The Hungry Tide (51 page)

“Why are you waiting?” said Dhona. “Come on, let's go.”

“There's no wood to cook with,” they said. “We need some more.”

Dhona turned to Dukhey when the crew had spoken. “Go and fetch some firewood; there's not enough for these men.”

“Oh, Chachaji,” said Dukhey, “please don't give me this chore. Why not send someone else? I don't want to go ashore. There's no lack of men here: ask another to rise. Why is it me that you must always tyrannize?”

“You've sat on my boat,” said Dhona, “and eaten your fill; yet when I make a request you defy my will? Right in my face you fling this stinging reply: ‘I won't go ashore, I won't even try.' I'm hurt by these insults, this insolence and pride.”

“Chachaji,” said Dukhey, “it's for you to decide. Of your pact with the deva, I'm not unaware. I know that he wants you to leave me right here. While the demon devours me in a tiger's guise, you'll go home rich, carrying this fabulous prize. Back in the village, you'll go to see my mother. ‘What could I do?' you'll say. ‘He met a tiger.' When you first came to our home, what a tale you spun; on the strength of that, she gave you her only son. Your sacred pledge you're now going to dishonor; you'll send me away and be off within the hour. When the news reaches my home, when my mother hears, her life will be over and she'll choke on her tears.”

“You're a sly one,” said Dhona, “an expert in deceit. Getting you to obey is a singular feat. If you know what's best for you, you'll do as I say, or I'll just kick you off — you'll have to go either way.”

“Wasn't it only for this that you brought me along? You knew I'd die while you grew rich and strong. So then why so much slander, why so much abuse? If the tiger takes me, what do you have to lose? Now salaam chacha, I touch your feet,” said Dukhey. “Point me in the right direction, show me the way.”

Raising a finger, Dhona pointed to the forest. Dukhey stepped off, sorrow swelling in his breast. And even as he crossed the deep mud of the banks, back on the boats they were pulling in the planks.

Then, in his heart's silence, Dhona began to say, “Listen, Dokkhin Rai: now I've given you Dukhey. For the wrongs of the past, deva please forgive me. I wash my hands; now it's all up to Bon Bibi.”

Away they sailed, and when the boy saw that they'd left, he could move no more; he was utterly bereft. It was then from afar that the demon saw Dukhey. Dhona had kept his word; he had left him his prey. Long had he hungered for this muchawaited prize; in an instant he assumed his tiger disguise. “How long has it been since human flesh came my way? Now bliss awaits me in the shape of this boy Dukhey.”

On the far mudbank Dukhey caught sight of the beast: “That tiger is the demon and I'm to be his feast.”

Raising its head, the tiger reared its immense back; its jowls filled like sails as it sprang to attack. The boy's life took wing on seeing this fearsome sight. “O Ma, Bon Bibi, deliver me from this plight. Where are you O Mother? Why're you keeping away? If you don't come now, it'll mean the end for Dukhey.”

With these words on his lips, Dukhey lost consciousness. But Bon Bibi, far away, had heard his cry of distress. “I heard the child call,” she said to Shah Jongoli. “The demon will kill him, brother. Quick, come with me. That devil's desires have outrun him of late; his appetites have grown, they're like a flood in spate. We can't let the boy vanish into that vast maw.” In the blink of an eye they crossed to the far shore.

When Bon Bibi saw Dukhey lying motionless, she took him to her lap with a gentle caress. There lay his body, unmoving and dust-defiled, while the world's mother strove to rouse the inert child. Then Shah Jongoli knelt beside Dukhey's still form, and breathed life into him with the
ism-e-aazam.

Roused to anger, Bibi spoke to Shah Jongoli, “It's time to cure this demon of his deviltry. Brother, strike him a blow that will fill him with dread.”

Picking up his staff, Shah Jongoli ran ahead. So eager was he to carry out his command that he struck the tiger with the flat of his hand. The demon reeled, so great was the force of the blow, and in panic fled south as fast as he could go.

