The Honeyman and the Hunter

by Neil Grant

  Lucky he didn’t see the skull.

  Lucky, Rudra.

  ‘Hollow bones,’ says Nayna once they are onboard.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s what makes birds light enough to fly.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We don’t have them.’

  ‘True,’ says Rudra. ‘But we have this plane.’

  ‘This plane is built by people, Rudra.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And engineers and such – they tighten bolts and repair fuel lines and replace tyres.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘And they are human?’

  ‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this.’

  ‘Humans make mistakes and I can’t stop thinking that the mistakes they made, maybe last night when they were tired, or this morning when they skipped a coffee break, might mean that this plane will fall out of the sky. Because,’ she pauses to take a sip of water, ‘we do not have hollow bones and were never meant to fly.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Yes, Rudra.’

  ‘You’re a woman of science.’

  ‘I am a reasonable woman, Rudra,’ she snaps. ‘But reason tells me this machine should not fly. I know the physics behind air travel and all – lift, thrust, drag. This I understand. But really, we are breaking the rules by doing this.’

  ‘We’ll be fine, Mum.’

  ‘How do you know? You’re only sixteen.’

  Soon enough, they are taxiing to the runway. On the runway now, nose pointed at the water. Then they are thrown back in their seats and Rudra feels the growl of the beast in his belly, and the wing-shaking calamity of too much speed so soon. And a leap into the air, cursed by pockets of chaos, unseen, lurching drunk, this way and that. It makes him want to cry and laugh. He feels his teeth unscrewing and his ears lumpy with pressure, and he grins wildly at his mum but she is staring intently at the screen on her seat back, the tail camera showing way too much, and it not disappearing despite her blinking it away like a bad dream. Nayna, a woman of science, rational, knowing this bird doesn’t fall as often as a car will crash, but there’s still the possibility. And then they’re bouncing through pavlova cloud stretched as far as forever, meringue of the gods.

  When the seatbelt sign goes off, it triggers a calm in Nayna Solace. She, trusting now that the danger is over until landing, shrugs at Rudra.

  ‘See – nothing to worry about,’ she says.

  When they are over the huge red heart of the country, Rudra looks down and imagines himself a tiny speck on the map below. It turns out that the Central Coast is not the whole world after all and that all-the-worries-that-ever-were are unseen from this altitude.

  After hours of blood-coloured sand and mulga, they are still in Australia and Rudra begins to grasp the immensity of their country and this planet. He watches a movie, then another. He eats an impossibly small meal on a stupidly small tray, grazing elbows with Nayna. He tears open a foil-capped cup, spilling orange juice on his lap, drinks a bitter cup of tea, sits in biscuit crumbs. He starts a Bollywood movie as they set out over the ocean, volcanic cones of islands snaring cloud beneath them. The movie exhausts him with its singing and crying and gangsters and laughing and choreographed dancing piled on top of each other like layers of exotic, gaudy cake. Soon he is asleep with his mouth open, waking frequently to gasp at the dry air.

  They stop for fuel in Singapore, swooping to the runway, his mum’s damp hand round his wrist. They rise again in a flossy sunset, over container ships, dark blocks in the harbour, water like polished copper.

  Somewhere, on nightfall, over the Andaman Sea, an island’s lights wink up at Rudra and he feels a flutter of excitement rise in his belly, knowing they are drawing close to mainland India. He walks down the aisle to the toilet, past people with their heads thrown back in sleep, their kids glued to inflight games. The toilets are both occupied and Rudra waits with an old woman. She smiles sweetly at him, covering her missing teeth with the fringe of her sari.

  ‘Namaste,’ she says, pressing her hands together.

  ‘Namaste,’ replies Rudra. It is the first time he has greeted someone this way since his whispered childhood. Namaste, meaning I worship the god within you. Back before, when he was little and his mum would teach him, out of Cord’s earshot. Even as the beachside hippies borrowed it to wear with their bindis and henna tattoos, he would practise this word behind closed doors.

  They stand in awkward silence, before the old lady asks, ‘Are you going home?’

  And he looks out the porthole at an absence that he knows must be the Bay of Bengal. To him India is just a story, a phantom pain where a limb never grew. India, gone before it was there.

