The Hungry Tide

BEGINNING AGAIN

I had thought that on the way to Lusibari my face would lose the flush it had acquired in Morichjhãpi: the brisk air of the river would cool my skin and the rocking of Horen’s boat would slow the pace of my heart. But no, exactly the opposite happened: with every turn a new vista seemed to open in front of me. I could not keep still. I put away my umbrella and stood up, opening my arms as if to embrace the wind. My dhoti became a sail and I a mast, tugging the boat toward the horizon.

“Saar,” cried Horen, “sit down! The boat will roll over — you’ll fall.”

“Horen, you are the best of boatmen. You’ll find a way of keeping us afloat.”

“Saar,” said Horen, “what’s the matter with you today? You don’t seem like your old self.”

“You are right, Horen. I am not my old self anymore. And it’s you who’s responsible.”

“And how’s that, Saar?”

“Wasn’t it you who took me to Morichjhãpi?”

“No, Saar. It was the storm.”

Forever modest, our Horen. “All right, then. It was the storm.” I laughed. “It was the storm that showed me that a man can be transformed even in retirement, that he can begin again.”

“Begin what, Saar?”

“Begin a new life, Horen, a new life. The next time we come to Morichjhãpi my students will be waiting. I’ll teach as I have never taught before.”

“And what will you teach them, Saar? What will the lesson be?”

“Why, I’ll tell them about —”

And what indeed was I to tell them about? Expert boatman that he was, Horen had found a way of spilling the wind from my sails.

I sat down. This was a matter that needed careful thought.

I would start, I decided, with magical tales of the kind to which these children were accustomed. “Tell me, children,” I would begin, “what do our old myths have in common with geology?”

This would catch their interest. Their eyes would narrow, they would puzzle over my question for a minute or two before giving up.

“Tell us, Saar.”

“Goddesses, children,” I would announce in triumph. “Don’t you see? Goddesses are what they have in common.”

They would look at each other and whisper, “Is he teasing? Is this a joke?” Presently a small, hesitant voice would speak up: “But Saar, what do you mean?”

“Think about it,” I would say, “and you’ll see. It’s not just the goddesses — there’s a lot more in common between myth and geology. Look at the size of their heroes, how immense they are — heavenly deities on the one hand, and on the other the titanic stirrings of the earth itself — both equally otherworldly, equally remote from us. Then there is the way in which the plots go round and round in both kinds of story, so that every episode is both a beginning and an end and every outcome leads to others. And then, of course, there is the scale of time — yugas and epochs, Kaliyuga and the Quaternary. And yet — mind this! — in both, these vast durations are telescoped in such a way as to permit the telling of a story.”

“How, Saar, how? Tell us one of these stories.”

And so I would begin.

Maybe I would start with the story of Vishnu, in his incarnation as a divine dwarf, measuring out the universe in three giant strides. I would tell them about the god’s misstep and how an errant toenail on one of his feet created a tiny scratch on the fabric of creation. It was this pore, I’d tell them, that became the source of the immortal and eternal Ganga that flows through the heavens, washing away the sins of the universe — this was the stream that would become the greatest of all the earth’s rivers.

“The Ganga? Greatest of all rivers?” They would rise, provoked beyond endurance by my mischievous phrasings. “But Saar, many rivers are longer than our Ganga: the Nile, the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Yangtze.”

And then I would produce my secret treasure, a present sent to me by a former student — a map of the sea floor made by geologists. In the reversed relief of this map they would see with their own eyes that the Ganga does not come to an end after it flows into the Bay of Bengal. It joins with the Brahmaputra in scouring a long, clearly marked channel along the floor of the bay. The map would reveal to them what is otherwise hidden underwater: and this is that the course of this underwater river exceeds by far the length of the river’s overland channel.

“Look, comrades, look,” I would say. “This map shows that in geology, as in myth, there is a visible Ganga and a hidden Ganga: one flows on land and one beneath the water. Put them together and you have what is by far the greatest of the earth’s rivers.”

And, to follow this, I decided, I’d tell them the story of the Greek goddess who was the Ganga’s mother. I would take them back to the deep, deep time of geology and I would show them that where the Ganga now runs there was once a coastline — a shore that marked the southern extremity of the Asian landmass. India was far, far away then, in another hemisphere. It was attached to Australia and Antarctica. I would show them the sea and tell them about its name, Tethys, in Greek mythology the wife of Oceanus. There were no Himalayas then and no holy rivers, no Jamuna, no Ganga, no Saraswati, no Brahmaputra. And since there were no rivers, there was also no delta, no floodplain, no silting, no mangroves — no Bengal, in other words. The green coastline of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh was then a frozen waste with ice running to a depth of two hundred feet. Where the southern shore of the Ganga now lies was a length of frozen beach that dipped gently into the waters of the now vanished Tethys Sea.

I would show them how it happened that India broke away 140 million years ago and began its journey north from Antarctica. They would see how their subcontinent had moved, at a speed no other landmass had ever attained before; they would see how its weight forced the rise of the Himalayas; they would see the Ganga emerging as a brook on a rising hill. In front of their eyes they would see how, as India traveled, the Tethys shrank, how she grew thinner and thinner as the channel closed. They would watch as she withered, the two landmasses finally colliding at the expense of the mother ocean; they would see her dying but they would shed no tears, for they would see also the birth of the two rivers in which her memory would be preserved, her twin children — the Indus and the Ganga.

“And do you know how you can tell that the Sindhu and the Ganga were once conjoined?”

“How, Saar?”

“Because of the shushuk, the river dolphin. This creature of the sea was the legacy left to the twins by their mother, Tethys. The rivers nurtured it and made it their own. Nowhere else in the world is the shushuk to be found but in the twin rivers, the Ganga and the Sindhu.”

And if their interest wandered, I would tell them, in the end, a love story, about a king called Shantanu and how, on the banks of the great river, he spotted a woman of dazzling beauty. This was, of course, none other than the Ganga herself, but the king had no knowledge of this. On the banks of rivers even the most temperate men lose their heads. King Shantanu fell in love wholly, madly; he promised the river goddess that he would grant her whatever she wanted; if she chose even to drown her own children, he would not stand in her way.

A single besotted moment beside a river, and thus was launched a parva of the Mahabharata.

Why should a schoolmaster deny that which even the old mythmakers acknowledge? Love flows deep in rivers.

“Children, this is the lesson; hear it in the words of the Poet:

“To sing about someone you love is one thing; but, oh, the blood’s hidden guilty river-god is something else.”

LANDFALL

AT THE START, with the currents flowing in the wrong direction and Fokir laboring alone at the oars, the going was painfully slow. Piya was not surprised when after an hour of rowing she checked the boat’s position on the GPS and found that they had traveled only two miles. It struck her then, belatedly, that Fokir might have yet another pair of oars. On signaling the question, she was glad to discover he did: they were stowed underfoot in the boat’s bilges.

The oars were no less crudely crafted than the boat itself — they consisted of two oblong pieces of wood nailed awkwardly to a couple of shorn mangrove branches. There were no oarlocks on the gunwales and the handles had to be engaged in little protrusions of wood. When Piya dipped the oars in the water the current twisted them around and nearly tore them from her grip. It took her a while to grow used to the feel of them, but with two of them rowing the pace quickened.

As the hours wore on, Piya found it increasingly difficult to keep going: a crop of blisters appeared on her hands, and her face and neck seemed marbled with salt. Toward sunset she pulled in her oars and yielded to the temptation to ask how much longer it would be before they arrived at their destination. “Lusibari?”

Fokir had been rowing almost without a break since morning, but she was still unable to see any signs of tiredness in him. Now, pausing briefly to glance over his shoulder, he pointed to a tongue of land just visible in the distance: its deforested shoreline marked it out from the other islands in the vicinity. It was heartening to have the place finally within sight, but Piya knew it would be a while yet before they made landfall, and she was right.

By the time they had moored the boat and collected their things, the sun had set and darkness was closing in. Fokir picked up one of her backpacks while she carried the other, and they set off in single file with Tutul in the lead. Piya’s attention was focused on keeping the two of them in sight, and she took nothing in of the surroundings until Fokir came to an abrupt halt and pointed ahead. “Mashima,” he said, and she saw he was gesturing toward a flight of steps that led up to a closed door.

Was this it? She was wondering what to do next when he lifted the backpack off his shoulders and handed it to her. Then both he and the boy withdrew a little — Fokir with his catch of crabs rolled in a length of netting, and Tutul with a bundle of clothes balanced on his head. Fokir motioned to her again to step up to the door and Piya sensed now, from the incline of their bodies, that they were poised to turn away, leaving her where she was. Suddenly she was panicstricken. “Wait!” she cried. “Where are you going?”

She had envisaged many possibilities, but not this — not that they would just walk away with nothing said, not even a goodbye. Nor had it occurred to her that the prospect of their departure would result in such an icy feeling of abandonment.

“Wait. Just a minute.”

Somewhere in the distance a generator was switched on, and a flood of light came pouring out of a nearby window. Piya’s eyes had grown unaccustomed to electricity and she was momentarily blinded by the bright, flat light. Blinking, she dug her fists into her face, and when she opened her eyes again they were gone, both of them, Fokir and the boy.

She remembered that she hadn’t given Fokir any money for bringing her here. How would she ever find him again? She didn’t know where he lived — she didn’t even know his full name. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted into the darkness, “Fokir!”

“Ké?” The answer was spoken in a woman’s voice, and it came not from ahead of her but from behind. Then the door swung open and Piya found herself facing a small, elderly woman with wispy hair and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. “Ké?”

Collecting herself quickly, Piya went up the steps. “Please excuse me. I don’t know if I’ve come to the right place. I’m looking for Mashima.” She said this in a rush, not knowing whether she would be understood or not.

There was an awkward moment during which Piya felt herself to be subjected to a shrewd and searching scrutiny: the gold-rimmed glasses rose and fell as they took in her salt-streaked face and muddy cotton pants. Then, to her great relief, she heard a voice say, in soft, fluting English, “You are indeed in the right place. But tell me — who are you? Do I know you?”

“No,” said Piya. “You don’t know me. My name is Piyali Roy. I met your nephew on the train.”

“Kanai?”

“Yes. Kanai. He invited me to visit.”

“Well, do come in. Kanai will be down any minute.” She stepped aside to let Piya through. “How did you find your way here? Surely you didn’t come alone?”

“No,” said Piya. “I’d never have been able to find you on my own.”

“Then who brought you? I didn’t see anyone outside.”

“They left just as you opened the door —” Before Piya could say any more, the door swung open and Kanai stepped into the doorway, squinting in surprise. “Piya? Is that you?”

“Yes. It is.”

“So you made it after all.”

“That’s right.”

“Good!” He gave her a broad smile. He hadn’t expected to see her quite so soon and was flattered as well as pleased: it seemed like a good augury. “Well, you’ve had an eventful trip.” He looked her up and down, taking in her mud-splattered clothes. “How did you get here?”

“In a rowboat.”

“A rowboat?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “You see, I had an accident soon after I met you.”

In a few short sentences, Piya told them about the events that had led to her fall from the launch. “And then the fisherman jumped in after me — I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t. I’d swallowed a lot of water but he managed to get me back into the boat. But after that I decided it wasn’t safe to get back in the launch with that guard. So I took a chance and asked the fisherman if he knew Mashima. It turned out he did, so I said I’d pay him if he brought me to Lusibari. We would have been here sooner but we had some unexpected encounters.”

“With what?”

“First we met up with some dolphins,” said Piya. “Then this morning we had a brush with a crocodile.”

“Upon my word!” said Nilima. “No injuries I hope.”

“No,” said Piya. “But there could have been. He fought it off with an oar — it was incredible.”

“My goodness!” said Nilima. “And who was this man? Did he tell you his name?”

“Sure,” said Piya. “His name’s Fokir.”

“Fokir?” cried Nilima. “Do you mean Fokir Mandol by any chance?”

“He didn’t tell me his last name.”

“Was there a little boy with him?” said Nilima.

“Yes, there was,” said Piya. “Tutul.”

“That’s him.” Nilima directed a glance in Kanai’s direction. “So that’s where he was.”

“Were people looking for them?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “Fokir’s wife, Moyna, works at the hospital here and she’s been half out of her mind with worry.”

“Oh?” said Piya. “It’s probably my fault. I kept them out there longer than they’d have stayed.”

“Well,” said Nilima, pursing her lips. “As long as they’re back now — no harm done.”

“I hope not,” said Piya. “I’d hate to think I’d gotten him into some kind of trouble. He saved my life, you know. And it wasn’t just that — he also led me straight to a pod of dolphins.”

“Is that so?” said Kanai. “But how did he know you were looking for dolphins?”

“I showed him a picture, a flashcard,” Piya said. “And that was all it took. He led me straight to the dolphins. In a way, that fall was the luckiest thing that could have happened to me — I’d never have found the dolphins on my own. I really need to see him again. I’ve got to pay him, for one thing.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Nilima. “They live nearby, in the Trust’s quarters. Kanai will take you there tomorrow morning.”

Piya turned to him. “It’d be great if you could.”

“Yes,” said Kanai, “of course I will. But that can wait. For the time being, we’ve got to get you settled so you can change and rest up.”

Piya had given no thought to what would happen next, and now, with the euphoria of her arrival beginning to fade, she was suddenly aware of a weighty backlog of fatigue. “Settled?” she said, looking around. “Where?”

“Here,” said Kanai. “Or rather, upstairs.”

She was discomfited to think he had assumed she would stay with him. “Are there any hotels around here?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Nilima. “But there’s a guest house upstairs with three empty rooms. You’re very welcome to stay there. There’s no one in it but Kanai. And if he bothers you, just come down and let me know.”

Piya smiled. “I’ll be fine — I know how to look after myself.” But she was glad the invitation had come from Mashima: somehow it made it easier to accept. “Thank you,” she said. “I’d really appreciate a good night’s rest. Are you sure I won’t be in your way if I stay a couple of days?”

“Stay as long as you like,” said Nilima. “Kanai will show you around.”

“Come on,” said Kanai, reaching for one of her backpacks. “It’s this way.” He led her upstairs and, after pointing out the kitchen and bathroom, unlatched a door and switched on a fluorescent light. The bedroom was no different from his own: there were two narrow beds in it, each equipped with its own mosquito net. The replastered cement walls were blotchy with damp spots and cracks, left behind by the last monsoon. On the far side was a barred window that looked out over the rice fields that adjoined the Trust’s compound.

“Will this do?” said Kanai, depositing her backpack on one of the beds.

Piya stepped in and looked around. Although bare in appearance, the room was comfortable enough: the sheets were clean and there was even a towel lying neatly folded at the foot of the bed. By the window stood a desk and a straight-backed chair. The door, she was glad to note, had a sturdy latch that could be attached from the inside.

“This is more than I expected,” Piya said. “Thanks so much.”

Kanai shook his head. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “It’ll be nice to have you here. I was getting a bit lonely on my own.”

She didn’t know what to make of this, so she gave him a neutral smile.

“Anyway, I’ll leave you to settle in,” said Kanai. “I’ll be upstairs in my uncle’s study. Knock if you need anything.”

A FEAST

Any excuse to return to Morichjhãpi would have sufficed, but none could have been better than that which Horen presented me. I had, in the meanwhile, arranged for his son’s admission, so it happened that I often ran into him in the school’s vicinity.

“Saar,” Horen said one day, “I have news from Morichjhãpi. There’s to be a big feast there. Kusum said you should come.”

I was astonished. “A feast? What kind of feast?”

“They’ve invited many people from Kolkata — writers, intellectuals, journalists. They want to tell them about the island and all they have achieved.”

This explained everything: once again I was impressed by the acumen of the settlers’ leadership. Clearly they had decided their best defense was to enlist the support of public opinion and this was to be a step in that direction. Of course I had to go. Horen said we would leave in the morning and I told him I would be ready.

When I got back home, Nilima took one look at me and said, “What’s the matter? Why’ve you got that look on your face?”

Why was it I’d never spoken to Nilima about Morichjhãpi before? Perhaps in my heart I knew she would not share my enthusiasm; perhaps I knew she would see my excitement about their project as a betrayal of her own efforts in Lusibari. In any event, these fears were soon confirmed. I described as best I could the drama of the settlers’ arrival; I told her about the quest that had brought them from their banishment in central India to the edge of the tide country; I explained their plans, their program for building a new future for themselves, their determination to create a new land in which to live.

To my surprise, I found she already knew about the settlers and their arrival: she had heard about it in Kolkata from bureaucrats and politicians. The government, she said, saw these people as squatters and land grabbers; there was going to be trouble; they would not be allowed to remain.

“Nirmal,” she said, “I don’t want you going there. It’s not that I have anything against the settlers. I just don’t want you to be in harm’s way.”

I realized at that moment, with a great sense of sadness, that from now on my relationship with Morichjhãpi would have to be conducted in secret. I had intended to tell her about the feast of the next day but now said nothing. Knowing Nilima as I did, I was sure she would find a way to prevent me from going.

Yet I would not have lied had she not pressed me. She saw me packing my jhola and asked if I was planning to go somewhere.

“Yes, I have to leave tomorrow morning.” I made up a story about visiting a school in Mollakhali. I knew she didn’t believe me, for she looked at me closely and said, “And who are you going with?”

“Horen,” I said.

“Oh?” she said. “Horen?” And the inflection of her voice as she said this was enough to make me fear for the safety of my secret.

Thus was sown the seed of our mistrust.

But to the feast I went — and it proved to be one of the strangest days of my existence. It was as if, on the eve of my retirement, I had been presented with a glimpse of the life I might have led if I had stayed in Kolkata. The guests who had been brought in from the city were exactly the people I would have known: journalists, photographers, well-known authors; there was the novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay and the journalist Jyotirmoy Datta. Some of them I even recognized for I had known them back in the university. One of them — we used to call him Khokon in those days — had once been a friend as well as a comrade. I observed him from a distance, marveling at how well he looked, at the bright effulgence of his face and the raven-black hue of his hair. Would this have been me had I stayed on, living the literary life?

I became aware as never before of all my unacknowledged regrets.

I hung back, following at a distance, as the settlers’ leaders led the guests on a tour of the island. There was much to show — even in the short while I had been away, there had been many additions, many improvements. Salt pans had been created, tube wells had been planted, water had been dammed for the farming of fish, a bakery had started up, boat builders had set up workshops, a pottery had been founded as well as an ironsmith’s shop; there were people making boats while others were fashioning nets and crab lines; little marketplaces, where all kinds of goods were being sold, had sprung up. All this in the space of a few months! It was an astonishing spectacle — as though an entire civilization had sprouted suddenly in the mud.

After all this came the feast, done in the old style and artfully arranged, with banana leaves set out on the earth and the guests seated in the shade of murmuring trees. Among those who were serving I spotted Kusum, who showed me the massive dekchis in which the food had been cooked. There were gigantic prawns, both golda and bagda, and a fantastic variety of fish: tangra, ilish, parshey, puti, bhetki, rui, chitol.

I was amazed: knowing that many of the settlers went hungry, I couldn’t understand how this show of plenty had been arranged.

“Where did all this come from?” I said to Kusum.

“Everyone contributed what they could,” she said. “But there was not much to buy — only the rice. The rest came from the rivers. Since yesterday we’ve all been out with nets and lines, even the children.” She pointed proudly to the parshey: “Fokir caught six of those this morning.”

My admiration was boundless. What better way to win the hearts of these city people than by feeding them freshly caught fish? How well these settlers understood their guests!

Kusum urged me to sit down and start eating. But I could not bring myself to sit with the guests: I was not of their number. “No, Kusum,” I said. “It’s better you feed those who can spread the word. This is precious food — it would be wasted on me.” I hung back in the shade of the trees, and from time to time Fokir or Kusum would bring me a few morsels wrapped in a banana leaf.

It was soon evident that the occasion had served its purpose: the guests were undeniably impressed. Speeches were made extolling the achievements of the settlers. It was universally agreed that the significance of Morichjhãpi extended far beyond the island itself. Was it possible that in Morichjhãpi had been planted the seeds of what might become, if not a Dalit nation, then at least a safe haven, a place of true freedom for the country’s most oppressed?

When the day was almost at an end, I went up to Khokon, the writer I had once known, and stood silently in his line of sight. He glanced at me without recognition and went on with his conversation. In a while I tapped his elbow: “Eijé. Here, Khokon?”

He was annoyed at being addressed so familiarly by a stranger. “And who, moshai, might you be?” he said.

When I told him who I was, his mouth fell open and his tongue began to flop around inside it like a netted fish. “You?” he said at last. “You?”

I said, “Yes. It’s me.”

“You haven’t been heard from in so long, everybody thought —”

“That I was dead? As you see, I’m not.”

On the brink of saying “It would have been better so,” he cut himself short. “But what have you been doing all these years? Where have you been?”

I felt then as if I had been called upon to justify the entirety of my existence, to account for the years I had spent in Lusibari.

But what I had to say in answer was very modest: “I’ve been doing schoolmasteri in a place not far from here.”

“And your writing?”

I shrugged. What was there to say? “It’s a good thing I stopped,” I said. “My work would have been put to shame by yours.”

Writers! How they love flattery. He put his arm around my shoulders and led me off, indulgently lowering his voice, as an elder brother might with a younger. “So, Nirmal, tell me, how did you get mixed up with these settlers?”

“I know a couple of them,” I said. “Now that I’m almost retired, I’m thinking of doing some teaching here.”

“Here?” he said dubiously. “But the problem is, they may not be allowed to stay.”

“They’re here already,” I said. “How could they be evicted now? There would be bloodshed.”

He laughed. “My friend, have you forgotten what we used to say in the old days?”

“What?”

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

He laughed in the cynical way of those who, having never believed in the ideals they once professed, imagine that no one else had done so either. I was tempted to tell him what I thought of him, but it struck me with great force that I had no business to be self-righteous about these matters. Nilima — she had achieved a great deal. What had I done? What was the work of my life? I tried to find an answer but none would come to mind.

It is afternoon now and Horen and Kusum have gone to see if they can find some fish. Fokir is sitting here with a crab line, what is called a don in the tide country, and as I watch him play with it, my heart spills over. There is so much to say, so much in my head, so much that will remain unsaid. Oh, those wasted years, that wasted time. I think of Rilke going for years without writing a word and then, in a matter of weeks, producing the Duino Elegies in a castle besieged by the sea. Even silence is preparation. As the minutes pass, it seems to me I can see every object in the tide country with a blinding brightness and clarity. I want to say to Fokir, “Do you know that every don has one thousand morsels of bait, tied at gaps of three arms’ lengths each? That each line is thus equal to the length of three thousand arms?”

How better can we praise the world but by doing what the Poet would have us do: by speaking of potters and rope makers, by telling of

some simple thing shaped for generation after generation until it lives in our hands and in our eyes, and it’s ours.

CATCHING UP

AFTER HER SHOWER, Piya sank into the chair by her window and found she could not get up again. After days of squatting and sitting cross-legged it was strange to have a support behind your back and to be able to swing your legs freely without worrying about tipping over. She could still feel the rocking motion of the boat in her limbs, and the sighing of the wind blowing through the mangroves was still in her ears.

The feeling of being back on the boat suddenly brought back the terror she had felt that morning. It had happened so recently that the sensations seemed still to be present, unprocessed, in her mind — they had not yet been absorbed as memory. She saw once again the wrenching, twisting motion of the reptile’s head as its jaws closed over the spot where her wrist had been: it was as if it had been so certain of its aim, so sure of seizing her arm, that it had already launched into the movement that would drag her out of the boat and into the water. She imagined the tug that would have pulled her below the surface and the momentary release before the jaws closed again, around her midsection, pulling her into those swift, eerily glowing depths where the sunlight had no orientation and there was neither up nor down. She remembered her panic in falling from the launch, and it made her think of the numbing horror that would accompany the awareness that you were imprisoned in a grasp from which there was no escape. The overlapping of these images created a montage of such vividness that her hands began to tremble. And now, with Fokir absent, the experience seemed even more frightening than it had been at the time.

She forced herself to sit up and look out the window. The moon was not up yet and it was dark outside. She could not see much except the outlines of a few coconut palms, and beyond that a striated emptiness that suggested a closely shorn field. Then she caught the sound of a conversation in Bengali, drifting in from the front of the house: a woman’s voice in counterpoint to Kanai’s deep baritone.

She made herself get up and go downstairs. Kanai was standing by the door with a lantern in his hands, talking to a woman in a red sari. The woman was facing away from her, but at Piya’s approach she looked over her shoulder so that one side of her face was suddenly brightened by the glow of Kanai’s lantern. Piya saw that she was about her own age, with a full figure, a wide mouth and large, luminous eyes. Between her eyebrows was a big red bindi, and a streak of vermilion shindur ran like a wound through the part in her shiny black hair.

“Ah, there you are, Piya!” cried Kanai, in English, and from the overly spirited sound of his voice Piya guessed they had been talking about her. The woman’s eyes were steady and clear as they looked her over, and Piya had the distinct impression that she had somehow been recognized and was being assessed. Then, with an abruptness no less unsettling than the frankness of her scrutiny, the woman looked away. Handing Kanai a set of stainless-steel containers, she headed down the steps and vanished into the night-shrouded compound.

“Who was that?” said Piya to Kanai.

“Didn’t I tell you?” said Kanai. “That was Moyna, Fokir’s wife.”

“Oh?”

Moyna was so unlike the wife she had envisaged for Fokir that it took Piya a moment to absorb this. Presently she added, “I should have guessed.”

“Guessed what?”

“That she was his wife. Her son has her eyes.”

“Does he?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “And what was she doing here?”

“She was delivering this tiffin carrier.” Kanai held up the steel containers. “Our dinner’s inside. Moyna’s brought it for us from the hospital’s kitchen.”

Piya’s attention drifted away from Kanai to the woman who was Fokir’s wife. She felt a twinge of envy at the thought of her going back to Fokir and Tutul while she returned to the absence upstairs. This embarrassed her and to cover up she smiled at Kanai and said briskly, “She isn’t at all like I expected.”

“No?”

“No.” Now again Piya found herself fumbling for the right words. “I mean, she’s very attractive, isn’t she?”

“You think so?”

Piya knew she should drop the matter, but instead she went on, as if she were picking at a scab. “Yes,” she said. “I think she’s quite beautiful, in a way.”

“You’re right,” said Kanai smoothly, recovering himself. “She’s very striking. But she’s more than that: in her own way, she’s an unusual and remarkable woman.”

“Really? How?”

“Just think of the life she’s led,” said Kanai. “She’s struggled to educate herself against heavy odds. Now she’s well on her way to becoming a nurse. She knows what she wants — for herself and her family — and nothing is going to keep her from pursuing it. She’s ambitious, she’s tough, and she’s going to go a long way.”

There was an edge to his voice that implied a comparison of some kind and Piya could not help wondering how she herself would fare by these lights — she who’d never had much ambition and had never had to battle her circumstances in order to get her education. In Kanai’s eyes, she knew, she must appear hopelessly soft and spoiled, a kind of stereotype. And she could not blame him for seeing her in this way — any more than she could blame herself for seeing him as an example of a certain kind of Indian male, overbearing, vain, self-centered — yet, for all that, not unlikable.

Piya switched to a more neutral subject. “And are Moyna and Fokir from around here? From Lusibari?”

“No,” said Kanai. “Both she and Fokir are from another island, quite a long way off. It’s called Satjelia.”

“Then how come they live here?”

“Partly because she’s training to be a nurse and partly because she’s trying to give her son an education. That’s why she was so upset that Fokir had taken him away on this fishing trip of his.”

“Does she know I was on the boat with them these last couple of days?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “She knows all about it — about the guard taking the money, about your fall and about Fokir diving in after you. She knows about the crocodile — the little boy told her everything.”

Piya noted the mention of the boy: did this mean Fokir hadn’t said much about the trip, or that he had given Moyna a different account? She wondered if Kanai knew the answer to either of these questions, but she could not bring herself to ask. Instead, she said, “Moyna must be curious about what I’m doing here.”

“She certainly is,” said Kanai. “She asked me about it and I explained you’re a scientist. She was very impressed.”

“Why?”

“As you can imagine,” said Kanai, “she has a great respect for education.”

“Did you tell her we’re going to visit them tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “They’ll be expecting us.”

They were back upstairs now in the Guest House, and Kanai had placed the tiffin carrier on the dining table. “I hope you’re hungry,” he said, taking the containers apart. “She always brings too much food so there should be plenty for both of us. Let’s see what we have here — there’s rice, dal, fish curry, chorchori, begun bhaja. What would you like to start with?”

She gave the containers a look of dubious appraisal. “I hope you won’t be offended,” she said, “but I don’t think I want any of that. I have to be careful about what I eat.”

“What about some rice, then?” said Kanai. “You could have some of that, couldn’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes. I guess I could — if it’s just plain white rice.”

“There you are,” he said, ladling a few spoonfuls of rice on her plate. Rolling up his sleeves, he gave her a spoon and then dug into the rice on his own plate with his hands.

During dinner, Kanai talked at length about Lusibari. He told Piya about Daniel Hamilton, the settling of the island and the circumstances that had led to Nirmal and Nilima’s arrival. He seemed so knowledgeable that Piya remarked at last, “It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time here. But you haven’t, have you?”

He was quick to confirm this. “Oh, no. I only came once as a boy. To be honest, I’m surprised by how vividly I still remember the place — especially considering it was a kind of punishment.”

“Why are you surprised?”

He shrugged. “I’m not the kind of person who dwells on the past,” he said. “I like to look ahead.”

“But we’re in the present now, aren’t we?” she said with a smile. “Even here, in Lusibari?”

“Oh, no,” he said emphatically. “For me Lusibari will always be a part of the past.”

Piya had finished her rice, so she rose from the table and started clearing away the plates. This seemed to fluster Kanai.

“Sit down,” he said. “You can leave those for Moyna.”

“I can do them just as well as she can,” said Piya.

Kanai shrugged. “All right, then.”

As she was rinsing her plate, Piya said, “Here you are, putting me up, feeding me and everything. And I feel like I know nothing about you — beyond your name that is.”

“Is that so?” Kanai gave a startled laugh. “I wonder how that could have happened? I’m not known for being unusually reticent.”

“It’s true, though,” she said. “I don’t even know where you live.”

“That’s easily remedied,” he said. “I live in New Delhi. I’m fortytwo and I’m single most of the time.”

“Oh?” Piya was quick to turn the conversation in a less personal direction. “And you’re a translator, right? That’s one thing you did tell me.”

“That’s right,” said Kanai. “I’m an interpreter and translator by profession — although right now I’m more of a businessman than anything else. I started a company some years ago when I discovered a shortage of language professionals in New Delhi. Now I provide translators for all kinds of organizations: businesses, embassies, the media, aid organizations — in short, anyone who can pay.”

“And is there much of a demand?”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded vigorously. “New Delhi’s become one of the world’s leading conference cities and media centers; there’s always something happening. I can barely keep up. The business just seems to keep growing and growing. Recently we started a speechtraining operation, to do accent modification for people who work in call centers. It’s become the fastest-growing part of the business.”

The idea that the currency of language could be used to build a business came as a surprise to Piya. “So I guess you know many languages yourself, right?”

“Six,” he said immediately, with a grin. “Hindi, Urdu and Bengali are my mainstays nowadays. And then there’s English, of course. But I have two others I fall back on from time to time: French and Arabic.”

She was intrigued by the odd combination: “French and Arabic! How did you come by those?”

“Scholarships,” he said with a smile. “I always had a head for languages, and as a student I used to frequent the Alliance Française in Calcutta. One thing led to another and I won a bourse. While I was in Paris an opportunity turned up to learn Arabic in Tunisia. I seized it and have never looked back.”

Raising a hand, Piya pinched the silver stud in her right ear, in a gesture that was childlike in its unselfconsciousness yet adult in its grace. “Did you know then that translation would be your profession?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Not at all. When I was your age I was like any other Calcutta college student — my mind was full of poetry. At the start of my career I wanted to translate Jibanananda into Arabic, and Adonis into Bangla.”

“And what happened?”

He breathed a theatrical sigh. “To put it briefly,” he said, “I quickly discovered that while both Bengali and Arabic possess riches beyond accounting, in neither is it possible to earn a living by translating literature alone. Rich Arabs have no interest in Bengali poetry, and as for rich Bengalis, it doesn’t matter what they want — there aren’t enough of them to make a difference anyway. So at a certain point I reconciled myself to my fate and turned my hand to commerce. And I have to say I was lucky to get into it when I did: there’s a lot going on in India right now and it’s exciting to be a part of it.”

Piya recalled the stories her father had told her about the country he had left: it was a place where there were only two makes of car and where middle-class life was ruled by a hankering for all things foreign. She could tell that the world Kanai inhabited was as distant from the India of her father’s memories as it was from Lusibari and the tide country.

“Do you ever feel you might want to translate literature again?” she said.

“Sometimes,” he replied. “But not often. On the whole, I have to admit I like running an office. I like knowing I’m giving people work, paying salaries, employing students with otherwise useless degrees. And let’s face it, I like the money and the comfort. New Delhi is a good place for a single man with some money. I get to meet lots of interesting women.”

This took Piya by surprise and for a moment she was not sure how to respond. She was standing at the basin, stacking the dishes she had just washed. She put away the last plate and yawned, raising a hand to cover her mouth.

“Sorry.”

He was immediately solicitous. “You must be tired after everything you’ve been through.”

“I’m exhausted. I think I have to go to bed.”

“Already?” He forced a smile, although it was clear he was disappointed. “Of course. You’ve had a long day. Did I tell you that the electricity would be switched off in an hour or so? Be sure to keep a candle with you.”

“I’ll be asleep long before that.”

“Good. I hope you get a good night’s rest. And if you need anything, just come up and knock: I’ll be up on the roof, in my uncle’s study.”

STORMS

I would have gone back to Morichjhãpi the very next week but was prevented by the usual procedures and ceremonies that accompany a schoolmaster’s retirement. At the end, however, it was all over and I was officially reckoned a man who had reached the completion of his working life.

A few days later Horen knocked on my study door. “Saar!

“I’ve just come from the market at Kumirmari,” he said. “I met Kusum there and she insisted I bring her here.”

“Here!” I said with a start. “To Lusibari? But why?”

“To meet with Mashima. The Morichjhãpi people want to ask Mashima for help.”

I understood at once: this too was a part of the settlers’ efforts to enlist support. Yet I could have told them that in this instance it was unlikely to bear fruit.

“Horen, you should have stopped Kusum from coming,” I said. “It’ll serve no purpose for her to meet with Nilima.”

“I did tell her, Saar. But she insisted.”

“So where is she now?”

“She’s downstairs, Saar, waiting to see Mashima. But look who I’ve brought upstairs.” He stepped aside and I saw now that Fokir had been lurking behind him all this while. “I’ve got to go to the market, Saar, so I’ll just leave him here with you.” With that he went bounding down the stairs, leaving me alone with the five-year-old.

As a schoolteacher I was accustomed to dealing with children in the plural. Never having had a child of my own, I was unused to coping with them in the singular. Now, subjected to the scrutiny of a lone pair of wide-open, five-year-old eyes, I forgot everything I had planned to say. In a near panic I led the boy across the roof and pointed to the Raimangal’s mohona.

“Look, comrade,” I said. “Look. Follow your eyes and tell me. What do you see?”

I suppose he was asking himself what I wanted. After looking this way and that, he said at last, “I see the bãdh, Saar.”

“The bãdh? Yes, of course, the bãdh.”

This was not the answer I had expected, but I fell upon it with inexpressible relief. For the bãdh is not just the guarantor of human life on our island; it is also our abacus and archive, our library of stories. So long as I had the bãdh in sight, I knew I would not lack for something to say.

“Go on, comrade. Look again; look carefully. Let’s see if you can pick out the spots where the embankment has been repaired. For each such repair I’ll give you a story.”

Fokir lifted a hand to point. “What happened there, Saar?”

“Ah, there. That breach happened twenty years ago, and it was neither storm nor flood that caused it. It was made by a man who wanted to settle a score with the family who lived next door to his. In the depths of the night he made a hole in the dyke, thinking to drown his neighbor’s fields. It never entered his mind to think that he was doing just as much harm to himself as to his enemy. That’s why neither family lives here anymore — for ten years afterward nothing grew in their fields.”

“And there, Saar? What happened there?”

“That one began simply enough, with an exceptionally high tide, a kotal gon, that came spilling over the top. The contract for the repairs was given to a man who was the brother-in-law of the head of the Panchayat. He swore he would fix it so that never again would a drop of water leak through. But they found later that the contractor had put in only half the materials he had been paid for. The profits had been shared by many different brothers-in-law.”

“And over there, Saar?”

Even storytellers know that discretion is sometimes a wiser course than valor. “As for that one, comrade, I had better not tell you too much. Do you see the people who live there, in those dwellings that run beside the embankment? It happened once that the people of that “para” had voted for the wrong party. So when the other party came to power, they decided to settle scores. Their way of doing it was to make a hole in the bãdh. Of such things, my friend, are politicians made, but let’s not dwell on this too much — it may not be good for our health. Look there instead; follow my finger.”

I pointed him in a direction where half a mile of the embankment had been beaten down, in the 1930s, by a storm.

“Imagine, Fokir,” I said. “Imagine the lives of your ancestors. They were new to this island, freshly arrived in the tide country. After years of struggle they had managed to create the foundations of the bãdh; they had even managed to grow a few handfuls of rice and vegetables. After years of living on stilt-raised platforms, they had finally been able to descend to earth and make a few shacks and shanties on level ground. All this by virtue of the bãdh. And imagine that fateful night when the storm struck, at exactly the time that a kotal gon was setting in; imagine how they cowered in their roofless huts and watched the waters rising, rising, gnawing at the mud and the sand they had laid down to hold the river off. Imagine what went through their heads as they watched this devouring tide eating its way through the earthworks, stalking them wherever they were. There was not one among them, I will guarantee you, my young friend, who would not rather have stood before a tiger than have looked into the maws of that tide.”

