The Hungry Tide (15 page)

The setting was Medina, one of the holiest places in Islam; here
lived a man called Ibrahim, a childless but pious Muslim who led the austere life of a Sufi faqir.
Through the intervention of the archangel Gabriel, Ibrahim became the father of blessed twins, Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli. When the twins came of age, the archangel brought them word that they had been chosen for a divine mission: they were to travel from Arabia to “the country of eighteen tides” —
athhero
bhati
r
des
h —
in order to make it fit for human habitation. Thus charged, Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli set off for the mangrove forests of Bengal, dressed in the simple robes of Sufi mendicants.

The jungles of the country of eighteen tides were then the realm of Dokkhin Rai, a powerful demon-king who held sway over every being that lived there — every animal as well as every ghoul, ghost and malevolent spirit. Toward mankind he harbored a hatred coupled with insatiable desire: for the pleasures afforded by human flesh he had a craving that knew no limit.

One day Dokkhin Rai heard strange new voices in the jungle calling out the
azán,
the Muslim call to prayer; this was his notice that Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli had come into his realm. Rousing his hordes, the incensed demon set upon the trespassers, only to be put to rout in a pitched battle. But Bon Bibi was merciful in victory, and she decided that one half of the tide country would remain a wilderness; this part of the forest she left to Dokkhin Rai and his demon hordes. The rest she claimed for herself, and under her rule this once forested domain was soon made safe for human settlement. Thus order was brought to the land of eighteen tides, with its two halves, the wild and the sown, being held in careful balance. All was well until human greed intruded to upset this order.

On the edges of the tide country lived a man called Dhona, who had put together a fleet of seven ships in the hope of making a fortune in the jungle. Dhona's fleet was about to set sail when it was discovered that the crew was one man short of a full complement. The only person at hand was a young lad called Dukhey, “sorrowful,” a name nothing if not apt, for this boy had long been cursed with misfortune: as a child he had lost his father and now lived in abject poverty with his old and ailing mother. It was with the greatest reluctance that the old woman allowed her son to go, and at the time of leave-taking she gave him a last word of advice: were he ever to find himself in trouble, he was to call on Bon Bibi; she was the savior of the weak and a mother of mercy to the poor; she was sure to come to his aid.

The expedition set off and wound its way down the rivers of the tide country until at last it came to an island by the name of Kedokhali Char. It so happened that this island fell within Dokkhin Rai's territory, and unknown to the sailors, the demon-king had already prepared a surprise for them. When they went into the forest strange things began to happen: they were given tantalizing glimpses of plump hives hanging from branches, but when they approached, the hives seemed to disappear, only to reappear again at a distance. They could not avail themselves of even one, and Dhona was reduced to despair. But that night Dokkhin Rai revealed himself to Dhona in a dream and proposed a pact in which they would each provide for the satisfaction of the other's desires. The demon wanted the boy that Dhona had brought on his boat; it was an age since he had been able to sate his appetite for human beings, and he was now riven with a longing for the taste of Dukhey's flesh. In exchange he would give Dhona wealth beyond imagining, as much as could be carried on the boats.

Overcome by greed, Dhona assented to the bargain and at once the creatures of the forest, the demons and ghosts, even the bees themselves, began to load Dhona's boats with a great cargo of honey and wax. Soon the vessels were full and could carry no more and then it was time for Dhona to keep his part of the bargain. Summoning Dukhey, he told him to go ashore to fetch some firewood.

The boy had no recourse but to obey, and on his return found his worst misgivings confirmed: the ships were gone. As he stood alone on the bank, trapped between river and forest, his eye caught a shimmer of black and gold — he was being stalked by a tiger, hidden in the greenery on the far shore. The animal was none other than Dokkhin Rai in disguise, and the demon shook the earth with a roar as he started his charge. At the sight of that immense body and those vast jowls, flapping in the wind like sails, mortal terror seized Dukhey's soul. Even as he was losing consciousness, he recalled his mother's parting words and called out, “O Mother of Mercy, Bon Bibi, save me, come to my side!”

