The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [11]
The bazaars ended in a causeway that led away from the town toward the Matla River. Although the causeway was a long one, it fell well short of the river: on reaching its end Kanai saw what Nilima had meant when she said the river had changed. He remembered the Matla as a vast waterway, one of the most formidable rivers he had ever seen. But it was low tide now and the river in the distance was no wider than a narrow ditch, flowing along the center of a halfmile-wide bed. The freshly laid silt that bordered the water glistened in the sun like dunes of melted chocolate. From time to time, bubbles of air rose from the depths and burst through to the top, leaving rings on the burnished surface. The sounds they made seemed almost to form articulate patterns, as if to suggest they were giving voice to the depths of the earth itself.
“Look over there,” said Nilima, pointing downstream to a boat that had come sputtering along the remains of the river. Although the vessel could not have been more than thirty feet in length, it was carrying at least a hundred passengers: it was so heavily loaded that the water was within half a foot of its gunwales. It came to a halt and the crew proceeded to extrude a long gangplank that led directly into the mudbank.
Kanai froze in disbelief. What would happen now? How would the boat’s passengers make their way across that vast expanse of billowing mud?
On the boat, preparations for the crossing were already in train. The women had hitched up their saris and the men were rolling up their lungis and trousers. On stepping off the plank, there was a long, drawn-out moment when each passenger sank slowly into the mud, like a spoon disappearing into a bowl of very thick dal; only when they were in up to their hips did their descent end and their forward movement begin. With their legs hidden from sight, all that was visible of their struggles was the twisting of their upper bodies.
Nilima frowned as she watched the men and women who were floundering through the mud. “Even to look at that hurts my knees,” she said. “I could do it once, but I can’t anymore — it’s too much for my legs. That’s the problem, you see: there isn’t as much water in the river nowadays and at low tide it gets very shallow. We brought the Trust’s launch to take you to Lusibari, but it’ll be at least two hours before it can make its way here to pick us up.” She directed an accusatory glance at Kanai. “It really would have been so much easier if you had come through Basonti.”
“I didn’t know,” said Kanai ruefully. “I wish you’d told me. The only reason I wanted to come through Canning was that this was the route we took when you brought me to Lusibari in 1970.”
As he looked around, taking in the sights, Kanai had a vivid recollection of Nirmal’s silhouette, outlined against the sky. Nirmal had put him in mind of a long-legged waterbird — maybe a heron or a stork. The impression was heightened by his clothes and umbrella: his loose white drapes had flapped in the wind like a mantle of feathers, while the shape of his chhata was not unlike that of a long, pointed bill.
“I still remember him standing here while we were waiting for a boat.”
“Nirmal?”
“Yes. He was dressed in his usual white dhuti-panjabi and he had his umbrella in his hands.”
Suddenly Nilima seized his elbow. “Stop, Kanai. Don’t talk about it. I can’t bear it.”
Kanai cut himself short. “Is it still upsetting for you? After all these years?”
Nilima shivered. “It’s just this place — this is where he was found, you know. Right here on the embankment in Canning. He only lived another couple of months after that. He must have been out in the rain, because he caught pneumonia.”
“I didn’t know about that,” Kanai said. “What brought him to Canning?”
“I still don’t know for sure,” Nilima said. “His behavior had become very erratic, as it tended to when he was under stress. He had retired