The Hungry Tide

by Amitav Ghosh

  “Who, Saar?”

  “Who indeed, Fokir? Neither angels nor men will hear us, and as for the animals, they won’t hear us either.”

  “Why not, Saar?”

  “Because of what the Poet says, Fokir. Because the animals

  “already know by instinct

  we’re not comfortably at home

  in our translated world.”

  NEGOTIATIONS

  LIKE EVERY OTHER trainee nurse, Moyna lived in the Lusibari Hospital’s staff quarters. This was a long, barracks-like building situated close to the island’s embankment. It was on the periphery of the Trust’s compound, about a five-minute walk from the Guest House.

  The space allotted to Moyna was on the far side of the building and consisted of one large room and a small courtyard. Moyna was waiting on her threshold when Kanai and Piya arrived. Joining her hands, she greeted them with a smiling “Nomoshkar” and ushered them into the courtyard, where a few folding chairs had been put out to await their arrival.

  Piya looked around as she was seating herself. “Where’s Tutul?”

  “In school,” said Kanai after relaying the question to Moyna.

  “And Fokir?”

  “There.”

  Turning her head, Piya saw that Fokir was squatting in the dwelling’s doorway, half hidden by a grimy blue curtain. He did not look up and offered no greeting nor any sign of recognition: his eyes were lowered to the ground and he seemed to be drawing patterns with a twig. He was wearing, as usual, a T-shirt and a lungi, but somehow in the setting of his own home his clothes looked frayed and seedy in a way Piya had not thought them to be before. There was a fugitive sullenness about his posture that suggested he would rather be anywhere but where he was: she had the impression it was only under great pressure (from Moyna or his neighbors?) that he had consented to be present at this occasion.

  It stung Piya to see him looking like this, beaten and afraid. What was he afraid of, this man who hadn’t hesitated to dive into the river after her? She would have liked to go up to him, to look into his eyes and greet him in a straightforward, ordinary way. But she thought better of it, for she could tell from his stance that, with Moyna and Kanai present, this would only add to his discomfiture.

  Kanai too was watching Fokir. “I thought only parrots could sit like that,” he said to Piya in a whispered aside.

  It was then that Piya noticed that Fokir was not squatting on the floor as she had thought. There was a raised lintel at the bottom of the doorframe and it was on this that he had seated himself, squatting on his haunches and using his toes to grip the wood, like a bird perching on the bar of a cage.

  Since Fokir clearly wanted to have no part of the conversation, Piya decided it might be best to address his wife. “Will you translate for me, please?” she said to Kanai.

  Through Kanai, Piya conveyed her gratitude to Moyna and told her that in return for all Fokir had done for her, she wanted to give a gift to the family.

  Piya had already prepared a wad of banknotes. She was taking it out of her money belt when she noticed that Kanai was leaning back to make room for her to reach over to the chair beside his. Moyna, meanwhile, was sitting forward with an expectant smile. It was evident that they had both assumed Piya would hand the money not to Fokir but to Moyna. This was in fact what Piya herself had intended a moment ago, but now, with the money in her hands, her sense of justice rebelled: it was Fokir who had risked his life in pulling her out of the water, and it was only fair the money should go to him. After everything he had done, she could not treat him as if he didn’t exist.

  Whether he chose to give the money to his wife or his family was his business — it was not for her to make that decision for him.

  Piya rose from her chair but was quickly preempted by Moyna, who stopped before her with an extended palm. Thus forestalled, there was nothing Piya could do: she handed the money to Moyna with as much grace as she could muster.

  “Moyna says she’s very happy to accept your gift on behalf of her husband.”

  Fokir, she noticed, had sat through this without making a move: it was as if he had grown accustomed to being treated as though he were invisible.

  Piya was going back to her chair when she heard Fokir say something that provoked a sharp response from Moyna.

  “What did he say?” Piya whispered to Kanai.

  “He told her it didn’t bode well to take money for something like this.”

  “And what was her answer?”

  “She told him they had no choice: there was no food in the house and no money either. Nothing except a few crabs.”

  Piya turned to face Kanai. “Look,” she said, “I don’t want to interfere in whatever’s going on between them, but I also don’t want this to be just between Moyna and me. Isn’t there any way we could pull Fokir into the conversation? It’s him I really need to talk to.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Kanai. Rising from his chair, Kanai went up to Fokir and said in a loud, hearty voice, attempting friendliness, “Hã-ré, Fokir, do you know me? I’m Mashima’s nephew, Kanai Dutt.” Fokir made no answer, so Kanai added, “Has anyone told you that I used to know your mother?”

  At this Fokir tipped his head back. Now, looking him full in the face for the first time, Kanai was startled by the closeness of his resemblance to Kusum: he could see her likeness in the set of his jaw, in his deep-set, opaque eyes, in his hair and the way he held himself. But Fokir, it seemed, had no interest in pursuing the conversation. After briefly locking eyes with Kanai, he looked away without answering his question. Kanai glared at him for a moment, then shuffled his feet and went back to his chair.

  “What was that about?” said Piya.

