by Neil Grant
‘Many years later when I was a grown woman living with your grandfather, I heard once again about my island. Baghchara had vanished. They said the rising sea had taken it. But I think the island tilted and fell into the water because it was weighed down by all its sorrow.’ She pulls a comical sad face as if to make light of her comment.
‘It is a funny thing, Rudra, to have the place you were born vanish from this earth. How can I ever go back?’ Didima pauses, pulling her bedsheets up under her chin. ‘Have you heard of the poet Rumi?’
‘Is he Indian?’
‘He was from a place in long-ago Afghanistan. His family fled from Genghis Khan and he ended up in what is now known as Turkey. He longed every day for his homeland. It was like a burning seed inside him. He wrote this poem called “The Reed Flute’s Song”. Let me see if I can remember it for you.’
She clears her throat, and blinks as if trying to rid her eyes of smoke.
‘Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated.
Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.
Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.
Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.’
Poetry makes Rudra uncomfortable. There is too much flower and sugar involved, too much earnestness. He escapes the void left by the poem by saying, ‘You told me I should take your ashes to your island after you die. That’s going to be tricky if it’s not there.’
Didima tilts her head as if considering it for a moment. Then she pulls her pillow from behind her, looking at it as if it is a stranger. Her eyes seem damp. ‘We are made from the soil of our birthplace, Rudra. It is there we must return when everything else is done.’
‘Why did you come here, Didima? Why did you leave India behind?’
‘Because I needed to see with my own eyes my strong grandson. I needed to see my daughter. And I needed to tell you things.’
‘What things?’
‘About where you are from – the soil that makes you too.’
‘But I am from here, Didima. I am Australian.’ There is something a little too shrill about those last words.
‘You are also from India, from the Sundarbans.’
‘I don’t feel anything when you talk about it.’
‘That makes me sad, Rudra.’
Rudra looks at his hands – his mother’s fine pink nails there at the end of his father’s fingers. ‘How long does it take to belong? I was born in this place, Didima. Cord is Australian.’
‘When I left Baghchara, I lived for many years in a place that never became my own.’
‘But I was born in Australia and I don’t feel Indian.’
‘But it is most definitely part of who you are, Rudra. You have Sundarbans mud inside you – the soil and the sea.’ She smiles and pats his hand. ‘Maybe you can be both Australian and Indian.’ She says it as if to placate him. ‘Just maybe it is possible.’
12
RUDRA FINDS HIS MOTHER AT THE kitchen table. She tries to hide the bills and the tears.
‘What’s the matter, Mum?’
‘Nothing, Rudra, it’s okay.’
‘I’m not a child anymore and I’m not stupid.’
She looks at him and nods. ‘You’re right. When did that happen?’
‘Me not being stupid?’
She slaps his forearm. ‘You becoming a man.’
Rudra shrugs and, getting a milk carton from the fridge, takes a long drink.
‘Rudra! How many times have I told you – fetch a glass! And so much milk is not good for you. You are not a calf.’
‘Tell me what’s going on, Mum.’
‘Oh, Rudra, where to start?’ She picks up the bills and drops them back to the table. ‘The bank will take the boat soon. Then it will come after the house. I am working all the shifts they will give me at the restaurant but still it is not enough.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘We have to go to Sydney this afternoon. As soon as your dad gets back from fishing. There’s a finance company who will take on our debt.’
‘That sounds alright.’
‘Then they will own the boat. And we will be their servants.’
‘Dad’ll never go for that.’
‘He has to, Rudra. He has no choice.’
Rudra puts the empty carton back in the fridge. ‘I’ll leave school and get a job.’
‘It’s not going to help. This is too much money.’
‘So we just let someone take our boat and house and we become their slaves?’
‘Servants, Rudra. There is a difference.’
‘Whatever. We’ve been fishermen forever. Grandfather, great-grandfather, back as far as it goes.’
‘Your dad is still going to fish. He’ll just be working for someone else.’
‘He’ll hate that.’