“Were there other storms, Saar?”

“Yes, many. Look there.” I pointed to an indentation in the island’s shore, a place that looked as if some giant had bitten off a part of Lusibari’s coast. “Look. That was done by the storm of 1970. It was a bhangon, a breaking: the river tore off a four-acre piece of land and carried it away. In an instant it was gone — its huts, fields, trees were all devoured.”

“Was that the worst storm of all, Saar?”

“No, comrade, no. The worst storm of all, they say, was long before my time. Long before the settlers first came to this island.”

“When, Saar?”

“It was in 1737. The Emperor Aurangzeb had died some thirty years before and the country was in turmoil. Calcutta was a new place then — the English had seized their opportunity and made it the main port of the east.”

“Go on, Saar.”

“It happened in October — that’s always when the worst of them strike, October and November. Before the storm had even made landfall the tide country was hit by a huge wave, a wall of water forty feet in height. Can you imagine how high that is, my friend? It would have drowned everything on your island and on ours too. Even we on this roof would have been underwater.”

“No!”

“Yes, comrade, yes. There were people in Calcutta, Englishmen, who took measurements and recorded all the details. The waters rose so high that they killed thousands of animals and carried them upriver and inland. The corpses of tigers and rhinoceroses were found miles from the river, in rice fields and in village ponds. There were fields covered with the feathers of dead birds. And as this monstrous wave was traveling through the tide country, racing toward Calcutta, something else happened — something unimaginable.”

“What, Saar, what?”

“The city was hit by an earthquake.”

“No!”

“Yes, my friend. Yes. That’s one of the reasons why this storm became so famous. There are people, scientists, who believe there is a mysterious connection between earthquakes and storms. But this was the first known instance of these two catastrophes happening together.”

“So what happened, Saar?”

“In Kolkata tens of thousands of dwellings fell instantly to the ground — Englishmen’s palaces as well as houses and huts. The steeple of the English church toppled over and came crashing down. They say there was not a building in the city left with four walls intact. Bridges were blown away, wharves were carried off by the surging waters, godowns were emptied of their rice, and gunpowder in the armories was scattered by the wind. On the river were many ships at anchor, large and small, from many nations. Among them there were two English ships of five hundred tons each. The wind picked them up and carried them over the tops of trees and houses; it threw them down a quarter of a mile from the river. People saw huge barges fluttering in the air like paper kites. They say that over twenty thousand vessels were lost that day, including boats, barges, dinghies and the like. And even among those that remained, many strange things happened.”

“What, Saar? What?”

“A French ship was driven on shore with some of its cargo intact. The day after the storm, the remaining members of the crew went out into the fields to try to salvage what they could from the wreckage. A crewman was sent down into one of the holds to see what had been spared. After he had been gone a while, his mates shouted to ask him what was taking him so long. There was no answer, so they sent another man. He too fell quickly silent, as did the man who followed him. Now panic set in and no one else would agree to go until a fire had been lit to see what was going on. When the flame was kindled they saw that the hold was filled with water, and swimming in this tank was an enormous crocodile — it had killed those three men.

“And this, my friend and comrade, is a true story, recorded in documents stored in the British Museum, the very place where Marx wrote Das Kapital.”

“But Saar, it couldn’t happen again, Saar, could it?”

I could see Fokir was trying to gauge the appetite of our rivers and I would have liked to put his young mind at rest. But I knew also that it would have been wrong to deceive him. “My friend, not only could it happen again — it will happen again. A storm will come, the waters will rise, and the bãdh will succumb, in part or in whole. It is only a matter of time.”

“How do you know, Saar?” he said quietly.

“Look at it, my friend, look at the bãdh. See how frail it is, how fragile. Look at the waters that flow past it and how limitless they are, how patient, how quietly they bide their time. Just to look at it is to know why the waters must prevail, later if not sooner. But if you’re not convinced by the evidence of your eyes, then perhaps you will have to use your ears.”

“My ears?”

“Yes. Come with me.”

I led him down the stairs and across the fields. People must have stared to see us, me in my flapping white dhoti with my umbrella unfurled against the sun, and Fokir in his ragged shorts racing along at my heels. I went right up to the embankment and put my left ear against the clay. “Now put your head on the bãdh and listen carefully. Tell me what you hear and let’s see if you can guess what it is.”

“I hear a scratching sound, Saar,” he said in a while. “It’s very soft.”

“But what is making this sound?”

He listened a while longer and then his face lit up with a smile. “Are they crabs, Saar?”

“Yes, Fokir. Not everyone can hear them but you did. Even as we stand here, untold multitudes of crabs are burrowing into our bãdh. Now ask yourself: how long can this frail fence last against these monstrous appetites — the crabs and the tides, the winds and the storms? And if it falls, who shall we turn to then, comrade?”

“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 listen. “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.

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

NEAR 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

And 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.”

This offered a dilemma of a new kind. In the past, I had always taken care to hold myself apart from matters of religious devotion. It was not just that I thought of these beliefs as false consciousness; it was also because I had seen at first hand the horrors that religion had visited upon us at the time of Partition. As headmaster I had felt it my duty not to identify myself with any set of religious beliefs, Hindu, Muslim or anything else. This was why, strange as it may seem, I had never seen a Bon Bibi puja or, indeed, taken any interest in this deity. But I was no longer a headmaster and the considerations that had once kept me aloof from such matters were no longer applicable.

But what about Nilima’s injunctions? What about her plea that I stay away from Morichjhãpi? I persuaded myself that this trip would not count as going to Morichjhãpi, since we would, after all, be heading to another island. “All right, Horen,” I said. “But remember — not a word to Mashima.”

“No, Saar, of course. No.”

The next morning Horen came at dawn and we set off.

A couple of months had passed since I was last at Morichjhãpi, and when we got there, it was clear at a glance that much had changed in the meanwhile: the euphoria of the time before had given way to fear and slow, nagging doubts. A wooden watchtower had been erected, for instance, and there were groups of settlers patrolling the island’s shore. When our boat pulled in, we were immediately surrounded by several men. “Who are you?” they asked. “What’s your business here?”

We were a little shaken when we got to Kusum’s thatch-roofed dwelling. It was clear that she too was under strain. She explained that in recent weeks the government had been stepping up the pressure on the settlers: policemen and officials had visited and offered inducements for them to leave. When these proved ineffective, they had made threats. Although the settlers were unmoved in their resolve, a kind of nervousness had set in: no one knew what was going to happen next.

The morning was quite advanced now, so we hurried on our way. Kusum and Fokir had made small clay images of Bon Bibi and her brother, Shah Jongoli. These we loaded on Horen’s boat and then pulled away from the island.

Once we were out on the river, the tide lifted everyone’s spirits. There were many other boats on the waters, all out on similar errands. Some of them had twenty or thirty people on board. Along with massive, wellpainted images of Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli, they also had singers and drummers.

On our boat were just the four of us: Horen, Fokir, Kusum and me.

“Why didn’t you bring your children?” I asked Horen. “What about your family?”

“They went with my father-in-law and my wife’s family,” said Horen sheepishly. “Their boat is bigger.”

We came to a mohona, and as we were crossing it, I noticed that Horen and Kusum had begun to make genuflections of the kind that are usually occasioned by the sight of a deity or a temple — they raised their fingertips to their foreheads and then touched their chests. Fokir, watching attentively, attempted to do the same.

“What’s happening?” I asked in surprise. “What do you see? There’s no temple nearby. This is just open water.”

Kusum laughed and at first wouldn’t tell me. Then, after some pleading and cajolery, she divulged that at that moment, in the very middle of that mohona, we had crossed the line Bon Bibi had drawn to divide the tide country. In other words we had crossed the border that separates the realm of human beings from the domain of Dokkhin Rai and his demons. I realized with a sense of shock that this chimerical line was, to her and to Horen, as real as a barbed-wire fence might be to me.

And now, indeed, everything began to look new, unexpected, full of surprises. I had a book in my hands to while away the time, and it occurred to me that in a way a landscape is not unlike a book — a compilation of pages that overlap without any two ever being the same. People open the book according to their taste and training, their memories and desires: for a geologist the compilation opens at one page, for a boatman at another, and still another for a ship’s pilot, a painter and so on. On occasion these pages are ruled with lines that are invisible to some people, while being for others as real, as charged and as volatile as high-voltage cables.

To me, a townsman, the tide country’s jungle was an emptiness, a place where time stood still. I saw now that this was an illusion, that exactly the opposite was true. What was happening here, I realized, was that the wheel of time was spinning too fast to be seen. In other places it took decades, even centuries, for a river to change course; it took an epoch for an island to appear. But here in the tide country, transformation is the rule of life: rivers stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in days. In other places forests take centuries, even millennia, to regenerate; but mangroves can recolonize a denuded island in ten to fifteen years. Could it be that the very rhythms of the earth were quickened here so that they unfolded at an accelerated pace?

I remembered the story of the Royal James and Mary, an English ship making its passage through the shoals of the tide country in the year 1694. Night stole unawares upon the many-masted ship and it capsized after striking a sandbank. What would be the fate of such a shipwreck in the benign waters of the Caribbean or the Mediterranean? I imagined the thick crust of underwater life that would cling to the vessel and preserve it for centuries; I imagined the divers and explorers who would seek their fortunes in the wreck. But here? The tide country digested the great galleon within a few years. Its remains vanished without trace.

Nor was this the only such. Thinking back, I remembered that the channels of the tide country were crowded with the graves of old ships. Wasn’t it true that in the great storm of 1737 more than two dozen ships had foundered in these waters? And didn’t it happen that in the year 1885 the British India Steam Navigation Company lost two proud steamers here, the Arcot and the Mahratta? And wasn’t the City of Canterbury added to that list in 1897? But today on these sites nothing is to be seen; nothing escapes the maw of the tides; everything is ground to fine silt, becomes something else.

It was as if the whole tide country were speaking in the voice of the Poet: “life is lived in transformation.”

It is afternoon now in Morichjhãpi and Kusum and Horen have just returned from a meeting of the settlers of this ward. The rumors have been confirmed. The gangsters who have massed on the far shore will be brought in to drive the settlers out. But the attack, they say, will likely start tomorrow, not today. I still have a few hours left.

A PILGRIMAGE

WHEN DINNER ARRIVED, Piya had the feeling that someone had spoken to Moyna about her eating preferences. Today, apart from the usual fare of rice and fish curry, she had also brought some plain mashed potatoes and two bananas. Touched, Piya put her hands together in a namaste to thank Moyna.

Later, when Moyna had gone, she asked Kanai whether it was he who’d spoken to her and he shook his head: “No. It wasn’t me.”

“Must have been Fokir, then.” Piya served herself an eager helping of mashed potatoes. “All I’m missing now is some Ovaltine.”

“Ovaltine?” Kanai looked up from his food in surprise. “You like Ovaltine?” He began to laugh when she nodded. “Do they have Ovaltine in America?”

“It was a habit my parents brought over,” Piya said. “They used to buy their groceries in Indian stores. I like it now because it’s easy to carry and convenient when you’re out on the water.”

“So you live on Ovaltine while you’re tracking these dolphins of yours?”

“Sometimes.”

Kanai shook his head ruefully as he filled a plate with rice, dal and chhechki. “You go through a lot for these creatures, don’t you?”

“That’s not how I think of it.”

“So are they fetching, these beasts of yours?” said Kanai. “Do they hold one’s interest?”

“They’re interesting to me,” said Piya. “And I can give you at least one good reason why they should be of interest to you.”

“I’m listening,” said Kanai. “I’m willing to be persuaded. Why?”

“Because some of the earliest specimens were found in Calcutta,” Piya said. “How’s that for a reason?”

“In Calcutta?” Kanai said incredulously. “You’re telling me there were dolphins in Calcutta?”

“Oh, yes,” said Piya. “Not just dolphins. Whales too.”

“Whales?” Kanai laughed. “Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”

“Not at all,” said Piya. “Kolkata was once a big place for cetacean zoology.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kanai said flatly. “I think I’d know if that were the case.”

“But it’s true,” Piya said. “And let me tell you — last week when I was coming through Kolkata? I actually went on a cetacean pilgrimage.”

Kanai burst into laughter. “A cetacean pilgrimage?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “My cousins laughed too. But that’s just what it was, a pilgrimage.”

“And who are these cousins of yours?” said Kanai.

“My mashima’s daughters,” Piya said. “They’re younger than me; one’s in high school and one’s in college — both really bright, smart kids. They had a car and driver and they said they’d take me wherever I wanted to go in Calcutta. I guess they figured that I’d want to buy some souvenirs or something. When I told them where I wanted to go, they were like, ‘The Botanical Gardens! What are you going to do there?’”

“I can see the point of that question,” Kanai said. “What do the Botanical Gardens have to do with dolphins?”

“Everything,” said Piya. “You see, in the nineteenth century the gardens were run by some very good naturalists. One of them was William Roxburgh, the man who identified the Gangetic dolphin.”

It was in Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens, Piya explained, that Roxburgh had written his famous article of 1801 announcing the discovery of the first-known river dolphin. He had called it Delphinus gangeticus (“Soosoo is the name it is known by among the Bengalese around Calcutta”), but the name had been changed later, when it was discovered that Pliny the Elder had already named the Indian river dolphin, as far back as the first century C.E. — he had called it Platanista. In the zoological inventory the Gangetic dolphin had come to be listed as Platanista gangetica (Roxburgh, 1801). Years later, John Anderson, one of Roxburgh’s successors at the gardens, actually adopted an infant Gangetic dolphin. He kept it in his bathtub, and it lived for several weeks.

“But you know what?” Piya said. “Although he had a dolphin in his bathtub, Anderson never found out that Platanista are blind — or that they prefer to swim on their side.”

“Is that what they do?”

“Yes.”

“So did you find the bathtub?” said Kanai, reaching across the table for the rice.

Piya laughed. “No. But I wasn’t too disappointed. It was good just to be there.”

“So what was the next station in your pilgrimage?” Kanai said.

“This one will surprise you even more,” said Piya. “Salt Lake.”

Kanai’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean the Kolkata suburb?”

“It wasn’t always a suburb, you know,” Piya said, peeling another banana. “In 1852 it was just a wetland with a few scattered ponds.”

In July that year, Piya said, an unusually high tide caused a sudden surge in the rivers of the delta. The wave traveled deep into the hinterland, flooding the swamps and wetlands that surrounded Calcutta. When the tide turned and the waters began to recede, a rumor swept the streets of the city: a school of giant sea creatures had been stranded in one of the salt lakes on the city’s western outskirts. The then superintendent of the Botanical Gardens was one Edward Blyth, an English naturalist. The news worried him. The year before on the Malabar coast a stranded whale, a full eighty-eight feet in length, had been dismembered by the local people: they had set upon it with knives, axes and spears and hacked it apart. A nearby English clergyman was shown the meat, both dried and fresh, and was told that it was “first chop beef.” What if these creatures were cut up and consumed before they had been subjected to a proper examination? The thought of this sent Blyth hurrying across town to the salt lake.

“It wasn’t that he cared about their being killed,” Piya said. “He just wanted to do it himself.”

The marshes were steaming under a blazing sun and the water had fallen back to its accustomed level. He arrived to find some twenty animals floundering in a shallow pond. Their heads were rounded and their bodies black with white undersides. The adult males were over thirteen feet long. The water was too low to keep them fully submerged and their short, sharply raked dorsal fins were exposed to the sun. They were in great distress and their moans could be clearly heard. Blyth was inclined to identify the animals as short-finned pilot whales, Globicephalus deductor. This was a common Atlantic species, named and identified some six years before by the great British anatomist Henry Gray.

“Of Gray’s Anatomy?” Kanai said.

“That’s the one.”

A large crowd had gathered but somewhat to Blyth’s surprise they had not set upon the whales. On the contrary, many people had labored through the night to rescue the creatures, towing them through a channel into the river. Apparently these villagers had no taste for whale meat and no knowledge of the oil that could be extracted from the animals’ carcasses. Blyth learned that many whales had been saved and that the twenty remaining ones were the last of a school of several dozen. With the rescues proceeding apace, there was clearly no time to be lost. Blyth chose two of the best specimens and ordered his men to secure them to the bank with poles and stout ropes: his intention was to return the next day with the implements necessary for a proper dissection.

“But when he came back the next morning,” said Piya, “they were all gone.” The chosen animals had been cut loose by the bystanders. But Blyth was not easily thwarted and managed to get hold of two of the last remaining whales. These he quickly reduced to perfect skeletons. After a prolonged examination of the bones, he decided that the animals were an unknown species. He called it the Indian pilot whale, Globicephalus indicus.

“I have a theory,” Piya said with a smile, “that if Blyth hadn’t gone out to Salt Lake that day, he’d have become the man who identified the Irrawaddy dolphin.”

Kanai was licking a grain of rice off his forefinger. “Why?”

“Because six years later he made a terrible mistake when he found the first specimen of Orcaella.”

“And where did he find it?”

“In a Calcutta fish market,” Piya said with a laugh. “Someone told him about it and he went running over. He gave it the once-over and decided it was a juvenile pilot whale like the animals he’d seen out near the Salt Lake. He couldn’t get those creatures out of his head.”

“So he wasn’t the one who identified your beloved dolphin?” Kanai said.

“No,” said Piya. “Old Blyth missed his chance.”

A quarter of a century later, another carcass of a small, roundheaded cetacean was found at Vizagapatnam, four hundred miles down the coast from Calcutta. This time the skeleton found its way to the British Museum, where it occasioned much curiosity. The anatomists of London saw what Blyth had failed to see: this was no juvenile pilot whale! It was a new species, a relative of none other than the killer whale, Orcinus orca. But where the killer whale grew to lengths of over thirty feet, its cousin rarely exceeded eight; while the killer whale liked the icy waters of the subpolar oceans, its cousin preferred the warmth of the tropics and appeared to thrive in both fresh water and salt. Compared to the mighty orca, this creature was so mellow as to need a diminutive: it became Orcaella — Orcaella brevirostris, to be exact.

A puzzled frown appeared on Kanai’s forehead. “So this killer-ella of yours was first netted in Calcutta and then in Vizagapatnam?”

“Yes.”

“Then why is it known as the Irrawaddy dolphin?”

“That’s another story,” said Piya.

The name was the doing of John Anderson, she said, the very one who’d tried to rear a Gangetic dolphin in his bathtub. In the 1870s Anderson accompanied two zoological expeditions that traveled through Burma to southern China. While sailing up the Irrawaddy, Anderson found no Orcaella in the lower part of the river. In the upper reaches, on the other hand, they were present in great numbers. There appeared also to be a few small anatomical differences between the animals that lived in fresh water and those that lived in salt water. From this Anderson drew the conclusion that there were two species of Orcaella: to Orcaella brevirostris he awarded a cousin, Orcaella fluminalis. This, he decided, was the Irrawaddy dolphin, the true inhabitant of Asia’s rivers.

“The name stuck,” Piya said, “but his conclusions didn’t.”

The great Gray of London examined several skeletons and handed down a definitive judgment: Orcaella was one species, not two. It was true that there were coastal populations and riverine populations, and it was true also that the two did not mix. But anatomically there was no difference. In the Linnaean bestiary the animal’s name became Orcaella brevirostris (Gray, 1886).

“And you know what the real irony was?” Piya said. “Poor old Blyth was wrong on all counts. Not only did he blow his chances of identifying Orcaella; he also misidentified the stranded whales of Calcutta’s Salt Lake: they were just short-finned pilot whales. Gray showed there was no such thing as Globicephalus indicus.”

Kanai nodded. “That’s how it was in those days,” he said. “London was to Calcutta as orca to Orcaella.”

Piya laughed as she carried her plate to the sink. “Are you convinced now? About Calcutta being a center of cetacean zoology?”

Piya raised her hand to her earlobe in the gesture that Kanai had noticed before. That movement made her seem at once as graceful as a dancer and as vulnerable as a child, and it made Kanai’s heart stop. He could not bear to think that she would be going the next day.

Leaving his plate on the table, he went to the bathroom to wash his hands. A minute later, he came hurrying out and went to stand at Piya’s elbow, beside the sink.

“I have an idea for you, Piya,” he said.

“Yes?” she said cautiously, alarmed by the shine in his eye.

“Do you know what your expedition lacks?”

“What?” She turned away from him, pursing her lips.

“A translator!” Kanai said. “Neither Horen nor Fokir speaks English. How are you going to communicate with them?”

“I managed OK over the last few days.”

“But you didn’t have a whole crew to deal with.”

She acknowledged the truth of this with a nod: she could see that there would be advantages to having him along. But her instincts told her to be careful: his presence might lead to trouble. Playing for time, she said, “But don’t you have stuff to do here?”

“Not really,” said Kanai. “I’m getting to the end of my uncle’s notebook — and it doesn’t necessarily have to be read right here. I could take it with me. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of this Guest House. I wouldn’t mind a little break.”

His eagerness was obvious and she was aware of a twinge of guilt: there was no denying that he had been very hospitable; she would feel more at ease about staying in the Guest House if she knew his generosity was not going to go unreciprocated.

“Well, then, sure,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “You’re welcome to come along.”

He made a fist and punched it into his open palm. “Thank you!” But this display of enthusiasm seemed to cause him some embarrassment, for he added, affecting nonchalance, “I’ve always wanted to be on an expedition. It’s been an ambition of mine ever since I learned that my great-great-uncle was the translator on Younghusband’s expedition to Tibet.”

DESTINY

Putting away my book, I said to Kusum: “What is this place we’re going to? Why is it called Garjontola?”

“Because of the garjon tree, which grows in great abundance there.”

“Oh?” I had not made this connection: I’d thought that the name of the place came from the other meaning of the word garjon, “to roar.” “So it’s not because of a tiger’s cry?”

She laughed. “Maybe that too.”

“So why is it Garjontola we’re going to? Why there and nowhere else?”

“It’s because of my father, Saar,” Kusum said.

“Your father?”

“Yes. Once, many years ago, his life was saved on this island.”

“How? What happened?”

“All right, Saar, since you asked, I’ll tell you the story. I know you’ll probably laugh. You won’t believe me.

“It happened long, long ago, before I was born; fishing alone, my father was caught in a storm. The wind raged like a fiend and tore apart his boat; his hands fell on a log and somehow he stayed afloat. Swept by the current, he came to Garjontola; climbing a tree, he tied himself with his gamchha. Attached to the trunk, he held on against the gale till suddenly the wind stopped and a silence fell. The waves were quieted, the tree stood straight again, but there was no moon and not a thing could be seen.

“Now, in the dark of the night he heard a garjon; soon he caught the smell of the unnameable one. Terror seized his heart and he lost all consciousness; he’d have fallen if the gamchha hadn’t held him in place. He dreamed, in his oblivion, of Bon Bibi: ‘Fool!’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid; believe in me. This place you’ve come to, I value it as my own; if you’re good at heart, here you’ll never be alone.’

“‘When day breaks you’ll see it is time for low tide; cross the island and go to the northern side. Keep your eyes on the water; be patient and you’ll see: you’re not on your own; you’re not far from me. You’ll see my messengers, my ears and my eyes; they’ll keep you company till the waters rise. Then will you know that deliverance is at hand; a boat will pass by and take you back to your land.’”

Who could fail to be charmed by such a story, so well told? “I suppose you will tell me,” I said, smiling, “that this was exactly how it happened?”

“Why, yes, Saar, it did. And afterward my father came back and built a shrine to Bon Bibi on the island. For the rest of his life, every year we came here on this day, when it was time to do a puja for Bon Bibi.”

I laughed. “And the messengers? I suppose you will say that they were real too?”

“Why, yes, Saar,” she said. “They were. And even you will see them soon.”

“Even I?” I laughed louder still. “An unbelieving secularist? I too am to be granted this privilege?”

“Yes, Saar,” she persisted in the face of my skepticism. “Anyone can see Bon Bibi’s messengers if they know where to look.”

I took a little nap in the shade of my umbrella, and then woke to the sound of Kusum’s voice telling me we had arrived.

I’d been looking forward to the moment when I would be able to confound her credulousness. I sat quickly upright. It was low tide and we were becalmed in a stretch of still water; the shore was yet some distance away. There was nothing to be seen, no messengers nor any other divine manifestation. I could not help preening myself a little as I savored my triumph. “So where are they, Kusum,” I said, “these messengers of yours?”

“Wait, Saar. You’ll see them.”

Suddenly there was a sound like that of a man blowing his nose. I turned around in astonishment, just in time to see a patch of black skin disappearing into the water.

“What was that?” I cried. “Where did it come from? Where did it go?”

“Look,” said little Fokir, pointing in the other direction, “over there.”

I turned to see another of these creatures, rolling through the water. This time I also caught a glimpse of a small triangular fin. Although I had never before seen this animal, I knew it had to be a dolphin; yet it was clearly not the shushuk I was accustomed to seeing in our waters, for those had no fins on their backs.

“What is it?” I said. “Is it some kind of shushuk?”

It was Kusum’s turn to smile. “I have my own name for them,” she said. “I call them Bon Bibi’s messengers.” The triumph was hers now; I could not deny it to her.

All the time our boat was at that spot, the creatures kept breaking the water around us. What held them there? What made them linger? I could not imagine. Then there came a moment when one of them broke the surface with its head and looked right at me. Now I saw why Kusum found it so easy to believe that these animals were something other than what they were. For where she had seen a sign of Bon Bibi, I saw instead the gaze of the Poet. It was as if he were saying to me:

some mute animal

raising its calm eyes and seeing through us,

and through us. This is destiny…

THE MEGHA

IN THE MORNING Piya and Kanai hired a cycle-van to take them across the island to look at the bhotbhoti Fokir had arranged. On the way, as they rattled down the brick-paved path that led to the village, Piya said, “Tell me about the owner of this boat. Did you say you knew him?”

“I met him when I came here as a boy,” said Kanai. “His name is Horen Naskor. I can’t really claim to know him, but he was close to my uncle.”

“And what’s his relation to Fokir?”

“Oh, he’s like an adopted parent,” said Kanai. “Fokir lived with him after his mother died.”

Horen was waiting at the foot of the embankment with Fokir at his side. Kanai recognized him at once: he was squat and wide-bodied, just as he remembered, but his chest seemed even broader now than before because of the substantial paunch that had burgeoned beneath it. With age the folds of Horen’s face had deepened so that his eyes seemed almost to have disappeared. Yet it was clear that the years had also added stature to his presence, for his demeanor was now that of a patriarch, a man who commanded the respect of all who knew him. His clothes too were those of a man of some means: his striped lungi was starched and carefully ironed and his white shirt was spotlessly clean. On his wrist was a heavy watch with a metal strap, and sunglasses could be seen protruding from his shirt pocket.

“Do you remember me, Horen-da?” said Kanai, joining his hands in greeting. “I’m Saar’s nephew.”

“Of course,” said Horen matter-of-factly. “You came here as a punishment in 1970. It was the year of the great Agunmukha cyclone — but you left before that, I think.”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “And how are your children? You had three then, I remember.”

“They have grown children of their own now,” said Horen. “Look, here’s one of them.” Horen beckoned to a lanky teenager who was dressed in jeans and a smart blue T-shirt. “His name is Nogen and he’s just out of school. He’s going to be on our crew.”

“Good.” Kanai turned to introduce Piya. “And this is the scientist who wants to hire the bhotbhoti: Shrimati Piyali Roy.”

Horen bobbed his head in greeting to Piya. “Come,” he said, pulling up his lungi. “My bhotbhoti’s waiting.”

Following him up the embankment, Piya and Kanai saw that he was pointing to a vessel anchored off the sandspit that served as Lusibari’s jetty. Painted in white lettering on its bow was the legend MV MEGHA.

At first sight there was little to recommend the vessel: it sat awkwardly in the water and its hull had the bruised and dented look of a tin toy. But Horen was proud of it and spoke of its merits at some length. The Megha had carried a great number of passengers, he said to Kanai, and none had ever had cause for complaint. He proceeded to recount many tales about the picnickers he had taken to Pakhiraloy and the bridegrooms and borjatris he had ferried to weddings. These stories were not hard to believe, for despite its general decrepitude the boat was clearly intended to cater to large, if huddled, numbers. The lower deck was a cavernous space crisscrossed with wooden benches and curtained with sheets of yellow tarpaulin; the galley and the engine room were located at opposite ends of this space. On top of this was a small upper deck, with a wheelhouse and two tiny cabins. Over the stern hung a tin-walled toilet. This was the head, and, being little more than a hole in the floor, it was reasonably clean.

“She’s not much to look at,” Kanai admitted, “but she might be just right for us. You and I could each have a cabin on the upper deck, and that would keep us away from the noise and fumes.”

“And what about Fokir?” said Piya.

“He’d be on the lower deck,” said Kanai, “along with Horen and the helper he’s bringing with him — his fifteen-year-old grandson, I believe.”

“Is that going to be the whole crew?” said Piya. “Just the two of them?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “We’re not going to be crowded for space.”

Piya gave the Megha a doubtful look. “It isn’t the research ship of my dreams,” she said. “But I could live with it. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t get how this old tub is going to follow the dolphins. I can’t see it going into all those shallow creeks.”

Kanai relayed Piya’s question to Horen and then translated the answer for her benefit: Fokir’s boat would be accompanying them on the journey; the Megha would tow it all the way, and on reaching their destination the bhotbhoti would stay at anchor while Piya and Fokir tracked the dolphins in the boat.

“Really?” This was what Piya had been hoping to hear. “I guess Fokir was ahead of me on this one.”

“What do you think?” said Kanai. “Will it work?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “It’s a great idea. It’ll be much easier to follow the dolphins in his boat.”

With Kanai translating, the bhotbhoti’s terms were quickly agreed upon. Although Piya would not allow Kanai to contribute to the rental, she agreed to split the costs of the journey’s provisions. They handed over a sum of money for Horen to buy rice, dal, oil, tea, bottled water, a couple of chickens and, specifically for Piya, a plentiful supply of powdered milk.

“It’s so exciting,” said Piya as they headed back to the Guest House. “I can’t wait to leave. I’d better get all my laundry done this morning.”

“And I’d better go and tell my aunt I’m going to be away for a couple of days,” said Kanai. “I don’t know how she’s going to take it.”

NILIMA’S DOOR WAS open and Kanai entered to find her sitting at her desk, sipping a cup of tea. Her smile of greeting turned quickly into a curious frown. “What’s the matter-ré Kanai? Is something wrong?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” said Kanai awkwardly. “I just wanted to tell you, Mashima, that I’m going to be away for a few days.”

“You’re going away?” she said. “But you’ve only just come.”

“I know,” said Kanai. “I hope you won’t mind. But Piya’s hired a bhotbhoti to track her dolphins. She needs someone to translate.”

“Oh, I see!” said Nilima, in English, drawing out the words. “So you’re going with her, then?”

Knowing how precious Nirmal’s memory was to her, Kanai said gently, “And I thought I would take the notebook along with me. If it’s all right with you?”

“You’ll be careful with it, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How much have you read?”

“I’m well into it,” said Kanai. “I’ll be done by the time I get back.”

“All right, then. I won’t ask you any more about it now,” Nilima said. “But tell me this, Kanai. Where exactly are you going?”

Kanai scratched his head. The fact was, he didn’t know and had not thought to ask. But a habitual unwillingness to acknowledge ignorance led him to pick the name of a river at random: “I think we’ll be going down the Tarobãki River — into the forest.”

“So you’re heading into the jungle?” said Nilima, looking him over speculatively.

“I suppose so,” Kanai said uncertainly.

Nilima rose from her desk and came to stand in front of him. “Kanai, I hope you’ve thought this over properly.”

“Yes, of course I have,” said Kanai, feeling suddenly like a schoolboy.

“No, I don’t think you have, Kanai,” said Nilima with her hands on her hips. “And I don’t blame you. I know that for outsiders it’s very hard to conceive of the dangers.”

“The tigers, you mean?” Kanai said. A smile lifted the corners of his lips. “Why would a tiger pick me when it could have a tasty young morsel like Piya?”

“Kanai,” scolded Nilima, “this is not a joke. I know that in this day and age, in the twenty-first century, it’s difficult for you to imagine yourself being attacked by a tiger. The trouble is that over here it’s not in the least bit out of the ordinary. It happens several times each week.”

“As often as that?” said Kanai.

“Yes. More,” said Nilima. “Look, I’ll show you something.” She took hold of Kanai’s elbow and led him across the room to one of the many stacks of shelves that lined the walls. “Look,” she said, pointing to a sheaf of files, “I’ve been keeping unofficial records for years, based on word-of-mouth reports. My belief is that over a hundred people are killed by tigers here each year. And, mind you, I’m just talking about the Indian part of the Sundarbans. If you include the Bangladesh side, the figure is probably twice that. If you put the figures together, it means that a human being is killed by a tiger every other day in the Sundarbans — at the very least.”

Kanai raised his eyebrows. “I knew there were killings,” he said, “but I never thought there were as many as that.”

“That’s the trouble,” said Nilima. “Nobody knows exactly how many killings there are. None of the figures are reliable. But of this I’m sure: there are many more deaths than the authorities admit.”

Kanai scratched his head. “This must be a recent trend,” he said. “Perhaps it has something to do with overpopulation, or encroachment on the habitat, or something like that?”

“Don’t you believe it,” Nilima said scornfully. “These attacks have been going on for centuries — they were happening even when the population here was a fraction of what it is today. Look.” Standing on tiptoe, she pulled a file off a shelf and carried it to her desk. “Look over here — do you see that number?”

Kanai looked down at the page and saw that the tip of her finger was pointing to a numeral: 4,218.

“Look at that figure, Kanai,” Nilima said. “That’s the number of people who were killed by tigers in lower Bengal in a six-year period — between the years 1860 and 1866. The figures were compiled by J. Fayrer — he was the English naturalist who coined the phrase ‘Royal Bengal Tiger.’ Think of it, Kanai — over four thousand human beings killed. That’s almost two people every day for six years! What would the number add up to over a century?”

“Tens of thousands.” Kanai frowned as he looked down at the page. “It’s hard to believe.”

“Unfortunately,” said Nilima, “it’s all too true.”

“And why do you think it happens this way?” Kanai said. “What’s behind this?”

Nilima sat at her desk and sighed. “I’ve heard so many theories, Kanai. I just wish I knew which to believe.”

The one thing everyone agreed on, Nilima said, was that the tide country’s tigers were different from those elsewhere. In other habitats, tigers attacked human beings only in abnormal circumstances: if they happened to be crippled or were otherwise unable to hunt down any other kind of prey. But this was not true of the tide country’s tigers; even young and healthy animals were known to attack human beings. Some said that this propensity came from the peculiar conditions of the tidal ecology, in which large parts of the forest were subjected to daily submersions. The theory went that this raised the animals’ threshold of aggression by washing away their scent markings and confusing their territorial instincts. This was about as convincing a theory as Nilima had ever heard, but the trouble was that even if it was true, there was nothing that could be done about it.

With every few years came some new theory and some yet more ingenious solution. In the 1980s a German naturalist had suggested that the tigers’ preference for human flesh was somehow connected with the shortage of fresh water in the Sundarbans. This idea had been received with great enthusiasm by the Forest Department, and several pools had been excavated to provide the tigers with fresh water.

“Just imagine that,” said Nilima. “They were providing water for tigers! In a place where nobody thinks twice about human beings going thirsty!”

The digging was in vain, however. The pools had made no difference. The attacks continued as before.

“Then there was the electric-shock idea,” said Nilima, with laughter shining in her eyes.

Someone had decided that tigers could be conditioned with the methods Pavlov had used on his dogs. Clay models of human beings had been rigged up with wires and connected to car batteries. These contraptions were distributed all over the islands. For a while they seemed to be working and there was much jubilation. “But then the attacks started again. The tigers ignored the clay models and carried on as before.”

Another time, a forester came up with another, equally ingenious idea: what if people wore masks on the backs of their heads? Tigers always attacked humans from behind, the reasoning went, so they would shy away if they found themselves looking at a pair of painted eyes. This idea too was taken up with great enthusiasm. Many masks were made and distributed; word was put out that a wonderful new experiment was being tried in the Sundarbans. There was something so picturesque about the idea that it caught the public imagination: television cameras descended, filmmakers made films.

The tigers, alas, refused to cooperate: “Evidently they had no difficulty in discriminating between masks and faces.”

“So are you saying the tigers are actually able to think these things through?” said Kanai.

“I don’t know, Kanai,” Nilima said. “I’ve lived here for over fifty years and I’ve never seen a tiger. Nor do I want to. I’ve come to believe what people say in these parts: that if you see a tiger, the chances are you won’t live to tell the tale. That’s why I’m telling you, Kanai, you can’t go into the jungle on a whim. Before you go you should ask yourself whether you really need to.”

“But I’m not planning to go into the jungle at all,” Kanai replied. “I’m going to be on the bhotbhoti, well removed from any harm.”

“And you think a bhotbhoti is going to keep you from harm?”

“We’ll be out on the water, well away from shore. What can happen there?”

“Kanai, let me tell you something. Nine years ago, a tiger killed a young girl right here in Lusibari. They found later that it had swum all the way across the Bidya’s mohona and back again. Do you know how far that is?”

“No.”