  “I was just trying to break the ice,” said Kanai. “I told him I knew his mother.”

  “His mother? You know her?”

  “I did,” said Kanai. “She’s dead now. I met her when I came here as a boy.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “I tried to,” said Kanai with a smile. “But he gave me pretty short shrift.”

  Piya nodded. She hadn’t understood what had passed between the two men, but there was no mistaking the condescension in Kanai’s voice as he was speaking to Fokir: it was the kind of tone in which someone might address a dimwitted waiter, at once jocular and hectoring. It didn’t surprise her that Fokir had responded with what was his instinctive mode of defense: silence.

  “Let’s leave him where he is,” Piya said. “Maybe we should just get started.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Please tell him this.”

  With Kanai translating, Piya explained to Fokir that she was doing research on the species of dolphin that frequented the Garjontola pool. After these past two days, she said, it had become clear to her, as it evidently was to him, that the dolphins left the pool to forage when the water was running high during the day. Now she wanted to trace their routes and map the patterns of their movement. The best way to do this, she had decided, was for her to return to Garjontola with him. They would take a bigger boat, a motorboat if possible; they would anchor near the pool and Fokir would help her survey the dolphins’ daily migrations. The expedition would last a few days — maybe four or five, depending on what they found. She would pay all expenses, of course — the rent for the boat, the provisions and all that — and she would also pay Fokir a salary plus a per diem. On top of that, if all went well there’d be a bonus at the end; all told, he would stand to make about three hundred U.S. dollars.

  Kanai had been translating continuously as Piya was speaking, and when he finished, Moyna gave a loud gasp and covered her face with her hands.

  “Was the money not enough?” Piya asked Kanai anxiously.

  “Not enough?” Kanai said. “Can’t you see Moyna’s overjoyed? This is a windfall for them. I’m sure they really need the money.”

  “And what does Fokir say? Will he be able to arrange for a launch?”

  Kanai paused to li
sten. “He says yes, he’ll do it; he’ll start making the arrangements right away. But there are no motorboats here. You’ll have to use a bhotbhoti.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s what diesel boats are called in these parts,” said Kanai. “They’re named for the hammering sound of their engines.”

  “I don’t care what kind of boat it is,” said Piya. “The thing is, can he arrange for one?”

  “Yes,” said Kanai, “he’ll arrange for one to be here tomorrow. You can look it over.”

  “Does he know the owner?”

  “Yes. It belongs to someone who’s like a father to him.”

  Piya recalled her last experience of hiring a launch and the trouble she had had with the forest guard and his relative. She said, “Do you think this man will be reliable?”

  “Yes,” said Kanai with a nod. “I know the man, actually. His name is Horen Naskor. He used to work for my uncle too. I can vouch for him.”

  “OK, then.”

  Glancing at Fokir, Piya saw there was a grin on his face now, and for a moment it was as though he had once again become the man she had known on the boat, not the sullen, resentful creature he evidently was on land. She could not tell whether it was the prospect of being back on the water that had lifted his spirits or the possibility of escaping from whatever it was that so weighed him down in his home; it was enough that she had been able to offer him something that mattered, whatever it was.

  “Listen, Piya.” Kanai nudged her with his elbow. “Moyna has a question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “She wants to know why a highly educated scientist like you needs the help of her husband — someone who doesn’t even know how to read and write.”

  Piya frowned, puzzling over this. Could Moyna really be as dismissive of her husband as her question seemed to imply? Or was she trying to suggest that Piya should hire someone else? But there was no one else she wanted to work with — especially if the alternatives were men like the forest guard.

  “Could you please tell Moyna,” Piya said to Kanai, “that her husband knows the river well. His knowledge can be of help to a scientist like myself.”

  When this was explained, Moyna responded with a retort sharp enough to draw a laugh from Kanai.

  “Why are you laughing?” said Piya.

  “She’s clever, this girl,” said Kanai.

  “Why? What did she say?”

  “She made a funny little play on the word gyan, which means ‘knowledge,’ and gaan, which means ‘song.’ She said that her life would be a lot easier if her husband had a little more gyan and a little less gaan.”

  HABITS

  Nilima was none too pleased by Kusum’s visit. That evening, she said to me, “Do you know that Kusum came to see me today? She was trying to get me involved with that business in Morichjhãpi. They want the Trust to help them set up some medical facilities there.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I told them there’s nothing we could do,” Nilima said in her flattest, most unyielding voice.

  “Why can’t you help them?” I protested. “They’re human beings; they need medical attention as much as people do anywhere else.”

  “Nirmal, it’s impossible,” she said. “Those people are squatters; that land doesn’t belong to them; it’s government property. How can they just seize it? If they’re allowed to remain, people will think every island in the tide country can be seized. What will become of the forest, the environment?”

  To this I answered that Lusibari was forest too once — it too once belonged to the government. Yet Sir Daniel Hamilton was allowed to take it over in order to create his experiment. And all these years, Nilima had often said that she admired what he did. What was the difference, then? Were the dreams of these settlers less valuable than those of a man like Sir Daniel just because he was a rich shaheb and they were impoverished refugees?