Bon Bibi was far away, but she crossed the waters in an instant. She revived the boy, taking him into her lap while her brother, Shah Jongoli, dealt a terrible chastisement to the demon. Then, transporting Dukhey to her home, she nursed him back to health. When it was time for him to return, she sent him back to his mother with a treasure trove of honey and wax. Thus did Bon Bibi show the world the law of the forest, which was that the rich and greedy would be punished while the poor and righteous were rewarded.

Kanai had expected to be bored by this rustic entertainment: in Calcutta he was accustomed to going to theaters like the Academy of Fine Arts and cinemas like the Globe. But much to his surprise he was utterly absorbed, and after the show had ended was unable to erase some of the scenes from his mind. The terror he had felt when the demon charged Dukhey was real and immediate, even though there was nothing convincing about the tiger, and it could be plainly seen that the animal was only a man dressed in a painted sheet and a mask. No less real were the tears of joy and gratitude that flowed from his eyes when Bon Bibi appeared at Dukhey's side. Nor was he the only one: everyone in the audience wept, although the actress's arrival was anything but instantaneous. On the contrary, the audience had actually had to hurry her along, because as Dukhey lay unconscious with the tiger poised to devour him, she had stopped to lean over the side of the stage in order to clear her mouth of a great wad of paan. But the flow of the story was such that none of this seemed to matter, and even before the performance had ended Kanai knew he wanted to see it again.

THE LAST PERFORMANCE
of
The Glory of Bon Bibi
was something of a special event, and many people came in from other islands. The crowd was much rowdier than on other days and Kanai kept to the maidan's fringes, watching from a distance. By this time he knew the first part of the show well enough to be bored by it. At a certain point he dozed off, and found on waking that he was sitting next to Kusum. “What's happening?” he whispered. “Where have they got to?” There was no answer; she was so rapt by the performance that she seemed oblivious of his presence. Her absorption prompted him to glance at the stage, and he saw that he had slept longer than he had thought. The action was well advanced now: Dhona and his fleet had arrived at Kedokhali Char and would soon make his pact with the devil.

“Kusum?” whispered Kanai, and when she turned briefly to look at him he saw, in the reflected glow of the gas lamps, that she was biting her lip and her face was streaked with tears. Having seen for himself the emotions the story could evoke, he was not particularly surprised to see she was crying. But then, when she suddenly leaned over to bury her face in her knees, he knew there was more at issue here than could be accounted for by the performance alone. On an impulse, thinking to console her, he slid his hand along the ground, hoping to find her fingers. But her hand was not where he had expected it to be, and instead he found his fist entangled in the folds of her frock. His fingers grew frantic as he tried to extricate them, and instead of finding their way out they encountered a soft and unexpectedly warm part of her body. The shock sparked by this contact passed through both of them like a bolt of electricity.

Suppressing a cry, she jumped to her feet and went stumbling into the darkness. He would have run after her right then, but some furtive instinct of prudence prompted him to think of how this might look to watching eyes. He waited a minute or two and then pretended to head in the other direction. Circling back in the shadows, he caught up with her as she was nearing the compound of Hamilton House: “Kusum — wait! Stop!”

There was just enough light from the now distant gas lamps for him to see that she was stumbling ahead, turning from time to time to wipe her dripping nose on her shoulder. “Kusum,” he cried, keeping his voice low, “stop!” He had caught up with her now and he gave her elbow a tug. “It was a mistake.”

She came to a halt and he steeled himself for a flood of reproach. But she said nothing, and when he looked into her eyes he knew that his link with her perturbation was only incidental and that her grief sprang from a much deeper source than could be plumbed by a boy's mistaken touch.

They were now very close to the gate of Hamilton House compound. On an impulse Kanai vaulted over the gate and gestured to Kusum: “Come on. Come.” After a moment's hesitation she followed, and he took her hand and they went racing up the mossy flagstones that flanked the pond. Kanai led Kusum up a flight of stairs to the shaded veranda. They seated themselves on the floor with their backs to the old wooden walls. From this position they had a clear view of the maidan, and they could even see Dukhey lying prone on the stage, beseeching Bon Bibi to save him.

