The Covenant of Water

1977, Vellore

In the recovery room, Lenin’s face is puffy and swollen. His eyelids flutter, and he retches from the anesthetic. He’s restless. She dabs Vaseline onto his parched lips, and wonders: Did time expand for him again, as it did after his seizure? Did the four hours of surgery feel like four years? Without this tumor that defined his whole life, will he be the old familiar Lenin or somebody new? She spoons ice chips past his lips, murmuring soothing words. He comes awake, his eyes unfocused at first. “Mariamma!” It is barely audible. She feels a fist unclench in her chest—it’s been there ever since Digby showed up at Triple Yem, a lifetime ago.

The next day, Lenin is on the regular ward. He’s weak but all his limbs are working, his speech and memory are intact—no damage to anything but the tumor, as far as they can tell. Mariamma feeds him, holds his urine bottle for him, cleans him, doing her best to spare the busy nurses. By watching the probationers, she’s learned how to change soiled sheets under a bedridden patient, how to turn him, and give him a proper bed bath. It’s humbling. Shouldn’t every physician learn this? Isn’t this what medicine is really about?

The Manorama runs the “Naxalite Priest” the day after Lenin’s surgery. A saintly altar boy was bedeviled by a slow-growing brain tumor that drove him to be a Naxalite; now, after heroic brain surgery, he’s whole again, repentant—that’s the tale the reporter spins. Who knows, it might even be the truth. Digby had hoped that kind of publicity would keep the Kerala police from harming Lenin once he is taken into custody. It might just work.

Ten days after Lenin’s surgery, Mariamma spends the entire day observing surgery at the chief’s invitation. When she returns to the ward at five in the evening, she’s puzzled to see a clean-shaven young man in a loose shirt and pants seated on her chair, next to Lenin’s empty bed. All eyes are on Mariamma. The nurses are smiling mischievously.

The stranger rises on his own and turns slowly and approaches her. From the time Mariamma first set eyes on Lenin at Saint Bridget’s, she hasn’t seen him on his feet. He’s taller than she remembers. Lenin stumbles into her embrace. He’s all bones against her body, all sharp angles. Every conscious patient and all their relatives look on; Matron and the nurses have sappy expressions . . . Mariamma feels the blood rush to her face. Dear God, please don’t let them start clapping!

At Lenin’s insistence, and with Matron’s blessing, they walk out to the shady courtyard behind the ward and sit on the bench. The leaves of the spreading oak in front of them make a dry rustling sound, like rice sifted in a basket. Lenin’s eyes trace the branches out to their tips. He scans the skies. “If I could sleep here, I would,” he says.

There’s nothing slow about his thoughts. They leap like a goat from ledge to ledge, as though the words have been piling up. He says that for the last two years he and his few remaining comrades were unwanted by and unable to trust the villagers—the very people whose cause they championed. “The reward money was too tempting. A villager whom I was willing to die for could send me to my grave.” The group spent more and more time in the jungle, getting increasingly disillusioned. “Do you know that a fungus called blister blight did more for the class struggle than all the Naxalites put together? It wiped out tea estates. The owners abandoned the land to the tribals. It was their land in the first place.” Lenin said the immensity of the jungle silenced him and his comrades; they hardly spoke to each other.

“An old tribal in Wayanad taught me how to sling a stone with a slender leader over the lowest branch of the tallest tree. Then, by tying a rope to the leader, I could loop the rope over the branch and make a sling for my body. He showed me a special knot, a secret one, that allowed me to pull myself up little by little—the rope locks so you don’t slide down. That friction knot, so hard to learn, is passed down by the tribals from generation to generation. People think of inheritance as being land or money. The old man gave his inheritance to me.”

The fugitive Lenin winched himself up to the stars. He lived for days in the canopy with mushrooms, tree beetles, rats, songbirds, parrots, and the occasional civet cat to keep him company. “Every tree had its own personality. Their sense of time is different. We think they’re mute, but it’s just that it takes them days to complete a word. You know, Mariamma, in the jungle I understood my failing, my human limitation. It is to be consumed by one fixed idea. Then another. And another. Like walking the straight line. Wanting to be a priest. Then a Naxalite. But in nature, one fixed idea is unnatural. Or rather, the one idea, the only idea is life itself. Just being. Living.”

