Fifty Degrees Below (19 page)

“All hail,” Drepung said. He looked older to Anna, his round face and little mouth finally at home. She had seen that he was clearly a well-known and popular figure here.

Joe stood in the shallows regarding the crowd. He was happy. The Khembalis were indulging him, enjoying him. The warm rain fell on them like a balm. Suddenly Anna felt happy; her little tiger saw that he was among friends, somehow, and at last he stood in the world content, relaxed, even serene. She had never seen him look like this. She had wanted so much for him to feel something like this.

Charlie, on the other hand, felt his stomach go tense at the sight of Joe in the pool. All his worries were being confirmed. He took a deep breath, thinking Nothing has changed, you knew this already—they’re thinking he’s one of their tulkus. That doesn’t mean that it’s true.

He couldn’t imagine what Anna was making of all this.

Standing beside each other, the two of them both felt the discrepancy in their reactions. And they sensed as well that their characteristic moods or responses were here reversed, Anna pleased by a Joe anomaly, Charlie worried.

Uneasily they glanced at each other, both thinking This is backwards, what’s going on?

“Big rain!” Joe exclaimed, looking up, and the crowd sighed appreciatively.

That night the visitors collapsed on the beds in their rooms, even Joe, and slept from the early evening through the night and well into the next morning. It had rained the whole time, and when they went back out after breakfast they found the island transformed; everything was drenched, with standing water everywhere. The Khembalis were very happy to see it, however, so they split up into groups and took off in the rain as planned. Joe and Nick were first taken to the school to see classes and playground games. Everywhere he went Joe was made much of, and he was left free to commune with every demon mask they passed, directing diatribes in his private language at some of them. In the afternoon Nick left his group and joined Anna at the Institute, where she was talking to her pen pals and the other scientists there. Charlie spent his time in Government House, talking to officials brought to him by Padma.

Frank was gone; they didn’t know how he was spending his time, although once in passing Anna saw him in conversation with Sucandra and some of the local monks. Later she saw him on the dike, walking the berm path with Rudra Cakrin. Judging from his talk at dinner, he had also spent time discussing agriculture out in the fields. But mostly he seemed to Anna like a religious pilgrim, eager for instruction and enlightenment, absorbed, distant, relaxed; very unlike his manner back in Washington.

Next afternoon they visited the zoo, located in a big park at the northwest quadrant of the island. Many of the animals and birds of the Sundarbans were represented. The elephants had a large enclosure, but the largest enclosure of all was the tigers’. Many of the big cats had been swept to sea by one flood or another, and rescued by Khembali patrol boats. Now they lived in an enclosure thick with stands of elephant grass and saal trees, fronted by a big pond cut by a curving glass retaining wall, so that when the tigers went swimming they could be seen underwater. Their abrupt foursquare dives and subsequent splayed strokes turned feline grace unexpectedly aquatic, and underwater their fur streamed like seaweed. “Tiger! Tiger! Big big
tiger
!”

At the end of that wet day they sat in a big hall and ate a meal anchored by curried rice. Nick was served a special order of plain rice, arranged by Drepung, but Joe was fine with the curry. Or so it seemed during the meal; but that night in their room he was fractious, and then, after a long nursing session, wide awake. Jet lag, perhaps. The monsoon rains were coming down hard, the drumming of it on the roof quite loud. Joe began to complain. Anna was asleep on her feet, but Charlie was out entirely, so she had to zombie on, hour after hour, mumbling replies to Joe’s cheerful jabberwocking. She was on the verge of a collapse when a knock came at the door, and Frank looked in.

“I can’t sleep, and I could hear you were up with Joe. I wondered if you wanted me to play with him for a while.”

“Oh God bless you,” she cried. “I was just about to melt.” She fell on the couch and shut her sandy eyes. For a while her brain continued to turn, as her body dove into sleep and dragged her consciousness down with it.

“Nick sleeping. Da sleeping. Mama sleeping.”

“That’s right.”

“Wanna play?”

“Sure. What you got here, trains? What about some airplanes, shouldn’t you have some airplanes?”

“Got planes.”