“Three and a half miles each way. And that’s not unusual: they’ve been known to swim as much as eight miles at a stretch. So don’t for a moment imagine that the water will give you any safety. Boats and bhotbhotis are attacked all the time — even in midstream. It happens several times each year.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Nilima nodded. “And if you don’t believe me, just take a close look at any of the Forest Department’s boats. You’ll see they’re like floating fortresses. Their windows have steel bars as thick as my wrist. And that’s despite the fact that forest guards carry arms. Tell me, does your bhotbhoti have bars on its windows?”

Kanai scratched his head. “I don’t remember.”

“There you are,” Nilima said. “You didn’t even notice. I don’t think you understand what you’re getting into. Leave aside the animals — those boats and bhotbhotis are more dangerous than anything in the jungle. Every month we hear of one or two going down.”

“There’s no reason for you to worry,” said Kanai. “I won’t take any risks.”

“But Kanai, don’t you see? To our way of thinking, you are the risk. The others are going because they need to — but not you. You’re going on a whim, a kheyal. You don’t have any pressing reason to go.”

“That’s not true; I do have a reason —” Kanai had spoken without thinking and cut himself off in midsentence.

“Kanai?” said Nilima. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“Oh, it’s just —” He could not think of what to say next and hung his head.

She looked at him shrewdly. “It’s that girl, isn’t it? Piya?”

Kanai looked away in silence, and she said, with a bitterness he had never heard in her voice before, “You’re all the same, you men. Who can blame the tigers when predators like you pass for human beings?”

She took hold of Kanai’s elbow and led him to the door. “Be careful, Kanai — just be careful.”

MEMORY

After we had spent a half hour with the dolphins, Horen began to row toward the shore of Garjontola. As we were drawing closer, Horen looked at me with a mischievous smile. “Saar,” he said, “now the time to go ashore is at hand. Tell me, Saar, bhoi ta ter paisen? Do you feel the fear?”

“The fear?” I said. “What do you mean, Horen? Why should I be afraid? Aren’t you with me?”

“Because it’s the fear that protects you, Saar; it’s what keeps you alive. Without it the danger doubles.”

“So are you afraid, then, Horen?”

“Yes, Saar,” he said. “Look at me. Don’t you see the fear on my face?”

And now that I looked more closely, it was true that I could see something out of the ordinary on his face — an alertness, a gravity, a sharpening of the eyes. The tension was of a kind that communicated itself readily: it didn’t take long before I could say to Horen, truthfully, that I was just as afraid as he was.

“Yes, Horen. I feel it.”

“That’s good, Saar. That’s good.”

When the boat was some fifty feet from the shore, Horen stopped rowing and put away his oars. Shutting his eyes, he began to mumble and make gestures with his hands.

“What is he doing?” I said to Kusum.

“Don’t you know, Saar?” she said. “He is a bauley. He knows the mantras that shut the mouths of the big cats. He knows how to keep them from attacking us.”

Perhaps in another circumstance I would have laughed. But it was true that I was afraid now: I did not need to feign my fear. I knew Horen could no more shut the mouth of a tiger than he could conjure up a storm — but I was still reassured by his meaningless mumbles, by his lack of bravado. His manner was not that of a magician weaving a spell: he was more like a mechanic, giving a spanner an extra turn in order to leave nothing undone. This reassured me.

“Now listen to me, Saar,” said Horen. “Since you haven’t done this before, I must tell you a rule.”

“What rule, Horen?”

“The rule, Saar, is that when we go ashore, you can leave nothing of yourself behind. You cannot spit or urinate, you cannot sit down to relieve yourself, you cannot leave behind your morning’s meal. If you do, then harm will come to all of us.”

Although no one laughed, I was conscious of a mild sense of affront. “Why, Horen,” I said, “I have done my business already. Unless my fear reaches such a pitch as to overwhelm me, I will have no need to leave anything of myself behind.”

“That’s good, Saar. I just thought I’d tell you.”

Then he started to row again and when the shore had come closer, he leapt over the side to push the boat. To my astonishment, Fokir followed him almost instantly. Even though the water came up to his neck, the boy quickly put his shoulder to the boat and began to push.

No one else was surprised by the child’s adeptness. His mother turned to me and I saw she was choking with pride: “See, Saar, the river is in his veins.”

What would I not have given to be able to say that this was true also of myself, that the river flowed in my veins too, laden with all its guilty burdens? But I had never felt so much an outsider as I did at that moment. Yet I was glad at least that my years in the tide country had taught me how to use my feet in the mud: when it came time to step off the boat, I was able to follow them ashore without difficulty.

We headed into the badabon with Horen in the lead, clearing a path for us with his dá. Kusum was behind him with the clay image balanced on her shoulder. I was in the rear, and not for an instant did the thought leave my mind that if a tiger were to fall upon me then, in those dense thickets of mangrove, it would find me all but immobile, a caged feast.

But nothing untoward happened. We came to a clearing and Kusum led the way to the shrine, which was nothing more than a raised platform with bamboo sides and a thatched covering. Here we placed the images of Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli, and then Kusum lit a few sticks of fragrant dhoop, and Fokir fetched some leaves and flowers and laid them at their feet.

So far there was nothing unusual about the ritual except its setting — otherwise it was very much like the small household pujas I remembered my mother performing in my childhood. But then Horen began to recite a mantra, and to my great surprise I heard him say:

Bismillah boliya mukhey dhorinu kalam / poida korilo jini tamam alam * baro meherban tini bandar upore / taar chhani keba achhe duniyar upore *

(In Allah’s name I begin to pronounce the Word / Of the whole universe He is the Begetter, the Lord * To all His disciples He is full of mercy / Above the created world, who is there but He *)

I was amazed. I’d thought I was going to a Hindu puja. Imagine my astonishment on hearing these Arabic invocations! Yet the rhythm of the recitation was undoubtedly that of a puja: how often, as a child, had I heard those endless chants, rolling on and on, in temples as well as in our home?

I listened enthralled as Horen continued his recitation: the language was not easy to follow — it was a strange variety of Bangla, deeply interpenetrated by Arabic and Persian. The narrative, however, was familiar to me: it was the story of how Dukhey was left on the shore of an island to be devoured by the tiger-demon Dokkhin Rai, and of his rescue by Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli.

At the end, after the others had said their prayers, we picked up our things and made our way back across the clearing to the shore. When we were back on the boat, heading toward Morichjhãpi, I said, “Horen, where did you learn that long recitation?”

He looked startled. “Why Saar,” he said, “I’ve known it as long as I can remember. I heard my father reciting it, and I learned from him.”

“So is this legend passed on from mouth to mouth and held only in memory?”

“Why no, Saar,” he said. “There’s a book in which it was printed. I have a copy.” He reached down into that part of his boat where he stored his things and pulled out a tattered old pamphlet. “Here,” he said, “have a look.”

I opened the first page and saw it bore the title Bon Bibir Karamoti orthat Bon Bibi Johuranama (The Miracles of Bon Bibi or The Narrative of Her Glory). When I tried to open the book, I had another surprise: the pages opened to the right, as in Arabic, not to the left, as in Bangla. Yet the prosody was that of much of Bangla folklore: the legend was recounted in the verse form called dwipodi poyar — with rhymed couplets in which each line is of roughly twelve syllables, each with a break, or caesura, toward the middle.

The booklet was written by a Muslim whose name was given simply as Abdur-Rahim. By the usual literary standards the work did not have great merit. Although the lines rhymed, in a kind of doggerel fashion, they did not appear to be verse; they flowed into each other, being broken only by slashes and asterisks. In other words they looked like prose and read like verse, a strange hybrid, I thought at first, and then it occurred to me that no, this was something remarkable and wonderful — prose that had mounted the ladder of meter in order to ascend above the prosaic.

“When was this book written?” I asked Horen. “Do you know?”

“Oh, it’s old,” said Horen. “Very, very old.”

Very, very old? But on the first page was a couplet that read, “There are those who travel with an atlas in hand / while others use carriages to wander the land.”

It struck me that this legend had perhaps taken shape in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, just as new waves of settlers were moving into the tide country. And was it possible that this accounted for the way it was formed, from elements of legend and scripture, from the near and the far, Bangla and Arabic?

How could it be otherwise? For this I have seen confirmed many times, that the mudbanks of the tide country are shaped not only by rivers of silt, but also by rivers of language: Bengali, English, Arabic, Hindi, Arakanese and who knows what else? Flowing into one another they create a proliferation of small worlds that hang suspended in the flow. And so it dawned on me: the tide country’s faith is something like one of its great mohonas, a meeting not just of many rivers, but a roundabout people can use to pass in many directions — from country to country and even between faiths and religions.

I was so taken with this idea that I began to copy some passages of the pamphlet into the back of a notebook I was carrying in my jhola — this very one, as it happens. The print was tiny and I had to squint hard at the page to decipher it. Absent-mindedly, I handed the booklet to Fokir, as I might have to one of my pupils. I said, “Read it out aloud so I can copy it.”

He began to speak the words out aloud while I wrote them down. Suddenly a thought struck me and I said to Kusum, “But you told me Fokir can neither write nor read.”

“That’s right, Saar,” she said. “He can’t.”

“Then?”

She smiled and patted him on the head. “It’s all inside here. I’ve told it to him so often that the words have become a part of him.”

It is evening now and Kusum has given me a candle so I can go on writing. Horen is impatient to leave: he has been entrusted with the task of taking Fokir to safety. Only Kusum and I will remain. We can hear the patrol boats, which have encircled the island. Horen will use the cover of darkness to slip past.

He wants to go now. I say to him, “Just a few more hours. There’s a whole night ahead.” Kusum joins her voice to mine; she leads Horen outside: “Come, let’s go down to your boat. Let’s leave Saar alone.”

INTERMEDIARIES

BY THE TIME Piya had organized her notes, washed her clothes and cleaned her equipment, the day was over and night had fallen. She decided to turn in without waiting for dinner. There was no telling how long it would be before she slept in a real bed again. She might as well make the most of this one and get a good night’s sleep. She decided not to interrupt Kanai, who was upstairs in the study. She mixed a tumbler of Ovaltine for herself and took it downstairs, into the open.

The moon was up, and in the silvery light Piya spotted Nilima standing outside her door. She appeared to be deep in thought, but her head turned as Piya approached.

Piya sketched a wave with her free hand: “Hello.”

Nilima answered with a smile and a few words of Bengali. This drew a rueful response from Piya. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Of course,” said Nilima. “I’m the one who should apologize. I always forget. It’s your appearance that gets me mixed up — I keep having to remind myself not to speak to you in Bangla.”

Piya smiled. “My mother used to say that a day would come when I’d regret not knowing the language. And I guess she was right.”

“But tell me, my dear,” Nilima said. “Just as a matter of interest: why is it your parents never taught you any Bangla?”

“My mother tried a little,” said Piya. “But I was not an eager student. And as for my father, I think he had some doubts.”

“Doubts? About teaching you his language?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “It’s a complicated story. You see, my father’s parents were Bengalis who’d settled in Burma — they came to India as refugees during the Second World War. Having moved around a lot, my father has all these theories about immigrants and refugees. He believes that Indians — Bengalis in particular — don’t travel well because their eyes are always turned backward, toward home. When we moved to America, he decided he wasn’t going to make that mistake: he was going to try to fit in.”

“So he always spoke English to you?”

“Yes,” said Piya, “and it was a real sacrifice for him because he doesn’t speak English very well, even to this day. He’s an engineer and he tends to sound a bit like an instruction manual.”

“So what did he speak with your mother?”

“They spoke Bengali to each other,” said Piya with a laugh. “But that was when they were speaking, of course. When they weren’t, I was their sole means of communication. And I always made them translate their messages into English — or else I wouldn’t carry them.”

Nilima made no response and her silence led Piya to wonder whether she had taken offense at something she had said. But just then Nilima reached for the hem of her sari and brought it up to her face. Piya saw that her eyes had filled with tears.

“I’m sorry,” Piya said quickly. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, my dear,” said Nilima. “You said nothing wrong. I was just thinking of you as a little girl, carrying your parents’ words from one to the other. It’s a terrible thing, my dear, when a husband and wife can’t speak to each other. But your parents were lucky: at least they had you to run between them. Imagine if they had no one —”

She let the sentence die unfinished and fell silent again. Piya knew she had unwittingly touched on some private grief and she waited quietly while Nilima composed herself.

“Only once was there ever a child in our home,” Nilima said presently. “That was when Kanai came to stay with us as a boy. To my husband it meant more than I could ever have imagined. More than anything else he longed to have someone to whom he could pass on his words. For years afterward he would say to me, ‘I wish Kanai would come again.’ I’d remind him that Kanai wasn’t a boy anymore: he was a grown man. But that didn’t stop my husband. He wrote to Kanai many times, asking him to come.”

“And Kanai never came?”

“No,” said Nilima. She sighed. “Kanai was on the way to success and that takes its own toll. He didn’t have time for anyone but himself — not his parents and certainly not us.”

“Has he always been like that?” Piya said. “So driven?”

“Some would say selfish,” said Nilima. “Kanai’s problem is that he’s always been too clever for his own good. Things have come very easily to him so he doesn’t know what the world is like for most people.”

Piya could see that this judgment was both shrewd and accurate but she knew it was not her place to concur. “I haven’t known him long enough to have an opinion,” she said politely.

“No, I don’t suppose you have,” said Nilima. “Just a word of warning, my dear. Fond as I am of my nephew, I feel I should tell you that he’s one of those men who likes to think of himself as being irresistible to the other sex. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t lack for women who’re foolish enough to confirm such a man’s opinion of himself, and Kanai seems always to be looking for them. I don’t know how you describe that kind of man nowadays, my dear — but in my time we used to call them ‘fast.’” She paused, raising her eyebrows. “Do you get my meaning?”

“I sure do.”

Nilima nodded and blew her nose into the hem of her sari. “Anyway, I mustn’t be rattling on like this. You have a long day ahead tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “We’re starting early. I’m really looking forward to it.”

Nilima put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “Do be careful, my dear. It’s dangerous in the forest — and not just because of the animals.”

BESIEGED

A few days after my trip to Garjontola, Nilima returned from her travels, full of news of the world outside. Almost in passing she said, “And as for Morichjhãpi, there are soon going to be developments.”

My ears pricked up. “What developments?”

“The government is going to take measures. Very strong measures.”

I said nothing but began to wonder if there was any way I could get word to Kusum, to warn the settlers. As it turned out, no warning was possible. The very next day the government announced that all movement in and out of Morichjhãpi was banned under the provisions of the Forest Preservation Act. What was more, Section 144, the law used to quell civil disturbances, was imposed on the whole area: this meant it was a criminal offense for five people or more to gather in one place.

As the day wore on, waves of rumors came sweeping down our rivers: it was said that dozens of police boats had encircled the island, tear gas and rubber bullets had been used, the settlers had been forcibly prevented from bringing rice or water to Morichjhãpi, boats had been sunk, people had been killed. The rumors grew more and more disturbing as the day passed; it was as if war had broken out in the quiet recesses of the tide country.

For Nilima’s sake I tried to keep up appearances, to present as normal a front as I could. But I could not sleep that night and by the time morning came I knew I would make my way to Morichjhãpi in whatever way I could, even at the expense of a confrontation with Nilima. But fortunately that contingency did not arise — not yet, anyway. Early in the morning a group of schoolmasters came to see me; they had heard the same rumors I had, and they too had become concerned. So much so that they had hired a bhotbhoti to take them to Morichjhãpi to see if any intercession was possible. They asked if I wanted to join them, and I was only too glad to say yes.

We left at about ten in the morning and were in view of our destination within a couple of hours. I should say here that Morichjhãpi is a large island, one of the biggest in the tide country: its coastline is probably a dozen miles long. When we were within sight of the island but still a good mile or two away, we saw clouds of smoke rising above it.

Not long afterward we spotted official motorboats patrolling the rivers. The owner of our bhotbhoti now became quite concerned and we had to plead with him to take us a little closer. He agreed to do so, but only on the condition that we stay by the near shore, as far as possible from the island. And so we proceeded, hugging this shore while all our eyes were turned in the other direction, toward Morichjhãpi.

Soon we drew close to a village. A great number of people had gathered on the shore and they were busily loading a boat — not a bhotbhoti or a sailboat, but a plain country nouko of the kind Horen owned. Even from a distance we could see that the boat was being stocked with a cargo of supplies — sacks of grain, jerry cans of drinking water. Then a number of people climbed into the boat, mainly men, but also a few women and children; some, no doubt, were day laborers who’d gone to work on some other island and been unable to return home. As for the others, perhaps they were people who had been separated from their families and were trying to get back to their homes in Morichjhãpi. Whatever their reasons for going, clearly they were pressing enough to make them take the risk of cramming themselves into that frail craft. By the time the boat was pushed into the water there must have been a good two dozen people sitting huddled inside. The boat wobbled as it drifted out into the currents; it was so heavily loaded that it seemed incredible that it would actually stay afloat. Watching from a distance, we speculated excitedly: these settlers were evidently hoping to slip through the police cordon with some provisions, to bring relief to their fellow islanders. What would the police do? Everyone offered a different theory.

Then, as if to put an end to our speculations, a police speedboat came roaring down the Bagna River. Moving at great speed, it drew level with the settlers’ rowboat and began to circle around it. There was a loudspeaker on the police boat, and even though we were a good distance away, snatches of the policemen’s orders reached us across the water: they were telling the settlers to turn back, to return to the shore they had come from. What was said in answer we could not hear, but we could tell from the gesticulations of the people on the boat that they were pleading with the policemen to let them proceed.

This had the effect of enraging the policemen who now began to scream into their loudspeaker. Suddenly, like a thunderclap, came the noise of a gunshot, fired into the air.

Surely the settlers would turn back now. In our hearts we prayed they would. But what happened instead was something unforeseen: the people in the boat began to shout in unison, “Amra kara? Bastuhara.” Who are we? We are the dispossessed.

How strange it was to hear this plaintive cry wafting across the water. It seemed at that moment not to be a shout of defiance but rather a question being addressed to the very heavens, not just for themselves but on behalf of a bewildered humankind. Who, indeed, are we? Where do we belong? And as I listened to the sound of those syllables, it was as if I were hearing the deepest uncertainties of my heart being spoken to the rivers and the tides. Who was I? Where did I belong? In Calcutta or in the tide country? In India or across the border? In prose or in poetry?

Then we heard the settlers shouting a refrain, answering the questions they had themselves posed: “Morichjhãpi chharbona.” We’ll not leave Morichjhãpi, do what you may.

Standing on the deck of the bhotbhoti, I was struck by the beauty of this. Where else could you belong, except in the place you refused to leave.

I joined my feeble voice to theirs: “Morichjhãpi chharbona!”

It had not struck me to ask how the policemen in their motorboat would interpret these cries. The boat, which had been idling for a few minutes, started up its engine. Its bow came around and it began to move away from the settlers. At first it seemed the policemen might have decided to look the other way and let the boat pass.

That their intention was utterly otherwise became clear when the motorboat wheeled around in the water. Picking up speed, it came shooting toward the wobbling nouko with its boatload of passengers and provisions. It rammed the boat square in the middle: in front of our eyes the timbers flew apart. Suddenly the water was full of struggling men, women and children.

It occurred to me that Kusum and Fokir might be on that boat. My heart stopped.

On our bhotbhoti, we shouted to the pilot to move closer so that we could be of help. He was hesitant, afraid of the police, but we persuaded him that the police would not harm a group of schoolmasters, that he had nothing to fear.

We edged closer, moving slowly so as not to hit anyone in the water. Leaning over the side, we extended our hands and pulled in one, two, a dozen people. The water fortunately was not deep, and many were able to wade ashore.

I asked one of the men we had pulled in, “Do you know Kusum Mandol? Was she on the boat?”

He knew her; he shook his head. She was still on the island, he told me, and I was giddy with relief. Little did I know how things were shaping up there.

Soon the policemen came speeding up to us. “Who are you people?” they demanded to know. “What are you doing here?” They paid no heed to answers; they told us that with Section 144 having been declared, we could be arrested for unlawful assembly.

We were just schoolmasters, most of the men had families, children. We quailed; we went to the shore to drop off the people we had pulled from the water and then we turned back.

My pen is out of ink and I must switch to my pencil stub. Every footstep I hear is a reminder that Kusum and Horen will soon be back, and that Horen will want to leave at once. But I cannot stop. There’s too much to tell.

WORDS

ENSCONCED IN Nirmal’s study, Kanai forgot about dinner. He was still reading when the compound’s generator shut down and the lights went off. He knew there was a kerosene lamp somewhere in the study, and he was fumbling for it in the dark when he heard a footfall in the doorway.

“Kanai-babu?”

It was Moyna, holding a candle. “Do you need a match?” she said. “I came to get the tiffin carrier and saw you still hadn’t eaten.”

“I was on my way down,” said Kanai. “I was just looking for the hurricane lamp.”

“There it is.”

Moyna went over to the lamp, candle in hand, and snapped back the glass cover. She was trying to light the wick when her hands slipped, sending both the lamp and the candle crashing to the floor. The glass shattered and the study was suddenly filled with the acrid smell of kerosene.

The candle had rolled into a corner and although the flame was out, Kanai saw that the wick was still glowing. “Quick.” Falling to his knees, he lunged for the candle. “Pinch out the wick or it’ll set fire to the kerosene. The whole place will burn down.”

He took the candle out of Moyna’s hands and squeezed the glowing wick between finger and thumb. “It’s all right — it’s out now. We just have to sweep up the glass.”

“I’ll do it, Kanai-babu,” she said.

“It’ll be quicker if we both do it.” Kneeling beside her, Kanai began to brush his hands gingerly over the floor.

“Why did you let your dinner get cold, Kanai-babu?” Moyna said. “Why didn’t you eat?”

“I was busy getting ready for tomorrow,” Kanai said. “You know we’re leaving early in the morning? I’m going too.”

“Yes,” said Moyna, “I heard. And I’m glad you’re going, Kanaibabu.”

“Why?” said Kanai. “Are you tired of bringing me my meals?”

“No,” she said. “It’s not that.”

“Then?”

“I’m just glad that you’ll be there, Kanai-babu; that they won’t be alone.”

“Who?”

“The two of them.” Her voice was suddenly serious.

“You mean Fokir and Piya?”

“Who else, Kanai-babu? I was really relieved when I heard you were going to be with them. To tell you the truth, I was hoping you would talk to him a little.”

“To Fokir? Talk about what?”

“About her — the American,” Moyna said. “Maybe you could explain to him that she’s only here for a few days — that she’s going to be gone soon.”

“But he knows that, doesn’t he?”

He could hear her sari rustling in the darkness as she pulled it tightly around herself. “It would be good for him to hear it from you, Kanai-babu. Who knows what he’s begun to expect — especially when she’s giving him so much money? Maybe you could speak with her too — just to explain she would do him harm if she made him forget himself.”

“But why me, Moyna?” Kanai said. “What can I say?”

“Kanai-babu, there’s no one else who knows how to speak to both of them — to her and to him. It’s you who stands between them: whatever they say to each other will go through your ears and your lips. But for you neither of them will know what is in the mind of the other. Their words will be in your hands and you can make them mean what you will.”

“I don’t understand, Moyna,” Kanai said, frowning. “What are you saying? What exactly are you afraid of?”

“She’s a woman, Kanai-babu.” Moyna’s voice sank to a whisper. “And he’s a man.”

Kanai glared at her in the dark. “I’m a man too, Moyna,” he said. “If she had to choose between me and Fokir, who do you think it would be?”

Moyna’s reply was noncommittal and slow in coming: “How am I to know what she has in her heart, Kanai-babu?”

Her hesitation provoked Kanai. “And you, Moyna? Whom would you choose, if you could?”

Moyna said quietly, “What are you asking, Kanai-babu? Fokir is my husband.”

“But you’re such a bright, capable girl, Moyna,” said Kanai insistently. “Why don’t you forget about Fokir? Can’t you see that as long as you’re with him you’ll never be able to achieve anything?”

“He’s my son’s father, Kanai-babu,” Moyna said. “I can’t turn my back on him. If I do, what will become of him?”

Kanai laughed. “Moyna, it’s true he’s your husband — but then why can’t you talk to him yourself? Why do you want me to do it for you?”

“It’s because he’s my husband that I can’t talk to him, Kanai-babu,” Moyna said quietly. “Only a stranger can put such things into words.”

“Why should it be easier for a stranger than for you?”

“Because words are just air, Kanai-babu,” Moyna said. “When the wind blows on the water, you see ripples and waves, but the real river lies beneath, unseen and unheard. You can’t blow on the water’s surface from below, Kanai-babu. Only someone who’s outside can do that, someone like you.”

Kanai laughed again. “Words may be air, Moyna, but you have a nice way with them.”

He stood up and went to the desk. “Tell me, Moyna, don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to be with a different kind of man? Aren’t you ever curious?”

He had said it in a light, mocking way, and this time he succeeded in provoking her.

She rose angrily to her feet. “Kanai-babu, you’re making a fool of me, aren’t you? You want me to say yes and then you’ll laugh in my face. You’ll tell everybody what I said. I may be a village girl, Kanaibabu, but I’m not so foolish as to answer a question like that. I can see that you play this game with every woman who crosses your path.”

This struck home and he flinched. “Don’t be angry, Moyna,” he said. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

He heard her sari rustling as she rose to her feet and pulled the door open. Then, in the darkness, he heard her say, “Kanai-babu, I hope it goes well for you with the American. It’ll be better for all of us that way.”

CRIMES

The siege went on for many days and we were powerless to affect the outcome. All we heard were rumors: that despite careful rationing, food had run out and the settlers had been reduced to eating grass. The police had destroyed the tube wells and there was no potable water left; the settlers were drinking from puddles and ponds and an epidemic of cholera had broken out.

One of the settlers managed to get through the police cordon by swimming across the Gãral River — an amazing feat in its own right. But not content with that, the young man had somehow made his way to Calcutta, where he talked at length to the newspapers. A furor erupted, citizens’ groups filed petitions, questions were asked in the legislature, and finally the High Court ruled that barricading the settlers was illegal; the siege would have to be lifted.

The settlers, it seemed, had won a notable victory. The day after the news reached us, I saw Horen waiting near the bãdh. Neither he nor I needed to say anything: I packed my jhola and went down to his boat. We set off.

There was a lightness in our hearts now; we thought we would find the people of Morichjhãpi celebrating, in a spirit of vindication. But such was not the case: on getting there we saw that the siege had taken a terrible toll. And even though it had been lifted now, the police were not gone; they continued to patrol the island, urging the settlers to abandon their homes.

It was terrible to see Kusum: her bones protruded from her skin, like the ribs of a drum, and she was too weak to rise from her mat. Fokir, young as he was, appeared to have weathered the siege in better health and it was he who was looking after his mother.

Summing up the situation, I assumed that Kusum had starved herself in order to feed Fokir. But the truth was not quite so simple. For much of the time, Kusum had kept Fokir indoors, fearing to let him out because of the swarming police. But from time to time he had managed to go outside and catch a few crabs and fish. These, at Kusum’s insistence, he had mainly eaten himself, while she had subsisted on a kind of wild green known as jadu-palong. Palatable enough at first, these leaves had proved deadly in the end, for they had caused severe dysentery. That, on top of the lack of proper nutrition, had been terribly debilitating.

Fortunately, we had taken the precaution of buying some essential provisions on the way — rice, dal, oil — and we now occupied ourselves in storing these in Kusum’s dwelling. But Kusum would have none of it. She roused herself from her mat and hefted some of the bags on her shoulders. Fokir and Horen were made to pick up the others.

“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing? Where are you taking those? They’re meant for you.”

“I can’t keep them, Saar; we’re rationing everything. I have to take them to the leader of my ward.”

Although I could see the point of this, I persuaded her that she did not need to part with every last handful of rice and dal. To put aside a little for herself would not be immoral, given she was a mother with a child to provide for.

As we were measuring out the cupfuls she would keep for herself, she began to cry. The sight of her tears came as a shock to both Horen and me. Kusum had never till now shown any flagging in courage and confidence; to see her break down was unbearably painful. Fokir went to stand behind her, putting an arm around her neck, while Horen sat beside her and patted her shoulder. I alone was frozen, unable to respond except in words.

“What is it, Kusum?” I said. “What are you thinking of?”

“Saar,” she said, wiping her face, “the worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit here, helpless, and listen to the policemen making their announcements, hearing them say that our lives, our existence, were worth less than dirt or dust. ‘This island has to be saved for its trees, it has to be saved for its animals, it is a part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by people from all around the world.’ Every day, sitting here with hunger gnawing at our bellies, we would listen to these words over and over again. Who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do they know what is being done in their name? Where do they live, these people? Do they have children, do they have mothers, fathers? As I thought of these things, it seemed to me that this whole world had become a place of animals, and our fault, our crime, was that we were just human beings, trying to live as human beings always have, from the water and the soil. No one could think this a crime unless they have forgotten that this is how humans have always lived — by fishing, by clearing land and by planting the soil.”

Her words and the sight of her wasted face affected me so much — useless schoolmaster that I am — that my head reeled and I had to lie down on a mat.

LEAVING LUSIBARI

LUSIBARI WAS SHROUDED in the usual dawn mist when Kanai walked down the path to the hospital. Early as it was, there was already a cycle-van waiting at the gate. Kanai led it back to the Guest House and, with the driver’s help, he and Piya quickly loaded their baggage onto the van — Kanai’s suitcase, Piya’s two backpacks and a bundle of blankets and pillows they had borrowed from the Guest House.

They set off at a brisk pace and were soon at the outskirts of Lusibari village. They had almost reached the embankment when the driver spun around in his seat and pointed ahead. “Look, something’s happening over there on the bãdh.”

Kanai and Piya were facing backward. Craning his neck, Kanai saw that a number of people had congregated on the crest of the embankment. They were absorbed in watching some sort of spectacle or contest taking place on the other side of the earthworks: many were cheering and calling out encouragement. Leaving their baggage on the van, Kanai and Piya went up to take a look.

The water was at a low ebb and the Megha was moored at the far end of the mudspit, alongside Fokir’s boat. The boat was the focus of the crowd’s attention: Fokir and Tutul were standing on it, along with Horen and his teenage grandson. They were tugging at a fishing line that was sizzling as it sliced through the water, turning in tight zigzag patterns.

The catch, Kanai learned, was a shankor-machh, a stingray. Now, as Piya and Kanai stood watching, a flat gray form broke from the water and went planing through the air. Fokir and the others hung on as if they were trying to hold down a giant kite. The men had gamchhas wrapped around their hands, and with all of them exerting their weight, they slowly began to prevail against the thrashing ray: the struggle ended with Fokir leaning over the side of the boat to plunge the tip of his machete-like daa into its head.

When the catch had been laid out on the shore, Kanai and Piya joined the crowd clustering around it. The ray was a good five feet from wingtip to wingtip, and its tail was about half as long again. Within minutes a fish seller had made a bid and Fokir had accepted. But before the catch could be carted off, Fokir raised his dá and with a single stroke cut off the tail. This he gave to Tutul, handing it over with some ceremony, as though it were a victor’s spoils.

“What’s Tutul going to do with that?” said Piya.

“He’ll make a toy out of it, I suppose,” said Kanai. “In the old days landlords and zamindaris used those tails as whips, to punish unruly subjects: they sting like hell. But they make good toys too. I remember I had one as a boy.”

Just then, as Tutul was admiring his trophy, Moyna appeared before him, having pushed her way through the crowd. Taken by surprise, Tutul darted out of her reach and slipped behind his father. For fear of hurting the boy, Fokir raised his dripping dá above his head with both hands, to keep the blade out of his way. Now Tutul began to dance around his father, eluding his mother’s grasp and drawing shouts of laughter from the crowd.

Moyna was dressed for duty, in her nurse’s uniform, a blue-bordered white sari. But by the time she finally caught hold of Tutul, her starched sari was spattered with mud and her lips were trembling in humiliation. She turned on Fokir, who dropped his eyes and raised a knuckle to brush away a trickle of blood that had dripped from the dá onto his face.

“Didn’t I tell you to take him straight to school?” she said to Fokir in a voice taut with fury. “And instead you brought him here?”

To the sound of a collective gasp from the crowd, Moyna wrung the stingray’s tail out of her son’s hand. Curling her arm, she flung the trophy into the river, where it was carried away by the current. The boy’s face crumpled as his mother led him away. He stumbled after her with his eyes shut, as though he were trying to blind himself to his surroundings.

Moyna checked her step as she was passing Kanai, and their eyes met for an instant before she went running down the embankment. When she had left, Kanai turned around to find that Fokir’s eyes were on him too, sizing him up — it was as if Fokir had noticed the wordless exchange between his wife and Kanai and was trying to guess its meaning.

Kanai was suddenly very uncomfortable. Spinning around on his heels, he said to Piya, “Come on. Let’s start unloading our luggage.”

THE MEGHA PULLED away from Lusibari with its engine alternately sputtering and hammering; in its wake came Fokir’s boat, following fitfully as its tow rope slackened and tightened. To prevent accidental collisions, Fokir traveled in his boat rather than in the bhotbhoti: he had seated himself in the bow and was holding an oar in his hands so as to fend off the larger vessel in case it came too close to his own.

Kanai was on the upper deck, where two deep, wood-framed chairs had been placed near the wheelhouse, in the shade of a canvas awning. Although Nirmal’s notebook was lying open on his lap, Kanai’s eyes were on Piya: he was watching her make her preparations for the work of the day.

Piya had positioned herself to meet the wind and the sun headon, at the point where the deck tapered into a jutting prow. After garlanding herself with her binoculars, she proceeded to strap on her equipment belt with its dangling instruments. Only then did she take her stance and reach for her glasses, with her feet wide apart, swaying slightly on her legs. Although her eyes were unwavering in their focus on the water, Kanai could tell she was alert to everything happening around her, on the boat and on shore.

As the sun mounted in the sky, the glare off the water increased in intensity until it had all but erased the seam that separated the water from the sky. Despite his sunglasses, Kanai found it hard to keep his eyes on the river — yet Piya seemed to be troubled neither by the light nor by the gusting wind: with her knees flexed to absorb the shaking of the bhotbhoti, she seemed scarcely to notice its rolling as she pivoted from side to side. Her one concession to the conditions was a sun hat, which she had opened out and placed on her head. From his position in the shade, Kanai could see her only in outline and it struck him that her silhouette was not unlike that of a cowboy, with her holsters of equipment around her hips and her widebrimmed hat.

About midmorning there was a flurry of excitement when Fokir’s voice was heard shouting from the boat. Signaling to Horen to cut the bhotbhoti’s engine, Piya went running to the back of the deck. Kanai was quick to follow but by the time he had made his way aft the action was over.

“What happened?”

Piya was busy scribbling on a data sheet and didn’t look up. “Fokir spotted a Gangetic dolphin,” she said. “It was about five hundred feet astern on the starboard side. But don’t bother to look for it; you won’t see it again. It’s sounded.”

Kanai was conscious of a twinge of disappointment. “Have you seen any other dolphins today?”

“No,” she said cheerfully. “That was the only one. And frankly I’m not surprised, considering the noise we’re making.”

“Do you think the bhotbhoti is scaring them off?”

“Possibly,” said Piya. “Or it could be that they’re just staying submerged until the sound fades. Like this one, for instance — it waited till we were past before it surfaced.”

“Do you think there are fewer dolphins than there used to be?”

“Oh yes,” said Piya. “It’s known for sure that these waters once held large populations of marine mammals.”

“What’s happened to them then?”

“There seems to have been some sort of drastic change in the habitat,” said Piya. “Some kind of dramatic deterioration.”

“Really?” said Kanai. “That was what my uncle felt too.”

“He was right,” said Piya grimly. “When marine mammals begin to disappear from an established habitat it means something’s gone very, very wrong.”

“What could it be, do you think?”

“Where do I begin?” said Piya with a dry laugh. “Let’s not go down that route or we’ll end up in tears.”

Later, when Piya took a break to drink some water, he said, “Is that all you do then? Watch the water like that?”

She seated herself beside him and tipped back her bottle. “Yes,” she said. “There’s a method to it, of course, but basically that’s all I do — I watch the water. Whether I see anything or not, it’s all grist for the mill: all of it’s data.”

He grimaced, miming incomprehension. “Each to their own,” he said. “For myself, I have to say I wouldn’t last a day doing what you do. I’d be bored out of my mind.”

Draining her bottle, she laughed again. “I can understand that,” she said. “But that’s how it is in nature, you know: for a long time nothing happens, and then there’s a burst of explosive activity and it’s over in seconds. Very few people can adapt themselves to that kind of rhythm — one in a million, I’d say. That’s why it was so amazing to come across someone like Fokir.”

“Amazing? Why?”

“You saw how he spotted that dolphin back there, didn’t you?” said Piya. “It’s like he’s always watching the water — even without being aware of it. I’ve worked with many experienced fishermen before but I’ve never met anyone with such an incredible instinct. It’s as if he can see right into the river’s heart.”

Kanai took a moment to chew on this. “So do you think you’re going to go on working with him?”

“I certainly hope he’ll work with me again,” Piya said. “I think we could achieve a lot, working as a team.”

“It sounds as though you’ve got some kind of long-term plan.”

She nodded. “Yes, I do, actually. I’m thinking of a project that could keep me here for many years.”

“Right here? In this area?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Kanai had assumed Piya’s stay in India would be a brief one and he was surprised to learn she was already contemplating an extended stay — and not in a city, either, but of all places in the tide country, with all its discomforts and utter lack of amenities.

“Are you sure you’d be able to live in a place like this?” said Kanai.

“Sure.” She seemed puzzled he should think to ask this. “Why not?”

“And if you stayed, you’d be working with Fokir?”

She nodded. “I’d like to — but I guess it depends on him.”

“Is there anyone else you could work with?”

“It wouldn’t be the same, Kanai,” Piya said. “Fokir’s abilities as an observer are really extraordinary. I wish I could tell you what it was like to be with him these last few days — it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.”

