The Hungry Tide (7 page)

Reaching for her belt, Piya unhooked her rangefinder. The instrument had the look of a pair of truncated binoculars, with two eyepieces at one end but only a single Cyclopean lens at the other. She focused this lens on the fishing boat and pressed a button to get a reading of the distance between them. A moment later, to the accompaniment of an exclamatory beep, the instrument posted the answer: 1.1 kilometers.

Piya could not see the fisherman clearly but it seemed to her that he had the grizzled look of an experienced hand: around his chin and mouth was a dusting of white that suggested stubble or a beard. There was some kind of turban wrapped around his head but his body was bare except for a single twist of cloth, wound between his legs and around his waist. His frame was skeletal, almost wasted, in the way of a man who'd grown old on the water, slowly yielding his flesh to the wind and the sun. She had come across many such fishermen on other rivers and they had often been sources of good tips and useful information. She decided it would be well worth her while to take a few minutes to show him her flashcards.

Twice before she had asked for detours, but Mej-da, who was steering, had grown increasingly hostile after the incident with the crocodiles; he had ignored her on both occasions. But this time she was determined to have her way.

Mej-da and the guard were in the boat's glass-fronted wheelhouse, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Stepping away from the bow, she turned to face the two men. Mej-da was at the wheel and he dropped his eyes on her approach — the furtiveness of his manner indicated all too plainly that he had been talking about her.

Pulling out a flashcard, she went to the wheelhouse and positioned herself directly in front of Mej-da. “Stop!” she said, pressing an open palm on the glass. Mej-da's eyes followed her finger to the boat, now clearly visible ahead. “Head over there,” she said. “Toward that boat. I want to see if he recognizes this.” She held up the card in explanation.

The wheelhouse door swung open and the guard stepped out, hitching up his khaki trousers. He made his way across the deck and leaned on the gunwale, shading his eyes. A frown appeared on his face as he squinted at the boat. Spitting into the water, he muttered something to the pilot. There was a quick exchange of words and then Mej-da nodded and spun the wheel. The bow of the launch began to turn in the direction of the boat.

“Good,” said Piya, but the guard ignored her; his attention was now wholly focused on the boat. The intensity of his expression puzzled her; there was a predatory look in his eye that made it hard to believe he was doing this solely out of deference to her wishes.

In the distance the fisherman was standing up to make another cast: the boat had stayed where it was, growing a little larger each time it crossed her line of vision. It was now about half a mile away, and she kept her binoculars trained on it as the launch turned. The fisherman had so far seemed unaware of their presence, but when it became apparent that the launch was changing course he checked himself in the act of casting his net and turned to look in their direction. Suddenly his eyes flared in alarm. She could see them through her glasses, outlined against the darkness of his skin. He turned to one side and his lips seemed to move as though he were speaking to someone. Shifting focus, Piya saw that the fisherman was not alone in the boat, as she had thought: there was a child with him — a nephew or grandson? The boy was sitting crouched in the prow. She guessed it was he who had alerted the fisherman to the launch's approach. He was pointing in their direction and cowering, as though in terror.

Within moments it became clear that both man and boy had taken fright. The man pulled out a pair of oars and began to row furiously while the boy scurried down the length of the boat and hid under the hooped covering at its rear. The boat had been positioned some fifty yards from the mouth of a narrow creek — a distance that could be covered with a few dozen oar strokes. It was toward this opening that they were heading. The forests that lined the creek's banks had been half submerged by the tide, and the boat was small enough to give the launch the slip by heading directly into the mangroves. The water was still at a height where it would carry them deep into the forest in perfect concealment. They would be well hidden and would be able to make an escape.

There was something about the situation that puzzled Piya. On the Irrawaddy and the Mekong too, fishermen had sometimes taken fright at the prospect of being interrogated by strangers, especially when there was a whiff of an official connection. Yet she had never known a fishing boat actually to attempt an escape.

Piya looked to her right. The guard was standing in the bow of the launch now and his rifle was slung over his shoulder. He had fetched it while her attention was fixed on the boat. Suddenly the fisherman's response made sense. Turning on the guard, she stabbed a finger at his gun. “What's that for?” she said. “Why do you need that?” The guard ignored her and she raised her voice: “Put that gun away. It's not necessary.” He waved her away with a brusque gesture and turned to shout something to Mej-da. At once, the pitch of the engine rose and the launch lurched forward, closing in on the boat.

