Half a mile down the road from Saint Bridget’s is a walled property where a traditional thatch house with carved gables and wooden walls has been tastefully fused onto a larger, modern house with whitewashed walls, a red tile roof, tall windows, a broad wrap-around verandah, a porte cochere extending well out from the front entrance with a car sitting under it, and a brick-lined gravel driveway. The inset on the stone pillar of the gate reads THETANATT—the house name—and below that, the owner’s name, T. CHANDY. Once, when riding past on his bicycle, Rune caught a glimpse of a heavy-lidded man smoking on a verandah bench-swing, a gold watch on his wrist. On another occasion he saw him drive past Saint Bridget’s gates, a woman at his side, just as Rune emerged. Rune waved, and the couple smiled and waved back. Each time he rode past the house, he wanted to drop in, but for the first time in his career, his kind of doctoring could make people uneasy. Mathachen, the tapper, tells him that Chandy had been a contractor for the British Army in Aden—“minting money.” When he returned, Chandy purchased an estate of several thousand acres up in the distant mountains that Rune can see from Saint Bridget’s. During the week, Chandy stays up in the estate bungalow, overseeing the planting and harvesting; on weekends he drives back down, a three-hour journey, to his ancestral home, where his wife and her aging mother live.
Three months after Rune’s arrival at the lazaretto, there is a commotion at the gate—someone yelling, “Doctor-ay! Doctor-ay!” The agitated servant from the Thetanatt house stands ten feet from the gate with a message: Chandy’s wife begs him to come at once because Mr. Chandy has collapsed. Rune races over on his bicycle. On the verandah, a pair of men’s slippers sits askew. Smoke curls lazily from an ashtray beside a tin of State Express 555s. From inside, he hears the clattering of furniture. He sees Chandy thrashing on the floor, his mundu askew, his large feet kicking. The terrified wife leans over the prone figure. She’s in a sari, with glittering earrings and bangles on both hands—the couple looks dressed to go out.
Rune kneels, checking Chandy’s airway and feeling his pulse, which is strong and bounding. “What happened? Tell me.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” the tearful woman says in English. “He was behaving different today. He wouldn’t permit me to take him to hospital. Then just now he gave a cry, then he fell like that on the floor. Then he was stiff—very stiff—and unconscious. Driver is not here. I didn’t know what to do. I sent our boy to you. Just now he started shaking, shaking.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rune sees an old woman in chatta and mundu, and enormous gold spikes in her ears, looking pale, her hands bloodless as she stands gripping the doorframe, her lower lip trembling. He calls out to her in Malayalam. “Ammachi, don’t be afraid, it’s just a fit and he’ll recover momentarily.” Even as he speaks, the thrashing subsides. “But I want you to sit down because if you faint it won’t help.” She obeys.
Rune registers Chandy’s swollen parotid glands, his red palms, his womanly chest, and the burst of new blood vessels on chest and cheeks. He has a feeling that Chandy has spilled more liquor than most men will ever drink. An ammoniacal odor of urine precedes the yellow stain that blossoms on the pristine white mundu.
“Has this happened before?” he asks.
“Never! He was as usual when he came back from the estate last night. Tired from driving from our estate.” She has switched to Malayalam.
“No, he wasn’t as usual,” the old lady says, finding her voice. “It was like an ant was biting him. Aah, fighting with everyone.” The embarrassed wife glares at her but she holds her ground. “Molay, it’s the truth and doctor must know.”
“He always gets irritable at the start of Lent,” the wife acknowledges.
“Ah,” Rune says. “He gives up his whisky for forty days?”
“Fifty days. Yes. Gives up his brandy. He does it for me,” she says, shyly. “He took a vow, the first year after we married.”
Lent began the previous day. Chandy’s sudden abstention probably precipitated a “rum fit,” an alcohol-withdrawal seizure. Rune stands. “Don’t worry.” Chandy is breathing noisily but regularly. “He’ll wake up shortly, but he will be very confused. I’ll be back right away with medicine.”
Mathachen, the tapper, also brews illicit arrack—not the anise-flavored arak of North Africa that Rune knows, but a tasteless distillate that Rune uses as an antiseptic. Back at Saint Bridget’s, Rune compounds a tincture of opium, arrack, lemon, and sugar into an apothecary bottle and heads back.
Chandy is on the floor, but awake, a pillow under his head, the soiled mundu replaced. He’s confused, but like a child he obediently swallows the medicine.
“Give him a tablespoon four more times before midnight,” Rune says to Leelamma—that is Mrs. Chandy’s name. “Tomorrow, three times a day. Then the day after, two times a day, and then once a day. I wrote it down.”
He calls again in the evening, by which time Chandy has come to his senses, though he is sleepy. Rune tells them that in the future, Chandy will need to taper his brandy consumption heading into Ash Wednesday.
A week later, a car honks at the gate. Chandy drives in. Other than Rune himself, he is the first non-leper to enter the property in Rune’s time there. Chandy, now that he is upright and recovered, proves to be a stocky man with a barrel chest and powerful forearms, and carrying excess weight around his waist. He is the rare Malayali without a mustache, his hair parted in the middle and slicked back. In his yellow silk juba and off-white mundu, he looks like a man at ease anywhere, even Saint Bridget’s. His gratitude takes the form of a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky. He says, “We would be honored if you join us on Easter Sunday for a late lunch. We’d invite you sooner, but Leelamma doesn’t want to serve you rice and green beans. And I’d like to be able to offer you a drink.” Rune accepts.
Chandy’s gaze takes in what he sees with interest; he is unruffled by the curious residents who emerge. Rune offers a tour and Chandy readily accepts. They walk through the buildings that are being restored. Rune had hoped to reuse wooden beams from one of the old buildings, but Sankar thinks there’s termite damage. Chandy squats to carefully examine the beam, then says, “I agree with your man. Termites and also flood damage. See how the color is different halfway up?” Chandy is knowledgeable about concrete and varieties of roof tile. In the fields, Chandy stoops down several times to gather soil and crumble it in his fingers. “I hope one day we can make the place self-sufficient,” Rune says. Chandy makes no comment, but a few days later he’s back with his driver in a car whose back seats have been removed; it also has a platform welded to the rear. The driver unloads pots of mango, plum, and plantain seedlings, as well as gunnysacks of bone and manure mix. Chandy unfolds a hand-drawn schematic of the grounds, on which he has marked his recommendations for the best spot to clear for an orchard. A low-lying, damper area near the canal is ideal for plantain. “This fertilizer, by the way, is for your existing coconut and date palms. Doesn’t look like anyone has done that for years. This land in between these coconut palms keep free for grazing; it will support two cows. A chicken coop would be good too.”
Easter at the Thetanatt house marks the beginning of a lasting friendship. Rune becomes a regular dinner guest at the Thetanatt home on Sundays, enjoying Leelamma’s lavish spreads and Chandy’s brandy. In summer, when the heat is oppressive, the family decamps to the estate bungalow for two months. They invite Rune to visit the mountains and stay with them in the bungalow some weekends.