A sudden stab of envy provoked Kanai to make a mocking aside. “And all that while you couldn’t understand a word he was saying, could you?”

“No,” she said with a nod of acknowledgment. “But you know what? There was so much in common between us it didn’t matter.”

“Listen,” said Kanai in a flat, harsh voice. “You shouldn’t deceive yourself, Piya: there wasn’t anything in common between you then and there isn’t now. Nothing. He’s a fisherman and you’re a scientist. What you see as fauna he sees as food. He’s never sat in a chair, for heaven’s sake. Can you imagine what he’d do if he was taken on a plane?” Kanai burst out laughing at the thought of Fokir walking down the aisle of a jet in his lungi and vest. “Piya, there’s nothing in common between you at all. You’re from different worlds, different planets. If you were about to be struck by a bolt of lightning, he’d have no way of letting you know.”

Here, as if on cue, Fokir suddenly made himself heard again, shouting over the hammering of the bhotbhoti’s engine, “Kumir!”

“What was that?” Piya broke off and went running to the rear of the deck, and Kanai followed close on her heels.

Fokir was standing braced against his boat’s hood, pointing downriver. “Kumir!”

“What did he see?” said Piya, raising her binoculars.

“A crocodile.”

Kanai felt compelled to underline the moral of this interruption. “You see, Piya,” he said, “if I hadn’t been here to tell you, you’d have had no idea what he’d seen.”

Piya dropped her binoculars and turned to go back to the bow. “You’ve certainly made your point, Kanai,” she said frostily. “Thank you.”

“Wait,” Kanai called out after her. “Piya —” But she was gone and he had to swallow the apology that had come too late to his lips.

Minutes later, she was back in position with her binoculars fixed to her eyes, watching the water with a closeness of attention that reminded Kanai of a textual scholar poring over a yet undeciphered manuscript: it was as though she were puzzling over a codex that had been authored by the earth itself. He had almost forgotten what it meant to look at something so ardently — an immaterial thing, not a commodity nor a convenience nor an object of erotic interest. He remembered that he too had once concentrated his mind in this way; he too had peered into the unknown as if through an eyeglass — but the vistas he had been looking at lay deep in the interior of other languages. Those horizons had filled him with the desire to learn of the ways in which other realities were conjugated. And he remembered too the obstacles, the frustration, the sense that he would never be able to bend his mouth around those words, produce those sounds, put sentences together in the required way, a way that seemed to call for a recasting of the usual order of things. It was pure desire that had quickened his mind then and he could feel the thrill of it even now — except now that desire was incarnated in the woman who was standing before him in the bow, a language made flesh.

AN INTERRUPTION

KANAI HAD BEEN LOOKING for an opportunity to speak to Horen about Nirmal’s notebook, and he thought he had found it when the Megha entered a stretch of open water. He stepped up to the wheelhouse and held up the notebook. “Do you recognize this?” he said to Horen.

Horen’s eyes flickered away from the water for an instant. “Yes,” Horen said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “Saar gave it to me, to keep for you.”

Kanai was deflated by the brevity of his response. Considering how often Horen figured in Nirmal’s notes, he had expected that the sight of it would trigger, if not a flow of sentiment, certainly a few fond reminiscences.

“He mentions you several times,” Kanai said, hoping this would catch his interest. But Horen merely shrugged without taking his eyes off the water.

Kanai saw that he would have to work hard to get anything at all out of Horen. Was this reticence habitual, or was he just suspicious of outsiders? It was hard to tell.

“What happened to it?” Kanai persisted. “Where was it all these years?”

Horen cleared his throat. “It got lost,” he said.

“How?”

“I’ll tell you, since you’ve asked,” Horen said. “After Saar gave it to me, I took it home and wrapped it in plastic and glued it together so that the damp wouldn’t get into it. Then I put it in the sun, for the glue to dry. But one of the children — maybe Fokir — must have found it and thought it was a plaything. They hid it in the thatch and forgot, as children do. I looked everywhere for it, but it had disappeared. Then I forgot all about it.”

“So how did it turn up again?”

“I’m getting to that,” Horen said in his slow, deliberate voice. “Last year I had my old home torn down so that I could put up a new house made of brick and cement. That was when it was found. When they brought it to me I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to send it by post because I was sure the address wouldn’t be good anymore. I didn’t want to take it to Mashima either — it’s been years since she’s spoken to me. But I remembered that Moyna goes often to the Guest House, so I gave it to her. ‘Put it in Saar’s old study,’ I said. ‘They’ll find it when it’s time.’ That’s all that happened.”

He closed his mouth firmly as if to say that he had no more to offer on this subject.

THE MEGHA HAD BEEN on the water for some three hours when Piya heard the engine skip a beat. She was still on effort, on the upper deck, but there had been no sightings since that one Gangetic dolphin earlier in the day, and this had only sharpened her eagerness to get to the Orcaella’s pool: a breakdown now, when they were so close, would be a real setback. Without interrupting her vigil, she tuned her ears to the engine, listening keenly. To her relief, the machine quickly resumed its noisy rhythm.

The respite was short: fifteen minutes later there was another hiccup, followed by a hollow sputtering and a few tired coughs and then, all too suddenly, total silence. The engine died, leaving the Megha stranded in the middle of a mohona.

Piya guessed that the delay would be a long one and she was too disappointed even to ask questions. Knowing that the news would come to her soon enough, she stayed in position, scanning the wind-whipped water.

Presently, just as she had expected, Kanai came to stand beside her. “Bad news, Piya.”

“We’re not going to make it today?”

“Probably not.”

Raising a hand, Kanai pointed across the mohona. There was a small village on the far shore, he explained, and Horen was confident that the Megha could make it there by coasting on the currents. He had relatives in the village and he knew of someone there who’d be able to fix the engine. If all went well, they might be ready to leave for Garjontola the next morning.

Piya pulled a face. “I guess we don’t have many options at this point, do we?”

“No,” said Kanai. “We really don’t.”

Horen, already in the wheelhouse, soon brought the bow around, to point in the direction of the distant village. In a while it became clear that the bhotbhoti had begun to drift across the mohona. Although the tide had turned and the currents were in their favor, their progress was painfully slow. By the time their destination came into view the day was all but over.

The village they were heading for was not directly on the mohona’s banks: it stood in a more sheltered location, on the banks of a channel about a mile wide. With the tide at a low ebb, the riverbank now towered high above the water and nothing of the village was visible from the deck; all that could be seen was the crest of the embankment, where knots of people had gathered, as if to await the Megha’s arrival. As the bhotbhoti edged closer, a few men were seen wading into the mud, waving their arms in welcome. In response, Horen leaned over the rail and shouted to them through cupped hands. A short while later a boat came cannoning down the mudbank and pulled up alongside. There were two men inside, one of whom was introduced as Horen’s relative, a fisherman who lived in the nearby village; the other was his friend, a part-time mechanic. There was an extended round of introductions and greetings and then Horen disappeared below deck with the visitors. Soon the bhotbhoti’s timbers began to ring to the sound of the mechanic’s tools. The sun went down to the accompaniment of much banging and hammering.

A little later, the twilight was pierced by an anguished animal sound: a frantic, pain-filled lowing that brought both Kanai and Piya racing out of their cabins, flashlights in hand.

The same thought had come to both of them. “An attack, you think?” said Piya.

“Can’t tell.”

Kanai leaned over the rail to shout a question to Horen, below deck. The hammering fell silent for a second and then a burst of loud laughter came echoing up.

“What’s the deal?” said Piya.

“I asked if there had been an attack,” said Kanai with a smile, “and they said it was just a water buffalo giving birth.”

“How do they know?” said Piya.

“They know because the buffalo belongs to Horen’s relative,” said Kanai. “He lives right by the embankment — over there.”

Piya laughed. “I guess we were being a little too jumpy.” Knitting her fingers together, she did a long stretch and followed this with a yawn. “I think I’ll go to bed early today.”

“Again?” said Kanai sharply. Then, as if to conceal his disappointment, he said, “No dinner?”

“I’ll have a nutrition bar,” said Piya. “That’ll keep me going till tomorrow. What about you: are you going to stay up late?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “I’m going to eat dinner, as most mortals do. Then I’m going to stay up and finish reading my uncle’s notebook.”

“Are you close to the end now?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “Close enough.”

ALIVE

I was still unwell when we returned to Lusibari, and Nilima put the blame for this purely on Horen: “It’s your fault,” she said to him. “You’re the one who’s been taking him to Morichjhãpi. Now look at the state he’s in.”

And it was true I was not well — my head was filled with dreams, visions, fears. Long days went by when I could not get out of my bed: all I did was lie awake and read Rilke in English and Bangla.

To me she spoke more gently: “Didn’t I tell you not to go? Didn’t I tell you it would come to this? If you want to do something useful, why don’t you help with the Trust, with the hospital? There’s so much to be done; why won’t you do it right here in Lusibari? Why must you go to Morichjhãpi?”

“You don’t understand, Nilima.”

“Why, Nirmal?” she said. “Tell me, because I’ve heard rumors. Everybody is speaking of it. Does it have something to do with Kusum?”

“How can you say that, Nilima? Have I ever given you cause for suspicion before?”

Now Nilima began to cry. “Nirmal, that’s not what people say. There are ugly rumors afloat.”

“Nilima, it’s beneath you to believe in these rumors.”

“Then bring Kusum here; tell her to work for the Trust. And you can do the same.”

How could I explain to her that there was nothing I could do for the Trust that many others could not do better? I would be no more than a hand pushing a pen, a machine, a mechanical toy. But as for Morichjhãpi, Rilke himself had shown me what I could do. In one verse I had found a message written for my eyes only, filled with hidden meaning.When the time came I would receive a sign and then I would know what I had to do. For the Poet himself had told me:

This is the time for what can be said. Here is its country. Speak and testify. .

Days, weeks went by and there came again a time when I felt well enough to leave my bed to go up to my study. I spent my mornings and afternoons there: long swaths of empty time spent gazing at the mohona as it filled and emptied, filled and emptied, day after day, as untiring as the earth itself.

One day I headed down a little earlier than usual after my afternoon rest. I was halfway down the stairs when I heard Nilima’s voice, speaking to someone in the Guest House. I knew who it was, for I had spoken to him briefly the night before. He was a doctor, a visiting psychiatrist from Calcutta. Now Nilima was telling him she was very afraid — for me. She had heard of something that was sure to upset me; she wanted to know how best I could be shielded from learning of it.

“And what news is this?” the doctor said.

“It won’t mean anything to you, Daktar-babu,” Nilima said. “It has to do with an island called Morichjhãpi, which has been occupied by refugees from Bangladesh. They simply will not leave, and now I believe the government in Calcutta is going to take very strong action to evict them.”

“Oh, these refugees!” said the doctor. “Such a nuisance. But of what concern is this to your husband? Does he know anyone on that island? What are they to him and he to them?”

I heard Nilima hesitate and clear her throat. “Doctor, you don’t understand,” she said. “Ever since his retirement, my husband, having little else to do, has chosen to involve himself in the fate of these settlers in Morichjhãpi. He does not believe that a government such as the one we have now would act against them. He is an old leftist, you see, and unlike many such, he truly believed in those ideals; many of the men who are now in power were his friends and comrades. My husband is not a practical man; his experience of the world is very limited. He does not understand that when a party comes to power, it must govern; it is subject to certain compulsions. I am afraid that if he learns of what is going to happen, he will not be able to cope with the disillusionment — it will be more than he can bear.”

“It’s best not to let him know,” the doctor said. “There’s no telling what he might do.”

“Tell me, Doctor,” Nilima said, “do you think it would be best to sedate him for a few days?”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “I think that might be wise.”

I did not need to listen anymore. I went to my study and threw a few things into my jhola. Then I crept silently downstairs and went hurrying to the village. Fortunately there was a ferry waiting and it took me straight to Satjelia, where I went to look for Horen.

“We have to go, Horen,” I said to him. “I’ve heard there’s going to be an attack on Morichjhãpi.”

He knew more than I did; he had heard rumors that busloads of outsiders were assembling in the villages around the island; they were people such as had never before been seen in the tide country, hardened men from the cities, criminals, gangsters. Morichjhãpi was now completely encircled by police boats; it was all but impossible to get in or out.

“Horen,” I said, “we have to try to bring Kusum and Fokir to safety. No one knows those waters better than you do. Is there any way you can get us there?”

He thought about this for a minute. “There’s no moon tonight,” he said. “It might be possible. We can try.”

We set off as night was approaching and took along a fair quantity of food and fresh water. Soon it was dark and I could see nothing, but somehow Horen kept our boat moving. We went slowly, staying close to the banks, and spoke in low voices.

“Where are we now, Horen?” I said.

He knew our position exactly. “We’ve left the Gãral and we’re slipping into the Jhilla. We’re not far now; soon you’ll see the police boats.” And within a few minutes we saw them, roaring by, sweeping the river with their searchlights: first one, then another, then another. For a while we hid close to the riverbank, and Horen gauged the intervals between the passage of the patrol boats. Then we cast off again, and sure enough, by starting and stopping between the patrols we were able to slip through the cordon.

“We’re there,” said Horen as the boat thrust its nose into the mud. “This is Morichjhãpi.” Between the two of us, we dragged the boat deep into the mangroves, where it couldn’t be seen from the water. The police had already sunk all the settlers’ boats, Horen told me. We took care to hide ours well and then, picking up the food and water we had brought, made our way quietly along the shore until we came to Kusum’s dwelling.

We were amazed to find her still in good spirits. We spent the rest of the night trying to persuade her to leave, but she paid no heed.

“Where will I go?” she said simply. “There’s no other place I want to be.”

We told her about the rumors, the men gathering in the surrounding villages, preparing for the impending assault. Horen had seen them; they had come by the busload. “What will they do?” she said. “There are still more than ten thousand of us here. It’s just a question of keeping faith.”

“But what about Fokir?” I said. “Suppose something happens? What will become of him?”

“Yes.” Horen added his voice to mine. “If you won’t leave, let me take him away for a few days. After things settle down, I’ll bring him back.”

It was clear she had already thought about this. “All right,” she said. “That’s how we’ll do it, then: Take Fokir back with you. Keep him with you in Satjelia for a few days. When this wind passes, bring him back.”

By this time day had broken and it was too late to leave. “We’ll have to wait till tonight,” Horen said, “so that we can slip past the police boats in the dark.”

It was time now for me to spring my surprise. “Horen,” I said. “I am staying. .”

They were amazed and disbelieving: they kept asking me why I wished to remain, but I evaded their questions. There was so much I could have told them: about the medicines that awaited me in Lusibari, about Nilima’s conversation with the doctor, about the emptiness of the days I had spent in my study. But none of that seemed of the least importance. The truth was that my reason for staying was very simple. I took out this notebook and said, “I have to stay because there’s something I must write.”

I am out of time. The candle is spluttering; my pencil is worn to a stub. I can hear their footsteps approaching; they seem, strangely, to be laughing as they come. Horen will want to leave immediately, I know, for daybreak is not far now. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to fill this whole notebook, but that is what I have done. It serves no purpose for me to keep it here: I will hand it to Horen in the hope it finds its way to you, Kanai. I feel certain you will have a greater claim to the world’s ear than I ever had. Maybe you will know what to do with it. I have always trusted the young. Your generation will, I know, be richer in ideals, less cynical, less selfish than mine.

They have come in now and I see their faces in the candlelight. In their smiles I see the Poet’s lines:

Look, I’m alive. On what? Neither childhood nor the future grows less. . More being than I’ll ever need springs up in my heart.

KANAI FOUND THAT his hands were shaking as he put down the notebook. The lamp had filled the cabin with kerosene fumes; he felt he was stifling. Picking a blanket off the bunk, he wrapped it around his shoulders and stepped out into the gangway. The sharp smell of a bidi came to his nose and he looked to his left, toward the bow.

Horen was seated there in one of the two armchairs. He was smoking with his feet up on the gunwale. He looked around as Kanai closed the door of his cabin.

“Still up?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “I just finished reading my uncle’s notebook.”

Horen acknowledged this with an indifferent grunt.

Kanai seated himself in the adjoining chair. “It ends with you taking Fokir away in your boat.”

Horen angled his gaze downward, into the water, as if he were looking into the past. “We should have left a little earlier,” he said matter-of-factly. “We would have had the currents behind us.”

“And what happened in Morichjhãpi after that? Do you know?”

Horen sucked on the end of his bidi. “I know no more than anyone else knows. It was all just rumor.”

“And what were the rumors?”

A wisp of smoke curled out of Horen’s nose. “What we heard,” he said, “was that the assault began the next day. The gangsters who’d been assembling around the island were carried over in boats and dinghies and bhotbhotis. They burnt the settlers’ huts, they sank their boats, they laid waste to their fields.” He grunted in his laconic way. “Whatever you can imagine them doing, they did.”

“And Kusum and my uncle? What happened to them?”

“No one knows for sure, but what I’ve heard is that a group of women were taken away by force, Kusum among them. People say they were used and then thrown into the rivers, so they would be washed away by the tides. Dozens of settlers were killed that day. The sea claimed them all.”

“And my uncle?”

“He was put on a bus with the other refugees. They were to be sent back to the place they had come from — in Madhya Pradesh or wherever it was. But at some point they must have let him off because he found his way back to Canning.”

Here Horen broke off and proceeded to search his pockets with much fumbling and many muttered curses. By the time he’d found and lit another bidi it had become clear to Kanai that he was trying to create a diversion so as to lead the conversation away from Nirmal and Kusum. Kanai was not surprised when he said, in a comfortably affable tone, “What time do you want to leave tomorrow morning?”

Kanai decided he would not let him change the subject. “Tell me something, Horen-da,” he said, “about my uncle. You were the one who took him to Morichjhãpi. Why do you think he got so involved with that place?”

“Same as anyone else,” Horen said with a shrug.

“But after all, Kusum and Fokir were your relatives,” Kanai said. “So it’s understandable that you were concerned about them. But what about Saar? Why did it mean so much to him?”

Horen pulled on his bidi. “Your uncle was a very unusual man,” he said at last. “People say he was mad. As we say, you can’t explain what a madman will do, any more than you can account for what a goat will eat.”

“But tell me this, Horen-da,” Kanai persisted. “Do you think it possible he was in love with Kusum?”

Horen rose to his feet and snorted in such a way as to indicate that he had been goaded beyond toleration. “Kanai-babu,” he said in a sharp, irritated voice, “I’m an unlettered man. You’re talking about things city people think about. I don’t have time for such things.”

He flicked his bidi away and they heard it hiss as it hit the water. “You’d better go to sleep now,” Horen said. “We’ll make an early start tomorrow.”

A POST OFFICE ON SUNDAY

PIYA HAD GONE to bed too early and around midnight found herself wide awake, sitting up in her bunk. She spent a few minutes trying to drift off again and then gave up. Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she stepped out on deck. The light of the waxing moon was so bright that she stood still for a moment, blinking. Then she saw, to her surprise, that Kanai was outside too. He was reading by the light of a small kerosene lantern. Piya went forward and slipped into the other chair. “You’re up late,” she said. “Is that your uncle’s notebook you’re reading?”

“Yes. I finished it, actually. I was just looking it over again.”

“Can I have a look?”

“Certainly.”

Kanai closed the book and held it out to her. She took the notebook gingerly and allowed it to fall open.

“The writing’s very small,” she said.

“Yes,” said Kanai. “It’s not easy to read.”

“And is it all in Bengali?”

“Yes.”

She closed the book carefully and handed it back to Kanai. “So what’s it about?”

Kanai scratched his head as he wondered how best to describe the notebook. “It’s about all kinds of things: places, people —”

“Anyone you know?”

“Yes. Actually, Fokir’s mother figures in it a lot. Fokir too — though Nirmal only knew him when he was very small.”

Piya’s eyes widened. “Fokir and his mother? How come they’re in it?”

“I told you, didn’t I, that Kusum, Fokir’s mother, was involved in an effort to resettle one of these islands?”

“Yes, you did.”

Kanai smiled. “I think, without knowing it, he may have been half in love with Kusum.”

“Does he say so in the book?”

“No,” said Kanai. “But then he wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Being what he was,” Kanai said, “a man of his time and place, with his convictions — he’d have thought it frivolous.”

Piya ran her fingers through her short, curly hair. “I don’t get it,” she said. “What were his convictions?”

Kanai leaned back in his chair as he thought this over. “He was a radical at one time,” he said. “In fact, if you were to ask my aunt Nilima, she would tell you that the reason he got mixed up with the settlers in Morichjhãpi was because he couldn’t let go of the idea of revolution.”

“I take it you don’t agree with her?”

“No,” said Kanai. “I think she’s wrong. As I see it, Nirmal was possessed more by words than by politics. There are people who live through poetry, and he was one of them. For Nilima, a person like that is very hard to understand — but that’s the kind of man Nirmal was. He loved the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, a great German poet, whose work has been translated into Bangla by some of our own best-known poets. Rilke said ‘life is lived in transformation,’ and I think Nirmal soaked this idea into himself in the way cloth absorbs ink. To him, what Kusum stood for was the embodiment of Rilke’s idea of transformation.”

“Marxism and poetry?” Piya said drily, raising her eyebrows. “It seems like an odd combination.”

“It was,” Kanai agreed. “But those contradictions were typical of his generation. Nirmal was perhaps the least materialistic person I’ve ever known. But it was very important for him to believe that he was a historical materialist.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“For him it meant that everything which existed was interconnected: the trees, the sky, the weather, people, poetry, science, nature. He hunted down facts in the way a magpie collects shiny things. Yet when he strung them all together, somehow they did become stories — of a kind.”

Piya rested her chin on her fist. “Can you give me an example?”

Kanai thought about this for a minute. “I remember one of his stories — it has always stuck in my mind.”

“What’s it about?”

“Do you remember Canning, the town where we got off the train?”

“Sure I remember Canning,” Piya said. “That’s where I got my permit. It’s not what I’d call a memorable place.”

“Exactly,” said Kanai. “The first time I went there was in 1970, when Nirmal and Nilima brought me to Lusibari. I was disgusted by the place — I thought it was a horrible, muddy little town. I happened to say something to that effect and Nirmal was outraged. He shouted at me, ‘A place is what you make of it.’ And then he told a story so unlikely I thought he’d made it up. But after I went back home, I took the trouble to look into it and discovered it was true.”

“What was the story?” Piya said. “Do you remember? I’d love to hear it.”

“All right,” said Kanai. “I’ll try to tell it to you as he would have. But don’t forget: I’ll be translating in my head — he would have told it in Bangla.”

“Sure. Go on.”

Kanai held up a finger and pointed to the heavens. “All right then, comrades, listen: I’ll tell you about the Matla River and a stormstruck matal and the matlami of a lord who was called Canning. Shono, kaan pete shono. Put out your ears so you can listen properly.”

LIKE SO MANY other places in the tide country, Canning was named by an Ingrej. And in this case it was no ordinary Englishman who gave it his name — not only was he a lord, he was a laat, nothing less than a viceroy, Lord Canning. This laat and his ledi were as generous in sprinkling their names around the country as a later generation of politicians would be in scattering their ashes: you came across them in the most unexpected places — a road here, a jail there, an occasional asylum. No matter that Ledi Canning was tall, thin and peppery — a Calcutta sweets maker took it into his head to name a new confection after her. This sweet was black, round and sugary — in other words, it was everything its namesake was not, which was lucky for the sweets maker, because it meant his creation quickly became a success. People gobbled up the new sweets at such a rate that they could not take the time to say “Lady Canning.” The name was soon shortened to ledigeni.

Now surely there must exist a law of speech which says that if “Lady Canning” is to become ledigeni, then “Port Canning” should become Potugeni or possibly Podgeni. But look: the port’s name has survived undamaged and nobody ever calls it by anything but the lord’s name, “Canning.”

But why? Why would a laat leave the comfort of his throne in order to plant his name in the mud of the Matla?

Well, remember Mohammad bin Tughlaq, the mad sultan who moved his capital from Delhi to a village in the middle of nowhere? It was a bee from the same hive that stung the British. They got it into their heads that they needed a new port, a new capital for Bengal — Calcutta’s Hooghly River was silting up and its docks, they said, would soon be choked with mud. Jothariti, teams of planners and surveyors, went out and wandered the land, striding about in wigs and breeches, mapping and measuring. And at last on the banks of the Matla they came on a place that caught their fancy, a little fishing village that overlooked a river so broad that it looked like a highway to the sea.

Now, it’s no secret that the word matla means “mad” in Bangla — and everyone who knows the river knows also that this name has not been lightly earned. But those Ingrej town planners were busy men who had little time for words and names. They went back to the laat and told him about the wonderful location they had found. They described the wide, mighty river, the flat plain and deep channel that led straight to the sea; they showed him their plans and maps and listed all the amenities they would build — hotels, promenades, parks, palaces, banks, streets. Oh, it was to be a grand place, this new capital on the banks of the mad Matla — it would lack for nothing.

The contracts were given out and the work began: thousands of mistris and mahajans and overseers moved to the shores of the Matla and began to dig. They drank the Matla’s water and worked in the way that matals and madmen work: nothing could stop them, not even the Uprising of 1857. If you were here then, on the banks of the Matla, you would never have known that in northern India chapatis were passing from village to village; that Mangal Pandey had turned his gun on his officers; that women and children were being massacred and rebels were being tied to the mouths of cannons. Here on the banks of the smiling river the work continued: an embankment arose, foundations were dug, a strand was laid out, a railway line built.

And all the while the Matla lay still and waited.

But not even a river can hide all its secrets, and it so happened that at that time, in Kolkata, there lived a man of a mentality not unlike the Matla’s. This was a lowly shipping inspector, an Ingrej shaheb by the name of Henry Piddington. Before coming to India, Piddingtonshaheb had lived in the Caribbean, and somewhere in those islands he had fallen in love — not with a woman nor even with a dog, as is often the case with lonely Englishmen living in faraway places. No, Mr. Piddington fell in love with storms. Out there, of course, they call them hurricanes, and Piddington-shaheb’s love for them knew no limits. He loved them not in the way you might love the mountains or the stars: for him they were like books or music, and he felt for them the same affection a devotee might feel for his favorite authors or musicians. He read them, listened to them, studied them and tried to understand them. He loved them so much that he invented a new word to describe them: “cyclone.”

Now, our Kolkata may not be as romantic a place as the West Indies, but for the cultivation of Piddington-shaheb’s love affair it was just as good. In the violence of its storms the Bay of Bengal, let it be said, is second to none — not to the Caribbean, not to the South China Sea. Wasn’t it our tufaan, after all, that gave birth to the word “typhoon”?

When Mr. Piddington learned of the viceroy’s new port, he understood at once the madness the river had in mind. Standing on its banks, he spoke his mind. “Maybe you could trick those surveyors,” he said, “but you can’t make a fool of me. I’ve seen through your little game and I’m going to make sure that they know too.”

And the Matla laughed its mental laugh and said, “Go on, do it. Do it now, tell them. It’s you they’ll call Matla — a man who thinks he can look into the hearts of rivers and storms.”

Sitting in his rooms in Kolkata, Piddington-shaheb drafted dozens of letters; he wrote to the planners and surveyors and warned of the dangers; he told them it was crazy to build a town so deep in the tide country. The mangroves were Bengal’s defense against the bay, he said — they served as a barrier against nature’s fury, absorbing the initial onslaught of cyclonic winds, waves and tidal surges. If not for the tide country, the plains would have been drowned long before: it was the mangroves that kept the hinterland alive. Kolkata’s long, winding sea-lane was thus its natural defense against the turbulent energies of the bay; the new port, on the other hand, was dangerously exposed. Given an unfortunate conjunction of winds and tides, even a minor storm would suffice to wash it away; all it would take was a wave stirred up by a cyclone. Driven to desperation, Mr. Piddington even wrote to the viceroy. Begging him to rethink the matter, he made a prediction: if the port was built at this location, he said, it would not last more than fifteen years. There would come a day when a great mass of salt water would rise up in the midst of a cyclone and drown the whole settlement; on this he would stake his reputation, as a man and as a scientist.

Of course, no one paid any attention; neither the planners nor the laat shaheb had the time to listen. Mr. Piddington, after all, was nothing but a lowly shipping inspector and he stood very low in the Ingrej scale of caste. People began to whisper that he was, well, he was a man so mental, who could blame him if there was a little gondogol in his mind; wasn’t he the one who’d once been heard to say that storms were “wonderful meteors”?

So the work went on and the port was built. Its streets and strand were laid out, its hotels and houses were painted and made ready, and everything went exactly as planned. One day, with much noise and drum beating the viceroy planted his feet on the Matla’s flanks and gave the town its new name, Port Canning.

Piddington-shaheb was not invited to the ceremony. On the streets of Kolkata, people laughed and sniggered now when they saw him pass by: Oh, there goes that old matal Piddington. Wasn’t he the one who kept bothering the laat shaheb about his new port? Hadn’t he made a prediction of some kind, staking his reputation?

Wait, said Piddington, wait — I said fifteen years.

The Matla took pity on this matal. Fifteen years was a long time and Mr. Piddington had already suffered enough. It let him wait one year, and then one more, and yet another, until five long years had gone by. And then one day, in the year 1867, it rose as if to a challenge and hurled itself upon Canning. In a matter of hours the town was all but gone; only the bleached skeleton remained.

The destruction came about just as Mr. Piddington had said it would: it was caused not by some great tufaan but by a relatively minor storm. Nor was it the storm’s winds that wrecked the city: it was a wave, a surge. In 1871, four years after the Matla’s uprising, the port was formally abandoned. The port that was to be one of the reigning queens of the eastern oceans, a rival to Bombay, Singapore and Hong Kong, became instead the Matla’s vassal — Canning.

“BUT AS ALWAYS with Nirmal,” said Kanai, “the last word was reserved for Rilke.”

He put his hand on his heart and recited aloud:

“But, oh, how strange the streets of the City of Pain …

Oh, how an angel could stamp out their market of comforts,

with the church nearby, bought ready-made, clean,

shut, and disappointed as a post office on Sunday.

“So now you know,” said Kanai, as Piya began to laugh. “That is what Canning has been ever since that day in 1867 when the Matla stamped out the laat’s handiwork: a Sunday post office.”

A KILLING

THE MEGHA’S CABINS were each outfitted with a raised platform that could be used as a bunk. By piling blankets, pillows and sheets on this ledge, Kanai was able to make himself a bed that was reasonably comfortable, although far from luxurious. He was fast asleep when he was woken by the sound of voices, both near and distant. Reaching for his flashlight, he shone the beam on his watch and discovered it was 3 A.M. The voices of Horen and his grandson were now clearly audible on the upper deck, joined in excited speculation.

Kanai had gone to sleep in a lungi and vest, and now, as he pushed his blankets aside, he was surprised to find a distinct chill in the air. He decided to wrap a blanket around himself before stepping out of his cabin. Horen and his grandson were close by, leaning on the rails and watching the shore.

“What’s happened?” said Kanai.

“It’s not clear,” came the answer, “but something seems to be going on in the village.”

The flood tide had set in some hours before, and with the boat anchored in midstream there was now close to a mile of water between them and the shore. The night was advanced enough for cottony clouds of mist to have arisen from the water’s surface: although much thinner than the dense fog of dawn, it had still obscured the outlines of the shore. Through this shimmering screen, glowing points of orange flame could be seen moving quickly here and there, as if to suggest that people were running along the shore with burning torches. The villagers’ voices could be heard in the distance, despite the mist’s muffling effect. Even Horen and his grandson were at a loss to think of a reason why so many people would bestir themselves so energetically at this time of night.

Kanai felt a touch on his elbow and turned to see Piya standing beside him, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes. “What’s up?”

“We’re all wondering.”

“Let’s ask Fokir.”

Kanai went to the bhotbhoti’s stern, with Piya following close behind, and shone his flashlight into the boat below. Fokir was awake, sitting huddled in the center of his boat with a blanket draped around his shoulders. He held up an arm to shield his face and Kanai switched off the beam before leaning over to speak to him.

“Does he know what’s going on?” Piya inquired.

“No. But he’s going to take his boat across to find out. He says we can go with him if we like.”

“Sure.”

They climbed in, and Horen came to join them, leaving his grandson in charge of the bhotbhoti.

It took some fifteen minutes to cross over, and as they approached the shore it became clear that the commotion had a distinct focus: it seemed a crowd was congregating around that part of the village where Horen’s relatives lived. As the shore neared, the voices and shouts rose in volume until they had fused into a pulsing, angry sound.

The noise inspired a peculiar dread in Kanai, and he said, on an impulse, “Piya, I don’t know if we should go any farther.”

“Why not?”

“Do you know what those voices remind me of?” said Kanai.

“A crowd?”

“A mob is what I would call it — an angry mob.”

“A mob?” said Piya. “In a small village?”

“I know, it’s the last thing you’d expect,” said Kanai. “But if I were just to listen to my ears, I’d say it was a riot, and I’ve been in riots where people were killed. I have a feeling we’re heading into something like that.”

Narrowing her eyes, Piya scanned the shimmering mist. “Let’s just take a look.”

Although the tide had peaked some hours before, the water was still high and Fokir had no trouble pushing his boat’s prow beyond the river’s muddy edge. Ahead lay a slope of damp earth, shaded with mangroves and carpeted with roots and seedlings. Fokir had steered the boat close to the point where the crowd had gathered, and beyond the shadow of the embankment the mist was lit by the orange glow of the massed torches.

Kanai and Piya were picking their way through the mangroves when Horen waved them to a stop. He took the flashlight out of Kanai’s hand and shone it down at his feet. Going over to join him, Kanai and Piya saw that the beam had settled on a mark in the ground. The earth here was neither dry nor wet but pliable, like clay, and it had preserved a stencil-like impression. Neither Kanai nor Piya had any doubt of what it was: the prints were as clearly marked as those of a kitten daubed on a kitchen floor — only many times larger. The shape was so sharply defined that they could see the very texture of the circular pads and the marks made by the retracted claws. Then Horen shone the beam ahead, and they saw a trail of similar depressions, leading up toward the embankment from the shore. From the trajectory of the marks it was easy to plot the animal’s path: it had crossed over from the forested bank on the far shore of the river and had touched land at almost the same point as their boat.

Piya said, “It must have passed within sight of the Megha.”

“I suppose so — but since we were all asleep, it was in no danger of being spotted.”

When they neared the crest of the embankment Horen pointed to a large mark in the dust and gestured to indicate that this was the place from which the animal had surveyed the village and picked out its prey. Then he made a sign to show that it was probably from here that it had sprung to attack. The old man was beside himself with anxiety now and he went running ahead, with Fokir in close pursuit. Piya and Kanai were a few paces to their rear — and on reaching the top of the embankment their progress was brought to an abrupt halt by the spectacle that lay ahead. By the light of the torches they saw that the village was made up of clusters of mud huts, so arranged as to run parallel to the embankment. Directly in front of them, a few hundred yards away, was a small mud-walled structure with a thatched roof. More than a hundred people had gathered around this little hut. Most of them were men and many were armed with sharpened bamboo poles: these they were plunging into the hut again and again. Their faces were contorted in such a way that they seemed to be in the grip of both extreme fear and uncontrollable rage. Many of the women and children in the crowd were shrieking, “Maar! Maar! Kill! Kill!”

Kanai spotted Horen on the edge of the crowd, and he and Piya went to join him. “Is this where your relatives live?” said Kanai.

“Yes,” said Horen, “this is their place.”

“What happened? What’s going on?”

“Remember the buffalo giving birth?” Horen said. “That’s what started it. The big cat heard the sound across the water. That’s what brought it here.”

The hut ahead was a livestock pen, said Horen. It belonged to his relatives, who lived in a larger dwelling nearby. A scant half hour before, the family had been awakened by a crashing sound, followed by frenzied cries from their livestock. They had looked out a window and hadn’t been able to see anything because of the darkness and the mist. But their ears told them all they needed to know: a large and powerful animal had jumped on top of the livestock pen and was trying to claw a hole in the straw roof. A moment later there was a crashing sound to indicate that the predator had succeeded in breaking into the pen.

There were six grown men in the house and they knew they had been presented with an opportunity unlikely ever to be repeated. This tiger was not new to their village; it had killed two people there and had long been preying on its livestock. Now, for the few minutes it was in the pen, it was vulnerable, because to make its escape it would have to leap vertically through the hole in the roof. Even for a tiger, this would not be a simple feat, not with a calf in its jaws.

The family had quickly gathered together a number of fishing nets. Then they had made their way outside and flung the nets over the thatch, piling them on, one on top of the other, and tying them down with heavy nylon crab lines. When the tiger tried to make its jump, it got entangled in the lines and fell back into the pen. It was struggling to free itself when one of the boys thrust a sharpened bamboo pole through a window and blinded it.

Kanai had been translating continuously as Horen was speaking, but at this point Piya stopped him. In a shaking voice she said, “Do you mean to tell me the tiger’s still in there?”

“Yes,” said Kanai, “that’s what he says. It’s trapped inside and blinded.”

Piya shook her head as if to wake herself from a nightmare: the scene was so incomprehensible and yet so vivid that it was only now she understood that it was the incapacitated animal that was being attacked with the sharpened staves. She was still absorbing this when the tiger gave voice for the first time. Instantly, the people around the pen dropped their staves and scattered, shielding their faces as if from the force of a detonation; the sound was so powerful that Piya could feel it through the soles of her bare feet as it echoed through the ground. For a moment nobody moved, and then, as it became clear the tiger was still trapped and helpless, the men snatched up their staves and attacked with redoubled fury.

Piya clutched Kanai’s arm and shouted into his ear, “We have to do something, Kanai. We can’t let this happen.”