  ‘No,’ he answers. ‘Just a holiday.’

  When the woman reaches for his hand, he flinches. Then the toilet door is unlocked and a man escapes, squeezing past and lurching down the aisle like a doomed bride. When Rudra turns back, the old woman and her awkward question has gone.

  When Rudra gets back from the toilet, his mum is in the window seat, conjuring land from the blackness. ‘Do you want your seat?’ she asks.

  He shakes his head. ‘You take it for a while. I’m going to read.’

  He sits in the aisle seat, a gap between them, and picks up the novel they are sharing. Two bookmarks are chasing each other through the pages. His is the photo of his great-grandfather’s hunting party at the temple. He has trapped it here within this book so he can recognise the point where they must drop the skull – there in the depths of the Sundarbans forest.

  He turns the book over in his hands and it feels just right. When he thumbs the pages, they exhale an inky promise of things good and bad and things in between. The cover is a duotone in blues and yellows – three figures in a boat over mirror-water. One silhouetted in the bow, frozen, casting a net. Another figure at the stern – a woman maybe, a sari pulled over her head – steering. In the middle, a small child seated facing forward, wondering what his father will pull from the depths of the river.

  ‘Good book?’ The old woman he met outside the toilets is sitting across the aisle. He puts his finger at his page, shows her the cover.

  ‘Aaah,’ she breathes. ‘Looks so nice.’

  He smiles and opens the book again.

  ‘Amitav Ghosh,’ says the woman.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The author of this book you are reading. It is Amitav Ghosh.’

  Rudra looks at the cover. ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Very famous, this one. Is the book good?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘What is it about?’

  The Hungry Tide is about a woman with Indian parents going to the Sundarbans for the first time. It’s like a metaphor, Nayna said, handing him the book on the train to Sydney. For your journey. Rudra looked at her. Metaphors. Why can’t the thing just be the thing?

  But the book ends up being alright and he is hooked a couple of pages in. Like nothing he has ever read before.

  ‘It’s about a woman … and a man … and a river.’

  ‘So nice,’ says the woman.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have read this book once before,’ says the woman.

  ‘Why did you ask me what it was about?’ says Rudra.

  ‘I was just making chit-chat.’ The woman looks wounded.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean … ’ Rudra shuts the book and lays it on his lap. ‘My family is from the Sundarbans. I’m going there for the first time.’

  ‘Oh,’ says the woman, her eyes suddenly glossy, crow’s feet puckering at their edges. ‘You will love it. I was there as a child. Many, many years before. There were tigers and the forest was so thick. We went on a boat and my father, well, he was a manager in a tin-plate factory, but then he became like a native. He was fishing and he was talking to the honeymen. It was truly a wondrous time. I will remember this one forever.’

  ‘It sounds awesome.’

  ‘It was awesome,’ she says. ‘I am from Jamshedpur,
Golmuri side, originally. It is not such an awesome place. Mainly steel town – Tata steel plants and such. The hills nearby were wild when I was little but more and more it is being tamed. What is your name, grandson?’

  ‘Rudra.’

  ‘Such a strong name. Rudra, are you happy about going home?’

  ‘India is not my home. I’m from Patonga on the Central Coast.’

  ‘Is that not your mother?’

  ‘My dad isn’t Indian.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  Rudra changes the subject. ‘Why are you going home?’

  ‘I am getting old. It is my time to die. I must be near the Ganga, you see, so they can burn me there and put in my ashes.’

  ‘The Ganges?’

  ‘Yes. My son, he does not understand, he works in IT and he has married a fully Australian girl. My grandchildren, they don’t speak Bangla or Hindi. They play basketball and they eat meat pies – such disgusting food, I cannot tell you. But I beg to my son that he show them where they are from, just once, so they know it. It is important to know the little pieces that make you up. Even if they are very long ago.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  The plane sneaks up on the Indian mainland, chasing the delicate chains of light that, dazed with cloud, run haphazardly through the darkened country.

  ‘That’s the Sundarbans,’ says Nayna, her finger hovering over her birthplace. Rudra stares down but can’t penetrate the black forest edged with light. He has seen maps of the great delta, though, stretching from India across to Bangladesh. Wondered at its lung-like appearance, the capillaries streaming with mud, coursing their way to the Bay of Bengal.

