The Hungry Tide (28 page)

She forced herself to sit up and look out the window. The moon was not up yet and it was dark outside. She could not see much except the outlines of a few coconut palms, and beyond that a striated emptiness that suggested a closely shorn field. Then she caught the sound of a conversation in Bengali, drifting in from the front of the house: a woman's voice in counterpoint to Kanai's deep baritone.

She made herself get up and go downstairs. Kanai was standing by the door with a lantern in his hands, talking to a woman in a red sari. The woman was facing away from her, but at Piya's approach she looked over her shoulder so that one side of her face was suddenly brightened by the glow of Kanai's lantern. Piya saw that she was about her own age, with a full figure, a wide mouth and large, luminous eyes. Between her eyebrows was a big red bindi, and a streak of vermilion
shindur
ran like a wound through the part in her shiny black hair.

“Ah, there you are, Piya!” cried Kanai, in English, and from the overly spirited sound of his voice Piya guessed they had been talking about her. The woman's eyes were steady and clear as they looked her over, and Piya had the distinct impression that she had somehow been recognized and was being assessed. Then, with an abruptness no less unsettling than the frankness of her scrutiny, the woman looked away. Handing Kanai a set of stainless-steel containers, she headed down the steps and vanished into the night-shrouded compound.

“Who was that?” said Piya to Kanai.

“Didn't I tell you?” said Kanai. “That was Moyna, Fokir's wife.”

“Oh?”

Moyna was so unlike the wife she had envisaged for Fokir that it took Piya a moment to absorb this. Presently she added, “I should have guessed.”

“Guessed what?”

“That she was his wife. Her son has her eyes.”

“Does he?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “And what was she doing here?”

“She was delivering this tiffin carrier.” Kanai held up the steel containers. “Our dinner's inside. Moyna's brought it for us from the hospital's kitchen.”

Piya's attention drifted away from Kanai to the woman who was Fokir's wife. She felt a twinge of envy at the thought of her going back to Fokir and Tutul while she returned to the absence upstairs. This embarrassed her and to cover up she smiled at Kanai and said briskly, “She isn't at all like I expected.”

“No?”

“No.” Now again Piya found herself fumbling for the right words. “I mean, she's very attractive, isn't she?”

“You think so?”

Piya knew she should drop the matter, but instead she went on, as if she were picking at a scab. “Yes,” she said. “I think she's quite beautiful, in a way.”

“You're right,” said Kanai smoothly, recovering himself. “She's very striking. But she's more than that: in her own way, she's an unusual and remarkable woman.”

“Really? How?”

“Just think of the life she's led,” said Kanai. “She's struggled to educate herself against heavy odds. Now she's well on her way to becoming a nurse. She knows what she wants — for herself and her family — and nothing is going to keep her from pursuing it. She's ambitious, she's tough, and she's going to go a long way.”

There was an edge to his voice that implied a comparison of some kind and Piya could not help wondering how she herself would fare by these lights — she who'd never had much ambition and had never had to battle her circumstances in order to get her education. In Kanai's eyes, she knew, she must appear hopelessly soft and spoiled, a kind of stereotype. And she could not blame him for seeing her in this way — any more than she could blame herself for seeing him as an example of a certain kind of Indian male, overbearing, vain, self-centered — yet, for all that, not unlikable.

Piya switched to a more neutral subject. “And are Moyna and Fokir from around here? From Lusibari?”

“No,” said Kanai. “Both she and Fokir are from another island, quite a long way off. It's called Satjelia.”

“Then how come they live here?”

“Partly because she's training to be a nurse and partly because she's trying to give her son an education. That's why she was so upset that Fokir had taken him away on this fishing trip of his.”

“Does she know I was on the boat with them these last couple of days?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “She knows all about it — about the guard taking the money, about your fall and about Fokir diving in after you. She knows about the crocodile — the little boy told her everything.”

Piya noted the mention of the boy: did this mean Fokir hadn't said much about the trip, or that he had given Moyna a different account? She wondered if Kanai knew the answer to either of these questions, but she could not bring herself to ask. Instead, she said, “Moyna must be curious about what I'm doing here.”

“She certainly is,” said Kanai. “She asked me about it and I explained you're a scientist. She was very impressed.”

“Why?”

“As you can imagine,” said Kanai, “she has a great respect for education.”

“Did you tell her we're going to visit them tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “They'll be expecting us.”

They were back upstairs now in the Guest House, and Kanai had placed the tiffin carrier on the dining table. “I hope you're hungry,” he said, taking the containers apart. “She always brings too much food so there should be plenty for both of us. Let's see what we have here — there's rice, dal, fish curry, chorchori, begun bhaja. What would you like to start with?”

She gave the containers a look of dubious appraisal. “I hope you won't be offended,” she said, “but I don't think I want any of that. I have to be careful about what I eat.”

“What about some rice, then?” said Kanai. “You could have some of that, couldn't you?”

She nodded. “Yes. I guess I could — if it's just plain white rice.”

“There you are,” he said, ladling a few spoonfuls of rice on her plate. Rolling up his sleeves, he gave her a spoon and then dug into the rice on his own plate with his hands.

During dinner, Kanai talked at length about Lusibari. He told Piya about Daniel Hamilton, the settling of the island and the circumstances that had led to Nirmal and Nilima's arrival. He seemed so knowledgeable that Piya remarked at last, “It sounds like you've spent a lot of time here. But you haven't, have you?”

He was quick to confirm this. “Oh, no. I only came once as a boy. To be honest, I'm surprised by how vividly I still remember the place — especially considering it was a kind of punishment.”

“Why are you surprised?”

He shrugged. “I'm not the kind of person who dwells on the past,” he said. “I like to look ahead.”

“But we're in the present now, aren't we?” she said with a smile. “Even here, in Lusibari?”