Mariamma listens, amused and even a bit alarmed by his thoughts.

Matron sends their dinner down, with a special treat just for them—ice cream.

“Mariamma, you know the best meal I ever had? I used to think of it often. It was the RoyalMeels. Mahabalipuram? One day, I’ll take you back there. To that same room.”

“You promise?”

He nods. He takes her hand and kisses it, stares at her as though trying to memorize her face. He sighs. “I didn’t want to ruin our evening. But earlier when you were off the ward and observing the surgeons, we learned that I’ll be handed over to the Kerala police tomorrow. They’ll transport me to the Trivandrum jail.”

It’s not grief, but primitive fear that clutches at her. Fear for his life—just as when he went under the knife. Lenin watches her, apprehensive. “Mariamma? What are you feeling?”

“I’m sad, scared—what do you expect? And I’m angry with you. Yes, I know it’s too late for that. But if you hadn’t insisted on being . . . being Lenin, we might have had a life.” The old Lenin would have protested, blamed a misunderstanding. This one looks penitent, and she feels bad. She strokes his cheek. “But then, if you’d been a good boy and become a priest, I might have found you quite dull.”

“Now that I’m an outlaw, I’m irresistible?”

She likes this Lenin. No. She loves him. As much as they’ve both changed, the essence of a person is formed at ten years of age—that’s her theory. The “eccentric” part can’t be cut out. One can perhaps learn to manage it.

“Mariamma, I know we said goodbye forever in Madras. Still, I’d have imaginary conversations with you. I saved things in a mental suitcase to tell you one day . . . What I’m saying is, I never relinquished you. I couldn’t. And here I am—alive. And I’ll be able to see you. Because you’ll know where to find me—”

“But in prison!” she bursts out, bitterly. The tears won’t be held back.

“Mariamma, you know that you don’t have to wait for me?” He cannot hide the tinge of anxiety in his voice.

“Oh, stop it, would you? I’m crying because it’ll be hard. But not as hard as it will be for you. I wish we didn’t have to wait. But now that I found you, surely you don’t think I’d let you go?”

She spends one last night in her chair by his side, her head resting on Lenin’s bed, clutching his hand. As the sun comes up, she’s jumpy, a nervous wreck. Lenin is unnaturally calm. Everyone on the ward knows what’s coming.

At ten in the morning, DSP Mathew from the Kerala Police Special Task Force arrives with two constables, their boots sounding like hammers on the tiled floor. The DSP is a big man, unsmiling, and with a fierce mustache. His whole being, from cap to polished brown shoes to the tufts of hair winging out from his ears and even from his knuckles, is menacing. Mariamma stands up, trembling.

Lenin eases himself to his feet and steps out between the beds to face the DSP, his shoulders bravely back, but looking like a puff of wind might knock him over. The look that passes between the two men chills Mariamma’s blood: two ancient enemies squaring off, men whose only desire is to tear the other’s heart out, who seek vengeance for what each has done to the other. But it is Lenin who chose to surrender, and so the fleeting defiance in his eyes vanishes, as though it never existed. It only fuels the hatred in the DSP’s eyes; the man’s hands curl into fists. Had there been no witnesses, Mariamma feels certain the DSP would have bludgeoned and bloodied Lenin before taking him away.

Lenin doesn’t protest when a constable handcuffs him. When the DSP barks an order for leg irons, Mariamma opens her mouth, but Matron beats her to it. “DSP!” Matron says in a voice that can cut interns off at the knees and cause probationers to wet themselves. “You’re upsetting my patients! Your prisoner had a brain operation, do you understand? If he runs, don’t you think you’ll be able to catch him?” The DSP falters under her withering gaze. The leg irons vanish. “I’m giving him to you in good condition,” Matron says. “Please keep him that way.”

A van awaits. Mariamma is allowed to walk alongside Lenin. The back doors open to reveal bench seats along the sides, facing each other. Matron, without asking permission, tosses a pillow and blankets in, along with a big bottle of water; after that she prays over Lenin and blesses him. Before the constables help him in, Mariamma embraces him, feeling the cold metal cuffs press against her. Lenin kisses her forehead. He whispers, “RoyalMeels, the Majestic Hotel ma! Don’t forget. Bring a bathing suit this time. I’ll come for you. Be ready.”