The Covenant of Water

She wakes to find Digby studying her. When did she fall asleep? She sits up. She extends a hand. “May I?” He hesitates, then yields his sketchbook. He’s recorded quick impressions, three to four per page. His draftsman’s eye coupled with his anatomical knowledge offers a precise shorthand of what he sees.

“My word, you’ve been busty!—Sorry, busy! I swear, I meant busy.” He hasn’t exaggerated the breasts any more than the sculptors have, but still, his pencil on white paper favors them. He’s captured all the hand gestures, the mudras—a vocabulary for dancers. “Digby, I’m speechless. Such a talent!”

She turns to a page of a woman with tinted glasses and the tiniest gap between her lips that sip the air as she sleeps. She feels like a voyeur peering at a temple voluptuary in repose. Her image on paper alongside the rock-hewn figures has fused the centuries. She studies this other self. Flattery isn’t the right word for his portrait. It’s empathy—the same quality in the sculptures that surround them. The ancient artists were devotees above all else. Without love of their subject, they’d just be cutting stone; their adoration is what brings it to life. She feels her face flushing. Digby’s an innocent, but he’s skilled in the female form from hours of careful regard along with the macabre intimacy afforded his profession.

Digby looks on anxiously. “I like it,” she says, sounding like someone she barely knows. “You have a gift . . .” Has Claude ever come close to paying her this kind of a tribute? She’s overcome by a desperate urge to break free of her present life.

“Escape,” she hears Digby say, as though he’s reading her mind.

She blushes again. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s an escape. Not a gift. As a boy, I’d draw worlds that I imagined were happier than mine. Faces. Postures. Exactly what I’m seeing here.”

Did the desire to create come with the desire to take apart? To put back together again? “Escaping what, Digby?”

His features become as still as sandstone. It’s as if she touched the scar again. At last he says, in too bright a voice that deflects further probing, “They weren’t shy about the body, were they? That comes across. They were comfortable in their own skin.” He looks directly at her.

She nods. “Very true. I visited the Khajuraho temples up north with my ayah, Janaki. Astonishing sculptures of intimate couples, courtesans . . . well, let’s say nothing is left to the imagination. The pilgrims visiting would have been scandalized to see that on a cinema poster. But on a temple wall it’s sacred. The sculptures simply echo their scriptures. ‘This is life’ is the message.”

“It wouldnae be right in the High Kirk o’ Glasgow, that’s for sure!” Digby says, deliberately letting his accent twist past his usual vigilance. He is rewarded by her laughter. “Seriously,” he continues. “I never liked that Christianity begins by telling us we’re sinners. If I had a penny for the times my Nana said to me that all boys were thieving, lying connivers, and that I’d be no exception . . . Sorry, Celeste. I hope my beliefs, or lack of them, don’t offend you.”

She shakes her head. After her parents’ deaths, how was she to hold to their faith? She and Digby are surrounded by ghosts, and not just those of the ancient sculptors who left their mark on stone.

“Digby, how did your parents die?” Her question floats in the air like one of the gandharvas. Digby’s features turn dark; a little boy trying to be stoic in the face of the unspeakable. “Forget I asked that, would you?” she says. “Forget it.”

Digby’s lips part as if to speak. But then he presses them together.

On the drive back home they are both silent. She feels the afterglow of traveling back in time, which is the gift Mahabalipuram offers its visitors. She worries about her companion. They’re both cut from the fabric of loss. She steals a glance at him, at the firm chin, the wiry, strong shoulders. He’s not made of bone china, for goodness’ sake. He’ll be all right.

“Celeste . . .” Digby says when they reach his quarters, his voice hoarse from the silence that piled up on the drive back.

She reaches over and takes his hand before he can say more. “Digby, thank you so much for a lovely day.”

“That’s what I was going to say!” he protests.

She smiles, though she’s overcome by sadness and a peculiar longing. She squeezes his fingers, keeping her body reined in, upright. She looks down at their hands.

“You’re a good man, Digby,” she says. “Goodbye. There, I said it for both of us.”





CHAPTER 19


Pulsatile


1935, Madras

Digby vows not to think of her. He thinks of her all the time. She’s chiseled in his memory like a rock sculpture; his thoughts about her survive a rainy season that didn’t deserve the moniker, a typhoon that did, and a “spring” that was over in a blink. He can still smell the surf, taste the chutney sandwiches, and conjure up Celeste’s face as she dozed, a face that hints at what she has endured even if the scars are less obvious than his.

He has one consolation: Esmeralda. So far she has lived up to Owen’s billing of being a “cent-per-cent reliable gem!” She has many idiosyncrasies, but she rewards the patient owner. On weekends she escorts him to new vistas, probing the edges of the city: Saint Thomas Mount, Adyar Beach, and even Tambaram.

Though his range has expanded from his cycling days, his circle of friends remains small: Honorine, the Tuttleberrys, and Ravichandran. Lena Mylin writes Digby chatty letters; she’s recovering well and Franz sends his best. She sends an enticing photograph of their guest cottage at AllSuch estate, where she says Digby can paint and relax. He has promised to make the trip the next summer, when Madras becomes unbearable.

Digby and Honorine are the Tuttleberrys’ guest at the Railway Institute’s Fall Ball, which Jennifer says is a “not-to-be-missed” event—and it appears that no one in the Anglo-Indian community has. The gray-haired papas and nanas and the infants nod off in corners, oblivious to Denzil and the Dukes on stage playing everything from swing to polka. A sultry female crooner joins them for “April Showers” and “Stardust.” Digby watches a middle-aged couple navigate the packed dance floor; they’ve been married for so long that their bodies have left impressions on each other.

Jennifer drags Digby to his feet, ignoring his protests. “I’ll teach you, no worries,” she says. “It can’t be as hard as surgery.” Digby would much prefer a gastrectomy. “Drive with your hips,” she says encouragingly.

Her brother Jeb’s arrival with a small entourage of good-looking mates creates a stir. “The Prince of Perambur honors us tonight,” Jennifer says, furrowing her brows. At once, a young woman scrapes back her chair and flounces out of the hall, her parents and siblings trailing behind her, all glaring at Jeb as they exit. Jeb stands aside—humble, polite, eyes on the concrete floor. Jennifer shakes her head and says to Digby, “Mary and Jeb were an item from the time they were both in knickers. Even gave her a ring. Then this month my brother ditches her just like that. I’m still mad.”

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