The Hungry Tide (54 page)

The stronger the gale blew, the more closely her body became attuned to the buffers between which she was sandwiched: the tree in front and Fokir behind. The branch they were sitting on was positioned so that it was on the sheltered side of the tree, pointing away from the wind. This meant that Piya and Fokir, sitting astride the branch, were facing in the direction of the wind, taking advantage of the “shadow” created by the tree's trunk. But for this lucky circumstance, Piya knew, they would have been pulverized by the objects the gale was hurling at them. She felt it in her bones every time a branch broke off or a flying object struck the tree; at times the wood would creak and shudder under the force of these collisions and the roll of fabric around her waist would bite into her skin. Without the sari they would long since have been swept off their perch.

Sitting behind her, Fokir had his fingers knotted around her stomach. His face rested on the back of her neck and she could feel his stubble on her skin. Soon her lungs adapted to the rhythm of his diaphragm as it pumped in and out of the declivity of her lower back. Everywhere their bodies met, their skin was joined by a thin membrane of sweat.

Then the noise of the storm deepened and another roar made itself heard over the rumbling din of the gale, a noise like that of a cascading waterfall. Stealing a glance through her fingers, Piya glimpsed something that looked like a wall, hurtling toward them from downriver. It was as if a city block had suddenly begun to move: the river was like pavement lying at its feet, while its crest reared high above, dwarfing the tallest trees. It was a tidal wave sweeping in from the sea; everything in its path disappeared as it came thundering toward them. Piya's mind went blank as disbelief yielded to recognition. Up to this point there had been no time for terror, no time to absorb the reality of the storm and to think about anything other than staying alive. But now it was as if death had announced its approach and there was nothing to do but to wait for its arrival. Her fingers went numb in fear, and she would have lost her hold on the tree if Fokir hadn't taken her hands in his own and held them fast against the trunk. Piya felt his chest expand as he gulped in a deep draft of air, and she did the same, swallowing as deep a breath as she could manage.

And then it was as if a dam had broken over their heads. The weight of the rushing water bent the tree trunk almost double. Encircled in Fokir's arms, Piya felt herself being tipped over and then upended as the branch met the ground. All the while, the water raged around them, circling furiously, pulling at their bodies as if it were trying to dismember them. The tree strained at its roots and it seemed that at any moment it would be torn from the earth and added to the storm of turbulence following the wave.

Piya knew from the pressure in her lungs that the water above them was at least nine feet deep. The sari that had seemed like a godsend before now became an anchor tethering them to the riverbed. Pulling her hands away from Fokir's grip, she began to tear at the knot so that they would be able to break free and rise to the surface. But instead of coming to her aid, Fokir took hold of her fingers and ripped them from the knot. His whole weight was on her now, and he seemed to be fighting to keep her where she was. But she could not stop struggling — it was impossible to hold still when the air was almost gone from her lungs.

And then, even as she was struggling to slip out of Fokir's imprisoning grip, she felt the pressure of the water diminishing. The crest of the wave had moved on and the tree had begun to straighten itself. She opened her eyes and saw that there was light above, faint but discernible: it came closer and closer and suddenly, just as her lungs were about to burst, the tree snapped almost upright and their heads were above water. The crest of the wave having passed on, the trough had caught up, forcing the water to subside a little: it fell not to its earlier level, but to a point just below their feet.

RAIN WAS ARROWING
down from the sky as Kanai slipped out of the hospital and began to run toward the Guest House. The drops felt more like pellets than rain: they had the bite of liquid metal and each created a small crater in the mud.

There were no lights in Nilima's window, but this did not surprise Kanai. The Trust's generator had not been turned on all day, and to light a lantern was probably not worth the trouble because of the drafts and the wind.

He hammered on her door. “Mashima! Are you there?” A minute passed and he beat his fist on the door again. “Mashima! It's me, Kanai.” He heard her fumbling with the latch and shouted, “Be careful!”