‘Yes, he will, but life is full of change.’ She looks out the window. ‘And compromise.’
The sky is flooded with purple clouds and the pier lights wink on as Rudra steps onto it. Rudra looks across to Palm Beach, then at the black forest rising above Dark Corner. He loves it here. This place is in his marrow – its soil and sea.
On the bench at the end, Maggs is sitting, his face lit by the glow of his phone. He looks up as Rudra approaches.
‘S’up?’ he asks.
‘Not much,’ answers Rudra. ‘You ready?’
‘Yup.’
‘Let’s do it.’
‘Where’s your folks?’
‘Sydney. Something about the boat.’
‘Are they staying there?’
‘They’ll be on the way back. We’d better do this quickly.’
They walk slowly towards the Solace house. Small bats flit down from the trees, plucking moths from under streetlights. The village tightens around them.
‘This is mad,’ says Maggs. ‘I mean, I’m up for it and all, but if Cord catches you again he’ll definitely kill you.’
‘We have to get it.’
‘If it’s just a skull, why do you want it so bad? Can we just get another less dangerous skull? I reckon Yorick would be piss-easy to nick. You distract DeNicola with something sciency, I put Yorick in my schoolbag. Cord doesn’t kill us.’
‘I have to take it back.’
‘Back where?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are making less sense than you usually do. Is this something to do with grandmother arriving?’
‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘It’s not healthy, mate – the three of you cooped up in Wallace’s place. You sleeping on the floor. Her getting up to piss a thousand times a night.’
‘She does go to the toilet a lot.’
‘That’s old people for you.’
‘She might be sick. Maybe dying.’
‘We’re all dying, mate. Might be sooner rather than later for us, if Cord catches us at it.’
They are at the front of the house. They are at the door. They are inside. Their footsteps are a drumbeat in the hall – a call to arms. Maggs pulls out his makeshift lock picking kit and has Cord’s office door open in minutes. He switches on the overhead light.
‘Let’s use the desk lamp,’ says Rudra. ‘If Dad comes home he’s less likely to notice we’re in here.’
He pauses in front of the old black-and-white photo on the wall. The hunters in front of the brick temple. A jungle backdrop. Something dead at their boots. He presses his finger to the glass – all that separates him from years of history, a thin membrane that just maybe he can push through.
‘Snap out of it, Rudra,’ says Maggs. ‘We gonna do this or what?’
They draw back the carpet and prise up the loose floorboard. The air rushes to them, cool and damp and smelling of a bunch of yesterdays. Rudra plunges his arm down, quickly finding the steel box, pulling it up, flipping open the catches.
‘Where is it?’ asks Maggs.
>
The box is empty. Even the envelopes are gone.
‘I don’t bloody know.’
‘What’s the big deal about this thing anyway? Why is Cord so hell-bent on hiding it? And why are you so mad for it?’
‘I know it sounds weird,’ says Rudra. ‘But I reckon it’s something to do with that dream I had.’
‘You mean the dream where an animal kills something and when you wake up it’s happened for real? That hardly sounds strange at all.’ Maggs circles his finger around his temple. ‘Gotta drop that crazy talk, you little weirdo, before they put you in a coat that ties at the back.’
‘Forget it.’
‘I already have.’
‘But if it’s no big deal, then why is Cord hiding it?’
‘People collect stuff, I guess,’ says Maggs. ‘My mad aunt has forty years’ worth of Woman’s Day stacked in her front room. There’s nothing special about any one of them.’
‘There is something about this thing, Maggs.’
‘Man, you are losing your shit. Your Dida-whatsit arrives from India. Next minute you are a full-blown weirdo.’
It is then that lights sweep through the room. Headlights. Their old ute, suddenly in the driveway. The guttural chuckle of its old motor, spitting oil and pinging tappets. Rudra dumps the box back and pulls the carpet back over the replaced board while Maggs kills the desk lamp. They squat in the darkness.
