by Amitav Ghosh
Afterwards, when she lay enveloped in his arms, he said, in his rough, hoarse voice: Ká sochawá? What’re you thinking?
. . . Thinking how you saved me today; sochat ki tu bacháwelá . . .
It was myself I saved today, he said in a whisper. Because if you had died, I couldn’t have lived; jinda na rah sakelá . . .
Shh! Don’t say any more. Always superstitious, she shuddered at the mention of death.
But where will we go now? he said. What will we do? They’ll hunt for us everywhere, in the cities and the villages.
Although she had no more of a plan than he did, she said: We’ll go away, far away, we’ll find a place where no one will know anything about us except that we are married.
Married? he said.
Yes.
Squirming out of his arms, she wrapped herself loosely in her sari and went off towards the river. Where are you going? he shouted after her. You’ll see, she called over her shoulder. And when she came back, with her sari draped over her body like a veil of gossamer, it was with an armload of wild-flowers, blooming on the bank. Plucking a few long hairs from her head, she strung the flowers together to make two garlands: one she gave to him, and the other she took herself, lifting it up above his head and slipping it around his neck. Now he too knew what to do and when the exchange of garlands had bound them together, they sat for a while, awed by the enormity of what they had done. Then she crept into his arms again and was swept into the embracing warmth of his body, as wide and sheltering as the dark earth.
PART II
River
Eight
Once the Ibis had been berthed, Zachary and Serang Ali opened the account books and paid the crew their accumulated addlings. Many of the lascars disappeared immediately into the gullies of Kidderpore, with their copper and silver coins carefully hidden in the folds of their clothing. Some would never see the Ibis again, but some were back in a matter of days, having been robbed or cheated, or having squandered their earnings in toddyshacks and knockingdens – or having discovered, simply, that life ashore was far more attractive when you were at sea than when your feet were a-trip on the slick turf of lubber-land.
It would be some time yet before the Ibis could be accommodated at the Lustignac dry docks in Kidderpore, where she was to be repaired and refurbished. During the time she was moored in the river, only a skeleton crew remained on board, along with Zachary and Serang Ali. Although shrunken in size, the crew continued to function much as at sea, being divided into two pors, or watches, each of which was headed by a tindal; as at sea, each por was on deck for four hours at a stretch, except during the chhota-pors, which were the two-hour dogwatches of dawn and dusk. The safety of port came at the price of an increased risk of pilferage and theft, so there was no slackening in the vigilance required of the por; nor was there any easing in the pace of work on board, for there were inventories to be made, inspections to be completed and most of all, a great deal of cleaning to be done. Serang Ali made no secret of his view that a sailor who would send his ship untended to the dry dock was worse than the worst shorebound scum, worse than a ma-chowdering pimp.
Gali was one domain of the Laskari tongue in which no one could outdo the serang: in no small measure was it because of the fluency of his swearing that Jodu held him in unbounded respect. It was a matter of great disappointment to him that his regard was entirely unreciprocated.
Jodu knew well enough that freshwater-jacks like himself were held in contempt by ocean-going lascars: often, while rowing past some towering three-master, he had looked up to see a grinning seacunny or kussab shouting taunts, calling him a stick-man – a dandiwálá – and spinning out insults about the uses to which sticks could be put. For taunts and jibes, Jodu was well-prepared and would even have been glad of, but the serang would allow no familiarities between him and the other lascars: indeed he lost no opportunity to make it clear that he had taken Jodu into the crew against his will and would prefer to see him gone. If he had to be put up with, at Zachary’s insistence, then it would only be as a topas, the lowliest of lascars – a sweeper, to scrub piss-dales, clean heads, wash utensils, scour the decks and the like. To make things as unpleasant as possible, he even made Jodu saw his jharu in half: the shorter the broom, he said, the cleaner the work – this way you’ll be so close to the droppings you’ll know what the tatti was made of when it went in the mouth. On the serang’s right foot, there was a single, carefully tended toenail, a half-inch in length and filed to a sharp point. When Jodu was on all fours, scouring the deck, the serang would sometimes steal up to kick him: Chal sálá! You think it hurts to be spiked in the stern? Be glad it’s not a cannon up your gundeck.