“I wish there was something we could do, Piya,” Kanai said. “But I don’t think there is.”

“But we can try, Kanai,” she pleaded. “Can’t we?”

Then Horen whispered something and Kanai took hold of Piya’s arm and tried to turn her away. “Listen, Piya, we should go back now.”

“Go back? Go back where?”

“Back to the Megha,” said Kanai.

“Why?” said Piya. “What’s going to happen?”

“Piya,” said Kanai, tugging at her hand. “Whatever it is, it’s better you don’t stay here to see this.”

Piya looked into his face, illuminated by the torches. “What aren’t you telling me?” she said. “What are they going to do?”

Kanai spat into the dust. “Piya, you have to understand — that animal’s been preying on this village for years. It’s killed two people and any number of cows and goats —”

“This is an animal, Kanai,” Piya said. “You can’t take revenge on an animal.”

All around them now people were howling, their faces lit by the dancing flames: “Maar! Maar!” Kanai caught hold of her elbow and tried to lead her away. “It’s too late now, Piya. We should both go.”

“Go?” said Piya. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to put a stop to this.”

“Piya,” said Kanai. “You’re dealing with a mob here. They could turn on us too, you know. We’re outsiders.”

“So you’re just going to stand by and let it happen?”

“There’s nothing we can do, Piya.” Kanai was shouting now. “Be reasonable. Let’s go.”

“You can go if you like,” she said, shaking off his hand. “But I’m not going to run off like a coward. If you’re not going to do anything about this, then I will. And Fokir will — I know he will. Where is he?”

Kanai lifted a finger to point. “There. Look.”

Rising on tiptoe, Piya saw that Fokir was in the front ranks of the crowd, helping a man sharpen a bamboo pole. Elbowing Kanai aside, she plunged into the throng and fought her way through to Fokir. There was a sudden surge of people around them and she was pushed up against the man who was standing next to Fokir. Now, at close quarters, she saw in the dancing light of the flame that the man’s spear point was stained with blood and that there were bits of black and gold fur stuck between the splinters. It was as if she could see the animal cowering inside the pen, recoiling from the bamboo spears, licking the wounds that had been gouged into its flesh. Reaching for the spear, she snatched it from the man’s hands and placed her foot on it, breaking it in two.

For a moment the man was too surprised to respond. Then he began to shout at the top of his voice, shaking his fist in Piya’s face. In a minute he was joined by some half-dozen others — young men with shawls wrapped around their heads, shouting words she could not understand. She felt a hand closing on her elbow and looked around to find Fokir standing behind her. At the sight of him, her heart lifted and she was assailed by both hope and a sense of relief: she was certain he would know what to do, that he would find a way to put a stop to what was going on. But instead of coming to her aid, he put his arm around her, pinning her to his chest. He carried her away, retreating through the crowd as she kicked his knees and clawed at his hands. Then she saw a knot of flame arcing over the crowd and falling on the thatch: almost at once, branches of flame sprouted from the roof of the pen. There was another roar, and this was matched a moment later by the voices of the crowd, screaming in a kind of maddened blood lust, “Maar! Maar!” The flames leapt up and people began to stoke them with sticks and straw.

Piya began to scream as she tried to throw off Fokir’s grip. “Let me go! Let me go!”

But instead of unloosing her, he turned her around, pinned her to his body and half dragged and half carried her to the embankment. In the light of the leaping flames she saw that Kanai and Horen were already standing there. They gathered around her and led her down the embankment toward the boat.

Stumbling down the bank, she managed to control herself to the point where she was able to say, in an icy voice, “Fokir! Let me go. Kanai, tell him to let me go.”

Fokir loosened his grip, but gingerly, and as she stepped away from him, he made a motion as if to prevent her from running back toward the village.

She could hear the flames crackling in the distance and she smelled the reek of burning fur and flesh. Then Fokir said something to her directly, in her ear, and she turned to Kanai: “What was that? What did he say?”

“Fokir says you shouldn’t be so upset.”

“How can I not be upset? That’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen — a tiger set on fire.”

“He says when a tiger comes into a human settlement, it’s because it wants to die.”

She turned on Fokir, covering her ears with both hands. “Stop it. I don’t want to hear any more of this. Let’s just go.”

INTERROGATIONS

DAYLIGHT WAS BREAKING when they stepped back on the Megha, and Horen lost no time in raising the anchor and starting the engine. It was best to get away quickly, he said; there was bound to be trouble once news of the killing reached the Forest Department. In the past, similar incidents had led to riots, shootings and large-scale arrests.

As the bhotbhoti was making its turn, Kanai headed toward his cabin to change, while Piya went, as if by habit, to her usual place at the head of the upper deck. Kanai assumed she would be back “on effort” in a matter of minutes. But when he came out again she was sitting slumped on the deck, leaning listlessly against a rail, and he knew from her posture that she had been crying.

He went to sit beside her. “Look, Piya,” he said, “don’t torment yourself with this. There’s nothing we could have done.”

“We could have tried.”

“It would have made no difference.”

“I guess.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Anyway, Kanai,” she said, “I feel I owe you an apology.”

“For what you said back there?” Kanai smiled. “That’s all right — you had every right to be upset.”

She shook her head. “No — it’s not just that.”

“Then?”

“Do you remember what you were telling me yesterday?” she said. “Fact is, you were right and I was wrong.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“You know,” said Piya. “What you said about there being nothing in common between —?”

“You and Fokir?”

“Yes,” said Piya. “You were right. I was just being stupid. I guess it took something like this for me to get it straight.”

Kanai choked back the first triumphant comment that came to his mind, and said instead, in as neutral a voice as he could muster, “And how did this revelation come to be granted to you?”

“By what just happened,” said Piya. “I couldn’t believe Fokir’s response.”

“But what did you expect, Piya?” Kanai said. “Did you think he was some kind of grass-roots ecologist? He’s not. He’s a fisherman — he kills animals for a living.”

“I understand that,” said Piya. “I’m not blaming him; I know this is what he grew up with. It’s just, I thought somehow he’d be different.”

Kanai placed a sympathetic hand on her knee. “Let’s not dwell on this,” he said. “After all, you have a lot of work to do.” She raised her head and forced a smile.

THE MEGHA HAD been under way for about an hour when a gray motorboat roared past it. Piya was in the bow with her binoculars and Kanai was sitting in the shade. They moved to the gunwale to watch as the boat sped downriver and they saw it was filled with khaki-uniformed forest guards. It seemed to be heading in the direction of the village they had left.

Horen came to join them and said something that made Kanai laugh. “According to Horen,” Kanai explained to Piya, “if you’re caught between a pirate and a forester, you should always give yourself up to the pirate. You’ll be safer.”

Piya nodded wryly, recalling her own experience with the forest guard. “What do you think they’re going to do to that village?” she said.

Kanai shrugged. “There’ll be arrests, fines, beatings. Who knows what else?”

Another hour went by and then, while crossing a mohona, they spotted a small flotilla of gray motorboats. These were heading in the same direction as the motorboat they had passed earlier.

“Wow!” said Piya. “Looks like they mean business.”

“I’m sure they do.”

Suddenly one of the motorboats parted company with the others and swung around. As it picked up speed it became clear that it had set its course to intercept the Megha. On catching sight of it Horen thrust his head out of the wheelhouse and spoke urgently to Kanai.

“Piya, you’ve got to go to your cabin,” said Kanai. “Horen says there’ll be trouble if they find you on the boat. It’s something to do with your being a foreigner and not having the right kind of permit.”

“OK.” Piya carried her backpack to her cabin and pulled the door shut. She lay down on her bunk and listened to the sound of the motorboat’s engine as it grew gradually louder. When it was cut off, she knew the boat had pulled up alongside. She heard people conversing in Bengali, politely at first and then with increasing acrimony: Kanai’s voice was counterpointed against a number of others.

A good hour passed. Arguments went back and forth and voices rose and fell. Piya was glad she had a bottle of water with her, for the cabin grew steadily hotter as the day advanced.

At length the voices died down and the motorboat pulled away. A knock sounded on Piya’s door just as the Megha’s engine was coming alive again. She was relieved to find Kanai standing outside.

“What was all that about?” she said.

Kanai made a face. “Apparently they’d heard a foreigner was at the village yesterday when the tiger was killed. They’re very exercised about it.”

“Why?”

“They said it’s a security risk for a foreigner to be wandering about so close to the border without a guard. But my feeling is that they just don’t want the news to get out.”

“About the killing?”

“Yes.” Kanai nodded. “It makes them look bad. Anyway, it seems they know you’re at large in these parts and now they’re on the lookout. They kept asking if we’d seen you.”

“What did you say?”

Kanai smiled. “Horen and I adopted a policy of unyielding denial. It seemed to be working until they spotted Fokir. One of the guards recognized him and said you were last seen on his boat.”

“Oh my God!” said Piya. “Was it a kind of weasel-looking guy?”

“Yes,” said Kanai. “That’s the one. I don’t know what he told the others, but they were all set to drag Fokir off to jail. Fortunately I was able to persuade them to change their minds.”

“And how did you do that?”

Kanai’s voice became very dry. “Shall we say I mentioned the names of a few friends and parted with a few notes?”

She guessed his ironic tone was intended to downplay the seriousness of the situation and she was suddenly grateful for his calm, urbane presence. What would have happened if he hadn’t been there? She knew that in all likelihood she would have ended up on one of those official motorboats.

She put a hand on Kanai’s arm. “Thank you. I appreciate it. I really do. And I’m sure Fokir does too.”

Kanai acknowledged this by dipping his head ironically. “Always glad to oblige.” In a graver tone of voice he added, “However, I do have to say, Piya, you really should think seriously of turning back. If they find you, there could be trouble. You could end up in jail and there’s not much I or anyone else could do. The proximity of the border changes everything.”

Piya looked into the distance as she considered this. She thought of Blyth and Roxburgh and the naturalists who had crossed these waters a hundred years before and found them teeming with cetaceans. She thought of all the years in between when, for one reason or another, no one had paid any heed to these creatures and so no one had known of their decimation. It had fallen to her to be the first to carry back a report of the current situation and she knew she could not turn back from the responsibility.

“I can’t return right now, Kanai,” she said. “It’s hard to explain to you how important my work is. If I leave, who knows how long it’ll be before another cetologist can come here? I’ve got to stay as long as I possibly can.”

Kanai frowned. “And what if they take you off to jail?”

Piya shrugged. “How long could they keep me, anyway? And when they let me out, the material will still be in my head.”

AT MIDDAY, with the sun blazing overhead, Piya took a break and came to sit beside Kanai in the shade of the awning. There was a troubled look in her eyes that prompted Kanai to say, “Are you still thinking about the forest guards?”

This seemed to startle her. “Oh, no. Not that.”

“Then?”

She tipped her head back to drink from her water bottle. “The village,” she said, wiping her mouth. “Last night: I still can’t get it out of my head. I keep seeing it again and again — the people, the flames. It was like something from some other time — before recorded history. I feel like I’ll never be able to get my mind around the —”

Kanai prompted her as she faltered. “The horror?”

“The horror. Yes. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to forget it.”

“Probably not.”

“But for Fokir and Horen and the others it was just a part of everyday life, wasn’t it?”

“I imagine they’ve learned to take it in their stride, Piya. They’ve had to.”

“That’s what haunts me,” said Piya. “In a way that makes them a part of the horror too, doesn’t it?”

Kanai snapped shut the notebook. “To be fair to Fokir and Horen, I don’t think it’s quite that simple, Piya. I mean, aren’t we a part of the horror as well? You and me and people like us?”

Piya ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t see how.”

“That tiger had killed two people, Piya,” Kanai said. “And that was just in one village. It happens every week that people are killed by tigers. How about the horror of that? If there were killings on that scale anywhere else on earth it would be called a genocide, and yet here it goes almost unremarked: these killings are never reported, never written about in the papers. And the reason is just that these people are too poor to matter. We all know it, but we choose not to see it. Isn’t that a horror too — that we can feel the suffering of an animal, but not of human beings?”

“But Kanai,” Piya retorted, “everywhere in the world dozens of people are killed every day — on roads, in cars, in traffic. Why is this any worse?”

“Because we’re complicit in this, Piya, that’s why.”

Piya dissociated herself with a shake of the head. “I don’t see how I’m complicit.”

“Because it was people like you,” said Kanai, “who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for the human costs. And I’m complicit because people like me — Indians of my class, that is — have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favor with their Western patrons. It’s not hard to ignore the people who’re dying — after all, they are the poorest of the poor. But just ask yourself whether this would be allowed to happen anywhere else. There are more tigers living in America, in captivity, than there are in all of India — what do you think would happen if they started killing human beings?”

“But Kanai,” said Piya, “there’s a big difference between preserving a species in captivity and keeping it in its habitat.”

“And what is that difference exactly?”

“The difference, Kanai,” Piya said slowly and emphatically, “is that it was what was intended — not by you or me, but by nature, by the earth, by the planet that keeps us all alive. Just suppose we crossed that imaginary line that prevents us from deciding that no other species matters except ourselves. What’ll be left then? Aren’t we alone enough in the universe? And do you think it’ll stop at that? Once we decide we can kill off other species, it’ll be people next — just the kind of people you’re thinking of, people who’re poor and unnoticed.”

“That’s all very well for you to say, Piya — but it’s not you who’s paying the price in lost lives.”

Piya challenged him. “Do you think I wouldn’t pay the price if I thought it necessary?”

“You mean you’d be willing to die?” Kanai scoffed. “Come on, Piya.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Kanai,” Piya said quietly. “If I thought giving up my life might make the rivers safe again for the Irrawaddy dolphin, the answer is yes, I would. But the trouble is that my life, your life, a thousand lives would make no difference.”

“It’s easy to say these things —”

“Easy?” There was a parched weariness in Piya’s voice now. “Kanai, tell me, do you see anything easy about what I do? Look at me: I have no home, no money and no prospects. My friends are thousands of miles away and I get to see them maybe once a year, if I’m lucky. And that’s the least of it. On top of that is the knowledge that what I’m doing is more or less futile.”

She looked up and he saw that there were tears in her eyes. “There’s nothing easy about this, Kanai,” she said. “You have to take that back.”

He swallowed the quick retort that had come to his lips. Instead, he reached for her hand and placed it between his own. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I take it back.”

She snatched her hand away and rose to her feet. “I’d better get back to work.”

As she returned to her place, he called out, “You’re a brave woman. Do you know that?”

She shrugged this off in embarrassment. “I’m just doing my job.”

MR. SLOANE

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Garjontola came into view and the water was at its lowest ebb. Piya was on watch as the Megha approached the pool, and her heart leapt when she saw that the dolphins had congregated there, punctually following the flow of the tides. For the sake of their safety, she signaled to Horen to drop anchor while the Megha was still half a mile or so away.

Kanai had come to the bow to stand beside her and she said, “Would you like to look at the dolphins close up?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m anxious to meet the beast to which you’ve pledged your troth.”

“Come along, then. We’ll go in Fokir’s boat.”

They went aft to the Megha’s stern and found Fokir waiting with his oars in hand. Piya stepped over and went to her usual place in the bow while Kanai seated himself in the boat’s midsection.

A few strokes of Fokir’s oars brought them to the pool and soon two dolphins approached the boat and began to circle around it. Piya recognized them as the cow-and-calf pair she had identified earlier and she was delighted to see them again. She had the impression — as she often did with Orcaella — that they had recognized her too, for they surfaced repeatedly around the boat, and on one occasion the adult even made eye contact.

Kanai, meanwhile, was watching the dolphins with a puzzled frown. “Are you sure these are the right animals?” he said at last.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“But look at them,” he said in a tone of plaintive complaint. “All they do is bob up and down while making little grunting sounds.”

“They do a lot more than that, Kanai,” Piya said. “But mostly they do it underwater.”

“I thought you were going to lead me to my Moby Dick,” said Kanai. “But these are just little floating pigs.”

Piya laughed. “Kanai, you’re talking about a cousin of the killer whale.”

“Pigs have impressive relatives too, you know,” Kanai said.

“Kanai, Orcaella don’t look remotely like pigs.”

“No — they do have that thing on their back.”

“It’s called a fin.”

“And I’m sure they don’t taste as good as pigs.”

“Kanai,” said Piya. “Stop it.”

Kanai laughed. “I just can’t believe we’ve come all this way to look at these ridiculous porcine things. If you’re going to risk jail for an animal, couldn’t you have picked something with a little more sex appeal? Or any appeal, for that matter.”

“Orcaella have a lot of appeal, Kanai,” Piya said. “You just have to have the patience to discover it.”

Despite his jocular tone, Kanai’s perplexity was genuine. In his imagination, dolphins were the sleek steel-gray creatures he had seen in films and aquariums. The appeal of those animals he could readily understand, but he could see nothing interesting in the phlegmatic, beady-eyed creatures circling the boat. He knitted his brows. “Did you always know you were going to be tracking these animals around the world?”

“No. It was an accident,” said Piya. “I knew nothing about the species when I met my first Orcaella. It happened about three years ago.”

She had been interning with a team doing a marine-mammal survey in the South China Sea. At the end of the survey, the ship stopped at Port Sihanouk, in Cambodia. A few members of the team went up to Phnom Penh to visit friends who worked for an international wildlife conservation agency. That was how they learned that a river dolphin had been found stranded near a small village in central Cambodia.

“I thought I’d go and take a look.”

The village, it turned out, was an hour’s journey from Phnom Penh and a long way inland from the Mekong River: Piya was driven there on a hired motorcycle. The terrain was a patchwork of huts, rice fields, irrigation ditches and shallow reservoirs. It was in one of these reservoirs, a body of water no bigger than a swimming pool, that the dolphin had been confined. The animal had swum inland with the floodwaters of the rainy season and had failed to depart with the rest of its pod; meanwhile, the irrigation ditches had run dry, shutting off its escape routes.

This was Piya’s first glimpse of Orcaella brevirostris: it was about five feet in length, with a steel-gray body and a short dorsal fin. It lacked the usual dolphin snout and its rounded head and large eyes gave it an oddly ruminative, bovine appearance. She named it Mr. Sloane, after a high school teacher to whom it bore a distinct resemblance.

Mr. Sloane, the dolphin, was clearly in trouble: the water was drying up fast and there were no fish left in the reservoir. Piya went with her motorcycle driver to the next kampong and brought back some fish from the market: she spent the rest of the day sitting beside the reservoir, feeding the dolphin. Next day, she went back again with a cooler filled with fish. Although there were many farmers and children present, Mr. Sloane ignored the others and went straight over to Piya’s side of the reservoir.

“I swear to you it recognized me.”

Back in Phnom Penh there was much concern in the small wildlife community. The Orcaella population of the Mekong was known to be declining rapidly and was expected soon to fall below sustainable levels. The Mekong Orcaella had shared Cambodia’s misfortunes: in the 1970s they had suffered the ravages of indiscriminate American carpet bombing. Later they too had been massacred by Khmer Rouge cadres, who had hit upon the idea of using dolphin oil to supplement their dwindling supplies of petroleum. The once abundant population of Orcaella in the Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s great fresh-water lake, had been reduced almost to extinction. These dolphins were hunted with rifles and explosives and their carcasses were hung up in the sun so their fat would drip into buckets. This oil was then used to run boats and motorcycles.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Kanai said, “that they were melted down and used as diesel fuel?”

“Yes, in effect.”

In recent years the threat to Orcaella had grown even more serious. There was a plan afoot to blow up the rapids of the upper Mekong in order to make the river navigable as far as China: this would mean the certain destruction of the dolphin’s preferred habitats. Thus the stranding of Mr. Sloane was not just an individual misfortune; it was a harbinger of catastrophe for an entire population.

Piya was given the job of caring for the stranded dolphin while arrangements were made for transporting the animal back to the river. Every day for six days, Piya traveled up to the reservoir bearing cooler-loads of fresh fish. On the morning of the seventh day she arrived to find that Mr. Sloane had disappeared. She was told that the animal had died during the night, but she could find no evidence to support this. There was no explanation of how the remains had been removed from the pool. What she did find were the tread marks of a heavy vehicle of some kind, probably a truck, that led down to the water’s edge. What had happened was all too obvious: Mr. Sloane had fallen victim to the flourishing clandestine trade in wildlife. New aquariums were opening throughout eastern Asia and the demand for river dolphins was growing. Mr. Sloane was a valuable commodity — Irrawaddy dolphins had been known to fetch as much as one hundred thousand dollars on the black market.

“One hundred thousand dollars?” said Kanai in disbelief. “For these?”

“Yes.”

Piya was not inclined to be sentimental about animals. But the idea that Mr. Sloane would soon be sold off to an aquarium, as a curiosity, made her stomach churn. For days afterward she was haunted by a nightmare in which Mr. Sloane was driven into a corner of his tank by a line of hunters armed with fishnets.

Trying to put the incident behind her, she decided to go back to the States to register for a Ph.D. program at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla. But then an unforeseen opportunity came her way: a wildlife conservation group in Phnom Penh offered her a contract to do a survey of Mekong Orcaella. The offer was perfect in every way: the money was enough to last a couple of years, and the material would count toward her Ph.D. She took the job and moved upriver to a sleepy town. In the three years since she had become one of a tiny handful of Orcaella specialists, she had worked everywhere Irrawaddy dolphins were to be found: Burma, northern Australia, the Philippines, coastal Thailand — everywhere, in fact, except the place where they first entered the record book of zoological reckoning, India.

It was only when she reached the end of her story that Piya realized, with a guilty start, that she had not said a single word to Fokir since she stepped onto the boat.

“Listen, Kanai,” she said, “there’s something I’ve been kind of puzzled about. Fokir seems to know this place so well — this island, Garjontola. He seems to know all about the dolphins and where they go. I wish I knew what first brought him here, how he learned about these things. Could you ask him?”

“Of course.” Kanai turned away to explain the question and then, as Fokir began to speak, he swiveled around to face Piya. “This is what he says:

“‘I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know about this place. Back when I was very little, long before I had seen these islands and these rivers, I had heard about Garjontola from my mother. She would sing to me and tell me tales about this island. This was a place, my mother said, where no one who was good at heart would ever have cause for fear.

“‘As for the big shush, the dolphins who live in these waters, I knew about them too, even before I came here. These animals were also in my mother’s stories: they were Bon Bibi’s messengers, she used to say, and they brought her news of the rivers and khals. They came here during the bhata, my mother said, so they could tell Bon Bibi about everything they had seen. During the jowar they scattered to the ends of the forest and became Bon Bibi’s eyes and ears. This secret her own father had told her, and he had told her also that if you could learn to follow the shush, then you would always be able to find fish.

“‘I had heard these stories long before I came to the tide country, and ever since I was little I had always wanted to come and see this place. When we came to live in Morichjhãpi I would say to my mother, “When will we go? When will we go to Garjontola?” There was never time — there was too much to do. The first time she brought me was just a few weeks before her death. Maybe this was why, after her death, whenever I thought of her I thought also of Garjontola. I came here time and again, and it happened that the shush became like my friends. I followed them where they went.

“‘That day when you came in that launch with the forest guard, and stopped my boat: this was where I was coming, with my son. The night before, my mother had come to me in a dream and she had said, “I want to see your son; why do you never bring him to Garjontola? It will soon be time for you and me to be reunited — after that, who knows when I will see him again? Bring him to me as soon as you can.”

“‘I could not tell my wife this, because I knew she would be upset and she would not believe me. So the next day, instead of taking Tutul to school, I took him to my boat and we set off to come here: on the way we stopped to catch some fish and that was when you came upon us in your launch.’”

“And what came of it?” Piya said. “Do you think she saw him, your mother?”

“‘Yes. The last night we were here, in my boat, I dreamed of my mother again. She was smiling and happy and she said, “I’m glad I’ve seen your son. Now take him home and come back, so that you and I can be together again.”’”

Up to this point Piya had been listening as if she were under a spell: Kanai seemed almost to have vanished, creating the illusion that she was speaking directly with Fokir. But now the spell broke and she stirred as if she had been jolted awake from her sleep.

“What does he mean by that, Kanai?” she said. “Ask him: what does he mean?”

“He says it was just a dream.”

Kanai turned away from her to say a few words to Fokir, and suddenly, to Piya’s surprise, Fokir began to sing, or rather to chant, in a quick rhythm.

“What’s he saying?” Piya said to Kanai. “Can you translate?”

“I’m sorry, Piya,” Kanai said. “But this is beyond my power. He’s chanting a part of the Bon Bibi legend and the meter is too complicated. I can’t do it.”

KRATIE

THE TIDE TURNED with the waning of the day and as the level of the water crept up, the dolphins began to drift away from the pool. When the last animal had left, Fokir turned the boat toward the Megha and began to row.

On board, in the meantime, Horen and his grandson had strung up a couple of tarpaulin sheets to create an enclosed bathing area in the bhotbhoti’s stern. After a long day under the sun, the prospect of cleaning up was all too welcome, and Piya lost no time fetching her towel and toiletries. She found two buckets in the enclosure, of which only one was full. The other had a rope attached to its handle to draw water from the river. Piya threw it overboard, hauled it in and emptied it over herself, reveling in the bracing chill. The other bucket was filled with fresh water and she dipped into it sparingly with an enamel mug to wash off the soap. When she was done, it was still half full.

On the way back to her cabin, she passed Kanai. He was waiting in the gangway with a towel slung over his shoulder.

“I’ve left plenty of fresh water for you.”

“I’ll make good use of it.”

In the distance, she heard someone else splashing and knew it was probably Fokir, bathing in the stern of his own boat.

Later, after she had changed into fresh clothes, she went out on deck. The tide was now nearing full flood and the currents were drawing patterns on the river’s surface as they whirled around the anchored vessel. Some of the distant islands had shrunk to narrow spars of land, and where there had been forest before, there were now only branches visible, bending like reeds to the sway of the tide.

Piya was pulling a chair up to the rails when Kanai appeared beside her with a cup of steaming tea in each hand. “Horen asked me to bring these up,” he said, handing one to Piya.

He pulled up a chair too, and for a while they were both absorbed in watching the slow submersion of the landscape. Piya braced herself, expecting a joke or a satirical remark, but somewhat to her surprise he seemed content to sit quietly. There was something companionable about the silence, and in the end it was she who spoke first.

“I could watch it forever,” she said. “This play of tides.”

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I once knew a woman who used to say that — about the sea.”

“A girlfriend?” said Piya.

“Yes.”

“Have you had many?”

He nodded, and then, as if to change the subject, said, “And what about you? Do cetologists have private lives?”

“Now that you ask,” said Piya, “I have to say that there aren’t many who do, especially not among us women. Relationships aren’t easy, you know, given the kinds of lives we lead.”

“Why not?”

“We travel so much,” Piya said. “We never stay long in one place. It doesn’t make things easy.”

Kanai raised his eyebrows. “But you don’t mean to say, do you, that you’ve never had a relationship — not even a college romance?”

“Oh, I’ve had my share of those,” Piya allowed. “But none of them ever led anywhere.”

“Never?”

“Well, once,” Piya said. “There was this one time when I thought it was leading somewhere.”

“And?”

Piya laughed. “It ended in disaster. What could you expect? It was in Kratie.”

“Kratie?” he said. “Where’s that?”

“In eastern Cambodia,” she said, “about a hundred miles from Phnom Penh. I lived there once.”

Kratie stood on a bluff above the Mekong, and a few miles north of the town was a riverbed pool that served as a dry-season home for a pod of some six Orcaella. This was where Piya had begun her research. As the town was both convenient and pleasant, she had rented the top floor of a wooden house with the intention of making it her base for the next two or three years. One of the advantages of Kratie was that it housed an office of the Fisheries Department, a branch of government with which she had to have many dealings.

One of the local representatives of the department was a young official who was reasonably proficient in English. His name was Rath and he was from Phnom Penh. Without friends or family in Kratie, he was often at loose ends, especially in the evenings. Kratie was very small, no larger than a couple of city blocks, and inevitably Piya found her path crossing Rath’s quite frequently. It turned out that he often ate in the same waterfront café where she usually went for her evening meal of noodles and Ovaltine. They took to sitting at the same table and their everyday small talk evolved slowly into real conversations.

One day, in passing, Rath revealed he had spent a part of his childhood in a death camp of the Pol Pot era: his parents had been transported there after the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. Although Rath had offered this as a throwaway scrap of information, his revelation had made such an impression on Piya that she had responded by telling him about her own childhood. In the weeks that followed she found herself talking to him as she never had to any man she had known before: she had told him about her parents and their marriage, about her mother’s depression and her last days in the hospital.

How much did Rath understand of what she was saying? The truth was she had no idea. Was it a delusion to think he too had made some kind of revelation about himself when all he had done was talk about an experience more common than not among his contemporaries? She would never know.

A day came when she found she was thinking of Rath all the time, even when her attention was meant to be focused on the dolphins and their pool. Although she realized she was falling in love, she was not alarmed. This was mainly because of the kind of man Rath was — like her, he was shy and a little solitary by nature. She took comfort in his hesitancies, taking them as proof that he was as inexperienced with women as she was with men. But she was still very cautious, and it was not until some four months had passed that their intimacy progressed beyond the sharing of meals and memories. It was the lightheadedness of the aftermath that caused her to dispense with her habitual caution. This was it, she decided; she was going to become one of those rare exceptions among female field biologists — one who’d had the good fortune to fall in love with the right man in the right place.

At the end of the dry season she was scheduled to go to Hong Kong for six weeks — partly to attend a conference and partly to earn some money by working on a survey team. When she left, everything seemed settled. Rath came to Pochentong Airport to see her off and for the first couple of weeks they exchanged e-mails every day. Then the messages began to tail off, until she could not get a response out of him. She didn’t call his office because she was trying to save money — and anyway, she assumed, what could happen in a couple of weeks?

On stepping off the boat at Kratie, she knew immediately something was wrong: she could almost hear the whispers running up and down the street as she walked back to her flat. It was her landlady who told her, conveying the news with a ghoulish glee: Rath had married and taken a transfer to Phnom Penh.

At first, trying to think the whole thing through, she had decided that he had been forced into a marriage of convenience by his family — this was a predicament she could have understood and it would have sweetened the pill. The rejection would have seemed a little less direct, a little less brutal. But even that consolation was denied her, for she soon found out that he had married a woman from his office, an accountant. Apparently he had started seeing her after she had left to go to Hong Kong: it had taken him just six weeks to decide.

Despite everything, she might still have found it in her to forgive Rath: she could see that in her absence it might have occurred to him to ask himself what it would mean, in the long run, to be married to a foreigner, a habitual peripatetic at that. Could he really be blamed for deciding that he could not deal with it?

She found some solace in this until she met Rath’s replacement. He was a married man in his thirties, and he too spoke some English. Within a short while of meeting her, he shepherded her down to the same waterfront café that she and Rath had once frequented. With the sun setting across the Mekong, he had gazed into her eyes and begun to ask sympathetic questions about her mother. It was then that she realized that Rath had told him everything: that the most intimate details of her life were common knowledge among the men of the town; that this awful oily man was actually trying to use those confidences in some sort of clumsy attempt at seduction.

That was it. The next week she packed her things and moved sixty-some miles upriver, to Stung Treng. In the end it was not the pain of what she had lived through with Rath that drove her out, but the sheer humiliation of having had her life laid bare before the whole town.

“But that wasn’t the worst part,” Piya said.

“What was the worst part, then?”

“That came when I went back to the States. I met up with some friends. All women, all doing research in field biology. They just laughed when they heard my story. They’d all been through something similar. It was as if what I’d been through wasn’t even my own story — only a script we were all doomed to live out. That’s just how it is, they said: this is what your life’s going to be like. You’re always going to find yourself in some small town where there’s never anyone to talk to but this one guy who knows some English. And everything you tell him will be all over the town before you’ve said it. So just keep your mouth shut and get used to being on your own.”

Piya shrugged. “So that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since.”

“What?”

“Get used to the idea of being on my own.”

Kanai fell silent as he thought about the story she had just told. It seemed to him that he had not till this moment been able to see her for the person she was. Her containment and her usual economy with words had prevented him from acknowledging, even to himself, her true extraordinariness. She was not just his equal in mind and imagination; her spirit and heart were far larger than his own.

Kanai had been leaning back with his feet up on the gunwale. Now, allowing his chair to right itself, he sat forward and looked into her face. “It doesn’t have to be like that, you know, Piya. You don’t have to be on your own.”

“You have a better idea?”

“I do.”

Before he could say any more, they heard Horen’s voice echoing up from the lower deck, summoning them to dinner.

SIGNS

PIYA WENT TO BED early again. Not having slept much the night before, Kanai tried to do the same. But despite his best efforts, sleep proved elusive for him that night: there was a strong wind blowing outside and, as if in response to the bhotbhoti’s rocking, a recurrent childhood nightmare came back to visit him — a dream in which he was taking the same examination over and over again. The difference now was in the faces of the examiners, which were not those of his teachers but of Kusum and Piya, Nilima and Moyna, Horen and Nirmal. In the small hours he sat up suddenly, in a sweat of anxiety: he could not remember what language he had been dreaming in, but the word pariksha, “examination,” was ringing in his head and he was trying to explain why he had translated the word in the archaic sense of “trial by ordeal.” Eventually these dreams yielded to a deep, heavy sleep, which kept him in his bunk until the dawn fog had lifted and the tide was about to reverse itself.

Kanai stepped out of his cabin to find that the wind had died down, leaving the river’s becalmed surface as still as a sheet of polished metal. Having reached full flood, the tide was now at that point of perfect balance when the water appears motionless. From the deck the island of Garjontola looked like a jeweled inlay on the rim of a gigantic silver shield. The spectacle was at once elemental and intimate, immense in its scale and yet, in this moment of tranquillity, oddly gentle.

He heard footsteps on the deck and turned to see Piya coming toward him. She was armed with a clipboard and data sheets and her voice was all business: “Kanai, can I ask you a favor? For this morning?”

“Certainly. Tell me: what can I do for you?”

“I need you to do some spotting for me,” Piya replied.

The timing of the tides had created a small problem for her, Piya said. Her original plan had been to follow the dolphins when they left the pool at high tide. But right now the flood seemed to be setting in early in the morning and late in the evening; this meant the animals would be migrating in the dark. Tracking them would be hard enough during the day; without good light it would be impossible. What she had decided to do instead was to make a log of the routes they followed when they came back to the pool. Her plan was to post watches at the two approaches to the pool, one upstream and one downstream. She would take the upstream watch on the Megha: the river was wide there and it would be difficult to cover it without binoculars. Fokir could take the other watch, in his boat: if Kanai could join him, so much the better — to have two pairs of eyes on the boat would compensate for the lack of binoculars.

“It means you’ll have to spend a few hours in the boat with Fokir,” said Piya. “But that’s not a problem, is it?”

Kanai was affronted to think she had the impression that he was somehow in competition with Fokir. “No,” he said quickly. “Not at all. I’ll be glad to have a chance to talk to him.”

“Good. That’s settled, then. We’ll get started after you’ve had something to eat. I’ll knock on your door in an hour.”

By the time Piya came to get him, he had breakfasted and was ready to go. In preparation for a day under the sun, he had changed into light-colored trousers, a white shirt and sandals. He had also decided to take along a cap and sunglasses. These preparations met with Piya’s approval. “Better bring these as well,” she said, handing him two bottles of water. “It’s going to get very hot out there.”

They went together to the Megha’s stern and found Fokir ready to leave, with his oars placed crosswise across the gunwales. After Kanai had gone over to the smaller boat, Piya showed Fokir exactly where he was to position himself. The spot was about a mile downstream of the Megha, at a point where Garjontola curved outward, jutting into the river so that the channel narrowed.

“The river’s only half a mile wide over there,” said Piya. “I figure that if you anchor at midstream, you’ll have all the approaches covered between the two of you.”

Then she turned to point upstream, where the river’s mouth opened into a vast mohona. “I’ll be over there,” said Piya. “As you can see, it’s very wide, but being on the Megha I’ll have some elevation. With my binoculars I’ll be able to keep it covered. We’ll be about two and a half miles apart. I’ll be able to see you, but you probably won’t be able to see me.”

She waved as Fokir cast off the boat’s moorings. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “If it gets to be too much for you, Kanai, just tell Fokir to bring you back.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Kanai, waving back. “Don’t worry about me.”

The boat had not gone very far when puffs of black smoke began to spurt from the Megha’s funnel. Slowly the bhotbhoti began to move and for several minutes Fokir and Kanai were shaken by the turbulence of its bow wave. Only when it had disappeared from view was the water calm again.

Now, with the landscape emptied of other human beings, it was as if the distance between Kanai and Fokir had been reduced a hundredfold — yet if the boat had been a mile long they could not have been farther apart. Kanai was in the bow and Fokir was in the stern, behind the hood. Separated by the thatch, neither of them could see the other and for the first couple of hours on the water very little was said. Kanai made a couple of attempts to break the silence and was answered on each occasion with nothing more than a perfunctory grunt.

Around noon, when the level of the water had begun to ebb, Fokir jumped to his feet in great excitement and pointed downriver: “Oi-jé! Over there!”

Shading his eyes, Kanai spotted a sharply raked dorsal fin arcing through the water.

“You’ll see better if you hold on to the hood and stand up.”

“All right.” Kanai made his way to the boat’s midsection, pulled himself to his feet and steadied his balance by leaning on the hood.

“Another one. Over there.”

Guided by Fokir’s finger, Kanai spotted another fin slicing through the water. This was followed in quick succession by two more dolphins — all of them spotted by Fokir.

This flurry of activity seemed to have created a small opening in the barrier of Fokir’s silence, so Kanai made another attempt to draw him into conversation. “Tell me something, Fokir,” he said, glancing down the length of the hood. “Do you remember Saar at all?”