‘They’ll have seen the light, for sure,’ whispers Maggs. ‘Let’s make a run for it.’
‘Sit tight, I reckon.’
The key in the front door. The light in the hallway – a bar beneath the door. The silence between his parents. Footsteps. Pause.
Rudra holds his breath.
More footsteps. The light switch snicks on in the kitchen and the kettle rattles against the tap.
‘Now,’ says Rudra and they open the office door, slip out and lock it behind them. Out the front door and into the pure, clear night, stars, now, prickling between the trees, them breathing the dark deep into their lungs.
‘We’re like bloody ninjas,’ says Maggs.
‘Next time we have to be more careful.’
‘Next time? Rudra, there was nothing there. Cord ditched it, for sure.’
‘It’s somewhere close,’ says Rudra. ‘I know it.’
‘Mate, you are a certified freak.’
‘Maybe.’
‘For sure,’ says Maggs. ‘Hey, what you got there?’
‘This?’ Rudra looks at the framed photo in his hand as if it has just appeared without his bidding. ‘I think it might be another piece of the puzzle.’
13
‘LISTEN,’ SAYS DIDIMA AND HOLDS RUDRA’S HAND so he can’t get away, ‘while I tell you the story of the tiger and the child. It is a true story and it happened long ago.’ She repositions herself on Wallace’s chapped little pier so her legs are crossed beneath her. It is the morning after the ninja raid and there have been no reprisals as yet so Cord must not have noticed Maggs and Rudra had broken into his office or that the picture was missing. It is a good morning for a story, bright and safe with a breeze crossing the creek.
‘It was the time when the Britishers had not long left India. I think it would have been around nineteen fifty if I have my mathematics just so. I was very young. The village men would go to the forest for honey while the bees were happiest. The bauliya – the tiger charmer – would make chants to protect them. The bauliya was needed by the forest workers but it did not come without a price. Because he was so close to the tiger spirit, Dokkhin Rai, he was often in danger of being eaten first. He could not eat pork or tortoise and if he ate crab, his ears would pop. Everyone prayed to Bonbibi – the protector – she so loved by Muslim or Hindu alike. The bauliya would pray the hardest.
‘Dokkhin Rai was a tricky one. Himself half made of dark and half of fire. On a full moon or a new moon, the spells would not work on him. Then the honeymen – the mawalis – would go into the forest unguarded. My father was a mawali.
‘In the early morning, my father would rise. He would join with the other mawalis of his group – five of them in all – and they would take their boat to the honey grounds. But first they would stop by the shrine to Bonbibi, beneath the banyan tree that guarded our village. There they would lay sweet herbs and flowers and chant Maa Bonbibi Durga, Durga. I would watch them go – their boat cutting through the early morning mist like the arrow of Krishna. And I would whisper Maa Bonbibi Durga, Durga, to keep my baba safe.’
Didima looks down into the water, where a school of tiny silver fish are sewing the shadows together. She smiles as if remembering something, but pain tightens the corners of her mouth.
‘On that day … ’
Rudra can feel what is coming, can read the inflected that, the infected that – the weight of the word on Didima’s tongue.
‘On that day,’ she shakes her head slowly, ‘they said Abhin, the son of the paan-wala, washed his cooking pot in the water. Or that he had thrown his beedi carelessly over the side. That is all Dokkhin Rai needs to seek his revenge. People disrespect the forest at their own risk. Or sometimes at someone else’s.
‘They couldn’t get his body. My wonderful baba. He so strong, like the trunk of a sundari tree. His hair dark and thick, full of rich oils. His name was Sutej, which means “lustre” in Bangla.
‘A tiger, once it has eaten a man, cannot turn back. It sends him mad. Or so they say. Things were different then. We were not separate from the world like now. We were part of nature. Sometimes we became food. But when we did, we fought back. Because we were equals. Now we have guns and poison. Then we had knives and spears.