During his first weeks on the Ibis, the serang would not allow Jodu to go below for any reason other than to clean the heads: even at night, he had to sleep on deck. This was a problem only when it rained, which didn’t happen often – at other times, Jodu was by no means the only hand to be looking for the ‘softest plank on deck’. It was thus that he was befriended by Roger Cecil David, known as Rajoo-launder to his shipmates. Tall and thin, Rajoo had the upright mien of a tent-pole, and a complexion that almost matched the tarry tint of the schooner’s masts. Having been raised in a succession of Christian missions, he liked to wear shirts and trowsers, and was often to be seen in a cloth cap – not for him the lungis and bandhnas of the other lascars. These were ambitious tastes for a ship-launder, and they earned him much derision – not least because his garments were patched together from scraps of sailcloth. The joke about him, in short, was that he was the schooner’s third dol – a human mizzen-mast – and his forays into the ringeen were often accompanied by much hilarity, with the foretopmen vying with each other to make cracks at his expense. The possibilities of suggestion here were very rich, for unlike sailors elsewhere, lascars often spoke of their ships in the masculine, referring to the vessels’ masts as their manhood – the word for which was much the same as the commonly used term for ‘ship’s-boy’, with but a syllable removed.
. . . lund to yahã, par launda kahã . . . ?
. . . here’s the prick, but where’s the pricker . . . ?
. . . lowering his canvas . . .
. . . waiting for a blow . . .
Rajoo, for his part, would have been overjoyed to give up his place among the foretopmen – not only because of their jokes, but also because he had no head for heights and was always queasy while aloft. It was his fond ambition to move off the yards, into some position such as mess-boy, steward, or cook, where his feet would be firmly planted on deck. Since Jodu, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to be up on the foremast with the trikat-wale, they quickly decided to put their heads together, to make the exchange come about.
It was Rajoo who took Jodu through the cramped companionway that led to the fo’c’sle, where the lascars’ hammocks were hung. The lascars’ word for this space was faná, or hood, as in the outspread crown of a cobra – for if a ship were to be thought of as a sinuous, living creature, then the head was the exact part to which the fana would correspond, being tucked between the bows, below the main deck and above the cutwater, just aft of the fang of the bowsprit. Although he had never before set foot on the exalted precincts of an ocean-going vessel, Jodu was familiar with the word fana, and had often wondered what it would be like to live and sleep inside the skull of the great living creature that was a ship. To be a fana-wala – a fo’c’sleman of the hood – and to live above the taliyamar, forging through the oceans, was the stuff of his dreams: but in the sight that met his eyes now, as he entered the fana, there was nothing of wonder, and certainly no trace of the fabled jewels of a cobra’s crown. The fana was airless, hot and dark, with no source of lighting except a single oil-lamp hanging on a hook; in the glow of the sputtering flame, it seemed to Jodu that he had tumbled into some musty cave that was densely festooned with cobwebs – for everywhere he looked there was a webbing of hammocks, hanging in double rows, suspended between wooden bea
ms. The cramped, shallow space had the form of an elliptical triangle, with sides that curved inwards to meet at the bows. In height, it was not quite as tall as a full-grown man, yet the hammocks were hung one above another, no more than sixteen regulation inches apart, so that every man’s nose was inches away from a solid barrier: either the ceiling or an arse. Strange to think that these hanging beds were called ‘jhulis’, as if they were swings, like those given to brides or infants; to hear the word said was to imagine yourself being rocked gently to sleep by a ship’s motion – but to see them strung up in front of you, like nets in a pond, was to know that your dreaming hours would be spent squirming like a trapped fish, fighting for space to breathe.
