Gun Island

by Amitav Ghosh

  Thanks to Gisa’s persuasive abilities Cinta was allotted a comfortable cabin on the main deck. The rest of us were accommodated below, in large, echoing, neon-lit compartments that were empty of furnishings.

  We were still stowing our luggage when the blast of a klaxon brought us up on deck, in time to watch the cranes and gantries of Marghera falling behind. As the port receded the landscape beyond came gradually into view, a flat estuarine plain lying prone beneath a lowering sky.

  Suddenly someone shouted – ‘Guardate! Guardate!’– and we all turned to look northwards where, miles away, a long serpentine form could be seen, dropping down from the heavens. It seemed to bounce a few times as it hit the ground and then it vanished into the sky, like a top being pulled back on a string.

  Barely had it disappeared than there was another shout. We spun eastwards this time, where another twister had appeared; it touched down on the Venetian lagoon, sucking up a whirling spout of water that hung above the surface as though it were a spinning column of crystal. It too was gone in a few seconds, but now the captain sounded an alarm and issued orders to clear decks.

  Our group crowded into Cinta’s cabin, which commanded a panoramic view, with windows on three sides. Cinta insisted that her wheelchair be positioned by the port window and she beckoned to me and Rafi to join her there.

  ‘You see, that island over there?’ she said, pointing to a speck of land as it slipped past us. ‘That’s San Giorgio in Alga; there’s been a monastery there for a thousand years. The Gun Merchant would have sailed past it just as we are now. And that island over there? That’s San Clemente and when the Merchant was here it would have looked much the same as it does today. And over there is the Lazzaretto Vecchio, where those who were stricken by the plague were sent. Thousands of skeletons have been found there, in mass graves; it hasn’t changed in centuries; what you are seeing is what the Gun Merchant would have seen…’

  And all the while the dark, swirling heavens continued to heave and churn, occasionally extruding twisters that sometimes made contact with land or water and sometimes not. The sight was like nothing I had ever seen before; it seemed to belong not on the earth of human experience but in the pages of some unworldly fantasy, like the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili.

  * * *

  Soon we learnt that the strange weather was not just a local phenomenon: all of Italy had been affected in different ways. Some northern cities had been deluged with rain and hail; many parts of the country had been struck by gale-force winds; in the mountains of the Sud Tirol entire forests had been flattened; elsewhere too trees had been knocked down, damaging houses and blocking roads.

  A member of Gisa’s crew rigged up a monitor in Cinta’s room which enabled us to watch some live footage – of devastated forests; of people sheltering from hailstorms; and of cars floating through city streets. Then came some extraordinary scenes of Rome where many towering stone pine trees had been uprooted and knocked over.

  As the images were flashing past, Gisa gasped. ‘That’s Trastevere – where I live!’ Pulling out her cellphone she ran out of the cabin.

  She was gone for so long that Cinta grew worried and turned to me: ‘Can you go and see where Gisa is? I hope her family is all right.’

  The Lucania was in open waters now and strangely, considering what was happening elsewhere, we had run into some good weather. The clouds had parted allowing the setting sun to light the sky with a rosy glow.

  With the easing of the weather many of our fellow passengers had returned to the main-deck. This meant that I had to scan dozens of faces as I circled the deck, searching for Gisa. When I finally spotted her she was half hidden behind one of the Lucania’s lifeboats. She looked as though she were in shock, staring glassily at her phone.

  ‘Gisa?’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She gave me a dazed look, blinking rapidly behind her thick glasses. ‘Oh it’s nothing, niente … I’m just relieved, that’s all.’

  She explained that she had had a great deal of trouble getting through to her partner, Imma, who hadn’t picked up for fifteen or twenty minutes. But in the meantime, Gisa had managed to get through to a downstairs neighbour and had learnt that the winds had toppled a tree on their street and it had hit their building. This had made her completely frantic; she was almost beside herself with worry when Imma finally called back. She told Gisa that that tree had indeed crashed into their apartment, breaking many windows. Their adopted daughter was in her room when it happened, and her window had shattered, scattering glass everywhere. She wasn’t hurt, none of them were, but they were in shock. They’d left their apartment and moved in with some friends; they were planning to spend the night there.