WHEN SHE REACHED
the end, Piya went to sit in the middle of the boat, and before long Fokir came to sit beside her, as she knew he would. His hands were on the gunwale, so she put her palm on his wrist. “Sing,” she said. “Bon Bibi — Dukhey — Dokkhin Rai. Sing.”

He hesistated momentarily before yielding to her plea. Tilting back his head, he began to chant, and suddenly the language and the music were all around her, flowing like a river, and all of it made sense; she understood it all. Although the sound of the voice was Fokir's, the meaning was Kanai's, and in the depths of her heart she knew she would always be torn between the one and the other.

She turned over the last sheet in the sheaf of pages Kanai had given her and saw a postscript on the back. It said, “And in case you should wonder about the value of this, here is what Rilke says.”

Look, we don't love like flowers

with only one season behind us; when we love,

a sap older than memory rises in our arms. O girl,

it's like this: inside us we haven't loved just some one

in the future, but a fermenting tribe; not just one

child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins

of mountains, the dry riverbed

of former mothers, yes, and all that

soundless landscape under its clouded

or clear destiny — girl, all this came before you.

FRESH WATER AND SALT

T
HE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
was such that Kanai had to get up and open the door of his cabin to let in some air. Returning to his bunk, he left the door ajar, and found that the gap had given him a view of a slice of the surroundings. The moon was bright enough to eke shadows from the trees on Garjontola, creating dark patches on the silvery surface of the water. A wedge of moonlight had even crept into the cabin, illuminating the heap of mud-soaked clothes Kanai had discarded the day before.

Sleep was slow in coming and what there was of it was anything but restful: time and again Kanai was shaken awake by his dreams. At four in the morning he gave up the struggle and got out of his bunk. Pulling his lungi tight around his waist, he stepped out on deck and found, to his surprise, that Horen was already seated there, on one of the two armchairs. He was watching the river with his chin resting on his fists. At Kanai's approach he raised his head and glanced over his shoulder. “So you couldn't sleep either?” he said.

“No,” Kanai replied, taking the other chair. “And how long have you been up?”

“About an hour.”

“Were you watching for the boat?”

Horen made a rumbling noise at the back of his throat. “Maybe.”

“But is there enough light right now?” Kanai said. “Could they find their way back at this time of night?”

“Look at the moon,” said Horen. “It's so bright tonight. Fokir knows these khals better than anybody else. He could find his way back — if he wanted to, that is.”

Kanai could not immediately unravel the suggestion implicit in this. “What do you mean by that, Horen-da?”

“Maybe he doesn't want to come back tonight.” Horen looked him full in the eyes and his face creased into a slow, wide smile. “Kanai-babu,” he said, “you've seen so many places and done so many things. Do you mean to tell me you don't understand what it is for a man to be in love?”

The question struck Kanai with the force of a blow to the chest — not just because he could not summon an immediate answer, but also because it seemed so out of character, so strangely fanciful, coming from a man like Horen.

“Do you think that's what it is?” Kanai said.

Horen laughed. “Kanai-babu, are you just pretending to be blind? Or is it just that you cannot believe that an unlettered man like Fokir could be in love?”

Kanai bridled at this. “Why should you say that, Horen-da? And why should I believe any such thing?”

“Because you wouldn't be the first,” Horen said quietly. “It was the same with your uncle, you know.”

“Nirmal? Saar?”

“Yes, Kanai-babu,” Horen said. “That night when he and I landed on Morichjhãpi in my boat? Do you really think it was just the storm that blew us there?”

“Then?”

