Part 9 (1/2)

A covered hackney carriage was waiting in the lane outside and when Neel sat down in it, the Major took the seat opposite his. He was clearly relieved to have accomplished his end without violence, and as the horses began to move, he said, in a kinder tone than he had earlier used: 'I am sure it will all be sorted out quite soon.'

The carriage arrived at the end of the lane, and as it was turning the corner, Neel swivelled in his seat to take a last look at his house. He could see only the roof of the Raskhali Rajbari, and on it, outlined against the dimming sky, his son's head, leaning on a parapet, as if in wait: he recalled that he had said he would be back in ten minutes, and this seemed to him now the most unpardonable of all the lies in his life.

Ever since that night by the river, when Deeti had come to his help, Kalua had kept count of the days on which he was granted a glimpse of her, and the empty days in between. The tally was kept neither with any specific intention, nor as an expression of hope - for Kalua knew full well that between her and himself, none but the most tenuous connection could exist - yet the patient enumeration happened in his head whether he liked it or not: he was powerless to make it cease, for his mind, slow and plodding in some respects, had a way of seeking the safety of numbers. Thus it was that when Kalua heard of Deeti's husband's death, he knew that exactly twenty days had elapsed since that afternoon when she asked for his help in bringing Hukam Singh back from the opium factory.

The news came to him by chance: it was evening, and he was on his way back to his dwelling, in his cart, at the end of the day, when he was stopped by two men who were travelling on foot. Kalua knew they had come a long way because their dhotis were dark with dust and they were leaning heavily on their sticks. They held up their hands as he was pa.s.sing by, and when his cart rumbled to a stop, they asked if he knew the dwelling of Hukam Singh, the former sepoy. I know it, said Kalua, and he pointed down the road and told them that to get there they would have to walk straight for two kos, and turn left after reaching a large tamarind tree. Then, after following a path through the fields for one hundred and twenty paces, they would have to turn left again, to walk another two hundred and sixty. The men were dismayed: It's almost dark, how will we find these paths? Just keep looking, said Kalua. And how long will it take? An hour, said Kalua, but maybe less.

The men began to plead with him to take them there in his cart: or they would be late, they said, and would miss everything. Late for what? Kalua asked, and the older of the two men said: For Hukam Singh's cremation and ...

He was about to say something else, when his companion nudged him sharply with his stick.

Has Hukam Singh pa.s.sed away? Kalua asked.

Yes, late last night. We set out as soon as we heard the news.

All right then, said Kalua. Come. I'll take you there.

The two men climbed on to the rear of the cart and Kalua shook his reins to set his oxen moving. After a good while had pa.s.sed, Kalua inquired cautiously: And what of Hukam Singh's wife?

Let's see what happens, said the older man. Maybe we'll know tonight ...

But here again he was interrupted by his companion and the sentence was never finished.

The oddly surrept.i.tious behaviour of the two men set Kalua to wondering whether something untoward was under way. He made it his practice to think hard about everything he saw around him: as the cart rolled down the road, he asked himself why these men, who didn't know Hukam Singh well enough to be aware of the location of his dwelling, would come such a great distance to be present at his cremation. And why was the cremation to be near the dead man's home rather than in the cremation ghat? No: there was something in this that was out of the ordinary. Kalua became more and more convinced of this as they approached their destination - for he saw now that there were a great many others heading towards the same place, more than seemed likely to attend the funeral of a man like Hukam Singh, known by the world to be an incorrigible afeemkhor. When they reached the dwelling, his suspicions deepened, for he saw that the pyre was a great mound of wood, on the banks of the Ganga. Not only was it far larger than was necessary for the cremation of a single man, it was surrounded by a profusion of offerings and objects, as if it were being readied for some larger purpose.

It was dark now, and after the two travellers had alighted, Kalua tethered his oxcart in a field, some distance away, and returned on foot to the pyre. There were some hundred or so people there, and by listening to their conversations, he soon picked up the whispered sibilance of a word - 'sati'. It was all clear now: he understood. He made his way back, in the dark, to his tethered cart, and lay in it a while, to think through his next move. He thought slowly and carefully, examining the merits and drawbacks of several possible courses of action. Only one plan survived the winnowing, and when he rose to his feet again, he knew exactly what he had to do. First, he took the yoke off his oxen and freed them, to wander off along the riverbank: this was the most difficult part of all, for he loved those two animals as if they were his kin. Then, one nail at a time, he ripped the bamboo platform from the axle of his cart, and tied a rope tightly and securely around its middle. The platform was a large unwieldy object, but for Kalua the weight was negligible, and he had no trouble slinging it over his back. Keeping to the shadows, he crept along the river till he came to a sandbank that overlooked the pyre. He laid the bamboo platform on the sand and flattened himself on it, taking care to stay out of sight.

