River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [144]
Allow removed the pipe from Bahram’s hands and picked up the tray. ‘Mister Barry rest now. Allow come back soon-soon.’ He took himself off, with the implements, and Bahram lay back, revelling in the supreme contentment that only opium could confer: that marvellous god-like lightness in which the body and the spirit were freed from gravity, of all kinds.
The fog was all around him now, and his weightless body seemed to be floating upon a cloud. He closed his eyes and let himself drift away.
How long he lay like that he did not know but there came a moment when he understood that he was no longer alone on the divan: someone was sitting by his feet – a woman. He knew she had been sent up from the deck below, and at first Bahram felt distinctly annoyed with Allow for disobeying his instructions. Had the woman been the usual type of sing-song girl, perfumed and painted and decked out with cheap jewellery, he would have sent her packing at once; he might even have shouted and lost his temper. But that was not the kind of woman she was: her clothing was as plain as could be – grey trousers and a tunic – and far from being coquettish or flirtatious she had draped a shawl over her head, as if to protect herself against the thick, smoky mist that was rising off the river. Nor did she make any move towards Bahram; she sat motionless at the bottom of the divan, with her feet drawn up and her arms clasped around her knees. There was something oddly comforting about her presence and Bahram’s initial annoyance with Allow turned slowly to gratitude; he was a budmash, of course, but a good fellow really, very considerate in his own way.
The woman seemed perfectly content to stay where she was and in the end it was Bahram who beckoned to her to approach him. When she made no response he sat up against the bolster and reached for her hand. He was pleased to find that it was not the hand of a sing-song girl – it was accustomed to hard work, with rough calluses on the palm. Her sleeve was wet so he pushed it back and lifted the inside of her wrist to his nose; there was not the faintest whiff of perfume about her; she smelled like the river, of woodsmoke and silted water. Something stirred in Bahram, some deep need, some yearning that had gone so long unacknowledged that he had forgotten its very existence. He tugged at her arm and when she seemed to resist, he turned his body around and laid his head against her: it was almost as if he were back with Chi-mei now, in that bubble of impossible absurdity they had once inhabited together, floating side by side in that coracle which had no proper name, which wasn’t love but wasn’t quite ‘lob-pidgin’ either.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come; I give cumshaw. Plenty big cumshaw.’
When she made no move he was seized with the fear that she would refuse him. To test her, he brushed her cotton-clad nipple with his lips; there was a wetness in the cloth that surprised him, but he was so glad she hadn’t pushed him away that he thought nothing of it. He undid the buttons and laid his face between her small, firm breasts and breathed deeply, sucking in the smell of smoke and water.
Her hands were on him too now, roaming through the folds of his clothing with the ease of familiarity, parting his choga, undoing the ties of his angarkha, gently lifting the sadra from under the strings of the kasti, loosening the top of his leggings and slipping down, to touch him in his secret places. Almost without effort, she drew him into her, pivoting her body so that her covered face was turned away from him, and his cheek was pressed against the back of her wet,