  Soon, the lights begin to thicken like clouds of bio-luminescence in a warm, dark ocean. Then they are above Kolkata.

  18

  ‘WELCOME TO NETAJI SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE International Airport. The local time is ten-twenty pee-em. The temperature on the ground is sixteen degrees Celsius. If Kolkata is your home – welcome home. If you are a visitor, then namaskar – welcome.’

  The tarry-scarred runway makes the ride to the gate a bumpy one. Then, even before the seatbelt lights go out, Indian businessmen are jumping into the aisles and wrestling their huge carry-ons from the overhead lockers. They stand between the seats, some with fresh tilak marks on their foreheads, snorting and shuffling plastic bags of duty-free. Still they have to wait ten minutes, then fifteen minutes, before the steps are wheeled to the doors. When the doors open, the plane inhales the subcontinent.

  At the top of the steps, Rudra pauses. There is a different smell to the place – not quite smoke but not quite air. It burns as it goes down. It is a lot cooler than he would have imagined, but it is winter and the Himalayas are only five hundred kilometres to the north.

  Inside, the terminal is new. Everything looks polished and empty. There are two queues for immigration – one for foreigners and another for Indian nationals.

  ‘Which one, Mum?’

  ‘We are foreigners, Rudra,’ she says.

  When they get to the desk, the immigration official studies their passports.

  ‘What is the purpose of your visit?’

  ‘Pleasure,’ says Nayna.

  ‘Have you been to India before?’

  ‘I was born here.’

  He looks at her and shrugs, stamps the passport. ‘Namaskar,’ he says. ‘Welcome home.’

  They pre-book a taxi to take them to their hotel and wrestle their bags outside to the waiting cab.

  The driver squashes their luggage into the boot of the cab – a strange old-fashioned affair. ‘Where is your chitty?’ he asks Rudra.

  ‘Chitty?’

  ‘Here.’ Mum hands over the receipt to the driver.

  He looks at it and shakes his head. ‘This is not number one hotel, Madam. May I make one recommendation?’

  ‘No.’

  Rudra notices a shift in his mother’s voice, a certain impatience he has never witnessed.

  ‘Okay, Madam. As you wish.’ He opens the door for Nayna, then rushes round the other side to open the door for Rudra who has, unfortunately, already let himself in. He shakes his head at this breaking of the rules, gets in himself and turns over the cab. It growls but refuses to start. The driver pounds the steering wheel and mouths some angry words. This prompts some rapid-fire Bengali from Nayna.

  He rocks his head. ‘Sorry, Madam. Sorry, Sir. This is very naughty taxi.’ Nayna clicks her tongue disapprovingly.

  ‘Hindustan Ambassador. This car born close-by Kolkata, driven by Madam Sonia Gandhi, also number one taxi from Top Gear show. You know this show?’ The car’s engine fires, and the driver slams it into gear and jerks it into the traffic. ‘Top Gear, na? Mister Jeremy Clarkson, Mister Richard Hammond, Mister James May. Top Gear.’

  ‘We don’t watch the show,’ Mum has pulled her scarf over her face to block the fumes welling in the cab.

  ‘In Top Gear, they race all taxis from around the world. Number one was Hindustan Motors Ambassador taxi.’

  ‘They have been around forever,’ says Nayna to Rudra.

  ‘But not now,’ says the driver. ‘Now they shut their making place. Sadly, Madam, it is the death for the Ambassador.’

  ‘I remember riding in an Ambassador car when I was very small,’ says Nayna. ‘On your didima’s lap with your dadu driving. I don’t know where the car came from; maybe we borrowed it.

  ‘It must have been my first time in a car and I remember marvelling at how my father knew how to drive – his big hand on the gearstick, his feet working the pedals, the indicators ticking, the sound of the horn. We travelled from Basanti to Kolkata during the great festival of Durga, passing decorative buildings made of cloth and paper, trucks carrying statues and people dancing to the crazy-happy music. How wonderful the seats smelled and how beautiful was the bonnet’s curve above the road. The insects rushed to our headlights and smeared so thick across our windscreen that we had to stop and wash them off.’ Nayna looks at Rudra. ‘It’s sad to think that it’s all over. That India’s homegrown car won’t carry excited children to festivals anymore.’ She laughs lightly. ‘But maybe I’m just being nostalgic. I, more than most, know that everything must change.’