The clearing around the pyre was illuminated by many small fires, so when Hukam Singh's body was carried out of his dwelling, in procession, and laid upon the mound, Kalua had a clear view. Following close behind was a second procession, and upon its entry into the clearing, Kalua saw that it was headed by Deeti, in a resplendent white sari - except that she was slumped over, barely upright: she would not have been able to stand on her own feet, much less walk, had she not been supported by her brother-in-law, Chandan Singh, and several others. Half dragged and half carried, she was brought to the pyre and made to sit cross-legged on it, beside her husband's corpse. Now there was an outbreak of chanting as heaps of kindling were piled around her, and doused with ghee and oil to ready them for the fire.

On the sandbank, Kalua bided his time, counting, counting, to calm himself: his main a.s.set, he knew, was neither his power nor his agility, but rather the element of surprise - for even he, with all his strength, could not hope to fight off fifty men or more. So he waited and waited, until the pyre was lit and everyone was intent upon the progress of the flames. Now, still keeping to the shadows, he crept down to the edge of the crowd and rose to his feet. Unloosing a roar, he began to whirl the bamboo platform above his head, holding it by the end of its rope. The heavy, sharp-edged object became a blur, cracking heads and breaking bones, clearing a path through the crowd - people fled from the hurtling projectile, like cattle scattering before some whirling demon. Racing to the mound, Kalua placed the platform against the fire, scrambled to the top, and s.n.a.t.c.hed Deeti from the flames. With her inert body slung over his shoulder, he jumped back to the ground and ran towards the river, dragging the now-smouldering bamboo rectangle behind him, on its rope. On reaching the water, he thrust the platform into the river and placed Deeti upon it. Then, pus.h.i.+ng free of the sh.o.r.e, he threw himself flat on the improvised raft and began to kick his heels in the water, steering out towards midstream. All of this was the work of a minute or two and by the time Chandan Singh and his cohorts gave chase, the river had carried Kalua and Deeti away from the flaming pyre, into the dark of the night.

The raft wobbled and spun as the currents swept it downstream, and every once in a while, a slick of water would run streaming over its surface. Under the impact of these dousings, the fog that clouded Deeti's mind began slowly to dispel and she became aware that she was on a river and there was a man beside her, holding her in place with his arm. None of this was surprising, for it was in exactly this way that she had expected to awaken from the flames - afloat in the netherworld, on the Baitarini River, in the custody of Charak, the boatman of the dead. Such was her fear of what she would see that she did not open her eyes: every wave, she imagined, was carrying her closer to the far bank, where the G.o.d of death, Jamaraj, held sway.

At length, when the journey showed no signs of ending, she plucked up the courage to ask how long the river was and how far the destination. There was no answer, so she called out the name of the boatman of the dead. Then, through the whisper of a deep, hoa.r.s.e voice it was made known to her that she was alive, in the company of Kalua, on the Ganga - and there was no destination or aim to their journey except to escape. Even then she did not feel herself to be living in the same sense as before: a curious feeling, of joy mixed with resignation, crept into her heart, for it was as if she really had died and been delivered betimes in rebirth, to her next life: she had shed the body of the old Deeti, with the burden of its karma; she had paid the price her stars had demanded of her, and was free now to create a new destiny as she willed, with whom she chose - and she knew that it was with Kalua that this life would be lived, until another death claimed the body that he had torn from the flames.

