The Covenant of Water

When Mariamma goes to see Digby again, trying to learn the truth about her parentage, he has her watch one of his hand surgeries. Despite his old wounds, he has learned how to perform these precise operations, mostly using his better left hand. Mariamma is “grudgingly impressed” with his skill (667). Digby describes his methods to her: “It’s not in any textbook. It needs faith. You must believe without proof” (667). Digby borrows the language of religion to describe the underlying psychology of his recovered capacities. It’s a faith he must actively choose, emphasizing the power of The Will to Believe. While Digby’s “faith” may not relate directly to the kind of faith held by Big Ammachi or, later, Philipose, it is still a statement that reveals how much the concept of faith—belief without proof—influences the characters of this world.

Part 10 also emphasizes how much India has changed in the years since Independence from British rule, especially in the chapters in which Digby describes how he and Elsie came to know each other. By 1950, there are fewer white faces at the elite clubs, as Digby notes: “Since Independence in 1947 and the departure of many white estate owners, Indians made up the majority at this gathering. Yet to Digby’s amazement, the tenor of Planters’ Week was unchanged” (674). While Indian pride has grown immeasurably over the years—think of Mariamma’s affirmation that Madras is hers—there are still lingering effects of colonial rule. The idea that post-colonialism erases the colonial past is false: “Indian national pride was at its height, but the educated, moneyed class, and certainly the ex-military officers, inevitably had English language and culture deeply enmeshed with their Indian ones” (674). In many fundamental ways, the postcolonial moment is an extension of the colonial period.

When Digby and Elsie reconnect, she is now a “grown woman,” as Digby observes; he thinks that she has “caught up to him” (676). This allows him to reconsider her role in his life—not as a child helping to rehabilitate his hands with drawing lessons, but as a woman who has known and survived tragedy. The two now have a more profound connection. Hands, though, still play a primary role:

Elsie glanced at Digby’s hands. He extended his right hand, flexed the fingers, and she smiled sheepishly, caught in the act. She studied it carefully, reconciling it with what she remembered. She nodded in approval and then looked steadily at him. He couldn’t look away, didn’t need to (677).

This frank appraisal, with its underlying tension, allows Digby to speak freely to her. When she talks about herself as an artist, and about what it meant to relinquish her work, she looks down at her own hands. Digby tells her that, “Art is never finished. Only abandoned” (678) and attributes the thought to Michelangelo while admitting that he might have “made that up” (678). Her laugh at his insouciance surprises and pleases Digby. The bond between the two begins with his acceptance of her artistic inclinations—something that Philipose destroyed rather than supported.

When Elsie walks to the edge of the cliff, Digby silently pleads with her not to leap; he has already decided that he wants to be with her. When he is able to pull her back, gently, from the edge, he hopes—he wants to believe—that she has chosen to live: “I’ll never let you fall, never let you go, not as long as I live” (683). This unspoken promise is one that he keeps, even as he discovers her terrible secret. When Elsie returns to Parambil and stays so long Digby fears she will never return, he is distraught: “The nature of the happiness that came from love was that it was fleeting, evanescent. Nothing lasted by the land—the soil—and it would outlast them all” (694). Ironically, Elsie is returned to him via water, floating down the river in an act of pretended suicide. Just as Elsie helped bring him back to life all those years ago—and echoing Mariamma’s revival of Lenin—Digby thinks of her as “a resurrected Ophelia” (696). Many of the characters in the book are martyred and/or resurrected; the story is one of redemption, in the end.

Elsie’s diagnosis of leprosy prevents the reunion of her chosen family; Mariamma, the child, cannot join them. It would not only risk her health but also her ability to succeed in the world; children of parents with leprosy are rarely allowed into society, even if escape the disease. For Digby’s part, he realizes that her condition—unlike the Condition that Mariamma manages to solve, at least in the case of her great love, Lenin—is progressive and incurable. This, too, evokes the theme of Condition and Connection. The word condition, in this novel, can refer to the Condition that plagues Big Ammachi’s family, or to any health condition, or to the human condition—which is to be vulnerable to illness, injury, and death, and therefore to grief. It’s this last kind of condition that binds Digby and Elsie, as he decides that the love they share is worth any risk to him, any pain at the end: “This is the end of one life,” he thinks, “[a]nd the beginning of another I could never have imagined. I have no choice, which is the best kind of choice” (702). He vows to stay with her, just as he had before he knew her fate.

Mariamma has a harder choice to make: “How is she to reconcile the long-dead mother with this living apparition on the lawn?” (705). Her shock at knowing her mother is alive; her astonishment at discovering that Digby is her father; and her sadness at meeting her mother after she has already been blinded and disfigured by her illness nearly overwhelms her. She silently appeals to the man that she thought was her father and suddenly realizes that Elsie had come to see her many times, dressed as a beggar at the annual religious convention. It seems like a sign—an approval from Philipose, her father—because shortly thereafter, Mariamma goes to the window where her mother has pressed her palms against it, matching them with her own.