Jodu could not resist climbing into one of the jhulis – but only to leap out again when he caught a noseful of its odour, which consisted not just of the stench of bodies, but of the accumulated smell of sleep itself, compounded of the reek of unwashed bedding, hair-oil, soot, and several months’-worth of dribbles, trickles, leaks, spurts and farts. As luck would have it, the next job to which he was set was that of scrubbing and washing the hammocks: so thoroughly were the jhulis steeped in soot and grime that it seemed to Jodu that not all the water of the Ganga would clean them of the sweat and sin of their former occupants. And when at last the job seemed done, the serang clipped him on the ear, and made him start all over again: Call that clean, do you, you tatter-arsed plugtail of a launder? Many a backslit is cleaner than this.
With his nose in the grime, Jodu yearned to leap up into the ringeen, to be with the trikat-wale, chatting in the crosstrees – not for nothing did lascars call that lofty chair a ‘kursi’, for that was where they went when they chose to lounge at ease, cooled by the breeze. How wasted was this privilege on Rajoo-launder, who never made use of it – and yet for him, Jodu, to so much as glance aloft was to risk a stinging blow from the serang’s foot. To think of all the years he’d spent learning to tell one mast from another, one sail from the next – the kalmí from the dráwal, the dastúr from the sawái – all that effort and knowledge wasted while he squatted by the scuppers, washing a fana-ful of jhulis.
Unpleasant though it was, the task had one fortunate consequence: with the fana emptied of its jhulis, all its occupants now had to sleep on the main deck. This was no great trial, for the weather was growing ever hotter, in anticipation of the coming monsoons, and it was better to be out in the open, even if it meant sleeping on wood. What was more, the fresh air seemed to have the effect of loosening everyone’s tongue, and the lascars often gossiped late into the night as they lay under the stars.
Serang Ali never joined in these sessions: along with the steward, the silmagoor, the seacunnies, and a few others, he had his quarters not in the fana but the deckhouse. But the serang kept himself aloof, even from the other inhabitants of the deckhouse. This was only partly because he was, by nature, a crusty and unforgiving disciplinarian (no shortcoming in the eyes of the lascars, none of whom liked to serve with serangs who were excessively familiar or played at favourites): the serang stood apart also because of his origins, which were obscure even to those who had served with him longest. But this again was not unusual, for many of the lascars were itinerants and vagrants, who did not care to speak too much about their past; some didn’t even know where their origins lay, having been sold off as children to the ghat-serangs who supplied lascars to ocean-going vessels. These riverside crimps cared nothing about who their recruits were and where they came from; all hands were the same to them, and their gangs would kidnap naked urchins from the streets and bearded sadhus from ashrams; they would pay brothel-keepers to drug their clients and thugs to lie in wait for unwary pilgrims.
Yet, varied as they were, most of the lascars on the Ibis knew themselves to be from one part or another of the subcontinent. The serang was one of the few exceptions: if asked, he would always say that he was a Muslim from the Arakan, a Rohingya, but there were those who claimed that he had served his launder-hood with a Chinese crew. That he was fluent in Chinese was soon common knowledge, and was regarded as a blessing, for it meant that often, of an evening, the serang would take himself off to the Chinese quarters of Calcutta’s docklands, leaving the lascars free to make merry on board.
At times when both Serang Ali and Zachary were gone the Ibis was a vessel transformed: someone would be sent aloft to watch for their return, and someone else would be dispatched to fetch a pitcher or two of arrack or doasta; then the whole lashkar would gather, on deck or in the fana, to sing, drink and pass around a few chillums. If there was no ganja at hand, they would burn a few shavings of sailcloth, which was, after all, made from the same plant that had given canvas its name and provided something of a cannabis savour.
The two tindals – Babloo-tindal and Mamdoo-tindal – had served together since their launder-hood: they were as devoted as a pair of nesting cranes although they were from places far apart, one being a Cooringhee Hindu and the other a Shia Muslim from Lucknow. Babloo-tindal, whose face was pitted with the scars of a childhood duel with smallpox, had a quick pair of hands and a knack for beating out rhythms on the backs of metal pots and khwanchas; Mamdoo-tindal was tall and lissom and when the mood was on him he would doff his lungi and banyan and change into a sari, choli and dupatta; with kohl in his eyes and brass rings dangling from his ears, he would assume his other identity, which was that of a silver-heeled dancer who went by the name of Ghaseeti-begum. This character had a complicated life of her own, strewn with heart-breaking flirtations, sparkling exchanges of wit and many besetting sorrows – but it was for her dancing that Ghaseeti-begum was best known, and her performances in the fana were such that few among the crew ever felt the need to visit a shoreside nautchery: why pay on land for what was free on board?