  “But Nirmal,” she said, “what Sir Daniel did happened a long time ago. Just imagine what would become of this whole area if everybody started doing the same thing today. The whole forest would disappear.”

  “Look, Nilima,” I said, “that island, Morichjhãpi, wasn’t really forest, even before the settlers came. Parts of it were already being used by the government for plantations and so on. What’s been said about the danger to the environment is just a sham in order to evict these people, who have nowhere else to go.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Nilima, “I simply cannot allow the Trust to get involved in this. There’s too much at stake for us. You’re not involved in the day-to-day business of running the hospital, so you have no idea of how hard we’ve had to work to stay on the right side of the government. If the politicians turn against us, we’re finished. I can’t take that chance.”

  It was all clear to me now. “So, Nilima,” I said, “what you’re saying is that your position has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the case. You’re not going to help these people because you want to stay on the right side of the government?”

  Nilima made her hands into fists and put them on her waist. “Nirmal, you have no idea of what it takes to do anything practical,” she said. “You live in a dream world — a haze of poetry and fuzzy ideas about revolution. To build something is not the same as dreaming of it. Building is always a matter of well-chosen compromises.”

  I rarely argued with Nilima when she used this tone of voice. But this time, I too wouldn’t let go: “I don’t see that this compromise is well chosen.”

  This made Nilima even angrier. “Nirmal,” she said, “I want you to remember something. It was for your sake that we first came to Lusibari, because your political involvements got you into trouble and endangered your health. There was nothing for me here, no family, friends or a job. But over the years I’ve built something — something real, something useful, something that has helped many people in small ways. All these years, you’ve sat back and judged me. But now it’s there in front of you, in front of your eyes — this hospital. And if you ask me what I will do to protect it, let me tell you, I will fight for it like a mother fights to protect her children. The hospital’s future, its welfare — they mean everything to me, and I will not endanger them. I’ve asked very little of you all this time, but I’m asking you now: stay away from Morichjhãpi. I know the government will not allow the settlers to stay and I know also that they will be vengeful toward anyone who gets mixed up in this business. If you get involved with those settlers you will be endangering my life’s work. Just keep that in mind. That’s all I ask.”

  There was nothing more to say. No one knew better than I the sacrifices she had made for me. I recognized that my idea of teaching the children of Morichjhãpi was just an old man’s hallucination, nothing more than a way of postponing an inevitable superannuation. I tried to purge it from my head.

  The new year, 1979, came in, and soon afterward Nilima left to go off on one of her periodic fundraising tours for the hospital. A rich Marwari family in Calcutta had agreed to donate a generator; a cousin of hers had become a minister in the state government and she wanted to see him. There was even to be a trip to New Delhi to meet with a senior official in Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s government. All of this had to be tended to.

  On the morning of Nilima’s departure, I went to the jetty to see her off, and just before leaving she said, “Nirmal, remember what I said to you about Morichjhãpi. Remember.”

  The boat sailed away and I went up to my study. With my schoolmaster’s duties at an end, time hung heavy on my hands. I opened my notebooks for the first time in many years, thinking that perhaps I would write something. I had long thought of compiling a book about the tide country, a volume that would include all I knew, all the facts I had gathered over these years.

  For several days I sat at my desk, gazing at the mohona of the Raimangal in the distance. I remembered how, when I first came to Lusibari, the sky would be darkened by birds at sunset. Many years had passed since
I’d seen such flights of birds. When I first noticed their absence, I thought they would soon come back but they had not. I remembered a time when at low tide the mudbanks would turn scarlet with millions of swarming crabs. That color began to fade long ago and now it is never seen anymore. Where had they gone, I wondered, those millions of swarming crabs, those birds?

  Age teaches you to recognize the signs of death. You do not see them suddenly; you become aware of them very slowly over a period of many, many years. Now it was as if I could see those signs everywhere, not just in myself but in this place that I had lived in for almost thirty years. The birds were vanishing, the fish were dwindling and from day to day the land was being reclaimed by the sea. What would it take to submerge the tide country? Not much — a minuscule change in the level of the sea would be enough.

  As I contemplated this prospect, it seemed to me that this might not be such a terrible outcome. These islands had seen so much suffering, so much hardship and poverty, so many catastrophes, so many failed dreams, that perhaps humankind would not be ill served by their loss.

  Then I thought of Morichjhãpi: what I saw as a vale of tears was for others truly more precious than gold. I remembered the story Kusum had told me, of her exile and how she had dreamed of returning to this place, of seeing once more these rich fields of mud, these trembling tides; I thought of all the others who had come with her to Morichjhãpi and of all they had braved to find their way there. In what way could I ever do justice to this place? What could I write of it that would equal the power of their longing and their dreams? What indeed would be the form of the lines? Even this I could not resolve: would they flow, as the rivers did, or would they follow rhythms, as did the tides?

  I put my books aside and went to stand on the roof, to gaze across the waters. The sight was almost unbearable to me at that moment; I felt myself torn between my wife and the woman who had become the muse I’d never had; between the quiet persistence of everyday change and the heady excitement of revolution — between prose and poetry.