by Neil Grant
When the rump of Lion Island appears, Wallace slows. ‘Tell me where,’ he yells.
‘Where do you think?’ Rudra asks Nayna.
‘Is there any place better than another?’
‘Let’s go to the seaward side.’
They motor around to the head of the great lion. Rudra tries to find the cave where he spent that crazy night with the tiger skull, but it has disappeared. Trees fall over, rocks shift and fall, things are obscured and exposed. Everything changes.
The water is a simmering blue, warm as it will ever be at the end of summer. There is something about these flooded valleys, the underwater creek lines and hillocks that makes him feel as if he is flying. What we think we know of the world is just the tip of it, thinks Rudra. You think an island is everything until you swim away from it. Then you see it as a mountain with its tip pushed into an unbreathable atmosphere – part of something far bigger and more connected. Like a temple spire with a whole village below.
It used to scare him to think of the size of the ocean. How it left his shore and bled out across the world, smashing every coast from the Sundarbans to the beaches of Normandy, from Tierra del Fuego to the Cape of Good Hope. You can call it by different names, but really it is one huge continuous mass of water. So big it can swallow islands, or give them back, as it sees fit.
His mum produces a yoghurt tub from her cloth bag.
‘Tell me that’s not Didima.’
‘It is.’
Rudra shakes his head.
‘Your didima loved curd. Every morning for breakfast. And lassi too.’
‘How do you want to do this?’ asks Rudra.
‘We just shake her into the sea.’
‘Without any words?’
‘Do you have any?’
‘No.’
‘Then without any words.’
‘Wait,’ says Wallace, coming out of the wheelhouse. ‘I got a poem right here that’ll suit nice.’
‘This’ll be good,’ says Maggs.
‘You think I don’t know poetry,’ says Wallace. ‘I know it, alright. I got more things going on than just fish.’
‘Let’s hear it then.’
Wallace pulls out a scrap of paper from his pocket. He flattens it against his thigh and gets the measure of the words. He rubs the stubble on his neck, then begins.
‘The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing.’
He pauses, looks at them. Maggs is about to speak when Wallace holds up a hand.
‘But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.’
They stand for a while in the bow of the boat with the water tocking on the hull and the waves shushing on Lion Island.
‘What does it mean?’ asks Maggs.
‘Hell if I know,’ says Wallace. ‘But it sounds pretty.’
‘It’s Tagore,’ says Rudra, remembering the lines from the book he read a thousand years ago in a room at the Beamish Hotel.
‘It’s a what?’ asks Wallace.
‘Rabindranath Tagore. The Bengali poet.’ Rudra feels blood drumming in his ears. ‘It’s from a book of his poems – Gitanjali. Song offerings.’ He remembers Gita’s nets, the way they fought the water. Her smile. Blood mingled with dirt. Pawprints.
Wallace looks at the paper. ‘Didima wrote it in the sand down by my pier.’
‘I think I know what she meant,’ says Rudra. ‘She told me once that we should treat everything like it has the potential to sing – even a fish – as stupid as that sounds. That sometimes a song is so quiet we can’t hear it.’ Rudra looks at the yoghurt tub containing what is left of his grandmother. ‘I think Didima was also saying that sometimes if we don’t make ourselves heard then it can seem as if we are agreeing.’
They stand in silence for a moment, the only sound waves on the hull and the wind through the low scrub on Lion Island.
‘Shall we scatter these ashes then?’ says Nayna finally.
‘I’m ready.’
Together they hold the plastic tub over the water and shake the ashes to the sea. This time, unlike the last, they do not blow back towards them. They float for a while and then grow heavy and sink. Tiny translucent fish rise and suck them into their mouths.
Wallace points his poem at the water. ‘See that little fish. He just swallowed a bit of Didima.’
‘That is just a little gross and freaky,’ says Maggs.
‘Nah,’ says Wallace. ‘A little bit of India is in that fish now. Reckon it may strengthen the little bugger.’
‘It’s ash,’ says Nayna. ‘I very much doubt it has any nutritional value.’
‘Will you let go for a minute.’ Wallace folds the Tagore poem in half and slips it back into his pocket. ‘Didima talked to me about what you folk believe.’
‘Us folk?’ says Nanya disdainfully.
‘When something dies it gets another life and turns into something else,’ says Wallace.
‘Are you becoming a hippie, Wallace?’ asks Maggs.
Wallace ignores him. ‘I take it to mean we’re all related in some way. Everything’s got a little bit of something else in it.’
Rudra sips a little of the clear Central Coast air. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘while I tell you the story of the honeyman and the hunter.’
Author’s note
I am not from India but my story is deeply entwined with that beautiful place. The Honeyman and the Hunter is about an Australian-born boy connecting with a country he has never known, and it is written with a sense of wonder rather than familiarity. The Indian content has been checked with readers familiar with that culture but some things will slip through. Such is the nature of nets.
Check out more fact and fiction on this and my other works at www.neilgrant.com.au.
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to Carl Blacklidge – fisherman, writer and filmmaker – who speaks the language of the sea and steered me from dangerous rocks.
To Jodie Webster, who somehow finds the time and the right words. And Hilary Reynolds for her patience and care in making this novel the best it could be.
To Aritra Paul – of Stree-Samya Publication House – for her cultural reading of the manuscript to discover what was lost in my translation.
To Janine Ravenwood and Richard Tudor for the creative space.
To the Barefoot Café at Macmasters Beach Surf Club for a table overlooking the ocean.