Sometimes, the lascars would gather between the bows to listen to the stories of the greybeards. There was the steward, Cornelius Pinto: a grey-haired Catholic from Goa, he claimed to have been around the world twice, sailing in every kind of ship, with every kind of sailor – including Finns, who were known to be the warlocks and wizards of the sea, capable of conjuring up winds with a whistle. There was Cassem-meah, who, as a young man, had gone to London as a shipowner’s dress-boy, and had spent six months living in the Cheapside boarding house where lascars were lodged: his tales of the taverns set everyone afire for those shores. There was Sunker, a wizened man-boy of indeterminate age, with bandy legs and the sad face of a chained monkey: he had been born into a family of high-caste landlords, he claimed, but a vengeful servant had kidnapped him and sold him to a ghat-serang. Then there was Simba Cader, of Zanzibar, who was deaf in one ear: he was the oldest of all of them, and claimed to have lost his eardrum while serving on an English man-o’-war; when primed with a few swallows of doasta, he would tell of the terrible battle in which his eardrums had been punctured by a cannon-blast. He would speak of it as if it had really happened, with hundreds of ships unloosing cannonades at each other – but the lascars were too wise to give any credence to these entertaining tales: for who could be so foolish as to believe that some great battle had really been fought at a place called ‘Three-fruit-house’ – Tri-phal-ghar?
Dearly would Jodu have liked to be fully of this contingent, to be assigned to a watch and to find a place on the yardarms aloft – but Serang Ali would have none of it, and on the only occasion when Jodu mentioned his ambition, he was answered with a kick in the buttocks: This is the only part of you that’s going to be up on that mast, with the laddu in your scuppers.
It was Steward Pinto, who had seen everything there was to be seen on a ship, who gave Jodu an inkling of why the serang had taken against him. It’s because of the young memsahib, said the steward. The Serang-ji has plans for the malum and he’s afraid that she’s going to lead him off course.
What plans?
Who knows? But this much is for sure, he doesn’t want anything to get in the malum’s way, least of all a girl.
A few days later, almost as if to confir
m the steward’s suggestion, Jodu was summoned to the capstan for a talk with Zikri Malum. The malum seemed somewhat ill at ease, and it was in a rather gruff voice that he asked: ‘You know Miss Lambert well, boy?’
Drawing on his limited supply of hookums, Jodu answered: ‘Fore and aft, sir!’
This appeared to offend the malum, who responded sharply: ‘Hey there! Is that any way to talk about a lady?’
‘Sorry, sir. Hard-a-weather!’
Since this was going nowhere, the malum decided, to Jodu’s horror, to call upon Serang Ali to translate. Squirming under the serang’s narrow-eyed gaze, Jodu veered sharp about, providing laconic answers to the malum’s questions, doing all he could to suggest that he knew Miss Lambert hardly at all, having merely been a servant in her father’s house.
He breathed a sigh of relief when Serang Ali turned away from him to report to the mate: ‘Launder say father-blongi-she go hebbin. That bugger do too muchi tree-pijjin. Allo time pickin plant. Inside pocket hab no cash. After he go hebbin cow-chilo catchi number-two-father, Mr Burnham. Now she too muchi happy inside. Eat big-big rice. Better Malum Zikri forgetting she. How can learn sailor-pijjin, allo time thinking ladies-ladies? More better keep busy with laund’ry till marriage time.’
The malum took unexpected umbrage at this. ‘Hell and scissors, Serang Ali!’ he cried, springing to his feet. ‘Don you never think of nothin but knob-knockin and gamahoochie?’
The malum went stalking off, in exasperation, and as soon as he was out of sight, the serang dealt Jodu’s ear a vicious little clip: Trying to hitch him to a bride, are you? I’ll see you dead first, you little holemonger . . .
