The Hungry Tide

by Amitav Ghosh

  There was just enough light from the now distant gas lamps for him to see that she was stumbling ahead, turning from time to time to wipe her dripping nose on her shoulder. “Kusum,” he cried, keeping his voice low, “stop!” He had caught up with her now and he gave her elbow a tug. “It was a mistake.”

  She came to a halt and he steeled himself for a flood of reproach. But she said nothing, and when he looked into her eyes he knew that his link with her perturbation was only incidental and that her grief sprang from a much deeper source than could be plumbed by a boy’s mistaken touch.

  They were now very close to the gate of Hamilton House compound. On an impulse Kanai vaulted over the gate and gestured to Kusum: “Come on. Come.” After a moment’s hesitation she followed, and he took her hand and they went racing up the mossy flagstones that flanked the pond. Kanai led Kusum up a flight of stairs to the shaded veranda. They seated themselves on the floor with their backs to the old wooden walls. From this position they had a clear view of the maidan, and they could even see Dukhey lying prone on the stage, beseeching Bon Bibi to save him.

  It was Kusum who spoke first. “I called her too,” she said. “But she never came.”

  “Who?”

  “Bon Bibi. The day my father died. I saw it all, it happened in front of me, and I called her again and again …”

  It had been an ordinary day, no different from any other, and it had happened under the full light of a blazing noonday sun. There was money in the house and food as well, because her father had come back just the day before from a long and successful fishing trip: the one untoward thing he had had to report was that he had lost his gamchha. He had wanted to eat well, so her mother had made rice, dal and vegetables, but when it came time to cook some fish, the firewood had run out. On being told this, he had flown into a rage: it was many days since he had had a good meal and he was not going to be deprived of one now. He stormed out of the house, saying he would be back soon with more firewood.

  Their hut was in the lee of the embankment, on the shore of a narrow creek; it took just ten or fifteen minutes of rowing to get to the forest on the far bank. Although this was a reserve, it was common for people of their village to forage for firewood there. Kusum followed him out of the house and stood on the embankment as he rowed across the river. This took longer than usual because there was a strong wind blowing in from the far shore. He was pushing the boat up the bank when she saw it — not the whole animal but enough of its flashing black and gold coat to know it was there.

  “Do you mean,” Kanai interrupted, “that you saw a — ?” But before he could say the word bÁgh, tiger, she had slammed a hand over his mouth: “No, you can’t use the word — to say it is to call it.”

  The animal was in the trees that lined the shore, and from the direction of its advance she knew it had watched the boat as it came across the river. At Kusum’s first scream her mother and many others from the hamlet ran up to the embankment. But her father, for whom the shout of warning had been intended, didn’t hear her, for the wind was blowing in the wrong direction.

  Within moments, dozens of people had joined her on the embankment and they all saw what she had seen: the animal was stalking her father. The men of the village raced to get their boats into the water, while the women shouted and banged on pots and pans, making as much noise as they could. But it made no difference, for the wind was against them — the sound did not carry to the man on the far bank. The animal too was upwind of its prey, and they could see its coat flashing as it closed in; because of the distinctiveness of its own odor, it was skilled in dealing with the wind and it knew that the people on the other bank were powerless against these gusts. So great was its confidence that in the last stretch it actually broke cover and went racing along the shore, in full view of the far shore; intent on its prey, it no longer cared about concealment. This was in itself an astonishing sight, almost without precedent, for the great cats of the tide country were like ghosts, never revealing their presence except through marks, sounds and smells. They were so rarely seen that to behold one, it was said, was to be as good as dead — and indeed the sight caused several of the women on the embankment to lose consciousness.

  But as for Kusum, she sank to her knees and began to whisper, “Help, O Mother of Mercy, O Bon Bibi, save my father.” She had shut her eyes so she didn’t see the end, but she heard everything. Because of the wind’s direction, the sounds that accompanied the kill carried across the water with exceptional clarity: Kusum heard the roar that froze her father; she heard his cry for help — bachao! She heard the sound of his bones cracking as the animal swiped a paw across his neck; she heard the rustle of the mangrove as the animal dragged the corpse into the forest.

  And all through this she never once stopped reciting Bon Bibi’s name.

  It was Horen who lifted her from the dust. “Bon Bibi’s heard you,” he told her. “Sometimes this is the means she chooses to call those who are closest to her: men like your father, bauleys, they’re always the first to go.”

  Kusum’s body had crumpled as she was telling this story, leaving her slumped against Kanai’s shoulder, and he could feel her hair on his skin. Her story had caused an upwelling of emotion in him that constricted his throat; he wanted to fold her in his arms, to ward off her grief; he wanted to wipe away her tears; he wanted his body to become a buffer between her and the world. This was the most intense physical sensation he had ever experienced, this need to protect, to defend, to make a bodily expression of his sympathy. He brushed her eyes with his lips and the softness and warmth were such that he could not stop: he put an arm around her and pulled her toward him, pressing his head against hers.

  Suddenly they heard the sound of running feet, flying up the teak stairs of the Hamilton bungalow. “Kusum! Kusum!” It was Horen’s voice, calling to her in a hoarse whisper.