Now there was a soft lapping and grinding, as Kalua nudged the raft to sh.o.r.e, and when it was lodged in the sand, he picked her up in his arms and placed her on the bank. Then, lifting up the raft, he disappeared into a stand of tall rushes, and when he came back to fetch her, she saw that he had laid the platform down in such a way as to turn it into a palette, a small, level island, hidden within the riverbank's greenery. After he had laid her on this bamboo floor, he drew back, as if to retreat and go elsewhere, and she understood that he was afraid, unsure of how she would respond to his presence, now that she was safe on land. She called to him, Kalua, come, don't leave me alone in this unknown place, come here. But when he lay down, she too was afraid: all of a sudden she was aware of how cold her body was, after its long immersion, and of the sopping wetness of her white sari. She began to s.h.i.+ver, and her hand, shaking, came upon his and she knew that he too was trembling, and slowly their bodies inched closer: as each sought the other's warmth, their damp, sodden clothing came unspooled, his langot and her sari. Now it was as though she was on the water again: she remembered his touch and how he had held her to his chest with his arm. On the side of her face that was pressed to his, she could feel the gentle abrasion of his unshaved cheek - on the other side, which was flattened against the deck, she could hear the whispering of the earth and the river, and they were saying to her that she was alive, alive, and suddenly it was as if her body was awake to the world as it had never been before, flowing like the river's waves, and as open and fecund as the reed-covered bank.

Afterwards, when she lay enveloped in his arms, he said, in his rough, hoa.r.s.e voice: Ka sochawa? What're you thinking?

... Thinking how you saved me today; sochat ki tu bachawela ...

It was myself I saved today, he said in a whisper. Because if you had died, I couldn't have lived; jinda na rah sakela ...

Shh! Don't say any more. Always superst.i.tious, she shuddered at the mention of death.

But where will we go now? he said. What will we do? They'll hunt for us everywhere, in the cities and the villages.

Although she had no more of a plan than he did, she said: We'll go away, far away, we'll find a place where no one will know anything about us except that we are married.

Married? he said.

Yes.

Squirming out of his arms, she wrapped herself loosely in her sari and went off towards the river. Where are you going? he shouted after her. You'll see, she called over her shoulder. And when she came back, with her sari draped over her body like a veil of gossamer, it was with an armload of wild-flowers, blooming on the bank. Plucking a few long hairs from her head, she strung the flowers together to make two garlands: one she gave to him, and the other she took herself, lifting it up above his head and slipping it around his neck. Now he too knew what to do and when the exchange of garlands had bound them together, they sat for a while, awed by the enormity of what they had done. Then she crept into his arms again and was swept into the embracing warmth of his body, as wide and sheltering as the dark earth.

PART II.

River.

Eight.

Once the Ibis had been berthed, Zachary and Serang Ali opened the account books and paid the crew their acc.u.mulated addlings. Many of the lascars disappeared immediately into the gullies of Kidderpore, with their copper and silver coins carefully hidden in the folds of their clothing. Some would never see the Ibis again, but some were back in a matter of days, having been robbed or cheated, or having squandered their earnings in toddyshacks and knockingdens - or having discovered, simply, that life ash.o.r.e was far more attractive when you were at sea than when your feet were a-trip on the slick turf of lubber-land.

It would be some time yet before the Ibis could be accommodated at the l.u.s.tignac dry docks in Kidderpore, where she was to be repaired and refurbished. During the time she was moored in the river, only a skeleton crew remained on board, along with Zachary and Serang Ali. Although shrunken in size, the crew continued to function much as at sea, being divided into two pors, or watches, each of which was headed by a tindal; as at sea, each por was on deck for four hours at a stretch, except during the chhota-pors, which were the two-hour dogwatches of dawn and dusk. The safety of port came at the price of an increased risk of pilferage and theft, so there was no slackening in the vigilance required of the por; nor was there any easing in the pace of work on board, for there were inventories to be made, inspections to be completed and most of all, a great deal of cleaning to be done. Serang Ali made no secret of his view that a sailor who would send his s.h.i.+p untended to the dry dock was worse than the worst sh.o.r.ebound sc.u.m, worse than a ma-chowdering pimp.

Gali was one domain of the Laskari tongue in which no one could outdo the serang: in no small measure was it because of the fluency of his swearing that Jodu held him in unbounded respect. It was a matter of great disappointment to him that his regard was entirely unreciprocated.