She understood now that the situation, although of her own making, was wholly outside her control and even her comprehension. The one explanation she could think of was that the fisherman had been working in an off-limits area, which might account for this pursuit. Whatever the reason, it was up to her to put a stop to this chase — her work would be in jeopardy if word got out that she was interfering with local people.

Turning to the wheelhouse, she signaled urgently to Mej-da, “Stop! We're not going any further; this is it.” She was about to walk over to him when the guard began to bellow at the boat. The rifle was at his shoulder now, upraised, and he was evidently threatening to open fire.

She was appalled. “What the hell do you think you're doing?” She rushed at him and lunged at his arm, trying to push away the barrel of the gun. He saw her coming and thrust out his elbow. It caught her in the collarbone and sent her reeling back. The display card went flying from her grip as she steadied herself, clutching her shoulder.

The fisherman had stopped rowing now and Mej-da cut the engine as the launch pulled up to the boat. Shouting an order, the guard threw over a rope and the fisherman tethered it to his boat. The child, Piya noticed, was watching everything from his hiding place under the boat's hooped covering.

The guard barked a question that elicited a muttered response from the fisherman. The answer was clearly much to the guard's liking, for he turned to Mej-da and smiled, as if in satisfaction. The two men had a quick exchange of words and then the guard turned to Piya and spat out the word “poacher” in a tone of accusation.

“What?” said Piya. Even if she had been disposed to believe him, this charge would not have been credible. She shook her head dismissively. “He was just fishing — that's all he was doing.”

“Poacher,” the guard said again, pointing his rifle at the fisherman. “Poacher.”

It was all clear to her now: just as she had thought, the fisherman had been casting his net in an off-limits area. He had chosen that spot so he would be able to get away if an official boat came along. He had assumed the launch to be just another tourist boat and hadn't realized until too late that there was an armed forest guard on board. Now he was going to have to pay either a bribe or a fine.

The fisherman was standing wearily upright in the boat, leaning on his oar. The sight of him startled Piya, for it was evident at close quarters that he was not at all the elderly graybeard she had taken him to be — he was about her own age, in his late twenties. His frame was not wasted but very lean and his long, stringy limbs were almost fleshless in their muscularity. Nor was it because of a beard that his chin sported a dusting of white: the flakes were salt crystals, left behind by a long day's deposits of brackish water. His face was narrow and angular and its gauntness seemed to exaggerate the size of his eyes. The cloth tied around his middle was no more than a faded rag and it gave his skeletal frame a look of utter destitution. Yet there was a defiance in his stance, at odds with the seeming defenselessness of his unclothed chest and his protruding bones. He was watching the guard with wary eyes, as though he were trying to reckon exactly how much money he was going to lose. At least a week's earnings, Piya guessed, if not a whole month's.

As if to remind her of her part in the situation, the guard stooped to pick her display card off the deck. He seemed to be in no hurry, now that he had caught up with his prey. Handing her the card, he made a gesture in the direction of the boat, urging her to show it to the fisherman.

Piya could scarcely believe that he was asking her to carry on as if nothing had happened. She drew her hands back, shaking her head. He thrust the card at her again and this time his rifle seemed to move with his arm, as if to prod her in the direction of the fisherman. She shrugged. “All right.” Undoing her equipment belt, she stowed it in her backpack along with her binoculars. Then she picked up the display card and stepped up to the gunwale. The boat was directly below, tethered close to the launch, and the fisherman's face was now on a level with her knee.

On catching sight of her, the fisherman started. His attention had been focused on the guard and he hadn't realized there was a woman on the launch. Her presence seemed to make him suddenly self-conscious. He reached for the cloth tied around his head and yanked it down. It sprang apart and fell open around him, unrolling over his body like a curtain. When he had fastened it at the waist, she saw that the twist of cloth that she had taken to be a turban was, in fact, a rolled-up sarong. There was a consideration in this gesture, an acknowledgment of her presence, that touched her: it seemed like the first normal human contact she had had since stepping on the launch. Despite the strangeness of the circumstances, she was eager to see his response to the pictures.

