River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [15]
What are you talking about, Vico?
When patrão reached out right now, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Bahram shook his head brusquely: kai nai – it was nothing.
But patrão – you were calling a name also.
Freddy’s name?
Yes, but you were calling him by his other name – the Chinese one …
Ah Fatt?
This was a name that Bahram almost never used, as Vico well knew: Impossible – you must have heard wrong.
No, patrão, I’m telling you. I heard you.
There was a cloudiness in Bahram’s head now and his tongue seemed to have grown heavier. He began to mumble: It must have been the fumes … the opium … I was seeing things.
Frowning worriedly, Vico took hold of Bahram’s elbow and nudged him towards the ladder. Patrão must go to the Owners’ Suite and take some rest. I’ll look after everything here.
Bahram cast a glance around the hold: never before had his fortunes been so closely tied to a single consignment of cargo – and yet never had he felt so utterly indifferent to the fate of his merchandise.
All right then, Vico, he said. Bail out the hold and save everything you can; let me know what the damage is.
Yes, patrão; be careful now, go slowly.
The ladder seemed unaccountably long as Bahram made his way up. Whether this was because of the pitching of the ship or the giddiness in his head, he could not tell, but he made no attempt to hurry, climbing with great deliberation, pausing for breath between the rungs. He reached the top to find a half-dozen lascars waiting to go down, and they parted to make way for him, staring at him in wide-mouthed astonishment. Following their gaze, Bahram glanced down at himself and saw that he, like Vico, was so thickly caked with melted opium that his clothes had become a kind of second skin. His head was thumping and he stopped to steady himself before stepping over the coamings of the hatch. The taste of opium was not new to Bahram: during his stays in Canton he smoked a pipe every now and again – he was one of those fortunate people who was able to take it occasionally without suffering unconquerable cravings afterwards: he never missed it when he was away. But there was a great difference between inhaling the drug and ingesting it in this raw, gummy, semi-liquid state. He was completely unprepared for the sudden nausea and weakness: he had no thought now for the losses he had suffered in the hold; his eyes and his mind were focused instead, with an almost clairvoyant concentration of attention, on Chi-mei: everywhere he looked, his eyes conjured up her face. Like a Chinese lantern the image seemed to hang before him, lighting his path as he made his way aft through the cramped innards of the ship to the spacious, sumptuously appointed poop-deck where he and the ship’s officers had their quarters.
The Owners’ Suite lay at the end of a long gangway with many doors leading off it. A group of lascars was standing crowded around one of these doors, and on seeing Bahram approach, one of them, a tindal, said to him: Sethji – your munshi has been badly hurt.
What happened?
The rolling of the ship must have tipped him out of his bunk. Somehow his trunk got loose and crashed on him.
Will he live?
Can’t say, Sethji.
The munshi was an elderly man, a fellow Parsi. He had dealt with Bahram’s correspondence for many years. He could not think how he would manage without him; nor could he summon the energy to grieve.
Are there any other casualties? Bahram said to the tindal.
Yes, Sethji; we’ve lost two men overboard.
And what’s the damage to the ship?
The whole head of the ship was ripped off, Sethji, all of it, including