The warning made no difference. The moment the latch came undone, the door was snatched out of her hand and slammed back against the wall. A stack of files fell off a shelf and a storm of paper went circling around the room. Nilima staggered back, shaking a wrenched wrist, and Kanai hurried to shut the door. Putting an arm around her, he led her to her bed.

“Does it hurt? How bad is it?”

“It'll be all right,” she said, putting her hands together on her lap. “I'm so glad to see you, Kanai — I was getting very worried about you.”

“But why are you still down here?” Kanai said urgently. “You should be upstairs in the Guest House.”

“Why there?”

“The river's bound to flood,” said Kanai. “And you don't want to be trapped in here when it does. If the water gets high enough it'll be in here too.” He glanced around the room, assessing its contents. “Let's spend a few minutes putting together your most essential things. Some we'll take upstairs with us; the rest we'll pile up on your bed. It's high enough that they'll be safe.”

Nilima pulled out a couple of suitcases and, working together, they quickly filled one with files and papers. Into the other went some clothes and such food as Nilima had on hand in her small kitchen — a little rice, dal, sugar, oil and tea.

“Now wrap some towels around yourself,” Kanai said. “It's raining so hard we'll be soaked before we can get around the house to the stairs.”

When Nilima was ready, he put the suitcases outside and led her through the door. The color of the sky was even darker now and the lashing rain had churned the earth into mud. Kanai pulled the door shut and locked it; then, with the suitcases in his hands and Nilima holding on to his elbow, he led her around to the stairs.

They were drenched by the time they reached the shelter of the stairwell, but the extra layers of covering had kept Nilima dry underneath. Unwinding the towels, she wrung them out before following Kanai up the stairs. Once they stepped into the Guest House, the storm seemed suddenly to recede. With the shutters securely fastened, the wind could be heard but not felt: it was strangely pleasurable to be able to listen to it from within the safety of four solid walls.

Kanai put the suitcases down and reached for one of Nilima's wrung-out towels. After drying his hair, he pulled off his mud-soaked shirt and wrapped the towel around his shoulders. Nilima, meanwhile, had seated herself at the dining table.

“Kanai,” she said, “where are the others? Piya? Fokir?”

“We couldn't find Piya or Fokir,” Kanai said grimly. “We had to leave them behind. We waited as long as we possibly could, and then Horen said we had to go. We're going to return tomorrow to look for them.”

“So they're going to be outside?” Nilima said. “During the storm?”

Kanai nodded. “Yes. There was nothing to be done.”

“Let's hope —” Nilima didn't finish her sentence, and Kanai cut in.

“And I have some other bad news.”

“What?”

“The notebook.”

“What about it?” she said, sitting up in alarm.

Kanai went around the table and sat beside her. “I had it with me till this morning,” he said. “I was bringing it back here, but I slipped in the water and it was swept out of my hands.”

Her mouth shaped itself into a horrified circle as she took this in.

“You can't imagine how I feel,” he said. “I would have done anything to save it.”

She nodded, collecting herself. “I know. Don't blame yourself,” she said softly. “But tell me, Kanai, did you read it?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

She looked closely at him. “And what was it about?”

“Many different things,” he said. “History, poetry, geology — many things. But mainly it was about Morichjhãpi. He wrote all of it in the course of one day and the better part of a night. He must have finished writing just hours before the assault started.”

“So it doesn't describe the attack?”

“No,” said Kanai. “By that time he'd given it to Horen, who had left Morichjhãpi earlier that day with Fokir. It was a lucky thing: that's how it survived.”

“What I don't understand,” Nilima said, “is how it got into his study.”

“It's a strange story,” Kanai said. “Horen wrapped it up very carefully in plastic with the intention of sending it to me. But it got lost, then it was found again recently. Horen gave it to Moyna, who slipped it into the study.”

Nilima fell silent as she thought about this. “Tell me, Kanai,” she said, “did Nirmal say why he didn't leave the notebook to me?”

