He thanks each of them for welcoming him into their midst; he conveys this message and his sorrow at parting by bringing his palms together, looking them in the eye. In this upside-down world, snarls are smiles, ugly is beautiful, and the crippled outwork the able-bodied, but tears are the same. In response, they drop their tools to appose their hands as best they can. He’s moved by the asymmetric “namastes” of clawed or absent fingers, or absent hands. Imperfection is the mark of our tribe, our secret sign. Rune said the divine was never more visible to him than at Saint Bridget’s, because of the imperfections. “God says, ‘My grace is sufficient. My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ ” It’d be a comforting thought to Digby if he believed.
Digby came to Saint Bridget’s with nothing. Alone in Rune’s bungalow, he recalls their evenings, mellowed by plum wine and the haze of rich, woodsy-scented tobacco. On just such an evening a few days before Rune’s death, Digby had asked him the question he’d first asked when they’d met at the Mylins’ estate. “Will I operate again?” Rune had deliberated, the plumes of smoke rising like cartoon bubbles as yet unlettered. Then he tapped his skull with the stem of his pipe. “Digby, what differentiates us from other animals isn’t the opposable thumb. It’s our brains. That’s what made us the dominant species. Not hands, but what we think to do with our hands. You know our motto at Saint Bridget’s? It’s from Ecclesiastes. ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.’ ”
He has one last bit of leave-taking. Chandy and his son are away on an errand; only Elsie and the maid are at the Thetanatt home. He sits opposite Elsie on the verandah, surprised how tongue-tied he is around her, as if he is the nine-year-old, and she twenty-eight. She waits calmly, a maturity in her eyes, a wisdom and equanimity far beyond her years.
“I came to say goodbye. I . . . You know Rune’s surgeries rebuilt my hands. But Elsie, it was you who brought life back to this one.” He holds out his right. Her inspired act of coupling their hands together, her palm atop the new skin of his hand, reignited his seized fingers, smashed through barriers of rust and disuse to reconnect his brain to his hand. He wants her to know that in seeing his mother’s beautiful face on the paper, he’d erased the grotesque death mask etched in his memory, an image that had been blocking every other memory of her. But now, blood rising to his face, he finds he’s too self-conscious to make this intimate confession. Perhaps when Elsie is older. If their paths ever cross. He hands over the gift he brought his young therapist.
Elsie unwraps the parcel. Her eyes widen with pleasure when she recognizes Rune’s copy of Gray’s Anatomy. Digby believes she has Henry Vandyke Carter’s particular gift: to render an object as it is; to let it then speak for itself.
Elsie’s lips silently mouth the inscription over which Digby labored. The first line is from that great Scot Robert Burns; the lines that follow are by a Scot who’ll leave no mark in history.
“Some books are lies from end to end, and some great lies were never penned.”
But you have my word this book is true, as I know it through and through.
For Elsie, who helped me understand, that past and present go hand in hand.
With eternal gratitude,
Digby Kilgour
1936. St. Bridget’s Leprosarium
She hugs the tome to her chest, dropping her head over it, the way a child might embrace a doll. When she looks up, her expression takes the place of words of thanks.
He rises to leave. She sets the book down and walks out with him. She slips her hand into his, as though that’s the most natural thing in the world. Once outside, she releases him.
He feels his soul slipping off its mooring, leaving him adrift without sail or map.
CHAPTER 37
Auspicious Sign
1937, AllSuch
Franz and Lena host a New Year’s Eve dinner for their closest circle; the occasion is bittersweet, as it is also Rune’s birthday. Chandy is detained in the plains, but the regulars—the Kariappas, the Cherians, Gracie Cartwright (but not Llewellyn), Bee and Roger Dutton, the Isaacs, the Singhs—are seated around Lena’s dining table, forearms resting on the damask cloth, the candelabra lighting their faces as in a Rembrandt painting. They toast Rune with plum wine and remember him with tears and laughter.
Digby is there too, having come three weeks earlier to occupy the guest cottage at AllSuch once more. He bears no resemblance to the shrouded, charred creature who sequestered himself in the Mylins’ guest cottage from all but Cromwell until Rune took him away. This time he is with Franz and Lena for every meal; he has driven with Franz all over the estate, observed him in the tea-tasting room, and accompanied him to the weekly tea auction. At other times he has ridden with Cromwell on horseback, learning the intricacies of tea plucking, of harvesting cardamom and coffee. Early every morning he sketches in a disciplined way for an hour, seeking to restore fluidity, if not grace, to his fingers. His plan is to return to Madras and stay with Honorine—but the Mylins insisted he stay till Rune’s birthday. Once his medical leave expires, he has no idea what will happen next.
Now, at the New Year’s Eve dinner, a shy Digby, encouraged by the pleas of the guests, and with his inhibitions loosened by wine, conjures up the aspect of Rune only he knew. He speaks of Rune’s surgical genius, Digby’s gesturing hands themselves a testament to the Swede’s skill. He even bashfully opens his shirt so they might see the glowing, shield-shaped scar on his left breast. (“The sacred heart of Jesus!” exclaims Gracie, pressing her hands to her bosom.) “He died singing,” Digby says, “as alive in that moment as he was in every moment . . .” He swallows, unable to go on.
The hush that follows is unbroken even as Franz pours a round of brandy, and they wordlessly raise their glasses once more to Rune. The silence of the night pulses around them. Betty Kariappa lowers a match to the golden remnant in her glass. A blue flame, a ghost, runs across the brandy’s surface and up and down the sidewalls before it vanishes.
In the first hours of the new year, 1937, they are still at the table, the mood shifting from nostalgic to celebratory and then to numinous, as though their blood alcohol levels have crossed the threshold that unlocks their mystical natures. That is when, in the wee hours, these planters arrive at the subject they know best: the mountain slopes on which they live their lives; the fecund soil and its munificence. Sanjay brings up Müller’s Madness and the golden opportunity the sale of that distant estate presents—but only if the price is right. Then, in a sequence of steps that neither Digby nor the others later recall, they’ve formed a consortium, sketched out its charter on a napkin, and passed its first resolution unanimously: Digby and Cromwell are to go forth like Lewis and Clark, as delegates of the consortium, to meet Müller and explore Müller’s Madness.