The Hungry Tide (40 page)

He thought about this for a minute. “There's no moon tonight,” he said. “It might be possible. We can try.”

We set off as night was approaching and took along a fair quantity of food and fresh water. Soon it was dark and I could see nothing, but somehow Horen kept our boat moving. We went slowly, staying close to the banks, and spoke in low voices.

“Where are we now, Horen?” I said.

He
kne
w
ou
r
positio
n
exactly
.
“We'v
e
lef
t
th
e
Gãra
l
an
d
we'r
e
slippin
g
int
o
th
e
Jhilla
.
We'r
e
no
t
fa
r
now
;
soo
n
you'l
l
se
e
th
e
polic
e
boats.
”
An
d
withi
n a
fe
w
minute
s
w
e
sa
w
them
,
roarin
g
by
,
sweepin
g
th
e
rive
r
wit
h
thei
r
searchlights
:
firs
t
one
,
the
n
another
,
the
n
another
.
Fo
r a
whil
e
w
e
hi
d
clos
e
t
o
th
e
riverbank
,
an
d
Hore
n
gauge
d
th
e
interval
s
betwee
n
th
e
passag
e
o
f
th
e patrol
boats
.
The
n
w
e
cas
t
of
f
again
,
an
d
sur
e
enough
,
b
y
startin
g
an
d
stoppin
g
betwee
n
th
e
patrol
s
w
e
wer
e
abl
e
t
o
sli
p
throug
h
th
e
cordon
.

“We're there,” said Horen as the boat thrust its nose into the mud. “This is Morichjhãpi.” Between the two of us, we dragged the boat deep into the mangroves, where it couldn't be seen from the water. The police had already sunk all the settlers' boats, Horen told me. We took care to hide ours well and then, picking up the food and water we had brought, made our way quietly along the shore until we came to Kusum's dwelling.

We were amazed to find her still in good spirits. We spent the rest of the night trying to persuade her to leave, but she paid no heed.

“Where will I go?” she said simply. “There's no other place I want to be.”

We told her about the rumors, the men gathering in the surrounding villages, preparing for the impending assault. Horen had seen them; they had come by the busload. “What will they do?” she said. “There are still more than ten thousand of us here. It's just a question of keeping faith.”

“But what about Fokir?” I said. “Suppose something happens? What will become of him?”

“Yes.” Horen added his voice to mine. “If you won't leave, let me take him away for a few days. After things settle down, I'll bring him back.”

It was clear she had already thought about this. “All right,” she said. “That's how we'll do it, then: Take Fokir back with you. Keep him with you in Satjelia for a few days. When this wind passes, bring him back.”

By this time day had broken and it was too late to leave. “We'll have to wait till tonight,” Horen said, “so that we can slip past the police boats in the dark.”

It was time now for me to spring my surprise. “Horen,” I said. “I am staying . . .”

They were amazed and disbelieving: they kept asking me why I wished to remain, but I evaded their questions. There was so much I could have told them: about the medicines that awaited me in Lusibari, about Nilima's conversation with the doctor, about the emptiness of the days I had spent in my study. But none of that seemed of the least importance. The truth was that my reason for staying was very simple. I took out this notebook and said, “I have to stay because there's something I must write.”

I
a
m
ou
t
o
f
time
.
Th
e
candl
e
i
s
spluttering
;
m
y
penci
l
i
s
wor
n
t
o a
stub
. I
ca
n
hea
r
thei
r
footstep
s
approaching
;
the
y
seem
,
strangely
,
t
o
b
e
laughin
g
a
s
the
y
come
.
Hore
n
wil
l
wan
t
t
o
leav
e
immediately
, I
know
,
fo
r
daybrea
k
i
s
no
t
fa
r
now
. I
hadn'
t
though
t
I'
d
b
e
abl
e
t
o
fil
l
thi
s
whol
e
notebook
,
bu
t
tha
t
i
s what I
hav
e
done
.
I
t
serve
s
n
o
purpos
e
fo
r
m
e
t
o
kee
p
i
t
here
: I
wil
l
han
d
i
t
t
o
Hore
n
i
n
th
e
hop
e
i
t
find
s
it
s
wa
y
t
o
you
,
Kanai
. I
fee
l
certai
n
yo
u
wil
l
hav
e a
greate
r
clai
m
t
o
th
e
world'
s
ea
r
tha
n I
eve
r
had
.
Mayb
e
yo
u
wil
l
kno
w
wha
t
t
o
d
o
wit
h
it
. I
hav
e
alway
s
truste
d
th
e
young
.
You
r
generatio
n
will
, I
know
,
b
e
riche
r
i
n
ideals
,
les
s
cynical
,
les
s
selfis
h
tha
n
mine
.

They have come in now and I see their faces in the candlelight. In their smiles I see the Poet's lines:

Look, I'm alive. On what? Neither childhood nor the future grows less . . . More being than I'll ever need springs up in my heart.

KANAI FOUND THAT
his hands were shaking as he put down the notebook. The lamp had filled the cabin with kerosene fumes; he felt he was stifling. Picking a blanket off the bunk, he wrapped it around his shoulders and stepped out into the gangway. The sharp smell of a bidi came to his nose and he looked to his left, toward the bow.

Horen was seated there in one of the two armchairs. He was smoking with his feet up on the gunwale. He looked around as Kanai closed the door of his cabin.