  Gisa brushed her hands over her eyes and struggled to summon a smile.

  ‘Can you believe it? In Rome – of all places! – my family have become refugees.’

  * * *

  Later in the evening one of the cameramen broke out some wine while Lubna and Palash served up plates of panini. That was when I noticed that Piya wasn’t in Cinta’s cabin, with the rest of us.

  I wasn’t entirely surprised because Piya had been strangely silent since we came on board; I’d had the impression that she was embarrassed about how she had responded to the tornado.

  I took a turn around the deck and spotted Piya standing at the bows of the ship, staring ahead at the moonlit sea. My approach startled her, and I froze in my tracks.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Am I intruding?’

  ‘No, no!’

  She reached out to put a hand on my sleeve. ‘Actually, I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to apologize for my meltdown back there, in the minibus. You must have taken me for an idiot.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ I said. ‘I was scared too.’

  I could see that she was struggling with herself, and when she spoke again it was with an obvious effort.

  ‘It’s not that I scare easily,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I had a terrible experience once, in a storm. It was a cyclone, not a tornado … I’d thought I’d gotten over it but I guess I haven’t. Maybe I never will.’

  ‘Is that the storm in which Tipu’s father was killed?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I’d have died too that day if it weren’t for him. His name was Fokir – he protected me, gave his life for me. And I’m sure Tipu knows that, which is one of the reasons why our relationship is so complicated. Tipu was very, very close to his father and I suppose, in his heart, he blames me for his loss.’

  ‘Well, Piya,’ I said, ‘you’ve done a lot for Tipu and Moyna; as much as you could possibly do.’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ said Piya, ‘but in some ways I think I’ve only ever made things worse for them. Nothing I do seems to help. Like taking Tipu to the US for example – I should have known that it would end badly; I’m just not the motherly type. But he so much wanted to go; I couldn’t say no.’

  It was disconcerting to see Piya, always so self-contained, looking confused and helpless. Nor was it easy to think of something consoling to say: she was too honest a person to be comforted by empty words. Finally I said: ‘Moyna understands, you know. She’s grateful for all you’ve done. She’s told me so.’

  Piya nodded. ‘She’s sort of forgiven me, I think. But the truth is that if something were to happen to Tipu she’d have nothing left. And it would all be on me then, wouldn’t it, all the guilt?’

  ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, Piya,’ I said. ‘We’re here to bring Tipu back, aren’t we? Don’t start imagining the worst before it’s happened.’

  ‘You’re right.’ She gave me a tight-lipped smile. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me, Piya.’

  Her hand fell on my sleeve again. ‘No, really, I mean it,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what I’d have done without you these last few weeks. I thought I’d lose my mind when we found out about Tipu’s disappearance. You were the only person I could depend on.’

  Her words were so unexpected
that I was struck, literally, speechless.

  * * *

  It had been explained to us when we boarded that the usual practice, on migrant rescue boats, was to provide separate sleeping quarters for men and women (an exception being made for families travelling together). The same procedure was followed on the Lucania, with the compartments on the starboard side being reserved for women and those on the port side for men.

  When it came time to turn in I wandered around for a bit, looking for a quiet place to lay down my sleeping bag. It didn’t take long to find a small cubicle-like space that was being used as a storehouse for supplies left over from previous rescue missions: donated clothes and blankets lay jumbled together with some forlorn-looking toys.

  Pushing the clothes and toys into a heap, I managed to make a small nest for myself and slipped quickly into my sleeping bag. The metal deck was none too comfortable, and there was nothing to be done about the glare of a distant nightlight. Yet somehow I did manage to fall asleep and was soon lost in a dream in which I was looking down on the earth through the eye of a tornado, with everything in motion around me. Through the whirling haze I caught sight of the man who had appeared in front of us after the tornado, dressed in robes and a turban.