  It is after midnight when a sign announcing Beamish Hotel appears in the headlights. The words are in spidery script and garlanded with a string of fairy lights. Half the bulbs are blown, which makes Rudra feel unaccountably sad.

  The driver removes their bags and waits for his tip. Nayna hands over fifty rupees and he looks at it for a moment as if it could, and should, magically double in value.

  A small guy in a stained but well-ironed velvet jacket takes their bags. Rudra places him in his early twenties. He has an impressive shovel-shaped goatee and a nervous manner, and his jet-black hair is greased into a glossy helmet beneath a colourful cloth cap. ‘I am Raj,’ he says. ‘From Nepal.’ He pronounces it Nay-paul. Then he whispers, behind his hand, like a stage villain, ‘And I very much like Amitabh Bachchan.’

  ‘Who?’ asks Rudra.

  ‘He’s a Bollywood movie star,’ Nayna explains with a sigh. ‘He’s pretty old.’

  The man frowns. ‘He is still number one movie star, Madam. That is why I am in India.’ He pauses. ‘To be.’ He waggles his head. ‘A Bollywood star.’

  ‘But Mumbai is fifteen hundred kilometres away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And … that’s where Bollywood is.’

  ‘I know, Madam. It is okay.’ Raj smiles and starts climbing the stairs. ‘If you need anything, anything at all, I am your man.’ He winks at Rudra. ‘These bags are very heavy. Have you brought duty-free Scottish whisky? I can get you an excellent price. If you would wish to sell, you need only ask.’

  ‘No Scotch.’ Nayna looks weary and cold and tired of Raj’s oversharing.

  ‘Or maybe cigarette. Also good price.’

  ‘We didn’t buy any duty-free,’ Nayna snaps.

  Raj looks crestfallen. He bites his lip. ‘Most s
orry, Madam. It is not my place.’ He heaves their heavy bags up the entrance steps to the Beamish.

  From the doorway, a woman with a pile of startling orange hair glares at them. She shouts something at Raj, who mutters under his breath.

  ‘Welcome,’ she says to Rudra and his mother, extending her arms, her glare transforming to a saintly smile, ‘to the Beamish Hotel. A grand experience awaits.’ Behind her, a woman in a sari, bent double at the waist, slowly swishes dust bunnies across the floor with a grass broom. ‘Since nineteen forty-two,’ continues the woman, pausing for effect. ‘And all modern convenience.’ Raj drops the bags on the steps and puts a beedi between his lips. ‘No smoking!’ shouts the woman, and Raj spits the cigarette into his palm. ‘We are pleased to offer you.’ Another pause. ‘Hot water geysers in all rooms.’ She smiles. ‘Full wi-fi.’ Pause. ‘And old-world charm.’ She nods as if accepting an award. ‘Do you have a reservation? Of course you do. Have you travelled far? Of course you have. Everyone has travelled far. I, myself, am from Romania. Like Mother Teresa – our own Kolkata Saint of the Gutters. God rest her soul.’

  ‘Macedonia,’ says Nayna.

  ‘Excusez-moi?’ the woman asks. This sounds more like French than Romanian to Rudra.

  ‘Mother Teresa was from Macedonia,’ replies Nayna. ‘Originally.’

  The woman’s face darkens thunderously and Raj seems to shrink into himself. ‘My name,’ says the woman ponderously, ‘is Ionela Ursu.’ She turns full to face Nayna. ‘You.’ She punctures the air with her finger. ‘May call me Mrs Ursu.’ Then she moves around behind the check-in desk. ‘Passports, please.’

  When they are signed in, Raj carries their bags up the winding staircase to their room. ‘You have made an enemy of Madam Ursu.’ He shakes his head. ‘Mistake.’ He opens their door and jerks his head for them to enter.

  The room is spacious. The ceiling is high and there is a large window looking over the hotel garden to Sudder Street. The curtains are faded and dusty, but there is an air of what-once-was about the place, as if it could rise at any moment and rush back to its former glory.