River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [259]
His throat, head and chest began to ache with the craving for a pipe – but it was impossible to light one here, in sight of his own staff. He would have to wait till he reached the Anahita. He lay down and began to count the hours.
It was past midnight when he was finally alone in the Owners’ Suite. He opened the window and locked the door before making himself a pipe. His fingers were trembling feverishly as he drank in the smoke. Within a few seconds his hands became steadier and his knotted muscles began to relax.
The night was hot and still: he had already taken off his angarkha, but his kasti and sadra were also drenched in sweat now. He took them off and lay bare-bodied on his bed, wearing nothing but a pair of pyjamas.
Through the window he could see the outlines of the desolate ridges and headlands of Hong Kong, looming above the ship, silhouetted against a brightly moonlit sky. The waters around the Anahita were crowded with ships and many small boats were paddling about. He could hear the splash of oars and the voices of boat-girls, raised in laughter and complaint. Their sound was very familiar, like echoes from the past; he was not in the least surprised when he heard his name being called: ‘Mister Barry! Mister Barry!’
He went to the window and saw that a sampan had pulled up, under the overhang of the Anahita’s stern. There was a boy in the back, leaning against the yuloh; he was wearing a conical sun hat so his face was in darkness. But Bahram could hear him clearly, even though he was speaking in a whisper, so as not to alert the ship’s crew: ‘Come, Mister Barry. Come. She waiting you – waiting you inside.’ He pointed to the sampan’s covered hull.
The window of the Owners’ Suite had been built, Bahram knew, to serve also as an escape hatch, in case of fire or other emergencies. Underneath was a glass-fronted box with a rope ladder. Bahram took the ladder out, attached the grapnels to the sill, and dropped it over the side. When the boy had taken hold of the bottom rung, Bahram swung his pyjama-clad leg over the sill and began to descend. He went down very carefully, rung by rung, watching every step.
‘Come, Mister Barry. Ha-loy!’
The sampan was under his feet now, so he let go of the ladder and pushed it away.
The boy was pointing at the sampan’s covered cabin: ‘There, Mister Barry. She wait you there.’
Bahram crept under the bamboo matting and immediately a hand brushed against his bare chest. He recognized at once the feel of the rough, callused fingers.
‘Chi-mei?’ He heard her giggle, and stretched his arms into the darkness. ‘Chi-mei! Come!’
Afterwards, as so often before, they crawled out on the prow. Lying flat on their bellies they looked at the moon’s image, shimmering in the water. It was shining so brightly that her face too was illuminated by its reflected glow: she seemed to be looking up from under the water’s surface, smiling at him, beckoning with a finger.
‘Come, Mister Barry. Come. Ha-loy!’
He smiled. ‘Yes, Chi-mei, I’m coming. It’s time now.’
The water was so warm that it was as if they were still on the boat, lying in each other’s arms.
*
The dangling rope ladder caught Paulette’s attention early in the morning, soon after she had made her daily climb up the slopes of the island, to the plot of land Fitcher had rented for his plants.
The spot was high enough to provide her with a fine view of the strait and every morning, at the end of her climb, she would spend a few minutes in the shade of a tree, counting the ships in the bay and catching her breath.
Over the preceding weeks the channel between Hong Kong and Kowloon had become busier than ever before. Many British-owned ships had left Macau and moved there; most of Macau’s British residents had left too and were now living on the anchored ships. As a result, a floating settlement had come into being in the shadows of Hong Kong’s peaks and ridges; although its core was formed by the fleet of foreign ships, many boat-people had also gathered there, offering every