The Covenant of Water

Rune’s spirits sink as he comes back into the compound and digests the task ahead. “Reality is always messy, Rune,” he says aloud. “Once you open the belly, it’s never as neat as the textbook suggested.”

Near the front gate, a flash of white catches his eye. Hidden by tall grass are the bleached bones of a human skeleton, strewn around by animals. The skull and pelvis are relatively intact, sutured to the ground by creepers. A woman, judging by the pelvis, and clearly a leper, based on the erosions over the cheekbones. He has a vision of her coming to this place, weak, perhaps feverish, hoping for relief and instead finding rubble. She lay down unattended, without food or water. She died. The shiny bones make him terribly sad. “This is a sign, isn’t it, Lord?”

That night he dreams of Sister Birgitta at the orphanage in Malm?, where he was raised. He used to feel sorry for her, dedicating her life to a place that he couldn’t wait to leave. Now he understands. In the dream Sister Birgitta is knitting, seated close to the lamp, which gets brighter and brighter, blinding his eyes.

He awakes to see two terrifying faces, inches from his, their features exaggerated by the candle flame held under their chins. He screams. They pull back, yelling. The two frightened shapes retreat to a corner. Rune lights his lamp. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Rune says in Malayalam, compounding their shock.

“We thought you were dead,” says a man with a hole for a nose. His name is Sankar, and the woman’s is Bhava. They are returning from a temple festival. Such events are where they seek alms. “It’s a long walk here,” Sankar says, “but there are walls and a roof under which to sleep.”

“Just two walls and not much of a roof,” Rune says.

“Better than out in the open, where wild dogs come at us,” Bhava says, making a sibilant sound as she takes her next breath. Rune guesses that her larynx is riddled with leprous lesions. “People won’t even let us lean against a cattle shed.”

“You don’t have leprosy,” Sankar observes. “Why are you here?”

“The well is silted up,” Rune says. “We must fix that first. Then we will restore the rest, bit by bit.” He gestures at the untended land, the rubble heaps that once were buildings.

“You and who else?” Sankar inquires.

Rune points up to the star-blazing sky.

The next morning, the two lepers wish Rune well and shuffle away in the cool of dawn. The battered tin vessels dangling from their necks that are to hold food or coins are filled with the coffee Rune brewed for them.

An hour later, as Rune stacks usable bricks from the rubble, he sees them hobbling back.

“We decided you could use help,” Sankar says. He shows Rune his hands and laughs. “I used to be a carpenter.” He is short two fingers on the right and the rest are clawed. The flesh of the palm is wasted, giving the hand a simian appearance. The left has all its fingers, but the index and middle stick out in a gesture of papal benediction. Still, he scoops up and squeezes a brick to his body. Bhava, whose hands are in only slightly better shape, does the same. These two, Rune realizes, are angels sent his way. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

That evening, Rune cooks rice and lentils for them and hears their tales. Sankar was a new father when he noticed a welt on his face, then more over the ensuing months. His hands turned numb. “I couldn’t hold my carpenter’s pencil. My wife’s brother threw me out. The whole village threw stones at me. My wife watched.” The emotion in Sankar’s voice belies his face, frozen forever into a snarl. Bhava’s face became gradually thickened, unnaturally smooth, and she lost her eyebrows. Her husband made her stay indoors. “ ‘Even the dogs run away from you,’ my husband said. Aah, but it didn’t stop him climbing on me at night. ‘You’re still pretty in the dark,’ he said.” When her fingers curled to her palm, her husband chased her out before she could say goodbye to her children. She cackles at this memory, a solitary tooth flashing in her mouth like a lone tree in a cemetery. Sankar joins in.

Rune puzzles over their strange laughter. The mind must get scarred from being rejected in this manner. These two have died to their loved ones and to society, and that wound is greater than the collapsing nose, the hideous face, or the loss of fingers. Leprosy deadens the nerves and is therefore painless; the real wound of leprosy, and the only pain they feel, is that of exile.

That’s the purpose of a lazaretto, Rune thinks. A home at the end of the world. A place where the dead can live with their own kind and where the spirit might rise. He stares at his blistered hands. The thumb alone would prove the existence of God. A working hand is a miracle; his are capable of removing a kidney or stacking bricks. Lord, what if I lose my use of them? Rune was taught that leprosy is rarely contagious. The causative bacterium lives in the environment, more so in unclean settings, but only those with unique susceptibility get the disease. He recalls Professor Mehr in Malm? dressing leprous wounds with impunity, saying, “Worry about other diseases you might get from your patients, not leprosy.” Indeed, Rune lost one classmate to tuberculosis, and another to sepsis from a scalpel cut. In his head Rune now debates Professor Mehr. What about Father Damien, serving all those years with lepers on Molokai? He caught it and died from it! He imagines Mehr’s response: But think of Sister Marianne, who nursed Father Damien. Think of all the other nuns who served on Molokai—they were fine. Rune decides he will simply not worry about contagion. Lean not on your own understanding. Let God worry.

In a month, there is a signboard in two languages on the gate: SAINT BRIDGET’S LEPROSARIUM. The name honors his beloved Sister Birgitta of his Malm? orphanage. It happens to be the name of Sweden’s patron saint, and perhaps it will help in getting support from a Swedish mission. They restore two buildings and desilt the well. Rune buys provisions from the Mudalali’s store in the village. Mathachen, the toddy tapper who gave his boatman directions, is an efficient middleman, dropping off other purchases—thatch, lumber, tools, coir—outside the front gate or on the steps on the canal side. If the villagers have qualms about Rune’s work, they have no objections to his money. He soon has a bicycle in addition to the boat. Thambi, Esau, Mohan, Rahel, Ahmed, Nambiar, Nair, and Pathros join his two angels. Like a teak forest with underground roots, the lepers have a network; word of the lazaretto’s resurrection travels fast.

Abraham Verghese's books