  Kusum stood up. “Yes, I’m here.”

  Horen appeared in front of them, panting. “Kusum,” he said, “we have to go. I saw Dilip — he’s here with some men, looking for you. You’re not safe here. You have to get away.”

  Horen squatted beside Kanai and stuck a finger in his face. “And as for you, little babu — if you tell anyone where she’s gone, or with whom, you won’t be safe either. Do you understand?” Without waiting for any response from Kanai, he took hold of Kusum’s hand and led her off at a run.

  This was Kanai’s last glimpse of Kusum. The next day Nirmal announced to him that his exile was over and he was to be taken back to Kolkata.

  STIRRINGS

  ALTHOUGH THE MOON was only three-quarters full, it cast such a bright sheen on the river’s surface that the water seemed to be glowing from within. Although the night was cool, there was no wind and not a sound was to be heard from the shore. Turning over in drowsy discomfort, Piya adjusted the sari that was her pillow and found her head resting against the boat’s wooden prow. Her sleep was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a great bustle: a restless, scraping, scratching noise was echoing through the timber, percolating up from the boat’s bowels. It took a few minutes for Piya to work out that this was merely the sound of the boat’s live cargo of crabs, scurrying about in the hold. She could hear the rattle of their shells, the clattering of their claws and the rustling of leaves and branches: it was as though she were a giant listening to the stirrings of a subterranean city.

  The boat rocked as if under the shifting of someone’s weight, and she glanced down to see that Fokir was sitting up in the center of the craft with a blanket draped tent-like around his shoulders. She had thought him to be asleep under the shelter, but there was a boulderlike immobility about him that suggested he had been sitting there for some time. He seemed to feel the touch of her gaze, for he turned to look in her direction, and when he saw she was awake gave her a smile that was both apologetic and self-mocking. It warmed her to think of him sitting there, keeping watch as she and Tutul slept. She remembered the moment when his hand had touched her in the water
and how violently she had tried to fight it off until she understood it was not a predator that had touched her but a human being, someone she could trust, someone who would not hurt her. In remembering this, she was amazed to think that no more than a few hours had passed since she had tumbled out of that launch and into the water. The memory caused a tremor to shake her body, and when she shut her eyes it was as if the water had closed around her again and she was back in those swift, eerily glowing depths where the sunlight had no orientation and it was impossible to know which way was up and which down.

  SHE FELT THE BOAT move under her and realized she was shivering. She was trying to calm herself, taking one deep breath after another, when she felt a firm, cool touch on her shoulder — and this too was strangely reminiscent of her fall, for she knew it was Fokir. Opening her eyes, she saw he was looking worriedly into her face and she tried to force a smile — but it turned into a grimace for her body would not stop its convulsive shaking. She could feel his anxiety deepening now, so she placed her hand on his and he took hold of it and stretched himself out beside her. His salty, sun-soaked smell was in her nostrils now, and through the blanket that separated them she could feel the sharpness of his ribs. His body seemed to warm her coverings, dissipating the clammy sensation that had seized her limbs. When her shivering stopped she sat up abruptly in embarrassment. He sprang back at the same time and she knew he was just as discomfited as she was. She wished she could think of a way to let him know it was all right — nothing had been misunderstood, no wrong had been done. But all she could do was clear her throat noisily and say thank you. Then, mercifully, as if to rescue them from the awkwardness of the moment, Tutul cried out in his sleep. Immediately Fokir slid away to comfort his son.

  Piya lowered her head again to the bunched-up sari she was using as a pillow, and it seemed to her now that in the folds of the fabric she could smell the presence of the garment’s owner: it was almost as if this other woman had suddenly materialized in the boat. Piya was glad to think she could have said to her exactly what she had said to Fokir: that no wrong had been done and nothing at all had happened.

  What could have happened anyway? Although she knew little else about Fokir, she did know he had a child and was married. And as for herself, no thought was farther from her mind than the idea of a personal entanglement. She was out on assignment, working in the field — it was the exclusion of intimate involvements that made a place into a field and the line between the two was marked by a taboo she could not cross except at the risk of betraying her vocation.

  THE BOAT WAS ALREADY moving when Piya woke next morning. She opened her eyes to find that a dense fog had resulted from the collision between the cold night air and the water’s warmth. She could not see much beyond her own feet and her blankets were wet with dew. It was only because of a faint glow in the eastern sky that she knew that the sun had risen. It astonished her that Fokir could steer in such bad light: clearly, he knew this stretch of water well enough to feel his way along the river’s edge.

  There was no pressing reason to get up, so she allowed herself to fall back into a doze. In a while the boat came to a stop, waking her again. She looked up to find that the fog was still thick around the boat and nothing could be seen of the surrounding terrain. There was a sound astern as of an anchor dropping and she wondered idly why Fokir had chosen to stop here. She decided it must have something to do with the visibility — perhaps they had reached a stretch of open water where it would be impossible to steer in the fog?

  She was about to drop off again when she heard something that made her sit upright. Cupping her hands around her ears, she listened hard, and there it was again, a rippling in the water followed by a muffled snort, as if a man were blowing his nose into a thick wad of Kleenex.