Jodu knew well enough that freshwater-jacks like himself were held in contempt by ocean-going lascars: often, while rowing past some towering three-master, he had looked up to see a grinning seacunny or kussab shouting taunts, calling him a stick-man - a dandi-wala - and spinning out insults about the uses to which sticks could be put. For taunts and jibes, Jodu was well-prepared and would even have been glad of, but the serang would allow no familiarities between him and the other lascars: indeed he lost no opportunity to make it clear that he had taken Jodu into the crew against his will and would prefer to see him gone. If he had to be put up with, at Zachary's insistence, then it would only be as a topas, the lowliest of lascars - a sweeper, to scrub p.i.s.s-dales, clean heads, wash utensils, scour the decks and the like. To make things as unpleasant as possible, he even made Jodu saw his jharu in half: the shorter the broom, he said, the cleaner the work - this way you'll be so close to the droppings you'll know what the tatti was made of when it went in the mouth. On the serang's right foot, there was a single, carefully tended toenail, a half-inch in length and filed to a sharp point. When Jodu was on all fours, scouring the deck, the serang would sometimes steal up to kick him: Chal sala! You think it hurts to be spiked in the stern? Be glad it's not a cannon up your gundeck.

During his first weeks on the Ibis, the serang would not allow Jodu to go below for any reason other than to clean the heads: even at night, he had to sleep on deck. This was a problem only when it rained, which didn't happen often - at other times, Jodu was by no means the only hand to be looking for the 'softest plank on deck'. It was thus that he was befriended by Roger Cecil David, known as Rajoo-launder to his s.h.i.+pmates. Tall and thin, Rajoo had the upright mien of a tent-pole, and a complexion that almost matched the tarry tint of the schooner's masts. Having been raised in a succession of Christian missions, he liked to wear s.h.i.+rts and trowsers, and was often to be seen in a cloth cap - not for him the lungis and bandhnas of the other lascars. These were ambitious tastes for a s.h.i.+p-launder, and they earned him much derision - not least because his garments were patched together from sc.r.a.ps of sailcloth. The joke about him, in short, was that he was the schooner's third dol - a human mizzen-mast - and his forays into the ringeen were often accompanied by much hilarity, with the foretopmen vying with each other to make cracks at his expense. The possibilities of suggestion here were very rich, for unlike sailors elsewhere, lascars often spoke of their s.h.i.+ps in the masculine, referring to the vessels' masts as their manhood - the word for which was much the same as the commonly used term for 's.h.i.+p's-boy', with but a syllable removed.

... lund to yah, par launda kah ... ?

... here's the p.r.i.c.k, but where's the p.r.i.c.ker ... ?

... lowering his canvas ...

... waiting for a blow ...

Rajoo, for his part, would have been overjoyed to give up his place among the foretopmen - not only because of their jokes, but also because he had no head for heights and was always queasy while aloft. It was his fond ambition to move off the yards, into some position such as mess-boy, steward, or cook, where his feet would be firmly planted on deck. Since Jodu, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to be up on the foremast with the trikat-wale, they quickly decided to put their heads together, to make the exchange come about.

It was Rajoo who took Jodu through the cramped companionway that led to the fo'c'sle, where the lascars' hammocks were hung. The lascars' word for this s.p.a.ce was fana, or hood, as in the outspread crown of a cobra - for if a s.h.i.+p were to be thought of as a sinuous, living creature, then the head was the exact part to which the fana would correspond, being tucked between the bows, below the main deck and above the cut.w.a.ter, just aft of the fang of the bowsprit. Although he had never before set foot on the exalted precincts of an ocean-going vessel, Jodu was familiar with the word fana, and had often wondered what it would be like to live and sleep inside the skull of the great living creature that was a s.h.i.+p. To be a fana-wala - a fo'c'sleman of the hood - and to live above the taliyamar, forging through the oceans, was the stuff of his dreams: but in the sight that met his eyes now, as he entered the fana, there was nothing of wonder, and certainly no trace of the fabled jewels of a cobra's crown. The fana was airless, hot and dark, with no source of lighting except a single oil-lamp hanging on a hook; in the glow of the sputtering flame, it seemed to Jodu that he had tumbled into some musty cave that was densely festooned with cobwebs - for everywhere he looked there was a webbing of hammocks, hanging in double rows, suspended between wooden beams. The cramped, shallow s.p.a.ce had the form of an elliptical triangle, with sides that curved inwards to meet at the bows. In height, it was not quite as tall as a full-grown man, yet the hammocks were hung one above another, no more than sixteen regulation inches apart, so that every man's nose was inches away from a solid barrier: either the ceiling or an a.r.s.e. Strange to think that these hanging beds were called 'jhulis', as if they were swings, like those given to brides or infants; to hear the word said was to imagine yourself being rocked gently to sleep by a s.h.i.+p's motion - but to see them strung up in front of you, like nets in a pond, was to know that your dreaming hours would be spent squirming like a trapped fish, fighting for s.p.a.ce to breathe.

