by Mary Finn
He looked at me then and clapped his hands to his moustaches.
“You have dressed for the river,” he said. “I have not seen this before.” He pointed at my twill trousers and laughed with delight. It did me good to hear him.
Miss Hickey had been unhappy when I began to wear my own designs. She loved my saris, she said, they were so much more elegant than any English dress. But Mr Hickey said my trousers were an old tradition and that I should be let wear them. He showed us a painting he had bought on one of his trips to the south. A handsome prince was sitting in his garden with a group of ladies. His favourite, for she was in the centre, was dressed in a soldier’s jacket and a pair of pink sprigged muslin breeches that came only as far as her knees. I thought she looked as bold and brave as her master.
What I had learned, and Miss Hickey had too, was that nobody expected me to do things properly, the way English ladies did. That was fine by me. That was how I was here today on the river.
Mr Walker ushered me ahead of him towards the little plank that led onto the boat. We had to dip our heads to enter the salon, where there were seats all around. At the back there were small cupboards of polished wood built into the walls of the boat. Madan said we should stow our personal goods in them.
“If the sun gets too strong you can close these,” he said. He pulled a cord and the slats of the wooden Venetians came together, just as they would in a house. For more shade there were tied-back drapes made of red canvas.
“Red like the sails. Look, Anila,” Mr Walker said. “They’re raising sail now. We’re away!”
BY THE CREEK
MY MOTHER NEVER CAUGHT fish down by the river. She caught men instead. Or they caught her. I wasn’t there of course when she and my father met, when she was just a young girl living with her own father in the village by the river. But I was there the day Mr Bristol paddled into our lives.
There was huge excitement when the boys first saw the long flat boat coming upstream from the main river. Only small punts ever came up our creek, and they usually stayed much further down, near where the waters met, where the men could net shrimps and other small grey fish. The boys rushed up to warn our group – the women who were washing clothes and bathing and the girls who were ducking themselves under my mother’s careful watch.
My mother was standing up to her waist in the middle of the creek and she waited there like that until every child was safely out on the bank. Then she bent down into the water to swim over to the washing rocks. She had no veil or scarf and her hair stretched out behind her like silky black waterweeds.
There were two English men sitting on little chairs on the flat boat, with two boatmen, front and back, who were working their way through the water and mud with tall poles. The men were wearing broad hats because of the heat, but their jackets were dark and they sat in the full sun.
One of them called on the boatmen to stop. Everybody was out of the water on the bank now, my mother too, and they were walking quickly away from the creek over the lumpy ground. Only Dinesh and I remained, sitting on the bank with our feet dabbling in the water. I was too hot to want to leave the creek for the lane and I knew these men would soon pass on. My mother had not yet noticed that I had stayed but there was little she could do anyway when she did miss me except send one of the small boys to get me.
“Can you speak English?” the man called out to us. I could not see his face properly under the hat but he was tall and stout and his voice was pleasant. It was very different from my father’s voice but I could understand him well enough.
“Yes!” I shouted back. I was proud to be able to say this because I knew Dinesh had no English at all.
“Who is the lady who was swimming out here where our boat is now?” the man asked. His friend made a noise that could have been a cough or a laugh.
“My mother,” I said proudly.
“I thought she might be,” he said. “And what are your names?”
I told him my name, my mother’s name and then Dinesh’s too, just to have Dinesh give a little jump of surprise beside me. I gave him a dig with my elbow.
There were more questions, all from the same man.
“And how might I find you if I came down your lane? Where would I take a turn from the high road?”
I thought about this for a while. I was trying to figure out which was the best way to pick our lane out from all the other lanes that also led off the road. But he must have thought that I preferred to keep this information to myself because he told the boatman to take the boat in closer and then he spoke to me again. He had remembered my name.
“Anila, I am writing stories about Calcutta and the people who live in the lanes and the bazaars. But it’s hard for me because so few people speak English. Your mother does too, am I right?”
I nodded. But I wondered what kind of stories he was talking about. We could tell him much better stories, I thought, stories of princesses and demons, magic birds and trees that talked. He could write the best tales down in his notebook, I thought, as my father had written them in mine.
“My publisher has given me a big bag of money to help me find and collect these stories. I would pay you and your mother for your help.”
Well, that was the best news I could hear. Life had been very hard lately even with my mother back in good health. We had eaten nothing but rice for weeks, and of that only the dirtiest of husks, and no salt with it either. One day there had only been the cold rice water that on our lane was normally given to animals.
I asked Dinesh what direction I could offer and he said that our lane was the one just after the ruined temple. If you were journeying towards the city, not away from it.
The man heard me and gave a little bow from his chair. Then he gave another order and the boat moved off, up the creek, just as it had been travelling before. Dinesh and I waited until it was out of sight and then we slipped back into the water.
But I discovered that I could not relax there. It felt warm now, not cool and I wanted to get home and present my good news, news that seemed almost a food in itself. Dinesh was pestering me to tell him what the stout man had said but I had no wish to do that. My mother should know first. She could decide what stories were best to tell and how we might prepare our little room for the Englishman’s visit.
