“Praise the Lord,” says Honorine. “He who farts, lives!”
Digby coughs out his tea.
Arnold is rarely to be seen and his wards are largely empty. When he and Matron are alone at the end of a long day, seated in her office and resting their feet, Digby cannot stop himself from saying, “Honorine, I’m puzzled about Claude. I mean . . . I don’t understand. Why is it that his ward . . . I mean, why doesn’t he . . . ? That is to say . . .”
Honorine waits, relishing his embarrassment. “Well! You waited a long time to ask, didn’t you, Digby Kilgour. Ah, you’ll hear it soon enough, you will. And then it might be exaggerated. What is it about Claude Arnold? Who but Claude can ever say? Did you kna’a he’s the oldest of three brothers, all in India? The youngest is a governor up north. The man rules over territory bigger than England, Scotland, and Ireland put together. The middle one is first secretary to the viceroy. In other words, they’re both at the very top of the ICS.” The Indian Civil Service, or ICS, is the machine by which a mere thousand British administrators control three hundred million people, a miracle of management. “As to why Claude hasn’t reached those heights hissel’, well that’s a mystery to we all. Alcohol’s a big part of it, but that may have come later. All three of them brothers are Old Etonians, or Old Harrow—Old something. A public-school boy, ’n other words, a reet bobby dazzler, except he’s not thrived as he should,” she growls in the Geordie accent she retreats to when it’s just the two of them. “Public school education is the very heart and soul of the Raj. Have you went to public school then, pet?”
Digby laughs. “You wouldn’t ask if you thought I had.”
“Believe it or not, I was almost engaged to an Old Boy from Rugby. The public schools give them boys three tools, Digby. Knowledge, ceremony, and sport. Me Hugh knew his classics, his Latin, and his History of the Peloponnesian War. But he’d have to scratch his heed to draw a map and put our Newcastle on it, wouldn’t he! It’s all about ‘We must strive, and we must win.’ Them bairns are taught their destiny is to rule the world. Look at the magnificent buildings we have here. Or d’ya remember the durbar to celebrate Queen Victoria as Empress of India—not that she came for it, mind. It works wonders in cowing the natives. But it only works because those ICS types, to a man, believe they’re doing good. They’re civilizing the world.”
Digby is taken aback at her breathless anger against the mission of the British Empire. When he signed up he hadn’t given much thought at all to the mission. But from the outset he’s felt guilty about his newfound privilege. He doesn’t ask Honorine anything more about her Hugh, and she doesn’t volunteer. Her mood has turned sour.
She pulls out a bottle of sherry and, ignoring Digby’s raised eyebrow, fills two tiny glasses. The nutty, caramel-like flavor and the sweetness are a revelation. His glass is soon empty.
“Are we not doing some good here, Honorine?” he asks gently.
She looks at him kindly. “Aye, bonny lad, you are! Us all are! Our hospital, the railways, and telegraphs. Plenty good things. But it’s their land, Digby, and we take and take us. We take tea, rubber, take their looms so they must buy our cotton at ten times the cost . . .”
“I met a young Indian barrister on my ship,” Digby says. “Lovely man who nursed me when I was ill. He said that our leaving India is inevitable.”
Honorine stares at her glass as though she doesn’t hear him.
“Ah, well, there you gan,” she says after a bit. “Now off with you,” she adds, taking his glass from him. “No, don’t argue. I can’t gan yem if you’re still here. You did a good day’s work. Gan over to the club like a good sahib. You deserve a drink—a proper one.”
CHAPTER 14
The Art of the Craft
1934, Madras
In the morning as Digby turns into the native ward, a giant goiter leaps up in front of him. It bulges from collarbone to chin, swallowing all the landmarks of the neck. The face above it sits like a pea atop a toadstool. Aavudainayaki is a thin woman with a broad smile that makes up for the rudeness of her goiter. Palms clasped, she greets him with “Vanakkam, Doctor!” When she first arrived, her overactive goiter caused her palpitations and tremors and made her intolerant of heat. Two weeks of oral saturated solution of potassium iodide drops—SSKI—have reversed her symptoms, and she’s thrilled. But SSKI has done nothing for the enormous, lumpy swelling that stretches taut the skin of her neck, revealing the lattice of engorged blood vessels on the goiter’s surface.
“Vanakkam, Aavudainayaki!” He feels bad that he’s unable—or isn’t foolhardy enough—to tackle her goiter, but he’s taken pains to master her formidable name. To remove her goiter he needs a skilled surgeon to teach him. The same is true if he is to tackle the exceedingly common cancers of the tongue or of the larynx that are related to the unsightly habit of chewing paan. He referred Aavudainayaki to the Madras Medical College, but she refused. No one but “Jigiby Doctor,” who gave her the miraculous drops, may operate. Krishnan translated her thoughts: “She says she has faith only in you, and she’ll wait until you agree.”
“Honorine,” Digby says when he enters the ward, “stop feeding that goiter. I swear it’s grown overnight.”
“It won’t get smaller with yer complaining. I’ve canceled your clinic on Tuesday. We’re meeting Ravi. Dr. V. V. Ravichandran at General Hospital. He’s brilliant . . . The first Indian full professor in surgery at the Madras Medical College. When the governor needed surgery, his wife quietly sent for Ravi. Everyone knows he’s the best, but on top of that he’s a lovely man and a good teacher. I knew him when we were posted together in Tanjore.”
“Well, well! What’s this?” An Indian in white slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt breezes into his own office, three junior doctors in tow, his high-pitched laughter preceding him as he exclaims, “Claude Arnold’s assistant wants to learn? A miracle! Most want to flee Claude only!” His excited demeanor is that of a man perpetually on the verge of hysterical laughter, his eyes buried in round, smiling cheeks. Digby finds himself grinning. Dr. Ravichandran grasps Honorine’s and Digby’s hands at the same time. His prematurely gray hair is slicked back and receding. On his convex forehead his namam is a vertical, three-pronged fork, the center stripe red and the flanking two white. It signals he’s a Vaishnavite, holding Vishnu to be the supreme god in the pantheon.
Ravichandran releases Digby’s hand but not Honorine’s; his full lips are pulled back into a disarming grin that Digby soon understands is a permanent state. “Dr. Digby, but for this remarkable lady I would have collapsed and been cremated in Tanjore, such was my busy-busyness, daily, from morning to night.” His lilting speech reminds Digby of the Carnatic music teacher next door to his bungalow, who drills his students in the army of intermediate notes between the Western do-re-mi. “But Madam Honorine stepped in, no discussion. She made a schedule. Including tea together each day, no matter what, at four thirty. Then I was to go home. Private practice could only begin at seven pee yem. Not only that, she decreed that practice must be away from my house, so I’d have some sleep!”
“Fat lot of good that did, Ravi, when you kept giving patients your home address.”