The Hungry Tide (6 page)

The laughter that followed this performance sharpened her doubts about this pair. It was not that she was unused to the company of watchers and minders. The year before, while surveying on the Irrawaddy she had been forced — “advised” was the government's euphemism — to take on three extra men. They were identically dressed, the three men, in knit golf shirts and checkered sarongs, and they had all sported steel-rimmed aviator sunglasses. She had heard later that they were from military intelligence, government spies, but she had never felt any unease around them, nor any sense of personal threat. Besides, she had always felt herself to be protected by the sheer matter-of-factness of what she did: the long hours of standing in unsteady boats, under blazing skies, scanning the water's surface with her binoculars, taking breaks only to fill in half-hourly data sheets. She had not realized then that on the Irrawaddy, as on the Mekong and the Mahakam, she had also been protected by her unmistakable foreignness. It was written all over her face, her black, close-cropped hair, the sun-darkened tint of her skin. It was ironic that here — in a place where she felt even more a stranger than elsewhere — her appearance had robbed her of that protection. Would these men have adopted the same attitude if she had been, say, a white European, or Japanese? She doubted it. Nor for that matter would they have dared to behave similarly with her Kolkata cousins, who wielded the insignia of their upper-middleclass upbringing like laser-guided weaponry. They would have known how to deploy those armaments against men like these and they would have called it “putting them in their place.” But as for herself, she had no more idea of what her own place was in the great scheme of things than she did of theirs — and it was exactly this, she knew, that had occasioned their behavior.

LUSIBARI

T
HE TIDE WAS RUNNING
low when the Trust's launch brought Kanai and Nilima to Lusibari and this seemed to augment the height of the tall embankment that ringed the island: from the water nothing could be seen of what lay on the far side. But on climbing the earthworks Kanai found himself looking down on Lusibari village and suddenly it was as if his memory had rolled out a map so that the whole island lay spread out before his eyes.

Lusibari was about a mile and a quarter long from end to end, and was shaped somewhat like a conch shell. It was the most southerly of the inhabited islands of the tide country — in the thirty miles of mangrove that separated it from the open sea, there was no other settlement to be found. Although there were many other islands nearby, Lusibari was cut off from these by four encircling rivers. Of these rivers two were of medium size, while the third was so modest as almost to melt into the mud at low tide. But the pointed end of the island — the narrowest spiral of the conch — jutted into a river that was one of the mightiest in the tide country, the Raimangal.

Seen from Lusibari at high tide, the Raimangal did not look like a river at all: it looked more like a limb of the sea, a bay perhaps, or a very wide estuary. Five other channels flowed into the river here, forming an immense mohona. At low tide, the mouths of the other rivers were clearly visible in the distance — gigantic portals piercing the ring of green galleries that encircled the mohona. But Kanai knew that once the tide turned everything would disappear: the rising waters of the mohona would swallow up the jungle as well as the rivers and their openings. If it were not for the tips of a few kewra trees you would think you were gazing at a body of water that reached beyond the horizon. Depending on the level of the tide, he remembered, the view was either exhilarating or terrifying. At low tide, when the embankment, or
bãdh,
was riding high on the water, Lusibari looked like some gigantic earthen ark, floating serenely above its surroundings. Only at high tide was it evident that the interior of the island lay well below the level of the water. At such times the unsinkable ship of a few hours before took on the appearance of a flimsy saucer that could tip over at any moment and go circling down into the depths.

From the narrow end of the island a mudbank extended a long way into the water. This spit was like a terrestrial windsock, changing direction with the prevailing currents. But just as a windsock can generally be counted on to remain attached to its mast, the mudbank too was doggedly tenacious in keeping a hold on the island. It formed a natural pier and that was where ferries and boats usually unloaded their passengers. There were no docks or jetties on Lusibari, for the currents and tides that flowed around it were too powerful to permit the construction of permanent structures.

The island's main village — also known as Lusibari — was situated close to the base of the mudspit, in the lee of the embankment. A newcomer, looking down at Lusibari from the crest of the bãdh, would see a village that seemed at first glance no different from thousands of others in Bengal: a tightly packed settlement of palmthatched huts and bamboo-walled stalls and shacks. But a closer examination would reveal a different and far from commonplace design.

