The doctor removes the scalpel, inverts it, then slips the blunt end into the slit they made, turning it ninety degrees to splay open the slit. Inside the hollow windpipe, jockeying for space with the bubbling air, is a thick curd. The doctor pulls out a long, rubbery piece, like a strip of linen. At once breath rasps in and out of the small opening, a coarse, ravenous sound.
“That’s the membrane of diphtheria. Greek for ‘leather.’ You used that word, didn’t you? ‘Leather’? You made the diagnosis when you said that. It’s the dead lining of the throat that sloughs off, all tangled with pus cells. You’ve heard of diphtheria? Well, it’s common. There’s a vaccine now. It’s the young’uns who die of it.”
He sees flecks of blood on the doctor’s face, just as there must be on his.
“Can we get it?”
“We probably had it as children, whether we knew it or not, so we are immune. This baby is malnourished, couldn’t fight it well. As adults if we get it, because of our bigger airways, it’s not this severe.”
The doctor picks up a metal straw and eases it into the slit of the windpipe in the direction of the feet. Breath flutes through the tube, harsh aspirations. Color washes into the baby’s face. Then it moves its limbs.
Philipose is stunned to witness this resurrection. His hands are badged with the blood of a stranger, and the sight brings another wave of nausea. The moment is both transcendent and revolting; he feels lifted above this room with its pungent antiseptic smell, looking down at the child, the father, the doctor, and his hands. Metal, blood, water, soil, flesh, sinew, white and brown skin are all one. He feels no triumph, just a desire to run away. But the doctor hands him pliers with a curved needle and a thread affixed to it, and the white paw clamps over his fingers. The movements don’t originate with Philipose, but he executes them all the same, as they stitch the tube to the skin and close the wound. “You’re my amanuensis,” the doctor says to his assistant, who has no idea what he means.
The baby’s eyes focus on them, alert and looking ready to speak. Then, as it spots its father’s face, its hands reach up and the corners of its mouth turn down. It takes a lungful of air and its face contorts for a mighty wail . . . but no sound emerges, just air through the tube. The baby is surprised.
“Your vocal cords were bypassed, little one,” the doctor says. “Welcome back to the bloody world. Maybe you can do something to change it.”
CHAPTER 35
The Cure for What Ails You
1936, Saint Bridget’s
Philipose rushes out to the verandah as his stomach rejects its contents. The spices and acid burn his throat. He washes his hands and rinses his mouth under a downspout from the roof. His nails have black outlines of blood. He cleans in a frenzy.
When he looks up, a monstrous face is inches from his, leering at him. The apparition has holes for nostrils, and unseeing eyes, though it cocks its head as if it hears his breathing. Philipose’s scream emerges as a choked gurgle. The ghoul stumbles back at the sound, more frightened than he is.
He must get out of this place. He must get back home. But where exactly is he?
The leper or watchman they first met, and who tried to turn them away, gives him the answer, but Philipose can’t believe it—surely not. Another leper, coming up beside them, confirms it. They notice his surprise at how well they know the roads. “There’s nowhere we haven’t walked! Did you think we go by bus? Or ferry?” Their laughter is macabre. His only interactions with lepers have been to drop coins into tin cups; who knew they were intelligent, capable of speech? His walk home will be circuitous because the main Pulath bridge is washed out. It’s a five-mile detour in the wrong direction, and then he must backtrack for perhaps ten more. No buses come by the leprosarium. His heart sinks. To think he was worried about being late for school! It could be very late before he gets home.
The doctor comes looking for him. “Philipose, yes? My name is Digby Kilgour, by the way. Can you translate for me?” They go back inside to the boatman, who stands soothing his silent yet crying baby. “Tell him that I’m hopeful we can take that tube out in twenty-four hours. It’s best he stays here till then.”
The boatman says, “What choice do I have? I’ve lost my boat. Lost my livelihood. But so what? I have my son, don’t I?”
Dr. Kilgour notices Philipose’s restlessness, his anxiety. When Philipose explains, Digby says, “We’ll get you home. You saved a life today.” He says he expects a friend named Chandy to return in the afternoon from his estate in the mountains—by car. The doctor reassures him that Chandy’s driver will get him back.
It’s a long wait, more so because he declines Digby’s offer of food or drink, fearing contagion. The sun is out, the sky cloudless, as though the morning downpour was a bad joke. He finds a shady spot in the orchard, and when he can’t hold out any longer, he draws water from the well and scoops mouthfuls from the bucket, trying not to touch the edges. The heat bakes the whirls and ridges of mud on the driveway into a hard crust.
It is midafternoon when a car pulls in. The large, well-to-do man driving it steps out and goes to the bungalow where Digby disappeared. Philipose sounds out the name on the badge on the car: “Chev-Ro-Lett.” The word is familiar. It has a sense of motion, a snap at the end. It sounds the way he imagines America to be: a land of hard-working, ambitious people like the inhabitants of Tisbury or the Vineyard of Martha. This car is like a wealthy man who shed his finery to work alongside his pulayar in the mud. The fenders are gone, exposing its wheels and its innards, and it is as mud-caked as Coconut Kurian’s bullock cart. A hook juts out from the prow. The front passenger seat is being used to haul some kind of motor sitting on a tarpaulin. A metal platform is welded to the rear of the car, holding petrol cans, rope, a block and tackle . . . and a dark, squatting figure who regards him indifferently. Philipose would have missed the man but for the whites of his eyes flashing when he blinked.
Digby emerges with Chandy, who speaks to Philipose in Malayalam and asks him where he lives. “All right, don’t worry, monay. We’ll get you home. Wait here. I’ll be back.”
But it’s five by the time Chandy finally returns, freshly bathed, his beige silk juba shimmering, his starched mundu a blinding white. A gold watch slides loosely on his wrist, its color matching the State Express 555 cigarettes in his paw. Philipose sits in the back next to a girl in a white-and-blue school uniform. She has shiny black hair parted in the center and pigtails hanging over her ears. Chandy’s daughter, no doubt. She smiles at Dr. Kilgour, who waves at her. She’s a few years younger than Philipose, but her direct manner and the frank way she studies him make her seem older. It makes him even more self-conscious: he has never had occasion to sit this close to a girl other than Baby Mol.
The rumble of the engine reminds Philipose of the roar of the river. Once they are moving, windows wide open, he leans his head out. The wind blows his hair off his forehead and pulls his cheeks back into a smile. This is his first-ever car ride.
Chandy’s voice is equal to the engine. “So, monay,” he says over his shoulder. “Doctor said you saved that kutty’s life. Are you some sort of saint in disguise?” He turns to grin at Philipose, a gold tooth flashing under a bushy mustache.
“Doctor’s hands on top of mine showed me what to do.”
The daughter’s fingers glide over the expanse of seat between them. Philipose watches in disbelief as they approach. Then her fingers are on top of his, pushing down his digits one after another, as though she’s playing the harmonium. Before he can react, she takes her hand back, the experiment having concluded. She picks up a notebook.
“Monay?” Chandy says. Philipose freezes. Did Chandy think he reached for his daughter’s hand? “Is the baby cured?”