It was Kusum who spoke first. “I called her too,” she said. “But she never came.”

“Who?”

“Bon Bibi. The day my father died. I saw it all, it happened in front of me, and I called her again and again …”

It had been an ordinary day, no different from any other, and it had happened under the full light of a blazing noonday sun. There was money in the house and food as well, because her father had come back just the day before from a long and successful fishing trip: the one untoward thing he had had to report was that he had lost his gamchha. He had wanted to eat well, so her mother had made rice, dal and vegetables, but when it came time to cook some fish, the firewood had run out. On being told this, he had flown into a rage: it was many days since he had had a good meal and he was not going to be deprived of one now. He stormed out of the house, saying he would be back soon with more firewood.

Their hut was in the lee of the embankment, on the shore of a narrow creek; it took just ten or fifteen minutes of rowing to get to the forest on the far bank. Although this was a reserve, it was common for people of their village to forage for firewood there. Kusum followed him out of the house and stood on the embankment as he rowed across the river. This took longer than usual because there was a strong wind blowing in from the far shore. He was pushing the boat up the bank when she saw it — not the whole animal but enough of its flashing black and gold coat to know it was there.

“Do you mean,” Kanai interrupted, “that you saw a — ?” But before he could say the word
bÁgh,
tiger, she had slammed a hand over his mouth: “No, you can't use the word — to say it is to call it.”

The animal was in the trees that lined the shore, and from the direction of its advance she knew it had watched the boat as it came across the river. At Kusum's first scream her mother and many others from the hamlet ran up to the embankment. But her father, for whom the shout of warning had been intended, didn't hear her, for the wind was blowing in the wrong direction.

Within moments, dozens of people had joined her on the embankment and they all saw what she had seen: the animal was stalking her father. The men of the village raced to get their boats into the water, while the women shouted and banged on pots and pans, making as much noise as they could. But it made no difference, for the wind was against them — the sound did not carry to the man on the far bank. The animal too was upwind of its prey, and they could see its coat flashing as it closed in; because of the distinctiveness of its own odor, it was skilled in dealing with the wind and it knew that the people on the other bank were powerless against these gusts. So great was its confidence that in the last stretch it actually broke cover and went racing along the shore, in full view of the far shore; intent on its prey, it no longer cared about concealment. This was in itself an astonishing sight, almost without precedent, for the great cats of the tide country were like ghosts, never revealing their presence except through marks, sounds and smells. They were so rarely seen that to behold one, it was said, was to be as good as dead — and indeed the sight caused several of the women on the embankment to lose consciousness.

But as for Kusum, she sank to her knees and began to whisper, “Help, O Mother of Mercy, O Bon Bibi, save my father.” She had shut her eyes so she didn't see the end, but she heard everything. Because of the wind's direction, the sounds that accompanied the kill carried across the water with exceptional clarity: Kusum heard the roar that froze her father; she heard his cry for help —
bachao!
She heard the sound of his bones cracking as the animal swiped a paw across his neck; she heard the rustle of the mangrove as the animal dragged the corpse into the forest.

And all through this she never once stopped reciting Bon Bibi's name.

It was Horen who lifted her from the dust. “Bon Bibi's heard you,” he told her. “Sometimes this is the means she chooses to call those who are closest to her: men like your father,
bauleys,
they're always the first to go.”

Kusum's body had crumpled as she was telling this story, leaving her slumped against Kanai's shoulder, and he could feel her hair on his skin. Her story had caused an upwelling of emotion in him that constricted his throat; he wanted to fold her in his arms, to ward off her grief; he wanted to wipe away her tears; he wanted his body to become a buffer between her and the world. This was the most intense physical sensation he had ever experienced, this need to protect, to defend, to make a bodily expression of his sympathy. He brushed her eyes with his lips and the softness and warmth were such that he could not stop: he put an arm around her and pulled her toward him, pressing his head against hers.