  His gaze was so piercing that I woke abruptly, only to find myself staring into three pairs of eyes: two stuffed animals and a large doll were sitting atop a pile of clothes, looking down on me.

  I sat up with a jolt wondering whether it was I who had put the toys there. Or had someone come in while I was sleeping and rearranged the supplies? But surely the tread of feet, on the metal floor, would have woken me up?

  I was now too unsettled to shut my eyes again. Instead I pulled on my jacket and climbed up the ladder to the main-deck.

  The night air was cool and bracing. Taking a couple of deep breaths I turned towards the bows – and to my surprise I spotted Cinta’s head and shoulders silhouetted against the moonlit sky. She was sitting in her wheelchair, talking to Gisa.

  They seemed to be deep in conversation so I decided not to disturb them. But just as I was about to turn back Gisa caught sight of me. Raising a hand she gestured to me to join them at the ship’s bows.

  ‘I suppose you haven’t been able to sleep either?’ said Cinta.

  ‘That’s right.’

  The silvery moonlight was lying brightly on Cinta and I saw that she had a faraway look in her eyes.

  ‘Gisa was just telling me about something that happened today,’ said Cinta, ‘when she was trying to call Imma in Rome…’

  At some point, during the twenty anxiety-ridden minutes when Gisa was unable to get through to her partner, she had heard a voice, a girl’s voice, saying: ‘Sta’ tranquilla, Ella – don’t be upset; they’re all right, your children. Nothing has happened to them…’

  Gisa had looked to the right and to the left and over her shoulder: there was nobody there.

  ‘The strange thing,’ said Gisa, ‘is that there was only one person who ever called me Ella. It was Cinta’s daughter, Lucia. Ella was her little nomignolo for me.’

  Cinta smiled and tossed her head, letting her hair float freely in the wind.

  ‘Lucia is here,’ she said with calm certainty. ‘I can feel her presence.’

  Sightings

  To everyone’s surprise the weather was exceptionally fine the next day.

  I was already on deck when I spotted Piya coming up, her face shaded by a big canvas hat; she looked briskly professional, with her field glasses strung around her neck and a backpack dangling from a shoulder.

  ‘Don’t tell me!’ I said incredulously. ‘Are you really planning to do some dolphin watching?’

  ‘I might as well,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Or else I’ll go crazy worrying about Tipu.’

  ‘But do you think you’ll actually see any dolphins?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ she replied. ‘Cetaceans are quite abundant in the Mediterranean and many of them will be migrating in this season.’

  Placing her backpack at her feet she positioned herself at the bows and was soon sweeping the horizon with her glasses.

  But in the event, it wasn’t Piya but Rafi who was responsible for the first sighting. ‘Oijé,’ he cried excitedly, ‘look over there Piya-didi. I think I see something.’

  A frown appeared on Piya’s forehead as she focused her glasses on the spot he had pointed to. After a couple of minutes she said, almost grudgingly: ‘Wow, Rafi! Tomar chokh khub bhalo to! You have good eyes!’

  ‘What do you see?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s definitely a school of cetaceans ahead. I’m not sure of the species though – it’s too far to tell. I can’t believe Rafi spotted them without glasses.’

  She handed me the binoculars: ‘Wanna have a look?’

  I pushed up my eyeglasses and squinted into the lens, but to no avail: it was all a blur to me.

  ‘You’ll see them soon enough,’ said Piya. ‘They seem to be travelling in the same direction as us. We should be abreast of them in a bit.’

  She trained her glasses on the waters ahead and in a short while even I was able to make out an occasional ridge of white surf, where dark, curving humps were rising to the surface.

  ‘They’re long-finned pilot whales, I think,’ said Piya excitedly. ‘Maybe five or six of them. We see them around the Sundarbans sometimes, especially along the coast. They rarely go upriver any more, although in the nineteenth century they used to be seen as far inland as Calcutta.’