“Good. Let’s fly, let’s fly and fly.”

“Fly!”

“Hey, those are your tigers! Well, that’s okay. Flying tigers are just right for here. Watch out, here he comes!”

“Tiger fly!”

Anna stitched the meandering border between sleep and dreams, in and out, up and down. Frank and Joe passed toys back and forth.

In the hour before dawn a hard knock battered their door, throwing Anna convulsively to her feet. She had been dreaming of the tigers’ fluid swimming, up in the sky—

It was Drepung, looking agitated. “I’m sorry to disturb you, my friends, but a decision has been made that we must all evacuate the island.”

This woke them all, even Charlie who was usually so slow to rouse. Frank turned on all the lights, and they packed their bags while Drepung explained the situation.

“The monsoon has returned, as you have seen,” he said. “This is a good thing, but unfortunately it has come at a time of especially high tides, and together with the storm surge, and the low air pressure, sea level is extremely high.” He helped the comatose Nick into a shirt. “It’s already higher on the dikes than is judged fully safe, higher than we have seen for many years, and some weaknesses in it are being exposed. And now we have been informed that the monsoon or something else has caused the breaking of ice dams in the drainage of the Brahmaputra.” He looked at Charlie: “These big glacial lakes are a result of global warming. The Himalayan glaciers are melting fast, and now lots of ice dams that create lakes behind them are giving way under these monsoon rains, adding greatly to the run-off. The Brahmaputra is already overflowing, and much of Bangladesh is faced with flooding. They called with the alarm from Dhaka just a short while ago.” He checked his watch. “Just an hour ago, good. It goes fast. The surge of high water will arrive soon, and we are already at our limit. And as you have seen, the island is lower than the sea even at the best of times. This is a problem with using dikes for protection. If the dike fails, the result can be severe. So we must leave the island.”

“How?” Anna exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, we have ferries at the dock enough for all. Always docked here for this very purpose, because the danger is ever-present. We have used them before, when the rivers flood or there are high tides. Any of them can flood us. The island is just too low, and unfortunately, getting lower.”

“And sea level is getting higher,” Charlie said. “I heard from a friend in Antarctica that a piece of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet came off a few days ago. Every time that happens sea level rises by whatever extra amount of water the ice displaces.”

“Interesting,” Drepung said. “Perhaps that explains why we are already at the safety level on the dike.”

“How much time do we have?” Anna said.

“Two or three hours. This is more than enough time for us.” He sighed nevertheless. “We prefer that our guests leave by helicopter in a situation like this, but to tell the truth the helicopter went to Calcutta last night, to bring out the ABC officials to meet you. So now it appears you should join us on the ferries.”

“How many people live here again?” Charlie asked as he threw their bathroom bags into his backpack.

“Twelve thousand.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. It is a big operation, but all will be well.”

“What about the zoo animals?” Nick asked. By now their bags were packed, and Nick was dressed and looking wide awake.

“We have a boat for them too. It’s a difficult procedure, but there is a team assigned to it. People with circus experience. They call their act, ‘Noah Goes Fast.’ How about you, are you ready?”

They were ready. Joe had watched all the action with a curious eye; now he said, “Da? Go?”

“That’s right big guy. We’re off on another trip.”

Outside it was raining harder than ever, the cloud cover somewhat broken and flying north on a strong wind. They hustled into a van and joined a little traffic jam on the island’s main road. All the crowded vans turned north toward the dock. Joe sat in Anna’s lap looking out the window, saying “Ba? Ba?”

Charlie was on his phone. “Hey Wade!” he said, and Anna bent her head to try and catch what he was saying. “How big was that berg? . . . No kidding. Have they calculated the displacement yet? . . . Oh okay. Yeah, not that much, but we’ve got a situation here, a monsoon flood and a full-moon tide. . . . Shit. Okay.”

He clicked off.

“What?” Anna said.

“Wade says the piece of the ice sheet that came off probably displaced enough water to raise sea level by a centimeter or two.”

“God that must be a big iceberg,” Anna said. “Think of sea level going up a centimeter everywhere around the world.”

