leave expires, he has no idea what will happen next.

Now, at the New Year’s Eve dinner, a shy Digby, encouraged by the pleas of the guests, and with his inhibitions loosened by wine, conjures up the aspect of Rune only he knew. He speaks of Rune’s surgical genius, Digby’s gesturing hands themselves a testament to the Swede’s skill. He even bashfully opens his shirt so they might see the glowing, shield-shaped scar on his left breast. (“The sacred heart of Jesus!” exclaims Gracie, pressing her hands to her bosom.) “He died singing,” Digby says, “as alive in that moment as he was in every moment . . .” He swallows, unable to go on.

The hush that follows is unbroken even as Franz pours a round of brandy, and they wordlessly raise their glasses once more to Rune. The silence of the night pulses around them. Betty Kariappa lowers a match to the golden remnant in her glass. A blue flame, a ghost, runs across the brandy’s surface and up and down the sidewalls before it vanishes.

In the first hours of the new year, 1937, they are still at the table, the mood shifting from nostalgic to celebratory and then to numinous, as though their blood alcohol levels have crossed the threshold that unlocks their mystical natures. That is when, in the wee hours, these planters arrive at the subject they know best: the mountain slopes on which they live their lives; the fecund soil and its munificence. Sanjay brings up Müller’s Madness and the golden opportunity the sale of that distant estate presents—but only if the price is right. Then, in a sequence of steps that neither Digby nor the others later recall, they’ve formed a consortium, sketched out its charter on a napkin, and passed its first resolution unanimously: Digby and Cromwell are to go forth like Lewis and Clark, as delegates of the consortium, to meet Müller and explore Müller’s Madness.

Two days into the new year, Cromwell and Digby set out in the Mylins’ Chevy, carrying spare tires, petrol, and camping equipment. The Western Ghats run parallel to the coastline for four hundred miles, most of it unspoiled, lush forest, save for a dozen discrete estate regions established in the previous century by daring adventurers. Those pioneers found their way up on old elephant trails known only to the indigenous people, the “tribals,” and staked out choice land on the fertile slopes. But if they didn’t soon carve out a ghat road by blasting through rock, building tunnels and switchbacks, their claim was worthless—they had to have a way to bring laborers from the plains to estates sitting at five thousand feet or higher, and to take the tea, coffee, or spices down to market. The first owners sold land at a nominal price or just gave away great swaths so as to have partners to share the expense of building and maintaining the ghat road. The largest established estate regions are Wayanad, the Highwavys, Anaimalais, Nilgiris, and the Cinnamon Hills—the last being where the Mylins and their friends have estates.

Their start is inauspicious, with early engine trouble, but Cromwell fixes it by taking the carburetor apart under a tree, cleaning and reassembling it. Cromwell is a member of the Badagas—an indigenous tribe in the Nilgiri mountains who live in tight-knit communities, farm collectively, and are proud to never have been in bondage. Those Badagas who migrated out are known for being skilled welders, carpenters, mechanics, and shop owners. Digby finds Cromwell easy to be around. A former employer dubbed him a “regular Cromwell” for bravely and cleverly defusing a volatile situation involving the employer’s son, a married woman, and an aggrieved husband—Digby heard this tale from Lena. Kariabetta, once he understood the nature of the comparison, decided he preferred “Cromwell” to his given name. Now even his mother calls him Cromwell.

They camp overnight by a stream. At noon the next day they arrive at the base of a highland range whose jagged contours remind Digby of the craggy peaks of Càrn Mòr Dearg or Lochnagar. Somewhere in the clouds is Müller’s Madness. Gerhard Müller was an early pioneer who never put in a ghat road. Sitting on a vast estate that he could never develop—hence the madness—he and his wife preached the gospel to tribals and scratched out an existence. His son, Bernard, did only marginally better, seeking but then scaring away potential partners by his asking price for land. He built a poor excuse for a ghat road that washed out every rainy season. Now, suddenly, Bernard Müller is selling it all and heading to Berlin, to a homeland that he’s never seen. His asking price has dropped three times in as many months, a sign of his desperation.

Getting to Müller’s property proves extremely tricky, and after one flat tire they hike the rest of the way in the mist. What am I doing here? Digby wonders. He knows he can’t be a surgeon anymore. He has been so focused on surgery for so long that he simply cannot imagine doing anything else in medicine. Being a planter is more appealing than the thought of being a general practitioner, dispensing unguents and digitalis, and seeing a hundred people a day. If he’s running from his past, these mountains are as good a place to hide as any other. He slogs on, following Cromwell, his breath short. Should Müller take the consortium’s offer, the plan is for Digby, with Cromwell as manager, to run the estate, and in time be given a piece of it for his effort. If Müller accepts the offer, Digby will take it as a sign that this is precisely what he is destined to do. Rune would approve. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

The valley below, the rock underfoot, and the mountain before him will outlast him. On the scale of this land, he is nothing; words like “shame” and “guilt” mean little here; and a reputation is no more than a fleeting blue flame, an evanescent spirit in a brandy glass.