‘But Dokkhin Rai was cunning. He knew how to hide and when to spring out. And he would use the nights when the moon was full or hidden. Then the bauliya’s spells do not work. And my mother, she was weak with grief.
‘The tiger killed four more men that season. His reputation grew. Soon the whole of the tide country knew of him. He was Dokkhin Rai himself. People had turned their back on Bonbibi to their peril. Dokkhin Rai would have the forest and humans would be banished forever.
‘Then a gora – a fair-faced one – came down the river from Basanti. He scared the children in the village. My mother said he could be a haji – a pilgrim who had been to Mecca – because he had red hair and a red beard. But us kids did not think he was a pilgrim, he did not look holy enough. Instead we knew he was definitely a demon.
‘He brought a gun with him. He had heard of the man-eater and wanted to take him as a trophy. I remember him talking to the tiger-widows – including my own dear mother. I can see her white sari fringed with mud. She looked so small near him. Even as a child, I thought the gora seemed too eager. His eyes were bright for blood. It wasn’t just revenge, like with us villagers, it ran deeper and was dirtier. It was killing for the sake of killing. You understand, Rudra?’
Rudra nods. Yes, he understands.
‘They were two nights in the jungle, the gora and his men. He came back with Dokkhin Rai – or the sack that held Dokkhin Rai. The fur was dirty and dull. He was already beginning to smell. The gora wanted to keep him. No one in the village had heard of keeping an animal forever like that. Even with an interpreter they didn’t understand. He sent a message to Kolkata, to bring a man who could preserve the beast.
‘The gora skinned that tiger. He threw that tiger’s guts into the water. The dolphins fought the sharks and the crocodiles fought them all. It was no longer safe to be out at night. The crocodiles stayed around, lying on the mud flats where we used to beach our boats.
‘Finally, the tanner from Kolkata arrived. It was two weeks since Dokkhin Rai had been killed. The skin was eaten through by flies. The hair was coming off in clumps. The gora was mad. He told the tanner he wouldn’t pay him. The tanner said he’d call the Forestry Department and have him jailed for poaching. Poaching? said the gora. I was saving lives.’
Didima’s eyes are round with the magic of the story. It is as i
f she is back there, still a child, wondering at the adult rage around her.
‘The tanner left. He took his knives and his case with plaster of Paris. But not before he poured his jar of formaldehyde into the ground where it later killed our banyan tree. That was the place where Bonbibi lived – our protector.
‘The gora left too, but not before he broke the skull out of the tiger skin. The headman warned him, Don’t take Dokkhin Rai from the tidelands. He will have his revenge. But the gora spoke no Bangla and his interpreter, knowing what was good for him, had set out for home the day before. The gora wrapped the skull in a cloth and, stepping past the sleeping crocodiles, he left for Kolkata.
‘But there must have been one ounce of goodness in the gora – as surely there is in everyone, Rudra. Or perhaps he did it from guilt. After all, he had stolen from the tidelands without giving anything in return. He took the money he was to pay the tanner and he gave it to my mother – the newest tiger-widow in the village.’
Rudra looks across the water. He knows Didima is expecting a response. ‘What happened to you and your mother?’
‘Your great-grandmother used the money the gora gave her and we went to Kolkata. We could never have afforded to go there otherwise. She left me at the Loreto Orphanage in Entally. I never saw her again.’
‘How old were you?’ asks Rudra.
‘I was eight.’
Those three words sit there for a while.
‘But this is not a sad story, Rudra. Not in the end. Your grandfather, his family saved me. They were quite wealthy, you know. Every so often, when times were good for them, they would sponsor one girl or boy from the orphanage. When I was twelve, I was chosen. They sent me money every year and I went to school – a good school. I learnt Bangla and I learnt English. Mathematics and poetry and some scientific things. And your grandfather, he was at St Lawrence High School in Ballygunge. One day, he took me to Flurys. It is a tea room in Kolkata. Very famous and very expensive. Such cakes I have never see since. Next time, he took me to a film at the Metro Cinema in Dharmatala.