  “Shit!” She sprang into a kneeling position and listened carefully, tuning her ears to the fog. A few minutes of close attention was all it took to know that there were several dolphins in the vicinity of the boat. The sounds were scattered in direction and seemed to change location frequently: some were faint and far away while others were close at hand. She had spent great lengths of time listening to these muffled grunts and knew exactly what they were: only the Irrawaddy dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris, produced this particular kind of sound. Evidently a group of traveling Orcaella had decided to make a brief halt near the boat. It was typical of her luck that this had happened at a time when she could not see beyond her arm: from her experience of such encounters, she knew that the dolphins would become restless in a matter of minutes. They would probably be gone before she could unpack her equipment.

  “Fokir!” She said his name in an urgent whisper, to make sure he had heard the sounds. The boat rocked and she knew from its motion that he was working his way forward. But he still startled her when he emerged from the fog: his head seemed to be floating on a cloud, with tendrils of mist swirling around his neck.

  “Listen!” she cried, holding a hand to her ear, pointing in the direction of the exhalations. He nodded, but without showing any surprise; it was as though there were nothing unexpected about this encounter and he had known all along that they would be there. Could it be that this was the spot he had been aiming for the night before with the idea of showing her the dolphins?

  This baffled her still more: how could he have known that they would run into a group of Orcaella right then and right in that place? It was possible, of course, that dolphins frequented this stretch of water, but even so, how could he have known that they would be there on that day, at that time? Groups of migrating Orcaella were anything but predictable in their movements. She decided to shrug off these questions for the time being. The job at hand was to record all the data that could be conjured out of this fog.

  Despite the urgency of the moment, Piya’s movements were unhurried and methodical as she went about the business of unpacking her equipment. Just as she was fixing a sheaf of data sheets into her clipboard, a dolphin surfaced a few feet away: it was so close she could feel the spray from its breath. She caught sight of a dorsal fin and a bluntly rounded snout. There was no further room for doubt now: these were definitely Orcaella. Although she had been almost sure from the start, it was still good to have visual confirmation. The animal had surfaced so close to the boat that she had only to extend her arm to get a reading on the GPS monitor. She recorded the figures with a sense of triumph: even if the dolphins took flight this very minute, this little scrap of data would have made the encounter credible and worthwhile.

  By this time the fog had thinned and with the tide at its lowest ebb, the shore was revealed to be no more than a few hundred feet away. Piya saw that Fokir had stopped the boat at a point where the shore curved, like the inside of an arm, creating a long patch of unperturbed water in the crook of the river’s elbow. It was evident also that the boat was anchored in the only remaining stretch of deep water. This consisted of a boomerang-shaped area about half a mile in length. It was in this stretch that the dolphins were circling, as if within the limits of an invisible pool.

  Soon the dawn fog was as distant a memory as the chill of the night. With the mudbanks and the forests holding back the wind, no breeze could find its way down to the water. In the stillness, the river seemed to give birth to a second sun, so that there was almost as much heat radiating from the water’s surface as from the cloudless sky above. As the temperature peaked, subterranean currents of life rose seething to the surface of the nearby mudbanks, with legions of crabs scuttling to salvage the rich haul of leaves and other debris left behind by the retreating tide.

  By midday Piya had enough data to make an informed guess about the size of the group. There were seven individuals, she estimated, but this included a pair that appeared to be swimming in tandem, usually surfacing together. One of these was smaller in size than the other animals, and she knew this to be a calf, probably a newborn, yet too young to swim independently of its mother. Time and again she observed it coming to the surface in a corkscrew
pattern, with its little head protruding from the water — an indication that it had still to learn to breathe smoothly. Her heart leaped every time she caught sight of that little head: it was exhilarating to know that the population was still reproducing. Rarely, if ever, did the animals venture away from the bend in the river: they seemed instead to be content to circle within that small stretch of deep water. Nor was it the boat’s presence that kept them there: whatever interest they had had in it had long since been exhausted.

  Why were they lingering? What had brought them here and what were they waiting for? It was all very confusing and yet Piya knew intuitively that something interesting was going on — something that might be important to the understanding of the Irrawaddy dolphin and its patterns of behavior. She just had to puzzle out what it was.

  MORICHJHÃPI

  SUNLIGHT streaming in through an uncurtained window woke Kanai shortly after dawn. A little later, having washed and changed, he went downstairs and tapped on Nilima’s door. The voice that answered was uncharacteristically tremulous: “Ké?”

  “It’s me — Kanai.”

  “Come in. The door’s open.”

  Kanai entered to find a bleary-eyed Nilima sitting propped up in bed with a bank of pillows behind her and a large quilt piled over her legs. There was a cup of tea on the bedside table, and next to it a saucer filled with Marie biscuits. No clothes or personal effects were anywhere to be seen while books and files lay stacked everywhere — under the bed, on the floor and even in the swell of the mosquito net. The room was sparsely utilitarian in appearance, with very few furnishings other than file cabinets and bookcases. But for the presence of a large four-poster bed, it would have been easy to mistake it for an extension of the Trust’s offices.