The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [144]
“It means you’ll have to spend a few hours in the boat with Fokir,” said Piya. “But that’s not a problem, is it?”
Kanai was affronted to think she had the impression that he was somehow in competition with Fokir. “No,” he said quickly. “Not at all. I’ll be glad to have a chance to talk to him.”
“Good. That’s settled, then. We’ll get started after you’ve had something to eat. I’ll knock on your door in an hour.”
By the time Piya came to get him, he had breakfasted and was ready to go. In preparation for a day under the sun, he had changed into light-colored trousers, a white shirt and sandals. He had also decided to take along a cap and sunglasses. These preparations met with Piya’s approval. “Better bring these as well,” she said, handing him two bottles of water. “It’s going to get very hot out there.”
They went together to the Megha’s stern and found Fokir ready to leave, with his oars placed crosswise across the gunwales. After Kanai had gone over to the smaller boat, Piya showed Fokir exactly where he was to position himself. The spot was about a mile downstream of the Megha, at a point where Garjontola curved outward, jutting into the river so that the channel narrowed.
“The river’s only half a mile wide over there,” said Piya. “I figure that if you anchor at midstream, you’ll have all the approaches covered between the two of you.”
Then she turned to point upstream, where the river’s mouth opened into a vast mohona. “I’ll be over there,” said Piya. “As you can see, it’s very wide, but being on the Megha I’ll have some elevation. With my binoculars I’ll be able to keep it covered. We’ll be about two and a half miles apart. I’ll be able to see you, but you probably won’t be able to see me.”
She waved as Fokir cast off the boat’s moorings. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “If it gets to be too much for you, Kanai, just tell Fokir to bring you back.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Kanai, waving back. “Don’t worry about me.”
The boat had not gone very far when puffs of black smoke began to spurt from the Megha’s funnel. Slowly the bhotbhoti began to move and for several minutes Fokir and Kanai were shaken by the turbulence of its bow wave. Only when it had disappeared from view was the water calm again.
Now, with the landscape emptied of other human beings, it was as if the distance between Kanai and Fokir had been reduced a hundredfold — yet if the boat had been a mile long they could not have been farther apart. Kanai was in the bow and Fokir was in the stern, behind the hood. Separated by the thatch, neither of them could see the other and for the first couple of hours on the water very little was said. Kanai made a couple of attempts to break the silence and was answered on each occasion with nothing more than a perfunctory grunt.
Around noon, when the level of the water had begun to ebb, Fokir jumped to his feet in great excitement and pointed downriver: “Oi-jé! Over there!”
Shading his eyes, Kanai spotted a sharply raked dorsal fin arcing through the water.
“You’ll see better if you hold on to the hood and stand up.”
“All right.” Kanai made his way to the boat’s midsection, pulled himself to his feet and steadied his balance by leaning on the hood.
“Another one. Over there.”
Guided by Fokir’s finger, Kanai spotted another fin slicing through the water. This was followed in quick succession by two more dolphins — all of them spotted by Fokir.
This flurry of activity seemed to have created a small opening in the barrier of Fokir’s silence, so Kanai made another attempt to draw him into conversation. “Tell me something, Fokir,” he said, glancing down the length of the hood. “Do you remember Saar at all?”
Fokir shot him a glance and looked away again. “No,” he said. “There was a time when he used to visit us, but I was very small then. After my mother died I hardly ever saw him.