The Hungry Tide (31 page)

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
though
t
o
f
Morichjhãpi
:
wha
t I
sa
w
a
s a
val
e
o
f
tear
s
wa
s
fo
r
other
s
trul
y
mor
e
preciou
s
tha
n
gold
. I
remembere
d
th
e
stor
y
Kusu
m
ha
d
tol
d
me
,
o
f
he
r
exil
e
an
d
ho
w
sh
e
ha
d
dreame
d
o
f
returnin
g
t
o
thi
s
place
,
o
f
seein
g
onc
e
mor
e
thes
e
ric
h
field
s
o
f
mud
,
thes
e
tremblin
g
tides
; I
though
t
o
f
al
l the
other
s
wh
o
ha
d
com
e
wit
h
he
r
t
o
Morichjhãp
i
an
d
o
f
al
l
the
y
ha
d
brave
d
t
o
fin
d
thei
r
wa
y
there
.
I
n
wha
t
wa
y
coul
d I
eve
r
d
o
justic
e
t
o
thi
s
place
?
Wha
t
coul
d I
writ
e
o
f
i
t
tha
t
woul
d
equa
l
th
e
powe
r
o
f
thei
r
longin
g
an
d
thei
r
dreams
?
Wha
t
indee
d
woul
d
b
e
th
e
for
m
o
f
th
e
lines
?
Eve
n
thi
s I
coul
d
no
t
resolve
:
woul
d
the
y
flow
,
a
s
th
e
river
s
did
,
o
r
woul
d
the
y
follo
w
rhythms
,
a
s
di
d
th
e
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.

Most haunting of all, was I overreaching myself even in conceiving of these confusions? What had I ever done to earn the right to address such questions?

I had reached the point where, as the Poet says, we tell ourselves

Maybe what's left

for us is some tree on a hillside we can look at

day after day…

and the perverse affection of a habit

that liked us so much it never let go.

A SUNSET

N
EAR THE END
of the day, when the sun was dipping toward the Bidya's mohona, Piya decided to take advantage of Kanai's invitation: she went up to the roof of the Guest House and knocked on the door of the study.

“Ké?” He blinked as he opened the door and she had the impression that she had woken him from a trance.

“Did I disturb you?”

“No. Not really.”

“I thought I'd take in the sunset.”

“Good idea — I'm glad you came up.” He put away the cardboard-covered book he was holding and went to join her by the parapet. In the distance the sky and the mohona were aflame with the colors of the setting sun.

“It's magnificent, isn't it?” said Kanai.

“It is.”

Kanai proceeded to point out Lusibari's sights: the village maidan, the Hamilton House, the school, the hospital and so on. By the end of the recital they had done a turn around the roof and were facing in the direction of the path they had followed that morning, looking toward the staff quarters of the Lusibari Hospital. Piya knew they were both thinking about the morning's meeting.

“I'm glad it went well today,” she said.

“Did you think it went well?”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “At least Fokir agreed to go on this expedition. In the beginning I didn't think he would.”

“I didn't know what to think, frankly,” Kanai said. “He's such a peculiar, sulky fellow. One doesn't know what to expect.”

“Believe me,” said Piya, “he's very different when he's out on the water.”

“But are you sure you'll be all right with him?” said Kanai. “For several days?”

“Yes, I'm sure.” She was aware of a certain awkwardness in discussing Fokir with him, especially because she could tell that he was still smarting from the silent snub of the morning. Quietly she said, “Tell me about Fokir's mother. What was she like?”

Kanai stopped to consider this. “Fokir looks a lot like her,” he said. “But it's hard to see any other resemblance. Kusum was spirited, tough, full of fun and laughter. Not like him at all.”

“And what happened to her?”

“It's a long story,” said Kanai, “and I don't know all of it. All I can tell you is that she was killed in some kind of confrontation with the police.”

Piya caught her breath. “How did that happen?”

“She'd joined a group of refugees who'd occupied an island nearby. The land belonged to the government, so there was a standoff and many people died. That was in 1979 — Fokir must have been five or six. But Horen Naskor took him in after his mother's death: he's been a father to him ever since.”

“So Fokir wasn't born here?”

“No,” said Kanai. “He was born in Bihar — his parents were living there at the time. His mother came back here when his father died.”

Piya remembered the family she had imagined for Fokir: the parents she had given him and the many siblings. She was shamed by her lack of insight. “Well, that's one thing we have in common, then,” she said. “Fokir and me.”

“What?”

“Growing up without a mother.”

“Did you lose your mother when you were little?” said Kanai.