Jodu could not resist climbing into one of the jhulis - but only to leap out again when he caught a noseful of its odour, which consisted not just of the stench of bodies, but of the acc.u.mulated smell of sleep itself, compounded of the reek of unwashed bedding, hair-oil, soot, and several months'-worth of dribbles, trickles, leaks, spurts and farts. As luck would have it, the next job to which he was set was that of scrubbing and was.h.i.+ng the hammocks: so thoroughly were the jhulis steeped in soot and grime that it seemed to Jodu that not all the water of the Ganga would clean them of the sweat and sin of their former occupants. And when at last the job seemed done, the serang clipped him on the ear, and made him start all over again: Call that clean, do you, you tatter-a.r.s.ed plugtail of a launder? Many a backslit is cleaner than this.

With his nose in the grime, Jodu yearned to leap up into the ringeen, to be with the trikat-wale, chatting in the crosstrees - not for nothing did lascars call that lofty chair a 'kursi', for that was where they went when they chose to lounge at ease, cooled by the breeze. How wasted was this privilege on Rajoo-launder, who never made use of it - and yet for him, Jodu, to so much as glance aloft was to risk a stinging blow from the serang's foot. To think of all the years he'd spent learning to tell one mast from another, one sail from the next - the kalmi from the drawal, the dastur from the sawai - all that effort and knowledge wasted while he squatted by the scuppers, was.h.i.+ng a fana-ful of jhulis.

Unpleasant though it was, the task had one fortunate consequence: with the fana emptied of its jhulis, all its occupants now had to sleep on the main deck. This was no great trial, for the weather was growing ever hotter, in antic.i.p.ation of the coming monsoons, and it was better to be out in the open, even if it meant sleeping on wood. What was more, the fresh air seemed to have the effect of loosening everyone's tongue, and the lascars often gossiped late into the night as they lay under the stars.

Serang Ali never joined in these sessions: along with the steward, the silmagoor, the seacunnies, and a few others, he had his quarters not in the fana but the deckhouse. But the serang kept himself aloof, even from the other inhabitants of the deckhouse. This was only partly because he was, by nature, a crusty and unforgiving disciplinarian (no shortcoming in the eyes of the lascars, none of whom liked to serve with serangs who were excessively familiar or played at favourites): the serang stood apart also because of his origins, which were obscure even to those who had served with him longest. But this again was not unusual, for many of the lascars were itinerants and vagrants, who did not care to speak too much about their past; some didn't even know where their origins lay, having been sold off as children to the ghat-serangs who supplied lascars to ocean-going vessels. These riverside crimps cared nothing about who their recruits were and where they came from; all hands were the same to them, and their gangs would kidnap naked urchins from the streets and bearded sadhus from ashrams; they would pay brothel-keepers to drug their clients and thugs to lie in wait for unwary pilgrims.

Yet, varied as they were, most of the lascars on the Ibis knew themselves to be from one part or another of the subcontinent. The serang was one of the few exceptions: if asked, he would always say that he was a Muslim from the Arakan, a Rohingya, but there were those who claimed that he had served his launder-hood with a Chinese crew. That he was fluent in Chinese was soon common knowledge, and was regarded as a blessing, for it meant that often, of an evening, the serang would take himself off to the Chinese quarters of Calcutta's docklands, leaving the lascars free to make merry on board.

At times when both Serang Ali and Zachary were gone the Ibis was a vessel transformed: someone would be sent aloft to watch for their return, and someone else would be dispatched to fetch a pitcher or two of arrack or doasta; then the whole lashkar would gather, on deck or in the fana, to sing, drink and pa.s.s around a few chillums. If there was no ganja at hand, they would burn a few shavings of sailcloth, which was, after all, made from the same plant that had given canvas its name and provided something of a cannabis savour.