“Still up?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “I just finished reading my uncle's notebook.”

Horen acknowledged this with an indifferent grunt.

Kanai seated himself in the adjoining chair. “It ends with you taking Fokir away in your boat.”

Horen angled his gaze downward, into the water, as if he were looking into the past. “We should have left a little earlier,” he said matter-of-factly. “We would have had the currents behind us.”

“And what happened in Morichjhãpi after that? Do you know?”

Horen sucked on the end of his bidi. “I know no more than anyone else knows. It was all just rumor.”

“And what were the rumors?”

A wisp of smoke curled out of Horen's nose. “What we heard,” he said, “was that the assault began the next day. The gangsters who'd been assembling around the island were carried over in boats and dinghies and bhotbhotis. They burnt the settlers' huts, they sank their boats, they laid waste to their fields.” He grunted in his laconic way. “Whatever you can imagine them doing, they did.”

“And Kusum and my uncle? What happened to them?”

“No one knows for sure, but what I've heard is that a group of women were taken away by force, Kusum among them. People say they were used and then thrown into the rivers, so they would be washed away by the tides. Dozens of settlers were killed that day. The sea claimed them all.”

“And my uncle?”

“He was put on a bus with the other refugees. They were to be sent back to the place they had come from — in Madhya Pradesh or wherever it was. But at some point they must have let him off because he found his way back to Canning.”

Here Horen broke off and proceeded to search his pockets with much fumbling and many muttered curses. By the time he'd found and lit another bidi it had become clear to Kanai that he was trying to create a diversion so as to lead the conversation away from Nirmal and Kusum. Kanai was not surprised when he said, in a comfortably affable tone, “What time do you want to leave tomorrow morning?”

Kanai decided he would not let him change the subject. “Tell me something, Horen-da,” he said, “about my uncle. You were the one who took him to Morichjhãpi. Why do you think he got so involved with that place?”

“Same as anyone else,” Horen said with a shrug.

“But after all, Kusum and Fokir were your relatives,” Kanai said. “So it's understandable that you were concerned about them. But what about Saar? Why did it mean so much to him?”

Horen pulled on his bidi. “Your uncle was a very unusual man,” he said at last. “People say he was mad. As we say, you can't explain what a madman will do, any more than you can account for what a goat will eat.”

“But tell me this, Horen-da,” Kanai persisted. “Do you think it possible he was in love with Kusum?”

Horen rose to his feet and snorted in such a way as to indicate that he had been goaded beyond toleration. “Kanai-babu,” he said in a sharp, irritated voice, “I'm an unlettered man. You're talking about things city people think about. I don't have time for such things.”

He flicked his bidi away and they heard it hiss as it hit the water. “You'd better go to sleep now,” Horen said. “We'll make an early start tomorrow.”

A POST OFFICE ON SUNDAY

P
IYA HAD GONE
to bed too early and around midnight found herself wide awake, sitting up in her bunk. She spent a few minutes trying to drift off again and then gave up. Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she stepped out on deck. The light of the waxing moon was so bright that she stood still for a moment, blinking. Then she saw, to her surprise, that Kanai was outside too. He was reading by the light of a small kerosene lantern. Piya went forward and slipped into the other chair. “You're up late,” she said. “Is that your uncle's notebook you're reading?”

“Yes. I finished it, actually. I was just looking it over again.”

“Can I have a look?”

“Certainly.”

Kanai closed the book and held it out to her. She took the notebook gingerly and allowed it to fall open.

“The writing's very small,” she said.

“Yes,” said Kanai. “It's not easy to read.”

“And is it all in Bengali?”

“Yes.”

She closed the book carefully and handed it back to Kanai. “So what's it about?”

Kanai scratched his head as he wondered how best to describe the notebook. “It's about all kinds of things: places, people —”

“Anyone you know?”

“Yes. Actually, Fokir's mother figures in it a lot. Fokir too — though Nirmal only knew him when he was very small.”

Piya's eyes widened. “Fokir and his mother? How come they're in it?”

“I told you, didn't I, that Kusum, Fokir's mother, was involved in an effort to resettle one of these islands?”

“Yes, you did.”

Kanai smiled. “I think, without knowing it, he may have been half in love with Kusum.”

“Does he say so in the book?”

“No,” said Kanai. “But then he wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Being what he was,” Kanai said, “a man of his time and place, with his convictions — he'd have thought it frivolous.”

Piya ran her fingers through her short, curly hair. “I don't get it,” she said. “What were his convictions?”

Kanai leaned back in his chair as he thought this over. “He was a radical at one time,” he said. “In fact, if you were to ask my aunt Nilima, she would tell you that the reason he got mixed up with the settlers in Morichjhãpi was because he couldn't let go of the idea of revolution.”

“I take it you don't agree with her?”

“No,” said Kanai. “I think she's wrong. As I see it, Nirmal was possessed more by words than by politics. There are people who live through poetry, and he was one of them. For Nilima, a person like that is very hard to understand — but that's the kind of man Nirmal was. He loved the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, a great German poet, whose work has been translated into Bangla by some of our own best-known poets. Rilke said ‘life is lived in transformation,' and I think Nirmal soaked this idea into himself in the way cloth absorbs ink. To him, what Kusum stood for was the embodiment of Rilke's idea of transformation.”