She lowered herself to one knee and when their heads were level she held out the card. She tried to give him a smile of reassurance but he would not meet her eye. He glanced from the card to her face and raised a hand to point upriver. The gesture was so quick and matter-of-fact that for a moment she thought he had misunderstood. Then she looked into his eyes and he nodded, as if to say, yes, that's where I saw them. But which ones? She thrust the card at him again,
expecting that he would point to the picture of the Gangetic dolphin, the more common of the two species. To her astonishment, his finger dropped to the illustration of the Irrawaddy dolphin, Orcaella
brevirostris
.
He said something in Bengali and held up six fingers.

“Six?” she said. She was very excited now. “You're sure?”

She was interrupted by a child's cry. Looking up, she saw that the guard had taken advantage of her conversation with the fisherman to board the boat. Now he was rifling through the possessions that lay bundled under the hooped covering. The child was cowering against the side of the boat, clutching his hands to his chest. With a sudden lunge, the guard caught hold of the child and pried his hands open: evidently the boy had been trying to conceal a thin wad of banknotes. The guard tore the money from his grip and slipped it into his own pocket. Then he gave the boy a parting slap and climbed back into the launch.

Piya, looking on from above, recalled her own wad of money, stashed in the money belt she was wearing around her waist. She undid the zipper surreptitiously, slipped her hand in and pulled out a handful of notes. Rolling them tight in her palm, she waited until the launch had started up again. When the guard had turned his back, she leaned over the side and stretched her arm toward the fisherman. “Here! Here!” She kept her voice low and it was drowned out by the hammering of the engine. Now a wedge of water had opened up between the boat and the launch, but she felt sure she would be able to throw the money over if only she could climb a little higher. There was a plastic chair nearby and she pushed it to the side of the deck. Then she climbed up, balancing her weight against the gunwale. “Here!” She threw over the money, and accompanied it with a loud hissing sound. This time she succeeded in catching the fisherman's attention and he jumped to his feet in surprise. But the guard had heard her too, and he came barreling across the deck. One of his feet crashed into the chair, throwing her forward, tipping her weight over the gunwale. Suddenly she was falling and the muddy brown water was rushing up to meet her face.

S'DANIEL

O
NE OF THE MANY WAYS
,” said Nirmal, “in which the tide country resembles a desert is that it can trick the eye with mirages. This is what it did to Sir Daniel Hamilton. When this Scotsman looked upon the crab-covered shores of the tide country, he saw not mud but something that shone brighter than gold. ‘Look how much this mud is worth,' he said. ‘A single acre of Bengal's mud yields fifteen maunds of rice. What does a square mile of gold yield? Nothing.'”

Nirmal raised a hand to point to one of the portraits on the wall. “Look,” he said. “That's him, Daniel Hamilton, on the day when he became a knight. After that, his name was forever S'Daniel.”

The picture was of a man in stockings and knee breeches, wearing buckled shoes and a jacket with brass buttons. On his upper lip was a bushy white mustache and at his waist hung something that looked like the hilt of a sword. His eyes stared directly into the viewer's, at once stern and kindly, austere and somewhat eccentric. There was something about his gaze that discomfited Kanai. As if by instinct, he slipped behind his uncle to elude those penetrating eyes.

“S'Daniel's schooling,” Nirmal said, “was in Scotland, which was a harsh and rocky place, cold and unforgiving. In school his teachers taught him that life's most important lesson is ‘labor conquers everything,' even rocks and stones if need be — even mud. As with many of his countrymen, a time came when Daniel Hamilton had to leave his native land to seek his fortune, and what better place to do that than India? He came to Calcutta and joined MacKinnon and McKenzie, a company with which he had a family connection. This company sold tickets for the P and O shipping line, which was then one of the largest in the world. Young Daniel worked hard and sold many, many tickets: first class, second class, third class, steerage. For every ship that sailed from Calcutta there were hundreds of tickets to be sold and only one ticket agent. Soon S'Daniel was the head of the company and master of an immense fortune, one of the richest men in India. He was, in other words, what we call a
monopolikapitalist.
Another man might have taken his money and left — or spent it all on palaces and luxury. But not S'Daniel.”