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By Root 848 0

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