“Not in so many words,” Kanai said. “But I suppose he felt you wouldn't be very sympathetic.”

“Sympathetic?” Rising angrily to her feet, Nilima began to pace the room. “Kanai, it's not that I wasn't sympathetic. It's just that my sympathies had a narrower focus. I am not capable of dealing with the whole world's problems. For me the challenge of making a few little things a little better in one small place is enough. That place for me is Lusibari. I've given it everything I can, and yes, after all these years it has amounted to something. It's helped people; it's made a few people's lives a little better. But that was never enough for Nirmal. For him it had to be all or nothing, and of course that's what he ended up with — nothing.”

“Except for the notebook,” Kanai corrected her. “He did write that.”

“And that's gone too now,” said Nilima.

“No,” said Kanai. “Not in its entirety. A lot of it is in my head, you know. I'm going to try to put it back together.”

Nilima put her hands on the back of his chair and looked into his eyes. “And after you've put together his notebook, Kanai,” she said quietly, “will you put my side of it together too?”

Kanai could not fathom her meaning. “I don't understand.”

“Kanai, the dreamers have everyone to speak for them,” she said. “But those who're patient, those who try to be strong, who try to build things — no one ever sees any poetry in that, do they?”

He was moved by the directness of her appeal. “I do,” he said. “I see it in you —” Suddenly the dining table began to rattle and he was cut short. Somewhere in the distance was a rushing sound, powerful enough to make itself heard above the gale.

Kanai went to the shutters and put his eye to a chink between the slats of wood. “It's the tidal surge,” he said to Nilima. “It's coming down the channel.”

A wall of water was shooting toward them. On its side, where it was cut off by the embankment, a huge plume of spray was shooting into the air. The island was filling with water, like a saucer tipped on its side, as the wave encircled it. Kanai and Nilima watched aghast as the water rose and kept rising, up the flight of stairs that led into Nilima's flat, stopping just short of the door.

“It'll take a long time to get the water out of the soil again, won't it?” Kanai said.

“Yes, but people's lives matter more.” Nilima had inclined her head to catch a glimpse of the hospital. A row of people could be seen on the second floor, braving the wind in order to look at the floodwaters.

“Just think of all the people who've been saved by that cyclone shelter,” Nilima said. “And it was Nirmal who convinced us to build it. If it weren't for his peculiar interest in geology and meteorology we would never have thought of it.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Nilima. “Making us build it was probably the most important thing he did in his whole life. You can see the proof of that today. But if you'd told him that, he'd have laughed. He'd have said, ‘It's just social service — not revolution.'”

THE DIMINUTION OF
the noise was the first indication of the eye's arrival. The sound didn't stop; it just pulled back a little, and as it retreated the wind slowed down and seemed almost to die. Piya opened her eyes and was amazed by what she saw. A full moon hung above the top of what seemed to be a whirling stovepipe that reached far into the heavens. The light of the moon, shining through this spinning tube, illuminated the still center of the storm.

Stretching away from them in every direction, as far as Piya's eye could reach, was a heaving carpet of leaves. Almost nothing was visible of the water's surface; the usual ripples, eddies and currents had disappeared under this layer of green. As for the island itself, it was entirely submerged, and its shape could be deduced only from the few thickets of trees whose uppermost reaches were still visible above water. These trees had a skeletal, forlorn look; few had any branches remaining and there was scarcely one that still had a leaf attached. Many had been snapped in half and reduced to shattered stumps.

A white cloud floated down from the sky and settled on the remnants of the drowned forest. It was a flock of white birds, and they were so exhausted as to be oblivious of Piya and Fokir. Piya loosened the knot in the sari and pushed back from the tree to stretch her aching limbs. One of the birds was so close she was able to pick it up in her hands: it was trembling and she could feel the fluttering of its heart. Evidently the birds had been trying to stay within the storm's eye. How far had they flown? Piya could not imagine. Releasing the bird, she rested against the tree.