  She turned to Rafi: ‘Have you ever seen this kind of whale before? With the big balloon-like swelling at the front of the head?’

  He nodded. ‘Once or twice.’

  Piya reached into her backpack, pulled out another pair of field glasses and held them out to Rafi. ‘Do you think you’d be able to use these, with one hand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you like to go on watch with me then?’

  Answering with a nod, Rafi put the glasses eagerly to his eyes. Within minutes he had made another sighting. ‘There! There!’

  Piya turned in the direction he had pointed to and focused her glasses. ‘Hey!’ she cried after a minute. ‘I think we might have ourselves a pod of Risso’s dolphins!’

  She reached out and gave Rafi a thump on his back. ‘Good job!’

  In a while Cinta too came out to join us. She watched Piya for a bit and then tugged at my sleeve, gesturing to me to lower my ear to her lips.

  ‘È in gamba questa ragazza,’ she whispered. ‘She’s smart this girl.’

  ‘So she is,’ I said.

  Cinta searched my face with her eyes. ‘You like her, don’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And are you doing anything about it?’ said Cinta.

  I laughed nervously. ‘Oh, I don’t know that she’s at all interested in me.’

  ‘Don’t be a babbeo, caro,’ said Cinta. ‘This ragazza is not the kind to bare her heart. But I can sense that she’s going to open a door for you, maybe just a crack. When she does you must step through. Capisci?’

  ‘Oh Cinta, I don’t know that anything like that is going to happen.’

  ‘But you’re hoping that it will,’ said Cinta. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose…’

  ‘See!’ said Cinta, smiling. ‘Your Merchant has already made your life better, hasn’t he?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It was because of him that you met her – non è vero?’

  * * *

  Now that the weather had cleared people began to mingle: Lubna and Palash went off to circulate amongst their activist friends while Gisa sought out the other journalists on board.

  At lunchtime, when we were gathering in Cinta’s cabin again, Gisa came running in, with a fresh story about the Blue Boat: she had heard it from a friend who was a foreign correspondent; he had called her from Egypt.

  Through an analysis of satellite images it had been established that the Blue Boat had started its journey somew
here near the town of El-Arish, in the Sinai. The area was notoriously lawless but a couple of intrepid correspondents had managed to make their way there. Some local people had led them to a wrecked building some thirty kilometres from the town: this, they said, was once the site of a notorious connection house, where large numbers of refugees had been kept captive by traffickers. The place was known to have been a hub for the trade in human organs.

  The connection house was cunningly designed: the refugees’ dungeon-like cells were below ground and difficult to detect. Above ground there was only an unremarkable-looking house; that was where the traffickers had their quarters. Looking at the structure, no one would have taken it for a connection house.

  Some three weeks before, said the locals, a new group of migrants had been brought there, in a darkened minivan: this was an unusually motley lot, consisting of Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Arabs and Bengalis. Among them was a woman, a tall Ethiopian.

  A couple of nights after their arrival, a boy who worked in the connection house, as a servant, had come running to a nearby village. He had a strange story to tell. The connection house had been hit by a sudden storm, he said, soon after nightfall. A tornado had struck the house with such force that the building had collapsed, killing some of the traffickers and rendering the others helpless. It had also torn off a part of the floor, so that the refugees were able to climb out of their underground cells and overpower the traffickers.

  Then, after seizing the traffickers’ cellphones and extracting the hard disks from their laptop, the refugees had forced their former captors to lead them to one of their boats – this was none other than the so-called Blue Boat. All of this, said the boy, was done under the instructions of the Ethiopian woman; she had led the refugees on to the boat and once they had boarded – more than a hundred of them – the boat had sailed away into the night.

  Looking into the story, the journalists had confirmed, from meteorological data, that a tornado had indeed hit that stretch of coast at around that time. They had learnt also that such freak storms were becoming increasingly common in that area; this was thought to be an effect of changing weather patterns.