At the center of the village was a maidan, an open space not quite geometrical enough to be termed a square. At one end of this ragged-edged maidan was a marketplace, a jumble of stalls that lay unused through most of the week, coming alive only on Saturday, which was the market day. At the other end of the maidan, dominating the village, stood a school. This was the building that was chiefly responsible for endowing the village with an element of visual surprise. Although not large, it loomed like a cathedral over the shacks, huts and shanties that surrounded it. Outlined in brick over the keystone of the main entrance were the school's name and the date of its completion:
SIR DANIEL HAMILTON HIGH SCHOOL 1938.
The façade consisted of a long shaded veranda, equipped with fluted columns, neoclassical pediments, vaguely Saracenic arches and other such elements of the schoolhouse architecture of its time. The rooms were large and airy, with tall shuttered windows.

Not far from the school lay a compound cut off from public view by a screen of trees. The house that occupied the center of this compound was much smaller and less visible than the school. Yet its appearance was, if anything, even more arresting. Built entirely of wood, it stood on a six-foot trestle of stilts, as if to suggest it belonged more in the Himalayas than in the tide country. The roof was a steeply pitched wooden pyramid, sitting on a grid of symmetrical lines: stilts and columns, windows and balustrades. Rows of French windows were set into the walls and their floor-to-ceiling shutters opened onto a shaded veranda that ran all the way around the house. In front there was a lily-covered pond, skirted by a pathway of mossy bricks.

In 1970, Kanai recalled, this compound had seemed lonely and secluded. Although it was situated in the center of the settlement there were few other dwellings nearby. It was as though some lingering attitude of deference or respect had prompted the islanders to keep their distance from that wooden house. But that had changed now. It was clear at a glance that the area was among the most heavily trafficked on the whole island. Clusters of huts, houses, stalls, sweetshops and the like had grown up around the compound. The lanes that snaked around its perimeter echoed to the sound of
filmi
music and the air was heavy with the smell of freshly fried
jilipis.

Kanai glanced over his shoulder and saw that Nilima was busy discussing Trust business with a couple of officeholders of the Women's Union. Slipping away, he pushed open the compound's gate and went hurrying up the mossy pathway that led to the house. To his surprise, none of the noise and bustle of the village seemed to filter into the compound and for a moment he felt as though he were stepping through a warp in time. The house seemed at once very old and very new. The wood, discolored by the sun and rain, had acquired a silvery patina, like certain kinds of bark; it reflected the light in such a way as to appear almost translucent, like a skin of mirrored metal. It seemed now to be almost blue in color, reflecting the tint of the sky.

On reaching the stilts, Kanai stopped to peer at the dappled underside of the house — the geometric pattern of shadows was exactly as he remembered. He went up the steps and was starting toward the front door when he heard his uncle's voice, echoing back from the past.

“You can't go in that way,” Nirmal was saying. “Don't you remember? The key to the front door was lost years ago. We'll have to go all the way around.”

Retracing the steps of that earlier visit, Kanai went down the veranda, around the corner of the balcony and along the next wing until he came to a small door at the rear of the house. The door opened at a touch and, on stepping in, the first object to meet his eyes was an old-fashioned porcelain toilet with a wooden seat. Next to it was an enormous cast-iron bathtub with clawed feet and a curling rim. A showerhead bowed over it, like a flower drooping on a wilted stem.

The fittings seemed somewhat more rusty since he had first seen them, but they were otherwise unchanged. Kanai remembered how eagerly, as a boy, he'd taken them in. Since coming to Lusibari he'd had to bathe in a pond, just as Nirmal and Nilima did — he'd longed to step under that shower.

“This is a
shahebi choubachcha,
a white man's tank,” Nirmal had said, pointing to the bathtub. “
Shahebs
use them to bathe in.”

Kanai remembered that he had been struck by the aptness of the description while also being offended at being spoken to as if he were a yokel who'd never seen such things. “I know what that is,” he had said. “It's a bathtub.”