“Yes. Although apparently it’s only a little piece of the total ice sheet. And once it starts coming apart there’s no telling how fast it might go.”

“My lord.”

They sat bracketing the boys. Nick was wide-eyed, but appeared too surprised by all the activity to formulate his usual barrage of questions. Their van joined the line out to the southern stretch of the dike. Drepung leaned forward from his seat to show them the screen of his cell phone, which now displayed a tiny image of the upper end of the Bay of Bengal and the lower delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. This satellite photo had rendered altimetry data in false coloration to show river and sea level departures from the norm, with the brilliant spectral band ranging from the cool blues and greens of normality to the angry yellows, oranges, and reds of high water. Now the right side of the delta ran red, the left side orange and then yellow. And the whole Bay of Bengal was light orange already.

Drepung put a fingertip to the screen, looking very serious. “See that little blue dot there? That’s us. We are low. Orange all around us. That means a couple meters higher than normal.”

Charlie said, “That’s not so bad, is it?”

“The dike is maxed out. They’re saying now that they don’t think it will be able to handle this flood surge.” He leaned back to take a call on his cell phone. Then: “Now they tell me that the helicopter is on its way, and will be here before the ferries can be loaded. We would very much appreciate it if you would take the helicopter back to Calcutta.”

“We don’t want to take space you might need,” Charlie said.

“No, that’s just it. It will be easier for us if you are away. No break in the routine at the docks.”

Their van turned around and drove back toward town. Now they were going against the traffic, and could speed south and then west out the road to the airport. Once there they circled around the terminal, directly out onto the wet tarmac near the helo’s landing site.

“Another twenty minutes,” Drepung said. Joe began to wail, and they let him down to run around. From time to time they looked at Drepung’s handheld and got the image of the delta, in real time but false color. The coming of day made it harder to see, but the whole delta was now orange, and the blue areas denoting islands were distinctly smaller. “The Sundarbans,” Drepung said, shaking his head. “They are really meant to be amphibious.”

Then a helicopter thwacked out of the dawn sky. “Good,” Drepung said, and led them off the concrete pad, onto a flat field next to it. They watched the big helicopter drop down through the clouds in a huge noise and wind of its own making, settling down on its pad like an oversized dragonfly. Joe howled at the sight. Charlie picked him up and felt the child clutch at him. They waited to be signaled over to the helo. Its blades continued to rotate, chopping the air at a speed allowing them to make out a speed of rotation, whether real or not they could not say.

“Down!” Joe shouted in Charlie’s ear. “Down! Down! Down! Down!”

“Let him down for a second,” Anna said. “There’s time, isn’t there?”

Drepung was still at their side. “Yes, there’s time.”

Men in dark green uniforms were getting off the helicopter. Charlie put Joe down on the ground. Immediately Joe struck out for the helo, and Charlie followed, intent on stopping him. He saw that Joe’s feet had sunk into what must have been very soft ground; and water was quickly seeping into his prints. Charlie picked him up from behind, ignored his wails as he returned to the others. He looked back; Joe’s watery prints caught little chips of the dawn light, looking like silver coins.

Then it was time to board. Joe insisted on walking himself, kicking furiously when held by either Charlie or Anna, shrieking “Down let down
let down
!” So they let him down and held him hard by the hands and walked forward, Nick on the other side of Anna, all ducking instinctively under the high but drooping blades that guillotined the air so noisily overhead.

In the helicopter it was a bit quieter. There were a few people already in the short rows of seats, and in the next half hour they were joined by others, about half of them Westerners, the rest perhaps Indians, including a bevy of wide-eyed schoolgirls. The Quiblers and Frank greeted each in turn, and the schoolgirls gathered to dote on Joe in their musical English. He hid his head from them, clung hard to Anna. Charlie looked out a little window beside them, set low so that right now he could see little more than the puddles on the concrete.

The noise of the engines got louder and up they lifted, tilting back and then forward, a strange sensation for anyone used to airplanes.

Out the lower window they caught a glimpse of the dike when they were just above its height, and there was the sea right there beyond it, lipping at the very top of the berm. The uncanny sight remained burned in their minds as the helo banked and they lost the view.