I left Dinesh and ran back to our house, dripping water like a piece of washing that had grown legs. I spattered the tailor’s red hens as I passed them on the lane and they squawked with rage to meet this sudden shower from nowhere.
“Mago!” I shouted when I got inside our door. “We’re going to have a big bag of money soon!”
She shushed me and took off my wet sari, wrapping me in one of her own, scolding me for staying behind. Then she sat me on our bed and heard my story. I watched her face for signs of pleasure but there were none. Yet I knew that the hunger I felt now in my belly was in hers too.
At night when we were preparing our dirty rice, picking out the stones and grit and worse from it, we talked about food and what we would buy if we found a coin on the road. My mother named all the kinds offish she knew, even ones I had never heard of. We would eat these with handfuls of sweet sticky rice mixed with seeds and spices. We would have dishes of hot dal and little purple brinjals with enough chillis to make tears come to our eyes. Then I listed all the sweetmeats we would have afterwards when our hunger pains were banished. Soft creamy balls of naru, dusted with sugar and seeds, fresh from the maira, the friendly sweet seller, who walked the high road calling out the names of all the delicious things he carried on his tray. But we would also have sweet bananas fried in oil and sugar. Melon cubes in syrup stuck together like jewels. Mangoes.
Sometimes tears came to my mother’s eyes when we talked like this.
“I’m called Annapurna after the great food provider but look, this is all I can offer you,” she’d say in a whisper. Then our brave little game would end and a hungry tide would wash over us again.
Now she had a very differ
ent look.
“And you told him where we lived?” she asked.
Her eyes looked as unbelieving as if I had told her that I had killed a buffalo calf.
“But we are so hungry, Ma,” I said. “If he gives us the money what harm can that do?”
She turned away from me and went out the door. I could hear her feet on the steps outside and then their light tread on the roof as she paced. I could not understand why she had taken no joy from my news. If I were her, I thought, I would be up there with a smile on my face, waiting for the stout man in the black jacket to appear at the top of the lane. I would have swept the floor and put blossom in the water jug. I would have my best sari on, and my hair washed and oiled and my head full of stories. And I would have my best golden girl dressed up too, waiting beside me, waiting for the bag of money so that we could eat as never before.
CARLEN
I SOON FOUND THAT a boat was like a church. Everyone had a proper place to be and woe to anyone who strayed out of that place. Then Madan would roar, no matter who was at fault, even if it was Mr Walker doing a turn to help Carlen up front, hauling on the ropes with his long thin arms.
Benu, the shy boy, was in charge of the tiller, the wooden handle that steered the boat from the back. He kept out of trouble, mostly, with his eyes fixed ahead. He never looked at me, that first day. But sometimes he was not speedy enough when the big boats came down the middle of the river heading straight for us. When that happened his father became like Ravana calling on his demons.
“RIGHHHHTTT side, Bigbelly!” he shouted. “Do you want us to be sliced down the middle like a hairy fruit?”
Hari knew what to do on a boat and he moved around neatly, putting his feet down as if there were marks on the boards telling him just so. That was a science that took me a while to learn, especially when the big boats passing made us rock in the water. With no fuss Hari put away our bags and unpacked what was needed, setting out a water flask and cups.
I took my notebook and pencils out of my case and sat down on an upturned barrel away from the ropes and canvas. The seats inside would be more comfortable but I preferred to be out here with nothing except air between me and any birds we might see.
There were plenty, already, most of them on the banks, or else in the bays of shallow water the river had shaped out of its own sides. Ducks were fussing and crowding each other into the reeds and lily pads to get away from us. But the long-beaked egrets stood firm and watched for frogs in the mud and water. One was close enough to the smooth water to make a perfect twin of himself. He stayed still, even when the ripples from our boat broke up his watery self into a white shudder.
Buffaloes called out to each other from the water meadows. Sometimes we saw them, swishing their tails, but not when the green bank sides grew tall with growth. Kingfishers flashed past us over the dark water and disappeared.
Kingfishers are the blue arrows from Lord Krishna’s bow, my little one. He shoots them up and down the river to make us wonder.
My pencil was moving quite as fast as a kingfisher, I thought. But still I saw the shadow fall on my page.
Carlen.
I smiled at him but was uncertain if I should. We had not spoken and he seemed aloof, or perhaps he was wrapped up in his own fair perfection.
“What are these words?” he asked. “I can’t read them.”
He crouched down, so close that his leg pressed on mine. No accident, for it followed me when I shifted. Above the roaring in my ears I heard him call out a couple of the words I’d pencilled in alongside my sketches – belly white, conch pink, mango green. But they sounded like nonsense when he said them. My words were Bangla words but my code was to write them down using English letters. For me it was a way of honouring my mother. She couldn’t read or write any language yet she always found the way of telling you the precise colour of anything – birds or saris, jewels or fruits. She even had words for the different shades of rain.