“Kanai-babu, as you know, Kusum and I were from the same village. She was six or seven years younger than me and when I was married off she was still a child. I was fourteen at the time and had no say in the matter — as you know, these things are often decided by the elders. But Kusum's father I knew well because I sometimes worked on his boat. I was with him on his last trip, and I was standing on the bãdh with Kusum at the time he was killed. After that, I felt I had a special obligation to Kusum and her mother, even though there was little I could do for them. I was young, barely twenty, and I had a wife and children of my own. I knew things had become very bad for them when her mother told me she had approached Dilip to find her a job. I tried to warn her; I tried to tell her about the kind of job he would find for her. She wouldn't listen to me, of course — she knew so little of the world that these things were beyond her imagining. But after she left, I felt that Kusum was more than ever my responsibility. That was why I brought her to your aunt, in Lusibari. But when it became clear that even this would not be enough to protect Kusum from Dilip, I helped her get away — from Lusibari, from the tide country. I thought I was protecting Kusum, but she was, in her own way, much stronger than me: she did not need my protection or anyone else's. This I discovered on the day I took her to the station at Canning, so she could go to look for her mother. Once we got there, I realized I might never see her again. I told her not to go; I begged her to stay. I feared for her safety, a girl wandering so far afield alone. I told her I would leave my wife, my children; I said I would live with her and marry her. But she wouldn't hear of it. She was determined to do what she wanted and so she did. To this day, I remember the sight of her as I put her on the train. She was still wearing a frock and her hair had not grown out yet. She looked more like a child than a grown woman. The train vanished, but that image stayed in my heart.

“Eight years went by and then we began to hear rumors about refugees coming to lay claim to Morichjhãpi. People said Kusum was with them, that she had returned from the mainland as a widow and had brought her son with her. I found out where she was living and two or three times rowed past her house in my boat, but I could not summon the courage to go in. That day when I took your uncle to Kumirmari, all I could think of was Kusum and how close she was. And then, on the way back, the storm came up, as if it had been willed by none other than Bon Bibi.

“And from that day on, I could not stop going to Morichjhãpi.

Your uncle became my excuse for going there, just as I became his. I saw that he, like me, could not stop thinking of her: she had entered his blood just as she had mine. At her name he would come alive, his step would change, words would come pouring out of him. He was a man of many words, your uncle — and I had very few. I knew he was wooing her with his stories and tales — I had nothing to give her but my presence, but in the end it was me she chose.

“The night before the killing, Kanai-babu, while your uncle was writing his last words in his notebook, Kusum said to me, ‘Give him some more time. Come, let's go outside.' She led me to my boat and there she gave me proof of her love — all that a man might need. It was high tide and the boat, which I had hidden among the mangroves, was rocking gently in the water. We climbed in and I wiped the mud from her ankles with my gamchha. Then she took my feet between her hands and washed them clean. It was as if the barriers of our bodies had melted and we had flowed into each other as the river does with the sea. There was nothing to say and nothing to be said; there were no words to chafe upon our senses: just an intermingling like that of fresh water and salt, a rising and a falling as of the tides.”

HORIZONS

A
T DAYBREAK,
when Piya woke, her face and hair were wet with dew, but the water's surface was almost completely clear of fog. She guessed this had something to do with the unusually warm night and was pleased to notice that a brisk breeze had started up and was stirring the river: it looked as though the weather would be somewhat more pleasant than it had been the day before.

Fokir was still asleep, so she lay motionless in her place, taking in the sounds of the early morning: the hooting of a distant bird, the rustle of the wind blowing through the mangroves and the lapping of the swift currents of high tide. As her ears grew attuned to her surroundings, she became aware of a sound that did not fit with the rest — a brief, breathy noise not unlike a sigh. It sounded like an exhalation, and yet it was not at all like the breathing of an Irrawaddy dolphin. She turned over onto her stomach and reached for her binoculars: her instincts told her it had to be a Gangetic dolphin,
Platanista
gangetica
.
Moments later she spotted a finless back rolling through the water some five hundred feet from the boat's bow. Yes, that was what it was; she was excited to have her intuition so quickly confirmed. Nor was it just a single animal: there were maybe three of them in the immediate vicinity of the boat.

Piya sat up. So far the paucity of her encounters with Platanista had disappointed her — this sighting was an unexpected bonus. She took a GPS reading and then reached into her backpack for some data sheets.

It was the data sheets that made her suspect something was amiss. Logging the dolphins' appearances, she saw that they were surfacing with unusual frequency, with barely a minute or two separating their exhalations. And more than once, along with the breathing, she heard a sound not unlike a squeal.