The Covenant of Water

The scene shifts to Glasgow, Scotland, where the reader meets Digby Kilgour, whose father has left and whose mother soon dies by suicide. Before she dies, she makes her son promise to stay in school. After her death, he gets intoxicated and engages in a bar fight. As he flees the scene, frustrated with the limitations of his life in Scotland, he sees the news that Charles Lindbergh has flown around the world as “THE HERO OF AMERICA” (89).

Digby has decided to travel to Madras, India (modern-day Chennai) to pursue his profession as a surgeon. Realizing that his lower-class status and Catholic identity will not allow him much opportunity in Scotland, he joins the Indian Medical Service. He must travel in second class due to his poverty and lower-class status. He contracts a gastro-intestinal illness—either sea sickness or food poisoning—and an Indian barrister takes care of him. When he disembarks, “he feels he’s arrived on a new planet” (94). He notices that the barrister must disembark via a separate line designated for “non-whites.”

Digby is taken to Longmere Hospital, his new place of employment, where he will become “Assistant Civil Surgeon” (97). He is to be apprenticed to Claude Arnold, who is a senior surgeon.