Now Carlen stood, but he leaned over my book still, trying to turn the page back, to see if he could find anything else. I pulled it away from his hand and held it closed against my chest, furious. Why was this man suddenly treating me with such rudeness? I took a long breath.
“They’re Bangla words,” I said to him. “They’re for colours so I’ll remember them later when I paint.”
“But you don’t want anyone else to know your secrets, is that it? Or can you not write in proper English?”
When he stopped talking his mouth stayed open like a cat that sees a bird. I could see the points of his neat white teeth.
I looked around, quickly. Mr Walker was doing his best up front with the ropes and Madan. I could see Hari through the glass, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cabin. He seemed to be praying. Benu’s red head wrap was pointed in our direction but that was all I saw of him.
“I can speak your language as well as you can,” I said to him. “Can you speak mine?”
He laughed.
“Jabber’s no language, whatever foolishness the master has swallowed down with his whisky.”
He reached forward then and, before I could twist away from him, he thrust his hand under my poor paper shield and squeezed my right breast through the thin cotton tunic. As if it were a fruit in a bag. As if it were his to handle. I managed to scratch the back of his hand before he took it away. But he laughed and held his hand to his mouth, licking the cut as if his own blood were a food.
“How old are you, anyway? Fourteen by the feel, I’d say. Nigh on fifteen. Or maybe you rice-eaters never grow anything better than that. Tell me, is that so, my black kitten?”
He laughed and made paws of his hands, pushing them at my face.
All the air had left my lungs. I couldn’t speak.
“And that’s no dress at all. I’ve known Indian dark-women, more than a few, I can tell you, and they’d not dream of getting themselves up in kit like that. What class of a creature are you, anyway? Down my way we’d call you a hinny.”
He moved away then, abruptly, going forward so swiftly that I knew even before I looked up that someone was coming. My body blazed like a dirty torch as Mr Walker came towards me. “Dirty”, like the word hinny, whatever it meant, lodged now in my brain.
“Anila, come forward with me and talk to Madan. I think he may have some news for you.”
He picked up my notebook and read out the same words that Carlen had chosen. But he said them beautifully in his deep rich voice.
“Belly white, Anila? Is that English belly white, as in our pale skins?”
He laughed but I knew he was mocking himself, not me. I could not even force a laugh myself, but I felt my blood flowing again and the jags in my stomach grew less painful.
“It’s the white a buffalo can be underneath,”
I could hear the dullness in my own voice. I tried to cover with a cough and said more than I needed to.
“That makes it not really white at all but a creamy grey with brown mixed in.”
Mr Walker’s eyebrows shot up. Should I tell him what had happened? I doubted I could find the words. Not in Bangla, not in English.
“Ah,” was all he said.
Madan looked up as we came forward into his little domain of ropes and canvas. Carlen was there too, hands busy, but his eyes were all for the passing crafts on the river. I kept him severely out of my glance.
“Sahib tells me your mother grew up on the river,” Madan said. “Where was that?”
I told him the name of the village. He threw his rope across to Carlen and came to my side.
“We pass there tomorrow,” he said. “She really grew up by the river?”
What else would come to trouble my poor stomach this day? I clutched it to ease the sudden shock and stared down into the water. Tomorrow I would be passing my grandfather’s village. Yet I didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.
When I looked at him Madan had a strange expression.
“Yes, her father was a boatman,” I told h
im. “She lived there until she was fourteen. There were just the two of them and she helped him with the work like a son.”
Now he was staring at me like a person does who has met you once a long time ago and is trying to remember your name.
“Was your mother’s name Annapurna, whose father was Arjun?” he asked, at last.
My legs and hands were shaking and I was glad to sit down, on a cask. I laid my notebook down on the deck but when I saw there was water puddling near it I picked it up again. My throat had closed itself off so I could hardly whisper back to him.
“Yes.”
Madan beamed, obviously satisfied with his good memory.
“I know Arjun,” he said. “But I never knew that he had a granddaughter. We knew Annapurna had married an Englishman. Many young men wept tears into the river that year, I can tell you. So, that’s the way, is it? Well, Arjun is a good man, a very good man.”
There was a roar from the back of the boat, from Benu. Quickly Madan pushed Carlen to one side and dragged hard on one of the short ropes he held loose. The sail tilted sharp towards the centre, as we skimmed along just inches away from the branch of an old willow that had fallen over and stretched itself far out over the river. Another flat boat was coming down the river and the men on board laughed rudely at us for our near escape.
Madan turned his broad back to them. He looked at Carlen.
“You are no boatman,” he said quietly, and this was worse, somehow, than his roar. Carlen’s skin flushed red, even his hands, I noticed. I wished he was gone. Back to the city, back to England, anywhere but on our boat. I did not want this man to hear another word about my mother. That was what had taken his attention from the ropes, I was sure of it.
“Carlen, the afternoon is well advanced. I think we shall eat soon,” Mr Walker said. “Will you take care of things in the cabin?”
He looked anxious, I thought, for all that he was the master here. When Carlen moved away inside, he spread his hands and sighed.