Fokir shot him a glance and looked away again. “No,” he said. “There was a time when he used to visit us, but I was very small then. After my mother died I hardly ever saw him. I hardly remember him at all.”

“And your mother? Do you remember her?”

“How could I forget her? Her face is everywhere.”

He said this in such a plain, matter-of-fact way that Kanai was puzzled. “What are you saying, Fokir? Where do you see her face?”

He smiled and began to point in every direction, to the ends of the compass as well as to his head and feet. “Here, here, here, here. Everywhere.”

The phrasing of this was simple to the point of being childlike, and it seemed to Kanai that he had finally understood why Moyna felt so deeply tied to her husband, despite everything. There was something about him that was utterly unformed, and it was this very quality that drew her to him: she craved it in the same way that a potter’s hands might crave the resistance of unshaped clay.

“So tell me, then, Fokir, do you ever feel like visiting a city?”

It was only after he had spoken that he realized he had inadvertently addressed Fokir as tui, as though he were indeed a child. But Fokir seemed not to notice. “This is enough for me,” he said. “What’ll I do in a city?” He picked up his oars as if to mark the end of the conversation. “Now it’s time to go back to the bhotbhoti.”

The boat began to rock as Fokir dipped his oars and Kanai retreated quickly to his place in the bow. After sitting down, he looked up to see that Fokir had moved to the boat’s midsection, seating himself so that he would be facing Kanai as he rowed.

In the steaming midday heat a haze was rising from the river, giving the impression of mirages dancing on the water. The heat and haze induced a kind of torpor in Kanai, and as if in a dream he had a vision of Fokir traveling to Seattle with Piya. He saw the two of them walking onto the plane, she in her jeans and he in his lungi and worn T-shirt; he saw Fokir squirming in a seat that was unlike any he had ever seen before; he pictured him looking up and down the aisle with his mouth agape. And then he thought of him in some icy western city, wandering the streets in search of work, lost and unable to ask for directions.

He shook his head to rid himself of this discomfiting vision.

It seemed to Kanai that the boat was passing much closer to Garjontola than it had on the way out. But with the water at its lowest level, it was hard to know whether this was due to a deliberate change of course or to an optical illusion caused by the usual shrinkage of the river’s surface at ebb tide. As they were passing the island Fokir raised a flattened palm to his eyes and peered at the sloping sandbank to their left. Suddenly he stiffened, rising slightly in his seat. As if by instinct, his right hand gathered in the hem of his unfurled lungi, tucking it between his legs, transforming the anklelength garment into a loincloth. With his hand on the gunwale, he rose to a half-crouch, setting the boat gently asway, his torso inclining forward in the stance of a runner taking his mark. He raised a hand to point. “Look over there.”

“What’s the matter?” said Kanai. “What do you see?”

“Look.”

Kanai narrowed his eyes as he followed Fokir’s finger. He could see nothing of interest, so he said, “What should I look for?”

“Signs, marks — like we saw yesterday. A whole trail of them, running from the trees to the water and back.”

Kanai looked again and caught sight of a few depressions in the ground. But the bank at this point was colonized mainly by stands of garjon, a species of mangrove that breathed through spear-like “ventilators” connected by subterranean root systems. The surface of the bank was pierced by so many of these upthrust organs that it was impossible to distinguish between one mark and another. The depressions that had caught Fokir’s eye looked nothing like the sharply defined marks of the night before. They seemed to Kanai to be too shapeless to signify anything in particular; they could just as well have been crabs’ burrows or runnels formed by the retreating water.

“See how they form a track?” Fokir said. “They go right to the edge of the water. That means they were made after the tide had ebbed — probably just as we were heading this way. The animal must have spotted us and come down to take a closer look.”

The thought of this, a tiger coming down to the water’s edge in order to watch their progress across the mohona, was just far-fetched enough to make Kanai smile.

“Why would it want to look at us?” said Kanai.

“Maybe because it smelled you,” said Fokir. “It likes to keep an eye on strangers.”

There was something about Fokir’s expression that convinced Kanai he was playing a game with him, perhaps unconsciously, and the thought of this amused him. Kanai understood all too well how the dynamics of their situation might induce Fokir to exaggerate the menace of their surroundings. He himself had often stood in Fokir’s place, serving as some hapless traveler’s window on an unfamiliar world. He remembered how, in those circumstances, he too had often been tempted to heighten the inscrutability of the surroundings through subtly slanted glosses. To do this required no particularly malicious intent; it was just a way of underscoring the insider’s indispensability: every new peril was proof of his importance, each new threat evidence of his worth. These temptations were all too readily available to every guide and translator — not to succumb was to make yourself dispensable; to give in was to destroy the value of your word, and thus your work. It was precisely because of his awareness of this dilemma that he knew too that there were times when a translator’s bluff had to be called.

Kanai pointed to the shore and made a gesture of dismissal. “Those are just burrows,” he said, smiling. “I saw crabs digging into them. What makes you think they have anything to do with the big cat?”

Fokir turned to flash him a bright, white smile. “Do you want to know how I know?”

“Yes. Tell me.”

Leaning over, Fokir took hold of Kanai’s hand and placed it on the back of his neck. The unexpected intimacy of this contact sent a shock through Kanai’s arm and he snatched his hand back — but not before he had felt the goosebumps bristling on the moist surface of Fokir’s skin.

Fokir smiled at him again. “That’s how I know,” he said. “It’s the fear that tells me.” Rising to a crouch, Fokir directed a look of inquiry at Kanai. “And what about you?” he said. “Can you feel the fear?”

These words triggered a response in Kanai that was just as reflexive as the goosebumps on Fokir’s neck. The surroundings — the mangrove forest, the water, the boat — were suddenly blotted from his consciousness; he forgot where he was. It was as though his mind had decided to revert to the functions for which it had been trained and equipped by years of practice. At that moment nothing existed for him but language, the pure structure of sound that had formed Fokir’s question. He gave this inquiry the fullest attention of which his mind was capable and knew the answer almost at once: it was in the negative; the truth was that he did not feel the fear that had raised bumps on Fokir’s skin. It was not that he was a man of unusual courage — far from it. But he knew also that fear was not — contrary to what was often said — an instinct. It was something learned, something that accumulated in the mind through knowledge, experience and upbringing. Nothing was harder to share than another person’s fear, and at that moment he certainly did not share Fokir’s.

“Since you asked me,” Kanai said, “I’ll tell you the truth. The answer is no, I’m not afraid, at least not in the way you are.”

Like a ring spreading across a pool, a ripple of awakened interest passed over Fokir’s face. “Then tell me,” he said, leaning closer, “if you’re not afraid, there’s nothing to prevent you from taking a closer look. Is there?”

His gaze was steady and unblinking, and Kanai would not allow himself to drop his eyes: Fokir had just doubled the stakes, and it was up to him now to decide whether he would back down or call his bluff.

“All right,” Kanai said, not without some reluctance. “Let’s go.”

Fokir nodded and turned the boat using a single oar. When the bow pointed toward the shore he started to row. Kanai glanced across the water: the river was as calm as a floor of polished stone and the currents etched on its surface appeared almost stationary, like the veins in a slab of marble.

“Fokir, tell me something,” said Kanai.

“What?”

“If you’re afraid, then why do you want to go there — to that island?”

“My mother told me,” Fokir said, “that this was a place where you had to learn not to be afraid. And if you did, then you might find the answer to your troubles.”

“Is that why you come here?”

“Who’s to say?” He shrugged, smiling, and then he said, “Now, can I ask you something, Kanai-babu?”

He was smiling broadly, leading Kanai to expect he would make some kind of joke. “What?”

“Are you a clean man, Kanai-babu?”

Kanai sat up, startled. “What do you mean?”

Fokir shrugged. “You know — are you good at heart?”

“I think so,” Kanai said. “My intentions are good, anyway. As for the rest, who knows?”

“But don’t you ever want to know for sure?”

“How can anyone ever know for sure?”

“My mother used to say that here in Garjontola, Bon Bibi would show you whatever you wanted to know.”

“How?”

Fokir shrugged again. “That’s just what she used to say.”

As they drew close to the island a flock of birds took wing, breaking away from the upper level of the canopy and swirling in a cloud before settling down again. The birds were parrots, of a color almost indistinguishable from the emerald tint of the mangroves; for a moment, when they rose in the air together, it was as though a green mane had risen from the treetops, like a wig lifted by a gust of wind.

The boat picked up speed as it approached the bank and Fokir’s final stroke rammed the prow deep into the mud. Tucking his lungi between his legs, he dropped over the side of the boat and went running over the bank to examine the marks.

“I was right,” cried Fokir triumphantly, dropping to his knees. “These marks are so fresh they must have been made within the hour.”

To Kanai the depressions looked just as shapeless as they had before. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“How could you?” Fokir looked up at the boat and smiled. “You’re too far away. You’ll have to get off the boat. Come over here and look. You’ll see how they go all the way up.” He pointed up the slope to the barrier of mangrove looming above.

“All right, I’m coming.” Kanai was turning to jump when Fokir stopped him. “No. Wait. First roll up your pants and then take your slippers off, or else you’ll lose them in the mud. It’s better to be barefoot.”

Kanai kicked off his sandals and rolled his trousers up to his knees. Then, swinging his feet over the gunwale, he dropped over the side and sank into the mud. His body lurched forward and he reached quickly for the boat, steadying himself against the gunwale: to fall in the mud now would be a humiliation too painful to contemplate. He pulled his right foot carefully out of the mud and planted it a little way ahead. In this fashion, by repeating these childlike steps, he was able to get across to Fokir’s side without mishap.

“Look,” said Fokir, gesturing at the ground. “Here are the claws and there’s the pad.” He turned to point up the slope. “And see, that’s the way it went, past those trees. It might be watching you even now.”

There was a mocking note in his voice that stung Kanai. He stood up straight and said, “What are you trying to do, Fokir? Are you trying to frighten me?”

“Frighten you?” said Fokir, smiling. “But why would you be frightened? Didn’t I tell you what my mother said? No one who is good at heart has anything to fear in this place.”

Then, turning on his heel, Fokir went back to the boat, across the mudbank, and reached under the hood. When he straightened up again, Kanai saw that he had drawn out his dá.

As Fokir advanced toward him, blade in hand, Kanai recoiled reflexively. “What’s that for?” he said, raising his eyes from the instrument’s glistening edge.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Fokir. “It’s for the jungle. Don’t you want to go and see if we can find the maker of these marks?”

Even in that moment of distraction, Kanai noticed — so tenacious were the habits of his profession — that Fokir was using a different form of address with him now. From the respectful apni that he had been using before, he had switched to the same familiar tui Kanai had used in addressing him: it was as though in stepping onto the island, the authority of their positions had been reversed.

Kanai looked at the tangled barrier of mangrove ahead and knew that it would be madness to walk into that with Fokir: his dá could slip, anything could happen. It was not worth the risk.

“No,” said Kanai. “I’m not going to play this game with you anymore, Fokir. I want you to take me back to the bhotbhoti.”

“But why?” said Fokir with a laugh. “What are you afraid of? Didn’t I tell you? A man like yourself should have nothing to fear in this place.”

Stepping into the mud, Kanai shouted over his shoulder, “Stop talking nonsense. You may be a child, but I’m not —”

Then suddenly it was as though the earth had come alive and was reaching for his ankle. Looking down, he discovered that a rope-like tendril had wrapped itself around his ankles. He felt his balance going and when he tried to slide a foot forward to correct it, his legs seemed to move in the wrong direction. Before he could do anything to break the fall, the wetness of the mud slapped him full in the face.

At first he was completely immobile: it was as though his body were being fitted for a mold in a tub of plaster. Trying to look up, he discovered that he could not see: the mud had turned his sunglasses into a blindfold. Scraping his head against his arm, he shook the glasses off and allowed them to sink out of sight. When Fokir’s hand descended on his shoulder, he brushed it off and tried to push himself to his feet on his own. But the consistency of the mud was such as to create a suction effect and he could not break free.

He saw that Fokir was smiling at him. “I told you to be careful.”

The blood rushed to Kanai’s head and obscenities began to pour from his mouth: “Shala, banchod, shuorer bachcha.”

His anger came welling up with an atavistic explosiveness, rising from sources whose very existence he would have denied: the master’s suspicion of the menial; the pride of caste; the townsman’s mistrust of the rustic; the city’s antagonism toward the village. He had thought he had cleansed himself of these sediments of the past, but the violence with which they spewed out of him now suggested that they had only been compacted into an explosive and highly volatile reserve.

There had been occasions in the past — too many of them — when Kanai had seen his clients losing their temper in like fashion: when rage had made them cross the boundaries of selfhood, transporting them to a state in which they were literally beside themselves. The phrase was apt: their emotions were so intense as almost to spill outside the physical boundaries of their skin. And almost always, no matter what the proximate cause, he was the target of their rage: the interpreter, the messenger, the amanuensis. He was the life preserver that held them afloat in a tide of incomprehension; the meaninglessness that surrounded them became, as it were, his fault, because he was its only named feature. He had survived these outbursts by telling himself that such episodes were merely a professional hazard — “nothing personal” — it was just that his job sometimes made him a proxy for the inscrutability of life itself. Yet, despite his knowledge of the phenomenon, he was powerless to stop the torrent of obscenities that were pouring out of his mouth now.

When Fokir offered a hand to help him up, he slapped it aside: “Ja, shuorer bachcha, beriye ja! Get away from me, you son of a pig!”

“All right, then,” said Fokir. “I’ll do as you say.”

Raising his head, Kanai caught a glimpse of Fokir’s eyes and the words withered on his lips. In Kanai’s professional life there had been a few instances in which the act of interpretation had given him the momentary sensation of being transported out of his body and into another. In each instance it was as if the instrument of language had metamorphosed — instead of being a barrier, a curtain that divided, it had become a transparent film, a prism that allowed him to look through another set of eyes, to filter the world through a mind other than his own. These experiences had always come about unpredictably, without warning or apparent cause, and no thread of similarity linked these occasions, except that in each of them he had been working as an interpreter. But he was not working now, and yet it was exactly this feeling that came upon him as he looked at Fokir: it was as though his own vision were being refracted through those opaque, unreadable eyes and he were seeing not himself, Kanai Dutt, but a great host of people — a double for the outside world, someone standing in for the men who had destroyed Fokir’s village, burnt his home and killed his mother; he had become a token for a vision of human beings in which a man such as Fokir counted for nothing, a man whose value was less than that of an animal. In seeing himself in this way, it seemed perfectly comprehensible to Kanai why Fokir should want him to be dead — but he understood also that this was not how it would be. Fokir had brought him here not because he wanted him to die, but because he wanted him to be judged.

Kanai lifted a hand to wipe the mud from his eyes, and when he looked up again he found that Fokir had stepped out of his field of vision. Something prompted Kanai to look back over his shoulder. Squirming in the mud, he turned just in time to see the boat slipping away. He could not see Fokir’s face, only his back; he was in the stern, rowing vigorously.

“Wait,” said Kanai. “Don’t leave me here.” It was too late: the boat had already vanished around a bend.

Kanai was watching the boat’s bow wave fanning across the river when he saw a ripple cutting slantwise over the water. He looked again carefully, and now it seemed certain that there was something beneath the water’s surface: obscured by the darkness of the silt, it was making for the shore, coming toward him.

Kanai’s head filled with visions of the ways in which the tide country dealt out death. The tiger, people said, killed you instantly, with a swipe of its forepaw, breaking the joint between your shoulder and neck. You felt no pain when it happened; you were dead already of the shock induced by the tiger’s roar just before the moment of impact. There was undeniably a quality of mercy to this — to the human mind, at least. Wasn’t this why people who lived in close proximity with tigers so often regarded them as being something more than just animals? Because the tiger was the only animal that forgave you for being so ill at ease in your translated world?

Or was it because tigers knew of the horror of a reptilian death? It’s the crocodile, he remembered, that most loves the water’s edge: crocodiles can move faster on mud than a man can run on grass; the clay doesn’t impede them; because of their sleek underbodies and their webbed feet they can use its slipperiness to their advantage. A crocodile, it’s said, will keep you alive until you drown; it won’t kill you on land; it’ll drag you into the water while you’re still breathing. Nobody finds the remains of people who’re killed by crocodiles.

Every other thought vanished from his mind. Rising to a crouch, he began to push himself backward, higher up the bank, unmindful of the rooted spear points raking his skin. As he retreated up the bank, the mud thinned and the mangrove’s shoots grew taller and more numerous. He could no longer see the ripple in the water, but it did not matter: all he wanted was to get as far from the river as possible.

Rising gingerly to his feet, he took a step and almost immediately there was an excruciating pain in the arch of his foot: it was as though he had stepped on the point of a nail or on a shard of glass. In wrenching out his foot, he caught a glimpse of a mangrove’s ventilator, sunk deep in the mud: he had jabbed his foot directly into its spear-like point. Then he saw that the spores were everywhere around him, scattered like booby traps; the roots that connected them ran just below the surface, like camouflaged tripwires.

The barrier of mangrove, which had looked so tangled and forbidding from the boat, now seemed a refuge, a safe haven. Picking his way through the minefield of ventilators, he went crashing into the vegetation.

The mangrove branches were pliable and sinuous; they bent without breaking and snapped back like whips. When they closed around him, it was as if he had passed into the embrace of hundreds of scaly limbs. They grew so thick he could not see beyond a few feet; the river disappeared from view, and if it were not for the incline of the slope he would have been unable to judge whether he was heading away from the water or not. Then, all at once, the barrier ended and he broke through to a grassy clearing dotted with a few trees and palms. He sank to his knees; his clothes were in shreds and his body was covered in cuts and scratches. Flies were settling on his skin and clouds of mosquitoes were hovering above.

He could not bring himself to look around the clearing. This was where it would be, if it was here on the island — but what was he thinking of? He could not recall the word, not even the euphemisms Fokir had used: it was as if his mind, in its panic, had emptied itself of language. The sounds and signs that had served, in combination, as the sluices between his mind and his senses had collapsed: his mind was swamped by a flood of pure sensation. The words he had been searching for, the euphemisms that were the source of his panic, had been replaced by the thing itself, except that without words it could not be apprehended or understood. It was an artifact of pure intuition, so real that the thing itself could not have dreamed of existing so intensely.

He opened his eyes and there it was, directly ahead,a few hundred feet away. It was sitting on its haunches with its head up, watching him with its tawny, flickering eyes. The upper parts of its coat were of a color that shone like gold in the sunlight, but its belly was dark and caked with mud. It was immense, of a size greater than he could have imagined, and the only parts of its body that were moving were its eyes and the tip of its tail.

At first his terror was such that he could not move a muscle. Then, collecting his breath, he pushed himself to his knees and began to move slowly away, edging backward into the thickets of mangrove, keeping his eyes fixed on the animal all the while, watching the tip of its twitching tail. Only when the branches had closed around him did he rise to his feet. Turning around, he began to push his way through the enclosing greenery, oblivious now to the thorns and splinters that were tearing at his limbs. When at last he broke through to the mudbank, he fell forward on his knees and covered his eyes with his forearm as he tried to prepare himself for the moment of impact, for the blow that would snap the bones of his neck.

“Kanai!” The shouted sound of his name made him open his eyes just long enough to see Piya, Fokir and Horen running toward him across the bank. Now once again he fell forward on the mud and his mind went dark.

When next he opened his eyes, he was on his back, in the boat, and a face was taking shape above him, materializing slowly against the blinding brightness of the afternoon sun. He came to understand that it was Piya, that she had her hands under his shoulders and was trying to prop him up.

“Kanai? Are you OK?”

“Where were you?” he said. “I was alone so long on that island.”

“Kanai, you were there just ten minutes,” she said. “Apparently it was you who sent Fokir away. He came hurrying back to get us and we came as quickly as we could.”

“I saw it, Piya. I saw the tiger.” Now Horen and Fokir crowded around him too, so he added in Bangla, “It was there, the cat — I saw it.”

Horen shook his head. “There was nothing there,” he said. “We looked, Fokir and I. We looked and saw nothing. And if it had been there, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“It was there, I tell you.” Kanai’s body was shaking so much that he could hardly get the words out of his mouth. Piya took hold of his wrist in an effort to calm him.

“Kanai,” she said gently, “it’s all right. You’re safe now. We’re with you.”

He tried to answer, but his teeth were chattering and his breath kept getting caught in his throat.

“Don’t try to talk,” Piya said. “I’ve got a sedative in my first-aid bag. I’ll give it to you when we get to the Megha. What you need is a good rest. You’ll feel much better afterward.”

LIGHTS

DAYLIGHT WAS FADING when Piya put away her data sheets and stepped out of her cabin. As she passed Kanai’s cabin, she paused to listen at his door: he had slept through the afternoon, after taking the pill she had given him, but she sensed he was awake now for she could hear him moving about inside. She raised her hand to knock, thought better of it and went on her way, across the deck and to the bow.

With the setting of the sun Garjontola, all but engulfed by the rising tide, had turned into a faint smudge of land outlined against the darkening sky. In the dying light the island seemed to be drifting peacefully to sleep. But just as Piya was stepping up to the bow, the dark blur was lit up by tiny points of phosphorescence. The illumination lasted only an instant and then the island went dark again. But a moment later the lights twinkled once more, in perfect synchrony: there were thousands, possibly millions, of glowing pinpricks of light, just bright enough to be seen across the water. As her eyes grew used to the rhythm of the flashing, she was able to make out the sinuous shapes of roots and branches, all outlined by the minuscule gleams.

Piya turned on her heel and ran to knock on Kanai’s door. “Are you up? You’ve got to see this. Come on out.”

When the door opened, she stepped back in surprise, as if the man before her were not the one she had expected to see. Kanai’s face and body were scrubbed clean and he was dressed in a lungi and vest he had borrowed from Horen. His hair lay plastered on his head, and there was a look on his face so different from his usual expression of buoyant confidence that she was hard put to recognize him.

“Kanai, what’s up? Are you OK?”

“Yes. Just a little tired. But I’m fine.”

“Then come and look at this.” She led him to the bow and pointed to Garjontola.

“What is it?”

“Wait.”

The lights flashed on and Kanai gasped. “My God,” he said. “What are those?”

“They’re glowworms, flashing their lights in rhythm,” said Piya. “I’ve read about it: they say it happens mainly around mangroves.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Me neither,” she said.

They watched intently as the lights flashed on and off, growing brighter as the sky darkened. She heard Kanai clearing his throat and sensed he was bracing himself to say something, but it was a while yet before he spoke. “Listen, Piya,” he said, catching her off-guard, “I wanted to tell you — I’m going back tomorrow.”

“Back where?”

“To Lusibari — then New Delhi.”

“Oh?” She feigned surprise, although she realized now that she had known all along what he was going to say. “So soon?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s time for me to get back to my office. It’ll be nine days tomorrow and I told everyone I’d be home in ten. If I leave early in the morning I’ll be able to make it back to New Delhi by the day after. The people in my office will begin to worry if I’m not there.”

She knew from his voice that he was holding something back. “And is that the only reason you’re going? Because of your office?”

“No,” he said tersely. “It’s also that I don’t really have much reason to stay here now that I’ve finished with my uncle’s notebook. It’s not as if I’m of much use to you. I think you’ll be able to manage perfectly well without a translator.”

“You certainly don’t have to stay on my account,” she agreed. “But if you don’t mind my asking, does your decision have anything to do with what happened today — on the island?”

His answer, when it came, seemed to be pronounced with some reluctance. “This is not my element, Piya,” he said. “What happened today showed me that.”

“But what exactly did happen, Kanai?” she said. “How did you end up on that island?”

“Fokir suggested we go and take a look at it,” Kanai said, “and I couldn’t think of any reason not to go. That’s about all there is to it.”

Despite his evident unwillingness to speak of the incident, Piya pressed him a little further. “Was it Fokir’s fault, then? Did he leave you behind deliberately?”

“No,” said Kanai firmly. “I happened to fall in the mud and lost my temper. He actually wanted to help — I was the one who shouted at him and told him to go away. He’s not to blame.” He pursed his lips as if to tell her that, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

“You seem to have made up your mind,” Piya said, “so I won’t try to stop you. But when are you planning to leave?”

“At daybreak,” Kanai said. “I’ll arrange it with Horen. If we make an early enough start, I’m sure he can get me to Lusibari and be back here by nightfall. I imagine you were planning to spend the day on the water anyway, in Fokir’s boat?”

“Yes, I was,” said Piya.

“Well, then, it won’t matter if the Megha is away during the day, will it? You won’t miss it.”

Piya thought with regret of the hours they had spent together. “No, I won’t,” she said. “I will miss our talks, though. It’s been good to have you along. I’ve enjoyed your company.”

“And I’ve enjoyed yours, Piya.” He paused briefly, as if he were trying to collect himself. “Actually, I was hoping —”

“Yes?”

“I was hoping you’d come too, Piya. To New Delhi, I mean.”

“To New Delhi?” A hiccup of laughter bubbled up in Piya’s throat.

“Does that seem funny to you?” Kanai said.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It was just so unexpected. New Delhi is a long way and I have so much to do right here.”

“I know that,” he said. “I didn’t mean immediately. I meant after you’d finished your survey. I was hoping maybe you could come then.”

Piya was unsettled by the tone of Kanai’s voice. She remembered her first meeting with him on the train and recalled the certainty of his stance and the imperiousness of his gestures. It was hard to square those memories with the halting, diffident manner of the man who stood before her now. She turned away to look in the direction of Garjontola, where the moon was climbing slowly above the horizon.

“What do you have in mind, Kanai?” she said. “Why do you think I should go to New Delhi?”

Kanai pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he were hoping the gesture would help him find the words he wanted. “I won’t lie to you, Piya — I don’t know what I have in mind. It’s just that I want to see you again. And I want you to see me — on my own ground, in the place where I live.”

She tried to think of his life in New Delhi, and she imagined a house filled with employees — a cook, a driver, people to fetch and carry. It seemed as remote from her own life as something she might see in a movie or on television. It was impossible for her to take it seriously — and she knew that no purpose would be served by pretending otherwise.

She reached over to touch his arm. “Listen, Kanai,” she said. “I hear what you’re saying. And believe me, I appreciate it; I appreciate everything you’ve done and I wish you the best. I’m sure one day you’ll meet the woman who’s right for you. But I don’t think I’m the one.”

He nodded resignedly to indicate that this was more or less what he had expected to hear. “There’s so much I want to tell you, Piya,” he said, “and maybe it would be easier to put it into words if I didn’t want to so much. It’s like Moyna says.”

Piya was jolted by the sound of that name. “What does she say?”

“That words are like the winds that blow ripples on the water’s surface. The river itself flows beneath, unseen and unheard.”

“What did she mean?”

“She was talking about how she feels about Fokir,” Kanai said.

“And?”

“He means everything to her, you know, although you wouldn’t think it. She’s terrified he’s going to leave her.”

“And why would he do that?”

Kanai’s voice fell. “Because of you, maybe?”

“Kanai, that’s absurd,” Piya protested. “There’s no reason why she or anyone else should think that.”

“None at all?”

Piya could feel her annoyance growing and she tried to calm her voice. “Kanai — what are you getting at?”

“I’ll tell you what Moyna thinks,” he said softly. “She believes you’re in love with Fokir.”

“And what about you?” Piya shot back. “Do you believe that too?”

“Well are you?”

There was an edge to his voice now and she chafed against its rasp. “Are you asking on her behalf, or are you asking for yourself?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know, Kanai. I don’t know what to tell you — any more than I know what to tell her. I don’t know the answers to any of these questions you’re asking.” Raising her hands, Piya clamped them on her ears as if to shut out the sound of his voice. “Look, I’m sorry — I just can’t talk about this anymore.”

The moon had risen over Garjontola now and in its waxing light the island’s glowing sparks had faded and become almost invisible. Piya stared at the dimming lights, trying to remember how magical they had seemed just a few minutes before. “It was beautiful while it lasted, wasn’t it?”

When Kanai answered, his voice sounded just as constricted as her own. “My uncle would have said that it was like a tide country mirage.”

A SEARCH

AT DAWN, when Piya stepped out of her cabin, the Megha was so thickly shrouded in fog that she could see neither its stern nor its bow. On her way to the foredeck she all but fell over Kanai, who was sitting in a chair with a pad on his knees and a lantern by his side.

“Up already?”

“Yes.” He gave her a tired smile. “Actually, I’ve been up for hours.”

“How come?”

“I’ve been working on something,” he said.

“So early?” She could not conceal her surprise. “It must be important to get you out of bed at that hour of night.”

“It is important,” he said. “In fact, it’s for you — a present. I wanted to have it done before we each went our own way.”

“A present for me?” she said. “Can you tell me what it is?”

He gave her a deprecatory smile and made a face. “You’ll see when it’s finished.”

“So it’s not done yet?”

“No,” he said. “But it will be by the time we’re ready to be off.”

“OK, I’ll be back.” She went to her cabin to change, and by the time she had brushed her teeth and had a quick breakfast of bananas and Ovaltine, Horen was already in the wheelhouse and Fokir was in his boat, preparing to cast off its mooring. She handed Fokir the backpack in which she had placed her equipment, a couple of bottles of water and a few nutrition bars. Then she went to the foredeck and found Kanai still seated in his chair.

“So is it done yet?” she said.

“Yes.” Rising to his feet, he handed her a large manila envelope. “Here it is.”

She took it from him and turned it over in her hands. “You still won’t tell me what it is?”

“I’d like it to be a surprise.” He looked down at the deck and shuffled his feet. “And if you should want to let me know what you think of it, you’ll find my address on the back of the envelope. I hope you’ll write.”

“Of course I’ll write, Kanai,” she said. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I hope so.”

She would have given him a peck on the cheek if she hadn’t known that Horen’s eyes were boring into her back. “Take care,” she said.

“And you too, Piya — take care and good luck.”

THE FOG HUNG so heavy on the water that it seemed to slow the currents with its weight. When Fokir dipped in his oars, the boat slipped easily forward, with the fog frothing around its bow like whipped milk. A few strokes of the oars was all it took to carry the boat out of sight of the Megha: the vessel vanished into the mist within minutes.

As the boat headed downriver, Piya glanced at the envelope Kanai had given her — she could tell from its size that there were several sheets of paper inside. She decided against opening the letter right away; instead, reaching into her backpack, she tucked the envelope inside and pulled out her GPS receiver. After taking a reading of the boat’s position, she allowed herself to succumb to the dreamy quiet of the fog.

Over the past couple of days her body had become attuned to the shuddering and noise of the diesel-powered bhotbhoti: this boat’s silence was a comforting contrast. Now, as she looked around herself, examining the texture of the boat’s wood and the ashen color of its thatch, it seemed to Piya that she was seeing these things properly for the first time. She ran her fingers over the plywood strips that covered the boat’s deck and tried to decipher the smudged lettering stamped on some of them; she looked at the speckled gray sheet of plastic that had once been a U.S. mailbag and remembered how much it had startled her when she first recognized it for what it was. It was strange that these ordinary things had seemed almost magical at that moment, when she was lying on this deck, trying to recover from the experience of almost drowning. Looking at these discarded odds and ends in the light of another day, she saw it was not the boat but her own eyes that had infused them with that element of enchantment. Now they looked as plain and as reassuringly familiar as anything she had ever thought of as belonging in a home.

Piya shook her head to clear it of daydreams. Rising to a crouch, she signaled to Fokir to pass her the other pair of oars. She had no definite idea of where he was taking her, but she guessed he was going to explore one of the routes the dolphins took when they went to forage. The flood tide had peaked an hour or so before and the Garjontola pool was still empty of dolphins. Fokir seemed to know where to find them.

The currents were in their favor and, with two pairs of oars between them, they made short work of the rowing. It was not long before Fokir motioned to Piya to let her know they had reached their destination. For a couple of minutes he allowed the boat to drift and then, leaning over the side, he threw out his anchor and paid out the line.

The fog had thinned now and Piya saw that the boat was positioned so as to command a view of the entrance to a broad creek. Fokir pointed several times to the creek’s mouth, as if to assure her that the dolphins would soon be coming toward them from that direction. Piya took another GPS reading before raising her binoculars to her eyes. She found they had come some five miles since they had parted from the Megha at Garjontola.

At the start Fokir watched the creek in a casual, almost negligent way — he seemed to have no doubt in his mind that the dolphins would soon come at them from this direction. But when two hours had passed without a sighting, he seemed less certain of his ground, and his attitude began to change, confidence yielding slowly to a bemused doubt.

They stayed on watch in the same place for another couple of hours, but again, despite the near-perfect visibility, there was no sign of the dolphins. Meanwhile, the tide had ebbed and the day had grown steadily hotter with the sun’s ascent. Piya’s shirt was damp with sweat. Thinking back, Piya could not remember any other time since her arrival when the temperature had been so high so early in the day.

Shortly after midday, with the tide running low, Fokir pulled in the anchor, a signal that they were about to move on. At first Piya thought he had given up the watch and was planning to head back to Garjontola. But when she reached for her oars, Fokir shook his head. He pointed to the mouth of the creek they had been watching all morning and motioned to her to stay on alert with her binoculars. He turned the boat into the creek and, after a couple of hundred yards, made another turn, into a still narrower channel.

It was only after they had spent an hour winding between creeks and gullies that Fokir stopped to take stock of the stretch of water ahead: there was still no trace of a dolphin. With an impatient click of his tongue, he reached for his oars again and turned the boat in a new direction.

In a while, as the boat continued its passage, Piya took another GPS reading and discovered that they were still heading away from Garjontola. They had covered a distance of a little more than nine miles since the morning. Their progress, however, had been anything but direct: on the monitor, the line that traced their route looked like a strand of wool that had come unraveled from an old scarf.

The air was stagnant and heavy and the water’s surface was like glass, unscarred by the faintest touch of wind. Fokir was drenched in sweat, and the look of puzzlement on his face had been replaced by an expression of concern: after seven hours of watching the water they had seen nothing of any interest. Piya gestured to Fokir, urging him to stop and rest, but he paid no attention: he seemed to be intent on penetrating ever deeper into the tidal labyrinth.

THE INITIAL PART of the journey to Lusibari led through a part of the tide country that was little frequented, and for the first few hours after its departure from Garjontola, the Megha encountered no other vessels, large or small. But then its route brought the bhotbhoti in view of a major seaward channel, the Jahajphoron River, and suddenly the waterways were as inexplicably busy as they had been empty before. With the river’s width lying athwart the bow, it became evident, even from a distance, that there were a great many boats out on the water. This would not have seemed untoward if it were not for the fact that the boats were all heading in the same direction — inland, and away from the sea.

Having had little rest the night before, Kanai had fallen asleep soon after the Megha left Garjontola. He was woken by the sound of Horen’s voice, summoning his grandson from the deck below.

Sitting up in his bunk, Kanai found his clothes and sheets soaked in sweat. He had shut the door at dawn, when the air was still chilly, but now, with hours to go before noon, the cabin’s bulwarks were already radiating heat. Kanai stepped out to find Horen standing at the bow, peering at the broad river ahead while Nogen tended the wheel.

“What’s the matter, Horen-da?” Kanai said as he made his way forward to the bow. “What do you see?”

“Look over there,” Horen answered, raising a hand to point ahead.

Kanai shaded his eyes as he considered the sight. Unused though he was to these waterways, he sensed there was something odd about the traffic in front of them. But the exact nature of the problem eluded him. “All I see is a lot of boats,” he said.

“Don’t you see, they’re all heading in the same direction?” Horen said gruffly. “They seem to be going back to their villages.”

Glancing at his watch, Kanai saw that it was a little after ten in the morning. It struck him that it was early in the day for fishermen to be bringing home their catch. “Why’re they heading back at this hour?” he said. “Isn’t it the wrong time?”

“Yes,” said Horen. “You wouldn’t normally see them going that way until quite late in the evening.”

“So what could the matter be?”

“At this time of year,” Horen said, “it’s usually only one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

Horen shrugged, and his eyes seemed to disappear into the enigmatic folds of his face. “We’ll find out soon enough.” He turned away and went back to the wheelhouse to take over the steering.

It took another ten minutes to cover the distance to the river ahead. Once Horen had executed the turn into the main channel of the Raimangal, he cut the engine so that the Megha drifted almost to a standstill. Then, with Nogen handling the wheel, Horen went to the stern and waited for a fishing boat to draw abreast. Soon a whole cluster of boats gathered there and shouts rang back and forth as the returning fishermen exchanged questions and answers with Horen. Then the boats sailed on and Horen came hurrying back to the wheelhouse, grim-faced and glowering. A muttered command sent Nogen racing down to start the engine while Horen took hold of the wheel.

Kanai was aware of a stab of apprehension as he looked at the set cast of Horen’s profile. “So, Horen-da,” he said, “what is it? What did you find out?”

Horen answered brusquely, “It’s just what I thought. What else would it be at this time of year?”

There was a storm on its way, Horen explained. A jhor. The weather office in New Delhi had put out warnings since the day before that it might even be a cyclone. The coast guard had been out on the Bay of Bengal since dawn, turning back the fishing fleet: that was why the boats were heading home.

“But what about —?” Kanai’s first thought was for Piya and Fokir, out on their boat at Garjontola.

Horen cut him short. “Don’t worry. The storm won’t be on us until midday tomorrow. This gives us plenty of time. We’ll go back to Garjontola to wait for them to get back. Even if they don’t return until late in the evening, we’ll be fine. If we set off early enough tomorrow morning, we’ll be back in Lusibari before the storm hits.”

The engine sprang back to life and Horen used his shoulders to hold the wheel to a tight turn. Within a few minutes, the Megha was heading back the way it had come, retracing the morning’s journey.