“Oh, no,” he said emphatically. “For me Lusibari will always be a part of the past.”

Piya had finished her rice, so she rose from the table and started clearing away the plates. This seemed to fluster Kanai.

“Sit down,” he said. “You can leave those for Moyna.”

“I can do them just as well as she can,” said Piya.

Kanai shrugged. “All right, then.”

As she was rinsing her plate, Piya said, “Here you are, putting me up, feeding me and everything. And I feel like I know nothing about you — beyond your name that is.”

“Is that so?” Kanai gave a startled laugh. “I wonder how that could have happened? I'm not known for being unusually reticent.”

“It's true, though,” she said. “I don't even know where you live.”

“That's easily remedied,” he said. “I live in New Delhi. I'm fortytwo and I'm single most of the time.”

“Oh?” Piya was quick to turn the conversation in a less personal direction. “And you're a translator, right? That's one thing you did tell me.”

“That's right,” said Kanai. “I'm an interpreter and translator by profession — although right now I'm more of a businessman than anything else. I started a company some years ago when I discovered a shortage of language professionals in New Delhi. Now I provide translators for all kinds of organizations: businesses, embassies, the media, aid organizations — in short, anyone who can pay.”

“And is there much of a demand?”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded vigorously. “New Delhi's become one of the world's leading conference cities and media centers; there's always something happening. I can barely keep up. The business just seems to keep growing and growing. Recently we started a speechtraining operation, to do accent modification for people who work in call centers. It's become the fastest-growing part of the business.”

The idea that the currency of language could be used to build a business came as a surprise to Piya. “So I guess you know many languages yourself, right?”

“Six,” he said immediately, with a grin. “Hindi, Urdu and Bengali are my mainstays nowadays. And then there's English, of course. But I have two others I fall back on from time to time: French and Arabic.”

She was intrigued by the odd combination: “French and Arabic! How did you come by those?”

“Scholarships,” he said with a smile. “I always had a head for languages, and as a student I used to frequent the Alliance Française in Calcutta. One thing led to another and I won a
bourse.
While I was in Paris an opportunity turned up to learn Arabic in Tunisia. I seized it and have never looked back.”

Raising a hand, Piya pinched the silver stud in her right ear, in a gesture that was childlike in its unselfconsciousness yet adult in its grace. “Did you know then that translation would be your profession?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Not at all. When I was your age I was like any other Calcutta college student — my mind was full of poetry. At the start of my career I wanted to translate Jibanananda into Arabic, and Adonis into Bangla.”

“And what happened?”

He breathed a theatrical sigh. “To put it briefly,” he said, “I quickly discovered that while both Bengali and Arabic possess riches beyond accounting, in neither is it possible to earn a living by translating literature alone. Rich Arabs have no interest in Bengali poetry, and as for rich Bengalis, it doesn't matter what they want — there aren't enough of them to make a difference anyway. So at a certain point I reconciled myself to my fate and turned my hand to commerce. And I have to say I was lucky to get into it when I did: there's a lot going on in India right now and it's exciting to be a part of it.”

Piya recalled the stories her father had told her about the country he had left: it was a place where there were only two makes of car and where middle-class life was ruled by a hankering for all things foreign. She could tell that the world Kanai inhabited was as distant from the India of her father's memories as it was from Lusibari and the tide country.

“Do you ever feel you might want to translate literature again?” she said.

“Sometimes,” he replied. “But not often. On the whole, I have to admit I like running an office. I like knowing I'm giving people work, paying salaries, employing students with otherwise useless degrees. And let's face it, I like the money and the comfort. New Delhi is a good place for a single man with some money. I get to meet lots of interesting women.”

This took Piya by surprise and for a moment she was not sure how to respond. She was standing at the basin, stacking the dishes she had just washed. She put away the last plate and yawned, raising a hand to cover her mouth.

“Sorry.”

He was immediately solicitous. “You must be tired after everything you've been through.”

“I'm exhausted. I think I have to go to bed.”

“Already?” He forced a smile, although it was clear he was disappointed. “Of course. You've had a long day. Did I tell you that the electricity would be switched off in an hour or so? Be sure to keep a candle with you.”

“I'll be asleep long before that.”

“Good. I hope you get a good night's rest. And if you need anything, just come up and knock: I'll be up on the roof, in my uncle's study.”

STORMS

I
would have gone back to Morichjhãpi the very next week but was prevented by the usual procedures and ceremonies that accompany a schoolmaster's retirement. At the end, however, it was all over and I was officially reckoned a man who had reached the completion of his working life.

A few days later Horen knocked on my study door. “Saar!

“I've just come from the market at Kumirmari,” he said. “I met Kusum there and she insisted I bring her here.”

“Here!” I said with a start. “To Lusibari? But why?”

“To meet with Mashima. The Morichjhãpi people want to ask Mashima for help.”

I understood at once: this too was a part of the settlers' efforts to enlist support. Yet I could have told them that in this instance it was unlikely to bear fruit.

“Horen, you should have stopped Kusum from coming,” I said. “It'll serve no purpose for her to meet with Nilima.”

“I did tell her, Saar. But she insisted.”

“So where is she now?”

“She's downstairs, Saar, waiting to see Mashima. But look who I've brought upstairs.” He stepped aside and I saw now that Fokir had been lurking behind him all this while. “I've got to go to the market, Saar, so I'll just leave him here with you.” With that he went bounding down the stairs, leaving me alone with the five-year-old.

As a schoolteacher I was accustomed to dealing with children in the plural. Never having had a child of my own, I was unused to coping with them in the singular. Now, subjected to the scrutiny of a lone pair of wide-open, five-year-old eyes, I forgot everything I had planned to say. In a near panic I led the boy across the roof and pointed to the Raimangal's mohona.