The Covenant of Water

Lizzi’s baby, named Lenin Evermore after Doctor Kilgour’s pronouncements, is now nine years old. It is 1959, and a plague has come to his village—smallpox. His father and sister are already dead; he knows his mother is not far behind. He himself has yet to get sick, though he is starving. He walks to the local estate house, but they turn him away. Instead, a pulayar woman offers him some food: The residents of the estate house would not take the food they sent her out to buy, fearing the illness.

When he returns home, he sleeps next to the unconscious body of his mother. When he awakes, she is dead. A priest finds Lenin alone next to the body.

Mariamma, Elsie’s child, is now eight years old, and Big Ammachi adores her. Philipose has recovered from his opium addiction and is now a doting father, reading to his daughter in English. He has also found religious belief. When Big Ammachi asks Mariamma what she would like to do with her life, Mariamma thinks she might want to be a bishop. Big Ammachi says that she would have been a doctor if she had been granted the opportunity.