It was one o’clock when they reached Garjontola, and neither Kanai nor Horen was surprised to find no one there. Only seven hours had passed since they had waved the boat off that morning. They knew that Piya and Fokir were probably planning to come back to Garjontola much later — in time to meet the Megha on its return from Lusibari, which was scheduled for the end of the day.

One thing puzzled Kanai: the boat was anchored well within sight of the Garjontola pool, yet, although it was low tide, there were no dolphins in the water. He recalled that the dolphins usually gathered there when the tide ebbed, and it was clear even to his unpracticed eye that the water was running low. He went to Horen to confirm this, and was told that this was indeed the ebb tide, the bhata — the jowar would not set in for another two or three hours.

“But Horen-da, look,” said Kanai, pointing toward Garjontola. “If it’s the bhata, then why is the water empty?”

Horen frowned as he took this in. “What can I tell you?” he said at last. “The world isn’t like a clock. Everything doesn’t always happen on time.”

There was no arguing with this, yet in the pit of Kanai’s stomach was a gnawing sensation that told him something was wrong. “Horen-da,” he said, “instead of waiting here, why don’t we set out to look for Fokir’s boat?”

There was an amused grunt from Horen. “To look for a boat here would be like trying to find a grain of grit in a sack full of rice.”

“It won’t do any harm,” Kanai insisted. “Not if we’re back by sunset. If all’s well, the boat will be here then and we’ll meet up with them.”

“It’ll serve no purpose,” Horen grumbled. “There are hundreds of little khals crisscrossing these islands. Most of them are too shallow for a bhotbhoti.”

Kanai could sense his resistance lessening and said lightly, “We’re not doing anything else, after all — so why not?”

“All right, then.” Bending over the gunwale, Horen shouted to Nogen to start the engine and draw anchor.

Kanai stood leaning on the wheelhouse as the bhotbhoti pulled away from Garjontola and headed downriver. There was not a cloud in the sky and the landscape seemed tranquil in the soporific heat of the afternoon sun. It needed some stretching of the mind to imagine that bad weather could be on its way.

CASUALTIES

THE TIDE WAS TURNING when at last Piya caught sight of a dorsal fin: it was half a mile or so ahead of the boat, very close to the shore. A quick read of the dolphin’s position showed it to be almost twelve miles southeast of Garjontola. When she put the binoculars back to her eyes she made another discovery — the dolphin she had spotted earlier was not alone; it was accompanied by several others. They seemed to be circling in the same place, much as they did in the Garjontola pool.

She saw that the water was still at midlevel, and a look at her watch told her that it was three in the afternoon. She was conscious now of an excitement similar to that which she had felt when Fokir first led her to the dolphins at Garjontola. If several dolphins had congregated here at low tide, surely it could only mean that this was yet another pool and these dolphins were from another pod? This seemed like the best news she could have had, but a glance at Fokir’s face was enough to indicate that something was not quite right — there was a cautionary look in his eyes that put her on guard.

When the dolphins were just five hundred feet ahead of the boat, she caught sight of a steel-gray form lying inert on the mudbank. Instantly she shut her eyes, knowing what it was and yet hoping it would be something else. When she looked again it was still there, and it was exactly what she had feared: the carcass of an Irrawaddy dolphin.

A closer look brought yet another shock: the animal’s body was relatively small, and she knew at once that it was probably the newborn calf she had watched for the past several days, swimming beside its mother. Its body appeared to have been deposited on the shore some hours before by the falling tide. Now, with the water rising again, it seemed to be teetering on the water’s edge.

Piya’s intuition told her that these dolphins belonged to the same pod that usually congregated at Garjontola at low tide. The carcass explained the dolphins’ departure from their routine: it seemed they were reluctant to return to their pool while one of their number lay dead in plain view. Piya had the sense that they were waiting for the tide to set it afloat again.

Fokir had spotted the carcass too, Piya knew, for the boat’s bow had turned to point toward the shore. As the boat was pulling slowly up to the bank a smell caught the back of Piya’s throat. The full heat of the sun was on the dead animal and the stench was such that she had to wrap a length of cloth around her head before she could step off the boat.

Looking down on the carcass, she saw that there was a huge gash behind the blowhole where a large wedge of flesh and blubber had been torn out of the dolphin’s body. The shape of the injury suggested that the dolphin had been hit by the propeller of a fast-moving motorboat. This puzzled Piya, because she had seen so few such boats in these waters. It was Fokir who suggested a solution to the mystery, by sketching a peaked cap with his hands. She understood that it was probably some kind of official boat used by uniformed personnel — maybe from the coast guard or the police or even the Forest Department. It had gone speeding down the channel earlier in the day, and the inexperienced calf had been slow to move out of its way.

Piya took a tape measure out of her backpack and spent a while taking the measurements required by the Norris protocols. Then, pulling out a small pocketknife, she took samples of skin, blubber and a few internal organs. These she wrapped in foil and slipped into Ziploc bags. Armies of crabs and insects were now swarming all over the dead calf, eating into the exposed flesh of its wound.

Piya remembered how her heart had leapt when she first saw the newborn surfacing beside its mother and she could not bear to look at the carcass any longer. She gestured to Fokir to pick it up by the flukes while she took hold of the fins. Between them, they swung it back and forth a couple of times and then heaved it out into the river. She had expected it to bob up again immediately, but to her surprise it sank quickly from view.

This was as much time as Piya could stand to spend in this place. She went back to the boat, threw in her equipment and helped Fokir push it away from the bank.

As the current was pulling them away, Fokir stood up and began to point upriver and downriver, east and west. Presently, as his gestures became more explicit, she understood he was telling her that what she had seen was not an uncommon sight. He had come upon three such carcasses: one of them had washed up a short distance downriver from this very place — that was why he had thought of coming this way.

By the time they were in midriver, the dolphins appeared to be dispersing — except for one, which seemed to be lingering in the wake of the pod. Piya had the sense that this animal was circling over the sunken carcass as the currents rolled it along the riverbed. Was this the mother? There was no way of knowing for sure.

Then, all at once, the dolphins sounded and disappeared. Piya would have liked to follow them, but she knew it would be impossible. It was a little past four in the afternoon now and the tide was flooding in. The currents, which had favored them in the morning, were now pushing powerfully against them. Even with two of them rowing, their progress was certain to be painfully slow.

AFTER THREE HOURS of unrewarded wandering, Horen said, in a tone of gruff vindication, “We’ve looked enough. We have to turn back now.”

Kanai’s eyes were weary from the effort of peering into creeks and gullies. Now that the sun was dipping toward the horizon, the light would be directly in their eyes and it would be even harder to maintain an effective watch. But the anxiety gnawing at his stomach would not go away and he could not bring himself to accept that there was nothing more to be done. “Do we have to turn back already?” he said.

Horen nodded. “We’ve wasted a lot of fuel. Any more and we won’t be able to get back to Lusibari tomorrow. Besides, the boat is probably back at Garjontola now.”

“And what if it’s not?” said Kanai sharply. “Are we just going to abandon them?”

Horen turned to squint at him through narrowed eyes. “Look,” he said, “Fokir is like a son to me. If there was anything more to be done, I would do it.”

Kanai was quick to acknowledge the justice of this reproof. “Yes,” he said with a nod. “I know that, of course.” He felt a twinge of shame for having doubted Horen’s diligence during the search. As the Megha changed course, he said, in a more conciliatory voice, “Horen-da, you have experience of these things. Tell me — what’ll happen here when the cyclone strikes?”

Horen looked pensively around him. “It’ll be as different as night from day.”

“You were caught in a cyclone once, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Horen in his slow, laconic way. “That was the year when you visited, 1970.”

It was well after the end of the monsoons, and Horen had gone out to sea in his uncle Bolai’s boat. The crew consisted of three men: Horen, his uncle and a man he didn’t know. They were on the edge of the Bay of Bengal, a couple of miles from the mouth of the Raimangal River, within sight of land. There was no formal warning system in those days and the storm had taken them completely by surprise. One minute there was sunshine and a stiff breeze; half an hour later a gale had hit them from the southwest. Visibility had become very poor and they had lost sight of all their usual landmarks. They had had no compass on board: their eyes were the only instruments they used in navigating and in any case it was rare for them to venture out of sight of the coast. Nor would any instrument have been of much help, for the gale did not leave them the option of steering in a direction of their choice. The wind was so fierce that there was no resisting its thrust. It had swept them before it in a northeasterly direction. For a couple of hours they could do nothing other than cling to the timbers of their boat. Then, all of a sudden, they had found themselves heading toward a stretch of flooded land: they could see the crowns of some trees and the roofs of a few dwellings — huts and shacks for the most part. The storm’s surge had drowned most of the shoreline; the flood was so deep that they didn’t know they had made landfall until their boat slammed into a tree trunk. The boat’s planks came apart instantly, but Horen and his uncle managed to save themselves by clinging to the tree. The third member of their crew also took hold of a branch, but it broke under his weight. He was never seen again.

Horen, then just twenty years old, had great strength in his arms. He was able to pull both himself and his uncle out of the raging water, into the tree’s higher branches. The two men used their gamchhas and lungis to tie themselves to the tree. They joined hands and held on as the gale howled around them. At times the wind was so fierce that it shook the tree as though it were a giant jhata, a reed broom — but somehow Horen and Bolai had managed to cling on.

When the wind abated a little, they discovered that the water had deposited a great deal of debris in the tree, including some pans and utensils that had been swept out of the surrounding dwellings. Horen salvaged a round-bellied clay hãri, which he then used to collect some rainwater: if it wasn’t for his foresight, thirst would have driven them from the tree the next day.

In the morning the sky was bright and clear but a torrent was still raging under their feet: the floodwaters were so high they reached most of the way up the tree trunk. Looking around them, they saw that they were not the only people to take shelter in a tree: many others had saved their lives in a similar fashion. Whole families, young and old alike, were sitting on branches. When greetings were shouted from one tree to another, they learned that they had been blown nearly thirty miles from where they had been when the storm hit. They had been carried across the border and thrust ashore near the Agunmukha (“fire-mouthed”) River, not far from the town of Galachipa.

“It’s in Bangladesh now,” Horen said. “In Khulna District, I think.”

They spent two days in the tree, without food or any additional water. When the floodwaters subsided they tried to make their way to the nearest town. They had not gone far before they turned back: it was as if they were in the vicinity of some terrible battlefield massacre. There were corpses everywhere, and the land was carpeted with dead fish and livestock. They found out that three hundred thousand people had died.

“Like Hiroshima!” said Kanai under his breath.

Horen and Bolai were fortunate soon to meet up with some fishermen who had managed to salvage their own boat. Making their way along unfrequented creeks and khals, they had slipped back into India.

That was Horen’s experience of a cyclone, and the memory of it would last him through a second lifetime — he never wanted to have it repeated.

Horen finished his story just as Garjontola was coming into view.

A carpet of crimson light lay on the island’s watery threshold, covering the dolphin pool and stretching all the way to the sun, now setting on the far side of the distant mohona. The angle of the light was such that any boat, even a very low one, would have cast a long shadow. But there were no boats or other vessels in sight. Piya and Fokir had not returned.

A GIFT

AT SUNSET, taking a reading of the boat’s position, Piya saw that they were still a good seven miles from Garjontola. She knew then that it would be impossible to get back to the Megha by the end of the day — but it wouldn’t matter much, she decided; there was no reason to think that Horen would be especially worried. He would know that they had gone too far afield to make it back by nightfall.

She guessed that Fokir had come to the same conclusion, for it soon became clear that he was looking for a place to anchor the boat for the night. A likely spot showed itself just as the last glow of daylight was fading from the sky — a stretch of water where a small channel flowed, at a right angle, into a wider one. At this time, with the water at its height, even the narrower channel looked like a river of substantial size, but Piya knew that when the tide turned it would shrink to a comfortable creek. The land on every side was thickly forested and the failing light gave the mangroves the look of a solid barricade of greenery.

There was a patch of relatively calm water where the channels met, and it was here that Fokir dropped anchor. Before doing so, he made a gesture that took in their surroundings and told Piya the name of the place: Gerafitola.

Once the boat was at anchor, Piya noticed that the moon had risen. It was almost perfectly spherical, except for a thin shaving missing on one side. Around it was a halo with a faint copper tint. The moist, unmoving air seemed to have a magnifying effect, for this moon was larger and brighter than any she could ever remember seeing.

As she was taking in the sight, Fokir crawled through the boat’s hood and came to sit beside her; raising a finger, he traced an arc on the darkening purple backdrop of the sky. When Piya shook her head to tell him she saw nothing there, he gestured to her to look more closely. Again his finger described an arc, circling around and over the moon. Now, as her eyes grew accustomed to the silvery light, she saw a faint spectrum of colored light: it seemed to hang in the air for an instant and then it was gone. She glanced at Fokir to ask if he had seen it too, and he gave her an affirmative nod. Then his finger traced another arc in the sky, a vast one this time, spanning the horizon, and it dawned on her that he was thinking of a rainbow of some kind. Was that what he had shown her, a rainbow made by the moon? He gave her an earnest nod and she nodded too — she had seen it after all, or at least glimpsed it, so what did it matter that she had never heard of such a phenomenon before?

Piya’s eyes strayed from the moon and the shadows of the forest and then fell to the currents playing on the river’s surface: it was as if a hand hidden in the water’s depths were writing a message to her in the cursive script of ripples, eddies and turbulence. She remembered a snatch of something Kanai had said about Moyna — something about the unseen flow of the water and the visible play of the wind. Did he, Fokir, understand what it meant to be the kind of person who could inspire and hold such constancy, especially when it was overlaid with so much pain and so many difficulties? What could she, Piya, offer him that would amount to even a small part of what he already had?

They sat unmoving, like animals who had been paralyzed by the intensity of their awareness of each other. When their eyes met again it was as if he knew at a glance what she was thinking. He reached for her hand and held it between his, and then, without looking in her direction again, he moved off to the stern and began to kindle a fire in his portable stove.

When the meal was ready, he offered her a plate of rice and spiced potatoes. She could not bring herself to decline it, for the plate seemed like an offering, a valedictory gesture. It was as if their shared glimpse of the lunar rainbow had somehow broken something that had existed between them, as if something had ended, leaving behind a pain of a kind that could not be understood because it had never had a name. Afterward, when the stove and the utensils had been put away, Piya took one of Fokir’s blankets and went to her usual place in the bow, while he retreated to the shelter of the hood.

She remembered the letter Kanai had given her and took it out of her backpack. It would be good to have the distraction — she needed to think of something else. Fokir saw her peering at the envelope in the moonlight, and he passed her a matchbox and a candle. She lit the wick and placed the candle on the boat’s prow, using its own drippings to fasten it in its place. The night was so still and airless that the flame held perfectly steady.

Tearing open the envelope, she began to read.

Dearest Piya:

What does it mean when a man wants to give a woman something that is beyond price — a gift that she, and perhaps only she, will ever truly value?

This is not a purely rhetorical question. It is inspired by a genuine perplexity, for I have never known this impulse before. For someone like me, a man whose chief concerns have always been with the here and now — and, let us admit it, with myself for the most part — this is new ground, uncharted terrain. The emotions that have generated this impulse are of a shocking novelty. Would it be true then to say that I have never been in love before? I had always prided myself on the breadth and comprehensiveness of my experience of the world: I had loved, I once liked to say, in six languages. That seems now like the boast of a time very long past. At Garjontola I learned how little I know of myself and of the world.

Suffice it to say then that I have never before known what it was to want to ensure someone’s happiness, even if it should come at the cost of my own.

Yesterday it dawned on me that I have it in my power to give you something that no one else can. You asked me what Fokir was singing and I said I couldn’t translate it; it was too difficult. And this was no more than the truth, for in those words there was a history that is not just his own but also of this place, the tide country. I said to you the other day that there are people who live their lives through poetry. My uncle was one such, and, dreamer that he was, he knew how to recognize others of his kind. In his notebook he tells a story of an occasion when Fokir, at the age of five, recited from memory many of the cantos that comprise a tide country legend: the story of Bon Bibi, the forest’s protectress. To be specific, he remembered a part of the story in which one of its central figures, a poor boy called Dukhey, is betrayed by Dhona, a ship’s captain, and is offered to the tiger-demon, Dokkhin Rai.

My uncle was amazed by this feat, because then, as now, Fokir did not know how to read or write. But Nirmal recognized also that for this boy those words were much more than a part of a legend: it was the story that gave this land its life. That was the song you heard on Fokir’s lips yesterday. It lives in him and in some way, perhaps, it still plays a part in making him the person he is. This is my gift to you, this story that is also a song, these words that are a part of Fokir. Such flaws as there are in my rendition of it I do not regret, for perhaps they will prevent me from fading from sight, as a good translator should. For once, I shall be glad if my imperfections render me visible.

From the epic of the tide country, as told by Abdur-Rahim: Bon Bibir Karamoti orthat Bon Bibi Johuranama — The Miracles of Bon Bibi or The Narrative of Her Glory.

THE STORY OF DUKHEY’S REDEMPTION

The next day at dawn, Dhona spoke to all his men. “Let’s turn and go back to Kedokhali again.”

From his perch Dokkhin Rai watched the ships setting sail. He thought, “Ah, he’s decided to follow this trail.”

So to Kedokhali went the demon deva, gathering his followers from near and afar. His honeybees came swarming; they numbered in lakhs. He ordered them all to yield their honey and wax. The forest was filled with the buzzing of bees as the swarms set to work, hanging their hives from trees.

Soon, on his boat, Dhona sighted Kedokhali. His heart filled with joy at the thought of all he would see. After his men had beached their ships on the shore, he said, “Come, let us look for beehives once more.” To the forest they went, Dhona leading the way; and there they were, not just one, but an amazing array. When they turned back at last, gladness lightened Dhona’s head. After much food and drink he went off to his bed; but late at night he began once more to dream. Suddenly Dokkhin Rai appeared, his eyes agleam. “The time,” said the demon, “is at hand for our tryst; be sure to say my name when you go to the forest. Although the bees will leave at the sound of my name, do not think that the honey is all yours to claim. And there is one more thing I must tell you about: however large your party, let there be no doubt. Let no man touch the hives that hang in the jungle — your sailors must only look and marvel. The bees will open the hives and carry the combs; they’ll load them on your boats for you to take to your homes. But remember, on Dukhey we’ve made a bargain; he must be left behind when you board your sampan. Take care! Beware! I want no excuse or pretext — or it will be your life that’s in jeopardy next.”

With these words the deva vanished into the night, while Dhona slept on till the first crack of daylight. He spoke to his men at the first namaaz of the day: “We must go to the forest, all except Dukhey.”

When the boy learned he was to be left behind, he cried out aloud, “Chacha, I must speak my mind.” Wiping the tears from his cheek with an unsteady hand, he said, “I know it’s all going just as you’d planned. Do you think I don’t know of your deal with the deva? You’re going to sail home, leaving me here forever.”

“Who told you this?” said Dhona, feigning a laugh. “Wherever did you hear such a tale and a half?”

Leaving Dukhey to cook dinner, Dhona led the way; in the forest they were met by a dazzling display. Though they whispered and marveled, not one of the men dared touch the hives till the deva’s name was spoken. At the sound of those words the bees began to swarm, and a demon host came flying, raising a storm. Hearing their lord’s name, they rushed into the forest, to load Dhona’s boats and to speed him on his quest.

Then said Dokkhin Rai, “Look, Dhona, watch my power; my army will load your boats within the hour.” He spoke to the demons and ghostly ganas, the dainis, the pishaches and all the rakshasas. They made the honey into a portable hoard and took it to the boats, carrying it on board. When all was ready, Dokkhin Rai said, “My job’s done. Your boats are full to the brim, every single one.”

Dhona went to the boats and with his own eyes saw: they were all loaded and could not take any more. Then said the deva, “Here’s a still better reward: empty your boats and throw the honey overboard. With a rich load of wax I’ll fill your boats instead; it’ll freshen your fortune and bring luck on your head. Forget the honey — your kismet is much better; take the wax instead, you’ll see, it’ll make you richer.”

So into the river Dhona poured his honey, and so that creek came to be known as Madhu Khali. And the place where Dhona chose to pour his cargo, there the brackish tides turned sweet and mellow.

Then it was time for a new and richer hoard. “Now listen to what I say,” said the demon-lord. “When you sell this, you’ll see I’ve given you a boon; you’ll live like a king and it’ll bring you good fortune. But don’t forget to leave the boy; be warned, listen; recall how this began — Dukhey was the reason. Don’t try any tricks or attempt any ruse; I’ll drown you in the Ganga and all your ships you’ll lose.”

With these words he left, vanishing beyond appeal. In the meantime Dukhey sat in the boat, trying to cook a meal. But the firewood was wet and the pots would not boil — tears were the result of his unrewarded toil. Then he spoke a name, his voice muted by sorrow, and Bon Bibi heard him in distant Bhurukundo. In the blink of an eye she crossed the divide; she spoke to the child, standing close by his side. “Why did you call me?” she said. “What’s happened to you?”

“I’m in trouble,” said he. “I don’t know what to do. Chacha told me to prepare a meal for tonight, but the kindling’s all wet and the fire won’t light.”

“All will be well,” she said. “Don’t worry in the least. With the help of the Lord, I will make you a feast.”

With these words of kindness she gave him reassurance; then raising her hand, she passed it over his pans. And such was her barkot, so strong her benediction, that the pots filled instantly with rice and with saalan. This was a feast that needed neither fire nor heat; she said to the boy, “Look! They’ll have plenty to eat!”

But Dukhey, still fearful, importuned her once more. “Dhona’ll set sail tomorrow, leaving me ashore. Mother of the earth, tell me: who’ll save me then?”

“My child,” said Bon Bibi, “do not fear this demon. He cannot kill you; he’s not of so fine a fettle that he’d survive a blow of my brother’s metal.”

With these last words, Bon Bibi took leave of Dukhey, and soon enough Dhona returned from his foray. His first words to the boy were “Here, Dukhey, tell me: where’s our food? Where have you put it, on which dinghy?”

“Here it is,” said Dukhey. “It’s on this boat, Chachaji. Look, I’ve cooked the meal and kept it ready.”

Dhona and the others went where he had pointed. And then, seating themselves, they waited to be fed. The food they were served was so fine, so ambrosial, that some began to say it was hardly credible. How could such a fine feast be a mere boy’s doing? Or, for that matter, any human being’s? Now, in undertones, they began to speculate. Had Bon Bibi perhaps taken a hand in his fate? “On his own the boy can’t find his way to the ghat. For sure Bon Bibi has taken him to heart.”

And so sat the men, talking in the dimming light, until the day had waned and dusk had turned to night. The others slept in their boats without care or qualm, but to fretful Dukhey sleep was proscribed, haraam. He could not close his eyes for fear and worry. “They’ll be off tomorrow,” he thought, “abandoning me. I’ll be left behind, as the demon’s shikar; Dokkhin Rai will hunt me in his tiger avatar.”

Hour after hour he sat bewailing his plight; not a single wink of sleep blessed his eyes that night. The other men slept in peace, happily replete; not till daybreak did they wake after night’s retreat. Standing amidst the ships, Dhona said to his men, “Undo the moorings: it’s time to be off again.” Six boats were unloosed at Dhona Mouley’s behest. Only one stayed where it was, apart from the rest.

“Why are you waiting?” said Dhona. “Come on, let’s go.”

“There’s no wood to cook with,” they said. “We need some more.”

Dhona turned to Dukhey when the crew had spoken. “Go and fetch some firewood; there’s not enough for these men.”

“Oh, Chachaji,” said Dukhey, “please don’t give me this chore. Why not send someone else? I don’t want to go ashore. There’s no lack of men here: ask another to rise. Why is it me that you must always tyrannize?”

“You’ve sat on my boat,” said Dhona, “and eaten your fill; yet when I make a request you defy my will? Right in my face you fling this stinging reply: ‘I won’t go ashore, I won’t even try.’ I’m hurt by these insults, this insolence and pride.”

“Chachaji,” said Dukhey, “it’s for you to decide. Of your pact with the deva, I’m not unaware. I know that he wants you to leave me right here. While the demon devours me in a tiger’s guise, you’ll go home rich, carrying this fabulous prize. Back in the village, you’ll go to see my mother. ‘What could I do?’ you’ll say. ‘He met a tiger.’ When you first came to our home, what a tale you spun; on the strength of that, she gave you her only son. Your sacred pledge you’re now going to dishonor; you’ll send me away and be off within the hour. When the news reaches my home, when my mother hears, her life will be over and she’ll choke on her tears.”

“You’re a sly one,” said Dhona, “an expert in deceit. Getting you to obey is a singular feat. If you know what’s best for you, you’ll do as I say, or I’ll just kick you off — you’ll have to go either way.”

“Wasn’t it only for this that you brought me along? You knew I’d die while you grew rich and strong. So then why so much slander, why so much abuse? If the tiger takes me, what do you have to lose? Now salaam chacha, I touch your feet,” said Dukhey. “Point me in the right direction, show me the way.”

Raising a finger, Dhona pointed to the forest. Dukhey stepped off, sorrow swelling in his breast. And even as he crossed the deep mud of the banks, back on the boats they were pulling in the planks.

Then, in his heart’s silence, Dhona began to say, “Listen, Dokkhin Rai: now I’ve given you Dukhey. For the wrongs of the past, deva please forgive me. I wash my hands; now it’s all up to Bon Bibi.”

Away they sailed, and when the boy saw that they’d left, he could move no more; he was utterly bereft. It was then from afar that the demon saw Dukhey. Dhona had kept his word; he had left him his prey. Long had he hungered for this muchawaited prize; in an instant he assumed his tiger disguise. “How long has it been since human flesh came my way? Now bliss awaits me in the shape of this boy Dukhey.”

On the far mudbank Dukhey caught sight of the beast: “That tiger is the demon and I’m to be his feast.”

Raising its head, the tiger reared its immense back; its jowls filled like sails as it sprang to attack. The boy’s life took wing on seeing this fearsome sight. “O Ma, Bon Bibi, deliver me from this plight. Where are you O Mother? Why’re you keeping away? If you don’t come now, it’ll mean the end for Dukhey.”

With these words on his lips, Dukhey lost consciousness. But Bon Bibi, far away, had heard his cry of distress. “I heard the child call,” she said to Shah Jongoli. “The demon will kill him, brother. Quick, come with me. That devil’s desires have outrun him of late; his appetites have grown, they’re like a flood in spate. We can’t let the boy vanish into that vast maw.” In the blink of an eye they crossed to the far shore.

When Bon Bibi saw Dukhey lying motionless, she took him to her lap with a gentle caress. There lay his body, unmoving and dust-defiled, while the world’s mother strove to rouse the inert child. Then Shah Jongoli knelt beside Dukhey’s still form, and breathed life into him with the ism-e-aazam.

Roused to anger, Bibi spoke to Shah Jongoli, “It’s time to cure this demon of his deviltry. Brother, strike him a blow that will fill him with dread.”

Picking up his staff, Shah Jongoli ran ahead. So eager was he to carry out his command that he struck the tiger with the flat of his hand. The demon reeled, so great was the force of the blow, and in panic fled south as fast as he could go.

WHEN SHE REACHED the end, Piya went to sit in the middle of the boat, and before long Fokir came to sit beside her, as she knew he would. His hands were on the gunwale, so she put her palm on his wrist. “Sing,” she said. “Bon Bibi — Dukhey — Dokkhin Rai. Sing.”

He hesistated momentarily before yielding to her plea. Tilting back his head, he began to chant, and suddenly the language and the music were all around her, flowing like a river, and all of it made sense; she understood it all. Although the sound of the voice was Fokir’s, the meaning was Kanai’s, and in the depths of her heart she knew she would always be torn between the one and the other.

She turned over the last sheet in the sheaf of pages Kanai had given her and saw a postscript on the back. It said, “And in case you should wonder about the value of this, here is what Rilke says.”

Look, we don’t love like flowers

with only one season behind us; when we love,

a sap older than memory rises in our arms. O girl,

it’s like this: inside us we haven’t loved just some one

in the future, but a fermenting tribe; not just one

child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins

of mountains, the dry riverbed

of former mothers, yes, and all that

soundless landscape under its clouded

or clear destiny — girl, all this came before you.

FRESH WATER AND SALT

THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT was such that Kanai had to get up and open the door of his cabin to let in some air. Returning to his bunk, he left the door ajar, and found that the gap had given him a view of a slice of the surroundings. The moon was bright enough to eke shadows from the trees on Garjontola, creating dark patches on the silvery surface of the water. A wedge of moonlight had even crept into the cabin, illuminating the heap of mud-soaked clothes Kanai had discarded the day before.

Sleep was slow in coming and what there was of it was anything but restful: time and again Kanai was shaken awake by his dreams. At four in the morning he gave up the struggle and got out of his bunk. Pulling his lungi tight around his waist, he stepped out on deck and found, to his surprise, that Horen was already seated there, on one of the two armchairs. He was watching the river with his chin resting on his fists. At Kanai’s approach he raised his head and glanced over his shoulder. “So you couldn’t sleep either?” he said.

“No,” Kanai replied, taking the other chair. “And how long have you been up?”

“About an hour.”

“Were you watching for the boat?”

Horen made a rumbling noise at the back of his throat. “Maybe.”

“But is there enough light right now?” Kanai said. “Could they find their way back at this time of night?”

“Look at the moon,” said Horen. “It’s so bright tonight. Fokir knows these khals better than anybody else. He could find his way back — if he wanted to, that is.”

Kanai could not immediately unravel the suggestion implicit in this. “What do you mean by that, Horen-da?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to come back tonight.” Horen looked him full in the eyes and his face creased into a slow, wide smile. “Kanai-babu,” he said, “you’ve seen so many places and done so many things. Do you mean to tell me you don’t understand what it is for a man to be in love?”

The question struck Kanai with the force of a blow to the chest — not just because he could not summon an immediate answer, but also because it seemed so out of character, so strangely fanciful, coming from a man like Horen.

“Do you think that’s what it is?” Kanai said.

Horen laughed. “Kanai-babu, are you just pretending to be blind? Or is it just that you cannot believe that an unlettered man like Fokir could be in love?”

Kanai bridled at this. “Why should you say that, Horen-da? And why should I believe any such thing?”

“Because you wouldn’t be the first,” Horen said quietly. “It was the same with your uncle, you know.”

“Nirmal? Saar?”

“Yes, Kanai-babu,” Horen said. “That night when he and I landed on Morichjhãpi in my boat? Do you really think it was just the storm that blew us there?”

“Then?”

“Kanai-babu, as you know, Kusum and I were from the same village. She was six or seven years younger than me and when I was married off she was still a child. I was fourteen at the time and had no say in the matter — as you know, these things are often decided by the elders. But Kusum’s father I knew well because I sometimes worked on his boat. I was with him on his last trip, and I was standing on the bãdh with Kusum at the time he was killed. After that, I felt I had a special obligation to Kusum and her mother, even though there was little I could do for them. I was young, barely twenty, and I had a wife and children of my own. I knew things had become very bad for them when her mother told me she had approached Dilip to find her a job. I tried to warn her; I tried to tell her about the kind of job he would find for her. She wouldn’t listen to me, of course — she knew so little of the world that these things were beyond her imagining. But after she left, I felt that Kusum was more than ever my responsibility. That was why I brought her to your aunt, in Lusibari. But when it became clear that even this would not be enough to protect Kusum from Dilip, I helped her get away — from Lusibari, from the tide country. I thought I was protecting Kusum, but she was, in her own way, much stronger than me: she did not need my protection or anyone else’s. This I discovered on the day I took her to the station at Canning, so she could go to look for her mother. Once we got there, I realized I might never see her again. I told her not to go; I begged her to stay. I feared for her safety, a girl wandering so far afield alone. I told her I would leave my wife, my children; I said I would live with her and marry her. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She was determined to do what she wanted and so she did. To this day, I remember the sight of her as I put her on the train. She was still wearing a frock and her hair had not grown out yet. She looked more like a child than a grown woman. The train vanished, but that image stayed in my heart.

“Eight years went by and then we began to hear rumors about refugees coming to lay claim to Morichjhãpi. People said Kusum was with them, that she had returned from the mainland as a widow and had brought her son with her. I found out where she was living and two or three times rowed past her house in my boat, but I could not summon the courage to go in. That day when I took your uncle to Kumirmari, all I could think of was Kusum and how close she was. And then, on the way back, the storm came up, as if it had been willed by none other than Bon Bibi.

“And from that day on, I could not stop going to Morichjhãpi.

Your uncle became my excuse for going there, just as I became his. I saw that he, like me, could not stop thinking of her: she had entered his blood just as she had mine. At her name he would come alive, his step would change, words would come pouring out of him. He was a man of many words, your uncle — and I had very few. I knew he was wooing her with his stories and tales — I had nothing to give her but my presence, but in the end it was me she chose.

“The night before the killing, Kanai-babu, while your uncle was writing his last words in his notebook, Kusum said to me, ‘Give him some more time. Come, let’s go outside.’ She led me to my boat and there she gave me proof of her love — all that a man might need. It was high tide and the boat, which I had hidden among the mangroves, was rocking gently in the water. We climbed in and I wiped the mud from her ankles with my gamchha. Then she took my feet between her hands and washed them clean. It was as if the barriers of our bodies had melted and we had flowed into each other as the river does with the sea. There was nothing to say and nothing to be said; there were no words to chafe upon our senses: just an intermingling like that of fresh water and salt, a rising and a falling as of the tides.”

HORIZONS

AT DAYBREAK, when Piya woke, her face and hair were wet with dew, but the water’s surface was almost completely clear of fog. She guessed this had something to do with the unusually warm night and was pleased to notice that a brisk breeze had started up and was stirring the river: it looked as though the weather would be somewhat more pleasant than it had been the day before.

Fokir was still asleep, so she lay motionless in her place, taking in the sounds of the early morning: the hooting of a distant bird, the rustle of the wind blowing through the mangroves and the lapping of the swift currents of high tide. As her ears grew attuned to her surroundings, she became aware of a sound that did not fit with the rest — a brief, breathy noise not unlike a sigh. It sounded like an exhalation, and yet it was not at all like the breathing of an Irrawaddy dolphin. She turned over onto her stomach and reached for her binoculars: her instincts told her it had to be a Gangetic dolphin, Platanista gangetica. Moments later she spotted a finless back rolling through the water some five hundred feet from the boat’s bow. Yes, that was what it was; she was excited to have her intuition so quickly confirmed. Nor was it just a single animal: there were maybe three of them in the immediate vicinity of the boat.

Piya sat up. So far the paucity of her encounters with Platanista had disappointed her — this sighting was an unexpected bonus. She took a GPS reading and then reached into her backpack for some data sheets.

It was the data sheets that made her suspect something was amiss. Logging the dolphins’ appearances, she saw that they were surfacing with unusual frequency, with barely a minute or two separating their exhalations. And more than once, along with the breathing, she heard a sound not unlike a squeal.

There was something odd here, she decided; this was not the way these animals normally behaved. She put away her data sheets and raised her glasses to her eyes.

As she was puzzling over the dolphins’ behavior, her mind wandered idly back to an article she had read some years before. It was by a Swiss cetologist, Professor G. Pilleri, one of the pioneers in river dolphin studies, a doyen of the field. As far as she could recall, the article had been written in the 1970s. Pilleri’s research had taken him to the Indus River, in Pakistan, and he had paid some fishermen to catch a pair of Platanista, a male and a female. The article, she remembered, had described the process in great detail. It was no easy task to capture these dolphins, for Platanista’s echolocation was so accurate that they were usually able to detect and evade a net once it had been lowered into the water. The fishermen had resorted to a strategy of luring unwary dolphins into places where nets could be dropped on them from above.

Once his two specimens had been secured, Pilleri’s next step was to transport them to his laboratory in Switzerland. The story of this journey, Piya recalled, was so complicated that it had made her laugh out loud as she was reading it. The animals had been wrapped in wet cloths and taken by motorboat to a roadhead on the Indus. A waiting truck took them to a railway station and they traveled by train to Karachi. All through the journey their bodies were regularly moistened with water from their native river. A Land Rover met the train in Karachi and transported them to a hotel, where a swimming pool had been prepared for the two cetaceans. After the dolphins had rested there for a couple of days, the Land Rover came back to take them to Karachi Airport. There they were driven to the tarmac and loaded onto a Swissair plane. With the two dolphins in its hold, the plane made a stopover in Athens before proceeding to Zurich, where the temperature was well below freezing. Warmed by blankets and hot-water bottles, the animals were put in a heated ambulance and driven to an anatomical institute in Bern, where a special pool awaited them — a tank in which the water was kept at a temperature similar to that of the Indus.

It was in this strange habitat — this Indus in the Alps — that Pilleri had observed a curious and previously unknown aspect of Platanista behavior. These animals were very sensitive to atmospheric pressure: weather fronts passing over Bern would cause them to behave in markedly unusual ways.

Piya was trying to recall the exact details of their behavior when her glasses strayed from the river and gave her a glimpse of the horizon to the southeast. Although the rest of the sky was cloudless, at this point of the compass the horizon had acquired a peculiar steely glow.

Piya let her glasses drop and looked from the sky to the dolphins and back again. Now she understood. Without thinking she began to shout, “Fokir, there’s a storm coming! We have to get back to the Megha.”

HOREN’S FINGER POINTED Kanai’s eyes to the southeastern quadrant of the sky, where a dark stain had spilled over the horizon like antimony from an eyelid. “It’s come quicker than I thought,” Horen said, glancing at his watch. “It’s half past five now. I’d say we can wait for thirty minutes more. Any longer than that and we won’t be able to make it back to Lusibari.”

“But Horen-da,” Kanai said, “how can we leave them here to face the cyclone on their own?”