“I wasn't as little as he was,” said Piya. “My mother died of cancer when I was twelve. But actually I felt I'd lost her long before.”

“Why?”

“Because she'd kind of cut herself off from us — my dad and me. She was a depressive, you see — and her condition got worse over the years.”

“It must have been very hard for you,” said Kanai.

“Not as hard as it was for her,” said Piya. “She was like an orchid in a way, frail and beautiful and dependent on the love and labor of many, many people. She was the kind of person who should never have strayed too far from home. In Seattle she had no one — no friends, no servants, no job, no life. My father, on the other hand, was the perfect immigrant — driven, hardworking, successful. He was busy getting on with his career, and I was absorbed in the usual kid stuff. I guess my mother kind of fell through the cracks. At some point she just gave up.”

Kanai put his hand on hers and gave it a squeeze. “I'm sorry.”

There was a catch in his voice that surprised Piya: she had judged him to be too self-absorbed to pay much attention to other people. Yet his sympathy now seemed genuine.

“I don't get it,” she said with a smile. “You say you're sorry for me, but you don't seem to have much sympathy for Fokir. Even though you knew his mother. How come?”

His face hardened and he gave a snort of ironic laughter. “So far as Fokir is concerned I'm afraid my sympathies are mainly with his wife.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn't you feel for her this morning?” said Kanai. “Just imagine how hard it must be to live with someone like Fokir while also trying to provide for a family and keep a roof over your head. If you consider her circumstances — her caste, her upbringing — it's very remarkable that she's had the forethought to figure out how to get by in today's world. And it isn't just that she wants to get by — she wants to do well; she wants to make a success of her life.”

Piya nodded. “I get it.” She understood now that for Kanai there was a certain reassurance in meeting a woman like Moyna, in such a place as Lusibari: it was as if her very existence were a validation of the choices he had made in his own life. It was important for him to believe that his values were, at bottom, egalitarian, liberal, meritocratic. It reassured him to be able to think, “What I want for myself is no different from what everybody wants, no matter how rich or poor; everyone who has any drive, any energy, wants to get on in the world — Moyna is the proof.” Piya understood too that this was a looking glass in which a man like Fokir could never be anything other than a figure glimpsed through a rear-view mirror, a rapidly diminishing presence, a ghost from the perpetual past that was Lusibari. But she guessed also that despite its newness and energy, the country Kanai inhabited was full of these ghosts, these unseen presences whose murmurings could never quite be silenced no matter how loud you spoke.

Piya said, “You really like Moyna, don't you?”

“I admire her,” said Kanai. “That's how I would put it.”

“I know you do,” Piya said. “But has it occurred to you that she might look a little different from Fokir's angle?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just ask yourself this,” said Piya. “How would
you
like to be married to her?”

Kanai laughed and when he spoke again his voice had an edge of flippancy that made Piya grate her teeth. “I'd say Moyna is the kind of woman who would be good for a brief but exciting dalliance,” he said. “A fling, as we used to say. But as for anything more lasting — no. I'd say someone like you would be much more to my taste.”

Piya raised her hand to her ear stud and fingered it delicately, as if for reassurance. With a wary smile she said, “Are you flirting with me, Kanai?”

“Can't you tell?” he said, grinning.

“I'm out of practice,” she said.

“Well, we have to do something about that, don't we?”

He was interrupted by a shout from below. “Kanai-babu.”

Looking over the parapet, they saw that Fokir was standing on the path below. On catching sight of Piya he dropped his head and shuffled his feet. Then, after addressing a few words to Kanai, he turned abruptly on his heel and walked away in the direction of the embankment.

“What did he say?” said Piya.

“He wanted me to tell you that Horen Naskor will be here tomorrow with the bhotbhoti,” said Kanai. “You can look it over and if it's OK you can leave day after tomorrow.”

“Good!” cried Piya. “I'd better go and organize my stuff.”

She noticed that the interruption had annoyed Kanai as much as it had pleased her. He was frowning as he said, “And I suppose I'd better get back to my uncle's notebook.”

TRANSFORMATION

A
nd if it were not for Horen, perhaps I would have been content to live out my days in the embrace of all the habits that liked me so much they would never let go. But he sought me out one day and said, “Saar, it's mid-January, almost time for the Bon Bibi puja. Kusum and Fokir want to go to Garjontola and I'm going to take them there. She asked if you wanted to come.”

“Garjontola?” I said. “Where is that?”

“It's an island,” he said, “deep in the jungle. Kusum's father built a shrine to Bon Bibi there. That's why she wants to go.”