A door led out from the bathroom into the interior of the house. Pushing it open, Kanai found himself in a cavernous, wood-paneled room. Clouds of dust hung, as if frozen, in the angled shafts of light admitted by the louvered shutters. A huge iron bedstead stood marooned in the middle of the floor, like the remains of a drowned atoll. On the walls there were fading portraits in heavy frames; the pictures were of
memsahibs
in long dresses and men in knee-length breeches.

Kanai came to a stop in front of a portrait of a young woman in a lacy dress, sitting on a grassy moor dotted with yellow wildflowers. In the background were steep slopes covered with purple gorse and mountains flecked with snow. A grimy copper plate beneath the picture said,
LUCY MCKAY HAMILTON, ISLE OF ARRAN.

“Who was she?” Kanai could hear his voice echoing back from the past. “Who was this Lucy Hamilton?”

“She's the woman from whom this island takes its name.”

“Did she live here? In this house?”

“No. She was on her way here from the far end of Europe when her ship capsized. She never got to see the house but because it had been built for her, people used to call it
Lusi'r-bari.
Then this was shortened to Lusibari and that was how the island took this name. But even though this house was the original Lusibari, people stopped calling it that. Now everyone speaks of it as the Hamilton House.”

“Why?”

“Because it was built by Sir Daniel MacKinnon Hamilton, Lucy's uncle. Haven't you seen his name on the school?”

“And who was he?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. Listen.” The knob-knuckled finger rose to point to the heavens. “Now that you've asked you'll have to listen. And pay attention, for all of this is true.”

THE FALL

T
HE DAY WAS
coming to an end when a distant fishing boat drew a scratch across Piya's line of vision, interrupting the rhythm of her vigil. At first it was no more than a pinpoint on the lens of her binoculars, a stationary speck, anchored on the far side of a confluence of many rivers. After a while, when the dot had grown a little, Piya saw that it represented a small canoe-like craft with a hooped covering at the rear. There seemed to be only one fisherman on board. He was going through the motions of casting a net, standing upright to make his throw and stooping to pull his catch in.

Piya had now spent three hours in her “on effort” position, in the bow of the launch. With her binoculars fitted to her eyes, she had scanned the water, waiting for a flash of black or gray to break through the dun surface. But so far her vigil had gone unrewarded: she had had no sightings all afternoon, not one. There had been one hopeful moment but it had ended with a glimpse of a gliding stingray, shooting into the air with its tail trailing behind it like the string of a kite. Soon afterward there was another false alarm. Mej-da had come running up in great excitement, pointing and gesticulating, giving her the impression that he had seen a dolphin. But it turned out that his attention had been caught by a group of crocodiles that were sunning themselves on a mudbank. Mej-da's motives for bringing them to her notice were made evident when he rubbed his fingers together to let her know that he deserved a tip. This had annoyed her and she had brushed him off with a peremptory gesture.

She had spotted the crocodiles long before him of course — she had seen them when they were a mile or so away. There were four of them, and they were huge: from tip to tail, the largest of them was probably about the same length as the launch. She had wondered what it would be like to encounter one of these monsters up close, and the thought had prompted an involuntary shudder.

But this was all. She had seen nothing else of note. Even though she hadn't known what to expect, she had not foreseen as complete a blank as this. That these waters had once contained large numbers of dolphins was known beyond a doubt. Several nineteenth-century zoologists had testified to it. The “discoverer” of the Gangetic dolphin, William Roxburgh, had said explicitly that the fresh-water dolphins of the Ganges delighted in the “labyrinth of rivers and creeks to the South and South-East of Calcutta.” This was exactly where she was and yet, after hours of careful surveillance she had still to spot her first dolphin. Nor had she seen many fishermen: Piya had been hoping that the trip would yield a few encounters with knowledgeable boat people but such opportunities had been scarce today. She had seen many overcrowded ferries and steamers but very few fishing boats — so few as to suggest that the area was off-limits for fishing. The canoe-like craft in the distance was the first boat she had seen in a long time and it was clear the launch would pass within a couple of hundred yards of it. She began to wonder if it was worth a detour.