“What else can we do?” Horen said. “It’s either that or we’ll all go down with this bhotbhoti, right here. It’s not just my life or yours I’m concerned about: there’s my grandson to think of too. As for safety, don’t think too much about that — I’m not sure we’re going to make it back either.”

“But couldn’t you find a sheltered spot somewhere nearby?” Kanai said. “Someplace where we could wait out the storm?”

Horen’s forefinger swept over the landscape. “Kanai-babu, look around. Where do you see any shelter? Do you see all these islands around us? When the storm hits, they’re going to be under several feet of water. If we stay here, this bhotbhoti would either capsize in midstream or be driven aground. We have no chance here. We have to go.”

“And what about them?” said Kanai. “What are their chances?”

Horen put a hand on Kanai’s shoulder. “Look. It won’t be easy, but Fokir knows what to do. If anyone has a chance, he does; his grandfather is said to have survived a terrible storm on Garjontola. Beyond that, what can I say? It’s not in our hands.”

LOSSES

IT WAS JUST AFTER five-thirty when Fokir nudged his boat out of the creek’s mouth. Although the wind had stiffened, Piya took heart from the fact that the sky was clear for the most part. And in the beginning the wind and the waves were more a help than a hindrance, pushing the boat in the direction they wanted to go, so it was like having extra pairs of hands to help with the rowing. Piya had her back to the bow, so at the outset, when the wind was behind them, she was able to watch the waves as they advanced on the boat from the rear. At this point they were just undulations on the water’s surface and there was no foam on their crests — they swept up quietly from behind the boat, raising the stern and then dropping it again before moving on.

After half an hour Piya took a reading of their position and was reassured by the result. If they managed to keep up the pace, she calculated they would be back at Garjontola in a couple of hours — probably before the storm broke.

But as the minutes crept by, the wind kept strengthening and the dark stain in the sky seemed to spread faster and faster. Their route, in any case, was a circuitous one, involving many changes of direction. Every time they turned, the wind came at them from a different angle, sometimes hitting them in such a way as to make the boat list. As the speed of the wind mounted, the waves grew taller and flecks of white appeared along their crests. Although there was no rain, the wind carried the churning spray right into their faces. Piya’s clothes were soon wet and she had to lick her lips to keep them from developing a crust of salt.

On entering their first mohona, they ran into waves much taller than those they had already faced. When the water curled up ahead of them, they had to strain against the oars to carry the boat over the crests. They seemed to be working twice as hard to cover half the distance: it was as if a once level track had now been stretched over a range of hills and valleys.

Piya took her next GPS reading after they had crossed the mohona — brief as it was, the operation gave her a minute to catch her breath. But there was nothing heartening about the reading itself: it confirmed her impression about the drop in their pace — it had slowed to a crawl.

Piya was reaching for her oars when something brushed against her cheek and fell into her lap. She glanced at it and saw that it was a mangrove leaf. She looked to her left, the direction from which the leaf had come. It so happened that they were in the center of a widebodied river — she estimated that the wind had carried the leaf a good mile and a half, from the shore to the boat.

They made another turn and now Piya found herself rowing with her back to the wind. It was oddly disorienting to be hit by a wave coming from her blind side; after it had lifted her up there would be a dizzying moment when the boat seemed to hang on the crest of the watery ridge. Then suddenly she would find herself tobogganing backward into the wave’s trough, clutching at the gunwales to keep her balance. Water came sluicing over the bow with each wave and it felt as if a bucket were being emptied on her back.

The impact of these descents soon began to shake loose the assorted bits of plywood that covered the boat’s deck. They began to quiver and rattle and the wind caught hold of one of them and tore it off the boat; it vanished in an instant. Minutes later, another slat of plywood went spinning away, and then another, exposing the boat’s bilges. Piya found she could see right into the hold where Fokir stored his crabs.

Another turn brought the wind around so that it was hitting them side-on, tilting the boat steeply to one side. The oar in Piya’s right hand was now almost a foot higher than the other: she had to lean sideways over the gunwale to bring it into contact with the water. As the boat tilted, her backpack began to roll around under the hood.

She had thought it would be dry there, but now it hardly seemed to matter. The spray was coming at them from so many different angles that everything was soaked. The boat lurched again and the pack was tossed into the air; it would have gone over but for the hood. Piya dropped her oars and scrambled forward to throw herself on the backpack. All her equipment was in it — her binoculars, her depth sounder, everything except her GPS monitor, which she had attached to a belt loop on her pants. The backpack also contained all the data she had gathered over the past nine days: she had put the sheets in a plastic bag and fastened it to her clipboard.

Piya was looking for some means of securing this precious piece of luggage when Fokir interrupted his rowing to pass her a length of rope. She took it from him gratefully and after threading it through the pack’s straps, she bound it tightly to one of the bamboo hoops of the hood. Then she opened the flap just wide enough to check her equipment. The backpack was made of a heavy waterproof material and its contents were more or less dry. As she was closing the pack her eyes fell on the pocket where she kept her cell phone: she had not activated it for use in India, so it hadn’t been charged or turned on since her arrival. Now, as the boat was heaving and listing below her, a sudden seizure of curiosity made her press the power button. Her spirits leapt at the sight of the familiar green glow of the screen, only to fall again when an icon appeared to indicate that there was no coverage where she was. She put it back in the bag and fastened the flap again before returning to her oars.

The wind seemed even stronger now and the boat’s tilt was more pronounced than before. As she pushed at the oars, her mind strayed back to the phone. She remembered reading accounts of people making calls from under the wreckage of derailed trains, from the rubble of houses that had been demolished by earthquakes, from the burning towers of the World Trade Center.

Who would she have called? Not her friends on the West Coast — they didn’t know where she was and it would take too long to explain. Kanai maybe? She remembered that along with his address he had also written down a couple of phone numbers on the back of his “present” — one of them was for a cell phone. He was probably on a plane, on his way to New Delhi; or maybe he was in his office already? It would be strange to reach him: he was sure to say something that would make her laugh. She bit her lip at the thought of this: it would be good to laugh right now, with the boat groaning as if it were going to come apart at any minute.

She shut her eyes tight, as she used to when she was little. Let it be on land, she said to herself, muttering aloud, as if in prayer. Whatever happens, let it be on land. Not the water, please. Not the water.

The boat banked into another turn, and after it had rounded the corner, Fokir rose to a crouch and pointed in the direction of a distant spit of land: Garjontola.

“The Megha?” she said. “Horen?” He shook his head and she raised herself to get a better look. It took just a glance to confirm what Fokir had indicated — the boat was not there. The waters that flanked the island were empty except for the white-flecked waves.

She was still trying to absorb this when the wind caught hold of the gray plastic sheet that lined the boat’s hood — the remains of the

U.S. mailbag Piya had recognized when she first stepped into the boat. Suddenly a part of the sheet broke out from under the thatch. It billowed outward like a sail and there was a fearsome cracking sound in the timbers. It was as if the wind were a clawed animal doing all it could to tear the boat apart.

The boat’s stern reared up as the sheet strained at its ties, pushing down the bow. Fokir dropped his oars and threw himself forward to cut the mailbag free. But even as he was hacking at the plastic bindings there was a loud cracking sound and the entire hood tore away from the boat and went sailing off into the sky, with Piya’s backpack trailing behind like the streamer of a kite. Within minutes the whole unlikely assembly of objects — the hood, the plastic sheet, the backpack with all its equipment, its data and Kanai’s gift — was carried so far off as to become a small speck in the inky sky.

IT WAS ALMOST eleven when the Megha steamed into the Raimangal’s mohona and turned in the direction of Lusibari. The water, Kanai noticed, had become peculiarly translucent: against the steely darkness of the sky, the brown water seemed to glow like neon, as though lit up from beneath.

This was the widest expanse of water they had crossed and the waves were taller than any they had encountered yet. The sound of the bhotbhoti’s engine changed in rhythm with the waves, rising to a plaintive whine as it plowed into the swells. So much water flew over the bow that the windows of the wheelhouse were continually awash in spray.

Through most of the journey Kanai had sat in the wheelhouse with Horen, who had grown increasingly taciturn as the wind picked up speed. Now, as the Megha met the waves of the mohona, Horen turned to Kanai and said, “We’re taking on a lot of water. If it gets into the engine, we’re finished. You’d better go below and see what you can do.”

Kanai nodded and rose to his feet, stooping to keep his head from bumping into the low roof. Pulling up the hem of his lungi, he tucked it in at the waist before opening the door.

“Be careful,” Horen said. “The deck will be slippery.”

No sooner had Kanai turned the handle than the wind tore the door from his grip and slammed it back on its hinges. Kanai kicked off his sandals and left them in the wheelhouse. Then he went to deal with the door. He had to step around and put his shoulder behind it, to push it shut against the wind. Step by step, keeping his back against the bulwark, he began to move toward the ladder that led to the deck below. The ladder was exposed to the wind and he felt the gusts clawing at him as he put his foot on the first rung — had he been wearing sandals, they would have been torn from his feet. The wind was pulling at him so hard that he knew it would take only a slight slackening in his grip for a gust to tear him from the ladder and send him into the churning water below.

When he stepped off the last rung and entered the cavernous galley, his foot sank immediately into ankle-deep water. He spotted Nogen deep in the deck’s unlit interior, standing beside the casing that housed the diesel engine, grimly baling water with a plastic bucket.

Kanai waded through the ankle-deep water. “Is there another bucket?”

Nogen answered by pointing to a tin container afloat in a slick of oily water. Kanai took hold of its handle, but when he reached for the water he was all but knocked off his feet by a sudden lurch of the bhotbhoti’s hull. Righting himself, he found that to fill the bucket was far more difficult than it might seem, for the Megha’s pitching kept the water moving in such a way that it seemed almost to be toying with them, making them lunge ineffectually from side to side. In a while Nogen broke off to point to the shore. “We’re close to Lusibari now,” he said. “Is that where you’re going?”

“Yes. Aren’t you?”

“Not us,” said Nogen. “We have to go to the next island: it’s the only sheltered place in this area. You’d better go and ask my grandfather how we’re going to drop you off. It won’t be easy in this wind.”

“All right.” Kanai clawed his way back up the ladder and went step by step along the slippery gangway to the wheelhouse.

“How is it down there?” Horen said.

“It was bad when we were in the middle of the mohona,” said Kanai. “But it’s better now.”

Horen flicked a thumb at the windshield. “Look, there’s Lusibari. Do you want to get off there, or do you want to come with us?”

Kanai had thought this over already. “I’ll get off at Lusibari,” he said. “Mashima is alone. I should be with her.”

“I’ll take the bhotbhoti as close to the bank as I can,” Horen said. “But after that you’ll have to wade across.”

“What about my suitcase?”

“You’d better leave it behind. I’ll bring it to you later.”

Kanai cared about only one thing in the suitcase. “I’ll leave everything but the notebook,” he said. “I’ll wrap it in plastic so it won’t get wet. I want to take it with me.”

“Here, take this.” Horen reached under the wheel and handed him a plastic bag. “But be quick now. We’re almost there.”

Kanai let himself out of the wheelhouse and stepped into the gangway. A couple of steps brought him to the cabin, and he opened the door just wide enough to slip inside. In the half-light he unlocked his suitcase, took out Nirmal’s notebook and wrapped it carefully in plastic. The engine went dead just as he was stepping out again.

Horen was waiting for him in the gangway. “You don’t have far to go,” he said, pointing to Lusibari’s embankment, some hundred feet away. Along the base of the earthworks, where the waves of the mohona crashed against the island, there was a fringe of foaming white surf. “The water isn’t deep,” Horen said. “But be careful.” As an afterthought he added, “And if you see Moyna, tell her that I’ll go back to get Fokir as soon as the storm lets up.”

“I want to go too,” Kanai said. “Be sure to stop at Lusibari.”

“I’ll pick you up when the time’s right.” Horen held up a hand to wave him off. “But be sure to let Moyna know.”

“I will.”

Kanai went aft to the stern, where Nogen had already pushed out the gangplank. “Step onto it backward,” Nogen said. “Use your hands to hold on, as if it were a ladder. Or else the wind will knock you off.”

“All right.” Kanai tucked the plastic-wrapped notebook into the waist of his lungi in preparation for the descent. Then he turned around and stooped to take hold of the edges of the gangplank with his hands. Immediately he knew he would have been blown into the water had he not taken heed of the boy’s advice: without using his hands he would not have been able to withstand the pressure of the wind. He crawled backward on all fours and straightened up as he stepped off the plank. He held on to the plank for a moment, steadying himself as his feet sank slowly through the water and into the mud. The water was about hip deep and he could feel the currents surging around him. He moved the notebook up so that it was pressed against his chest. Then, keeping his eyes fixed on the shore, he began to wade toward the embankment, stepping carefully with his bare feet, making sure of his footing. When the water fell to the level of his knees he breathed more easily — he was almost there now and knew he would make it. He heard the bhotbhoti’s engine start up somewhere behind him and turned to look.

And then it was as if the wind had been waiting for this one unguarded moment: it spun him around and knocked him sideways into the water. He thrust his hands into the mud and came up spluttering. He scrambled to his feet just in time to see the notebook bobbing in the current some thirty feet away. It stayed on the surface for a couple of minutes before sinking out of sight.

GOING ASHORE

THE TIDE SHOULD have been at a low ebb when the boat reached Garjontola, but because of the wind the level of the water was higher than Piya had ever seen it before. The gale was blowing so hard that it seemed to be holding the surface of the river at an incline: it was as if the water had been mounded into a sloping ramp that reached well past the island’s banks. Fokir was able to take the boat over the barrier of mangrove roots, right into a thicket of tree trunks. Piya noticed that he had not steered the boat to his usual Garjontola landing place; rather, he had taken it toward the most elevated point on the island, a headland that jutted into the river.

When the bow was just short of the tree trunks, Fokir vaulted over the gunwale to pull the boat deeper into the island. He put himself at the front end, where it was easier to maneuver. Piya went to the rear, so she could put her whole weight behind the stern. Between the two of them they were able to push the boat into a position where it was lodged between the trunks of several trees. Then Fokir jumped in again and removed the cover from the boat’s rear hold. Piya climbed in too, to look over his shoulder, and saw that the hold and its contents had survived the battering of the wind. Along with Fokir’s stove and utensils, there were some nutrition bars and a couple of bottles of water rolling around inside. She stuffed the bars into the pockets of her jeans and handed Fokir one of the bottles of water. Although her throat was parched, she was careful to sip very sparingly from her bottle: there was no telling how long it might have to last.

Then Fokir took out the old sari he had once given Piya to use as a pillow. Sheltering the fabric with his body, he twisted it into a rope and gestured to Piya to tie it around her waist. She could not see the point of this but did it anyway. While she was doing this, Fokir reached into the hold again and took out the coiled line that he used for catching crabs. He handed Piya the nylon roll and motioned to her to handle it carefully, because of the sharp edges of the bits of tile and bait that were attached to it. After they had stepped off the boat, he showed her how to pay out the line while keeping the coils sheltered from the wind with her chest. He upturned the boat and ran the line through its timbers and around the trunks of the surrounding trees. Piya’s job, she quickly realized, was only to see that the line stayed taut as it was paid out: any slack was instantly picked up by the wind, which threatened to turn the weights and the bait into vibrating projectiles.

In a few minutes, the line became a densely spun web, anchoring the boat to the forest. Yet despite the care he had taken, Fokir had not been able to keep the line’s attachments out of his way. By the time he was done, his face and chest were crosshatched with nicks and cuts.

Now he took hold of Piya’s arm and led her deeper into the island, crouching low against the wind. They came to a tree that was, for a mangrove, unusually tall and thick-trunked. Fokir gestured to her to climb up, and he followed at her heels as she pulled herself into the branches. When they were about eight feet off the ground, he chose a sturdy branch and motioned to her to sit astride it, facing the trunk. Then he seated himself behind her, like a pillion rider on a motorcycle, and made a sign to ask her for the rolled-up sari tied around her waist. She saw now what it was for — he was going to use it to tie them both to the tree trunk. She gave him one end of the fabric and helped him pass it around the trunk. After another turn, the sari was all paid out and Fokir tied its ends in a tight knot.

Powerful as it already was, the gale had been picking up strength all along. At a certain point its noise had reached such a volume that its very quality had undergone a change. It sounded no longer like the wind but like some other element — the usual blowing, sighing and rustling had turned into a deep, earsplitting rumble, as if the earth itself had begun to move. The air was now filled with what seemed to be a fog of flying debris — leaves, twigs, branches, dust and water. This dense concentration of flying objects further reduced the visibility in what was already a gathering darkness. The light was as dim as it might be at the approach of night, but Piya’s watch told her it was just one in the afternoon. It was difficult to imagine that the wind could grow any stronger or more violent, yet Piya knew it would.

IN HIS BARE FEET, with his body and clothes caked in mud, Kanai scrambled over the embankment and crouched low beneath it, to shelter himself from the wind. Drenched as he was, he became aware that the wind had grown colder as it picked up strength; he wrapped his arms around his chest and looked up, shivering, at the sky.

Although it had lost all trace of blue, the sky was not uniformly dark: the clouds above were a multiplicity of shades, ranging from an ashen gray to a leaden blue-black. There seemed to be many distinct layers of clouds, each distinguished by a minute difference of shading, each traveling on its own trajectory. It was as though the sky had become a dark-tinted mirror for the waters of the tide country, with their myriad cross-cutting currents, eddies and whirlpools, all with their slight but still discernible distinctions of coloring.

The casuarina trees that lined the embankment were now bent almost double in the wind and the fronds of the surrounding coconut palms had been twisted into flame-shaped knots. As a result, Kanai was able to look much farther into the interior of the island than he might have in other circumstances. The hospital, being one of Lusibari’s tallest structures, was easy to spot.

He started toward the hospital at a run but after a few steps was forced to slow down because the path was slippery and his bare feet kept sliding on the mud. For much of the distance he saw no one about — many of the islanders seemed to have abandoned their dwellings, while others had fortified themselves behind closed doors. But once the compound’s gate came into view, Kanai saw that streams of people were heading there, in order to take shelter inside the hospital — it was easy to see why, for there was something immensely reassuring about the building’s squat solidity. Mostly these people were on foot, but a number were seated on cycle-vans, principally the elderly and the very young. Kanai joined the throng, and on stepping onto the building’s portico, he saw that a full-scale evacuation was under way. Teams of nurses and other volunteers were at work, guiding patients down corridors and helping them climb the stairs that led to the fortified cyclone shelter on the upper floor.

At the far end of the ground-floor veranda stood the diminutive figure of a small boy. Winding his way through the crowd, Kanai went up to him. “Tutul?”

The boy didn’t recognize him and made no answer, so Kanai squatted on his heels and said, “Tutul, where’s your mother?”

Tutul nodded at one of the wards, and just as Kanai was rising to go toward it Moyna came hurrying out, dressed in her white nurse’s uniform. She stared at his wet lungi and mud-caked shirt: it was clear she hadn’t recognized him.

“Moyna,” said Kanai. “It’s me, Kanai.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth as she took this in. “But what happened to you, Kanai-babu?”

“Never mind that, Moyna,” he said. “Listen. I have to tell you something —”

She cut him short. “And where are they — my husband and the American?”

“That’s what I was about to tell you, Moyna,” he said. “They’re at Garjontola — we had to leave them there.”

“You left them behind?” Her eyes flared in angry indignation. “With the cyclone coming — you left them in the jungle?”

“It wasn’t my decision, Moyna,” Kanai said. “It was Horen who decided. He said there was nothing else to be done.”

“Oh?” The mention of Horen seemed to calm her a little. “But what will they do out there, with no shelter, nothing?”

“They’ll be all right, Moyna,” Kanai said. “Fokir will know what to do, don’t worry. Others have survived storms on that island, his grandfather included.”

Moyna nodded in resignation. “There’s nothing to be done now. All we can do is pray.”

“Horen wanted me to tell you he’s going to go back for them as soon as the storm blows over. I’ll be going too — he’s going to come here to pick me up.”

“Tell him I want to come too,” said Moyna, taking hold of Tutul’s hand. “Be sure to tell him.”

“I will,” said Kanai with a glance in the direction of the Guest House. “And now I’d better go and see how Mashima is.”

“Take her upstairs to the Guest House,” Moyna said. “I’ve closed the shutters. You’ll be fine up there.”

THE WAVE

THE MINUTES CREPT BY and the objects flying through the air grew steadily larger. Where first there had been only twigs, leaves and branches, there were now whirling coconut palms and spinning tree trunks. Piya knew that the gale had reached full force when she saw something that looked like a whole island hanging suspended above their heads: it was a large clump of mangroves, held together by the trees’ intertwined roots. Then Fokir’s hand tightened on her shoulder and she caught a glimpse of a shack spinning above them. She recognized it immediately: it was the shrine he had taken her to in the interior of Garjontola. All at once the bamboo casing splintered and the images inside went hurtling off with the wind.

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.

Fokir, she noticed, was already standing, balancing on the branch and stretching his legs. She had the impression that he was looking around urgently, searching for another branch to move to. But there was nothing in sight: their tree had lost all its limbs except the one they were sitting on.

Fokir lowered himself to a crouch and touched her knee, making a small, barely perceptible gesture. She saw that he was pointing into the distance to another thicket of trees. Following his finger, she saw a tiger pulling itself out of the water and into a tree on the far side of the island. It seemed to have been following the storm’s eye, like the birds, resting whenever it could. It became aware of their presence at exactly the same moment they spotted it; although it was several hundred yards away, she could tell that it was an immense animal, so large it seemed incredible that the tree could sustain its weight. Without blinking, the tiger watched them for several minutes; during this time it made no movement other than to twitch its tail. She could imagine that if she had been able to put a hand on its coat, she would have been able to feel the pounding of its heart.

The tiger seemed to sense the storm’s return, for it glanced over its shoulder before slipping off the branch. They saw its head bobbing in the water for a few minutes and then the moonlight dimmed and the roar of the wind filled their heads again.

Piya swung her legs on the branch and turned quickly to resume her position. When she was facing the tree, they looped the sari around the trunk and Fokir tied it in a knot. They had barely had time to get back in place when the storm was upon them. Again the air was full of hurtling projectiles.

But something had changed and it took Piya a moment to register the difference. The wind was now coming at them from the opposite direction. Where she had had the tree trunk to shelter her before, now there was only Fokir’s body. Was this why he had been looking for a branch on another tree? Had he known right from the start that his own body would have to become her shield when the eye had passed? She tried to break free of his grasp, tried to pull him around so that for once she could be the one who was sheltering him. But his body was unyielding and she could not break free of it, especially now that it had the wind’s weight behind it. Their bodies were so close, so finely merged, that she could feel the impact of everything hitting him, she could sense the blows raining down on his back. She could feel the bones of his cheeks as if they had been superimposed on her own; it was as if the storm had given them what life could not; it had fused them together and made them one.

THE DAY AFTER

EVEN THOUGH it was moving very slowly, the Megha had covered two-thirds of the distance to Garjontola when a boat appeared in the distance — the first to be seen in hours.

It was a bright, crisp day, cool but windless. Although the level of the water had been declining steadily since the passage of the storm, the mangroves were still mostly submerged. The water’s surface was covered in an undulating carpet of green, while the forest — or what little could be seen of it — was completely denuded of leaves, stripped down to trunks and stalks. With the drowning of the landscape the channels’ shores had disappeared, making navigation doubly difficult. As a result, since its departure from Lusibari at dawn, the Megha’s speed had rarely risen above a crawl.

Horen was the first to recognize the craft in the distance. With its hood gone, its appearance was so changed that neither Kanai nor Moyna had thought to associate it with Fokir’s boat. But Horen had built the boat with his own hands, and it had been with him for many years before he passed it on: he knew it at once. “That’s Fokir’s boat,” he said. “I’m sure of it. The storm’s ripped off the hood, but the boat is the same.”

“Who’s in it?” Kanai asked, but this elicited no response from Horen.

Kanai and Moyna went to stand in the Megha’s bow. The water seemed to congeal as the two craft inched toward each other. In a while Kanai realized that there was only one person on the boat: it was impossible to tell who it was, man or woman, for the figure was caked from head to toe in mud. Moyna’s hands, like his own, were fastened on the gunwale, and he saw that her knuckles had paled, just like his own. Even though they were right next to each other, a chasm seemed to open between them as they peered into the distance at the boat, trying to guess whom it was carrying toward them.

“It’s her,” Moyna said at last, in a whisper that rose quickly to a cry. “I can see. He’s not there.” Balling her hands into fists, she began to pound the marital bangles on her head. One of them broke, drawing blood from her temple.

Kanai snatched at her wrists to keep her from hurting herself. “Moyna, wait!” he said. “Wait and see…”

She froze and again they stared across the water, as if hypnotized by the approaching boat.

“He’s not there! He’s gone.” Moyna’s legs folded under her and she dropped to the deck. There was an outbreak of pandemonium as Horen came running out of the wheelhouse, shouting to Nogen to cut the engine. Between the two of them, Horen and Kanai carried Moyna into one of the cabins and laid her on a bunk.

By the time Kanai stepped out on deck again, Piya had drawn alongside the Megha. She was standing unsteadily upright, clutching the GPS monitor that she had been using to find her way. Kanai went to the stern and held his hand out to her. Neither of them said a word, but her face crumpled as she stepped onto the Megha. It seemed that she was going to fall, so Kanai opened his arms and she stumbled against him, resting her head on his chest. Kanai said softly, “Fokir?”

Her voice was almost inaudible: “He didn’t make it.”

It had happened in the last hour of the storm, she said. He’d been hit by something very big and very heavy, an uprooted stump; it had hit him so hard that she too had been crushed against the trunk of the tree they were sitting on. The sari had kept them attached to the trunk even as he was dying. His mouth was close enough to her ear so that she’d been able to hear him. He’d said Moyna’s name and Tutul’s before the breath faded on his lips. She’d left his body on the tree, tied to the trunk with Moyna’s sari, to keep it safe from animals. They would have to go back to Garjontola to cut it down.

THEY BROUGHT THE body to Lusibari on the Megha, and the cremation was held the same evening.

There had been very few casualties on the island: the early warning had allowed those who would have been most at risk to take shelter in the hospital. As a result, the news of Fokir’s death spread quickly and a great number attended the cremation.

Through that night and the following days, Piya stayed by Moyna’s side, in her room, where many mourners had gathered. One of the women fetched water so she could clean up and another lent her a sari and helped her put it on. Mats had been set out on the floor for the mourners, and when Piya seated herself on one, Tutul appeared beside her. He placed a couple of bananas on her lap and sat with her, holding her hand, patient and unmoving. She put her arm around him and held him close, so close that she could feel his heart beating against her ribs. She remembered then the impact of the hurtling stump that had crashed into Fokir’s unprotected back; she remembered the weight of his chin as it pressed into her shoulder; she remembered how close his lips had been to her ear, so close that it was from their movement, rather than from the sounds he uttered, that she had understood he was saying the names of his wife and his son.

She recalled the promises she had made to him in the silence of her heart, and how, in those last moments, with the wind and the rain still raging around them, she had been unable to do anything for him other than to hold a bottle of water to his lips. She remembered how she had tried to find the words to remind him of how richly he was loved — and once again, as so often before, he had seemed to understand her, even without words.

HOME: AN EPILOGUE

NILIMA WAS SITTING at her desk, a month after the cyclone, when a nurse came running over from the hospital to tell her that she’d seen “Piya-didi” stepping off the Basonti ferry: she was now heading toward the Trust’s compound.

Nilima was unable to disguise her astonishment. “Piya? The scientist?” she said. “Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, Mashima, it’s her. No doubt about it.”

Nilima sank back in her chair as she tried to absorb this.

A fortnight had passed since she’d said goodbye to Piya, and the truth was that she had not expected ever to see her again. The girl had stayed in Lusibari for a while after the cyclone, and during that time she’d become a strangely unnerving presence in the Guest House, a kind of human wraith, inward, uncommunicative, leadenfaced. On her own, Nilima would not have known how to deal with her, but fortunately Piya had formed a friendship with Moyna during that time. Nilima had encountered them several times in and around the Guest House, sitting silently next to each other. On occasion, Nilima had even mistaken the one for the other. Having lost her own clothes, Piya had perforce taken to wearing saris — colorful reds, yellows and greens — for Moyna had given her those of her own clothes that she herself would no longer wear. What was more, Moyna had also cut off her hair, in keeping with the custom, so it was now as short as Piya’s. But this was where the resemblance ended: as far as demeanor and expression were concerned, the contrast between the two women could not have been greater. Moyna’s grief was all too plainly visible in the redness of her eyes, while Piya’s face was stonily expressionless, as if to suggest that she had retreated deep within herself.

“Piya’s in shock,” Kanai had said to Nilima one day shortly before his own departure. “It’s hardly surprising. Can you imagine what it was like for her to sit through the last hours of the storm, sheltered by Fokir’s lifeless body? Leave aside the horror of the memory — imagine the guilt, the responsibility.”

“I understand all that, Kanai,” Nilima had said. “But that’s why I think it would be easier for her to recover if she was in some familiar place. Don’t you think it’s time for her to go back to America now? Or else couldn’t she go to her relatives in Kolkata?”

“I suggested that to her,” Kanai had replied. “I even offered to arrange for a ticket to the U.S. But I don’t think she heard me, really. What’s uppermost in her mind right now, I suspect, is the question of her obligation to Moyna and Tutul. She needs to be left alone for a bit, to think things through.”

Nilima’s response had been tinged with apprehension. “So you’re just going to go off and leave her here? For me to deal with?”

“I don’t think she’ll be any trouble to you,” Kanai had said. “In fact, I’m sure she won’t be. She just needs some time to pull herself together. To have me here will be no help — exactly the opposite, I suspect.”

Nilima had not raised any further objections to his departure. “Of course, Kanai, I know how busy you are…”

Kanai had put his arm around her shoulder and given her a hug. “Don’t worry,” he’d said. “It’ll be all right. I’ll be back soon. You’ll see.”

She’d received this with a noncommittal shrug. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

Kanai had left the next day — a week after the cyclone — and some days later Piya had come down to tell Nilima that she was leaving too.

“Yes, my dear, of course. I understand.” Nilima had made an effort to keep her voice level so as not to betray her relief. She’d been wondering for the past couple of days whether Piya’s presence in Lusibari might lead to trouble with the authorities. Did she have a visa? Did she have the right permit? Nilima didn’t know and didn’t like to ask. “You’ve been through a lot,” Nilima had said warmly. “You must give yourself time to recover.”

“I’ll be back soon, though,” Piya had said, and Nilima had replied, with hearty goodwill, “Yes, my dear, of course you will.”

But Piya’s valediction was not an unfamiliar one; Nilima had heard the same words often before, on the lips of many well-meaning foreign visitors. None of them had ever been seen or heard from again, so it was not without reason that Nilima had assumed that the same would be true of Piya. But now here she was, just as she had said.

THE KNOCK SOUNDED before Nilima had had the time to properly prepare herself. She could think of nothing to say except “Piya! You’re back.”

“Yes,” said Piya matter-of-factly. “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

This was, of course, exactly what Nilima had thought, so she was quick to change the subject. “So tell me then, Piya, where did you go off to?” The girl had bought herself some new clothes, she noticed: Piya was dressed, as before, in a white shirt and cotton pants.

“I went to Kolkata,” Piya said. “I stayed with my aunt and spent a lot of time on the Internet. You’ll be glad to know there was a terrific response.”

“Response? To what?”

“I sent out some letters explaining what happened during the cyclone and how Fokir had died. Some of my friends and colleagues took up the cause and circulated a chain letter to raise money for Moyna and Tutul. The response was better than we’d expected. The money’s not as much as I’d have liked, but it’s something: it’ll buy them a house of their own and maybe even provide a college education for Tutul.”

“Oh?” said Nilima, sitting up. “I’m glad to hear that, very glad indeed. I’m sure Moyna will be too.”

“But that’s not all,” said Piya.

“Really?” Nilima raised her eyebrows. “What else have you been up to?”

“I wrote up a report,” said Piya, “on my dolphin sightings in this area. It was very impressionistic, of course, since I’d lost all my data, but it sparked a lot of interest. I’ve had several offers of funding from conservation and environmental groups. But I didn’t want to go ahead without talking to you first.”

“Me?” cried Nilima. “What do I know about such matters?”

“You know a lot about the people who live here,” Piya said. “And for myself, I don’t want to do the kind of work that places the burden of conservation on those who can least afford it. If I was to take on a project here, I’d want it to be under the sponsorship of the Badabon Trust, so the local fishermen would be involved. And the Trust would benefit too. We’d share the funding.”

At the mention of funding, Nilima, ever pragmatic, began to pay closer attention. “Well, it’s certainly worth a thought,” she said, biting her lip. “But, Piya, have you considered the practical aspect of this? For instance, where would you live?”

Piya nodded. “I have an idea for that too,” she said. “I want to run it by you, to see what you think.”

“Go on.”

“I thought, if you were agreeable, that maybe I’d rent the upper floor of this house from you — the Guest House, in other words. I could really set myself up there, with computers and a small office. I’d need an office to keep track of the funds.”

Nilima smiled indulgently. Having had long experience in administration, she could tell that Piya had no idea of what she was getting into. “But, Piya,” she said gently, “to start something on that scale you’d need a staff, you’d need people to help. You can’t do it on your own.”

“Yes, I know,” Piya said. “I’ve thought about that too. My idea was that Moyna would manage that end of things — part-time of course, when she’s not on duty at the hospital. It would give her an additional source of income, and I’m sure she’d be able to handle the work. And it would be good for me too. She could maybe teach me some Bangla in exchange for some English.”

Nilima twisted her hands together, frowning, trying to anticipate every possible objection to Piya’s plan. “But, Piya, what about permits and visas and so on? You’re a foreigner, remember? I don’t know if it’ll be legally possible for you to stay here for an extended period of time.”

This, too, Piya took in her stride. “I spoke to my uncle about that,” she said. “He told me I’m eligible for a card that would allow me to stay on indefinitely — something about being a person of Indian origin. And as for the permits to do research, he said that if the Badabon Trust was willing to sponsor my work, he’d take care of the rest. He knows of some environmental groups in New Delhi that will intervene with the government.”

“My goodness! You really have thought of everything.” Nilima gave a bark of laughter. “I suppose you even have a name for this project of yours?” Nilima had meant this ironically, but when Piya gravely cleared her throat, she realized that the matter was no joke for the girl. “So you do have a name? Already?”

“I was thinking,” Piya said, “that we might name it after Fokir, since his data are going to be crucial to the project.”

“His data?” Nilima raised her eyebrows. “But I thought you’d lost all your data in the storm?”

Piya’s eyes brightened. “Not all of it,” she said. “I still have this.” She took her hand-held monitor out of her pocket and showed it to Nilima. “See, this is connected to the satellites of the Global Positioning System. On the day of the storm it was in my pocket. It was the only piece of equipment that survived.” At the touch of a button the screen flickered on. Piya tapped a key to access the memory. “All the routes that Fokir showed me are stored here. Look.” She pointed to a sinuous zigzag line that had appeared on the screen. “That was the route we took on the day before the storm. Fokir took the boat into every little creek and gully where he’d ever seen a dolphin. That one map represents decades of work and volumes of knowledge. It’s going to be the foundation of my own project. That’s why I think it should be named after him.”

“My goodness!” said Nilima. Her eyes strayed to the fragment of sky that was visible through the nearest window. “So you mean to say it’s all preserved up there?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

Nilima fell silent as she pondered the mystery of Fokir and his boat, writing a log of their journeys and locking it away in the stars. Presently she reached for Piya’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “You’re right,” she said. “It would be good to have a memorial for Fokir, on earth as well as in the heavens. But as for the details, you’ll have to give me a little time to think it through.” She sighed and rose to her feet. “Right now, my dear, what I need most is a cup of tea. Would you like one too?”

“Yes, I would,” said Piya. “Thank you.”

Nilima went into her kitchen and filled a kettle with water from a filter. She was pumping her kerosene stove when Piya put her head around the door.

“And what about Kanai?” said Piya. “Have you had any news from him?”

Nilima put a match to the stove and replaced the grill. “Yes, I have,” she said. “I got a letter from him just the other day.”

“And how is he?” said Piya.

Nilima laughed as she placed the kettle on the stove. “Oh, my dear!” she said. “He’s been almost as busy as you.”

“Is that so? What’s he been doing?”

“Let me see,” said Nilima, reaching for a teapot. “Where shall I begin? The most important thing is that he’s restructured his company so that he can take some time off. He wants to live in Kolkata for a while.”

“Really?” said Piya. “And what’s he going to do there?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Nilima said as she spooned some longhoarded Darjeeling tea leaves into the pot. “He told me he was going to write the story of Nirmal’s notebook — how it came into his hands, what was in it, and how it was lost. But what he means by that you can ask him yourself. He’ll be here in a day or two.”

“That soon?”

Nilima nodded. The kettle’s cover had begun to rattle, so she took it off the stove. Pouring a stream of boiling water into the teapot, she said, “And I hope you won’t mind if Kanai stays upstairs while he’s here — in the Guest House?”

Piya smiled. “No,” she said. “Not at all. In fact it’ll be good to have him home.”

Piya’s choice of words surprised Nilima so much that she dropped the spoon she was using to stir the tea leaves. “Did I hear you right?” she said, directing a startled glance at Piya. “Did you say ‘home’?”

Piya had said the word without thinking, but now, as she reflected on it, furrows appeared on her forehead.

“You know, Nilima,” she said at last, “for me, home is where the Orcaella are, so there’s no reason why this couldn’t be it.”

Nilima’s eyes opened wide and she burst into laughter. “See, Piya,” she said. “That’s the difference between us. For me, home is wherever I can brew a pot of good tea.”