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By Root 797 0

of language had metamorphosed — instead of being a barrier, a curtain that divided, it had become a transparent film, a prism that allowed him to look through another set of eyes, to filter the world through a mind other than his own. These experiences had always come about unpredictably, without warning or apparent cause, and no thread of similarity linked these occasions, except that in each of them he had been working as an interpreter. But he was not working now, and yet it was exactly this feeling that came upon him as he looked at Fokir: it was as though his own vision were being refracted through those opaque, unreadable eyes and he were seeing not himself, Kanai Dutt, but a great host of people — a double for the outside world, someone standing in for the men who had destroyed Fokir’s village, burnt his home and killed his mother; he had become a token for a vision of human beings in which a man such as Fokir counted for nothing, a man whose value was less than that of an animal. In seeing himself in this way, it seemed perfectly comprehensible to Kanai why Fokir should want him to be dead — but he understood also that this was not how it would be. Fokir had brought him here not because he wanted him to die, but because he wanted him to be judged.

Kanai lifted a hand to wipe the mud from his eyes, and when he looked up again he found that Fokir had stepped out of his field of vision. Something prompted Kanai to look back over his shoulder. Squirming in the mud, he turned just in time to see the boat slipping away. He could not see Fokir’s face, only his back; he was in the stern, rowing vigorously.

“Wait,” said Kanai. “Don’t leave me here.” It was too late: the boat had already vanished around a bend.

Kanai was watching the boat’s bow wave fanning across the river when he saw a ripple cutting slantwise over the water. He looked again carefully, and now it seemed certain that there was something beneath the water’s surface: obscured by the darkness of the silt, it was making for the shore, coming toward him.

Kanai’s head filled with visions of the ways in which the tide country dealt out death. The tiger, people said, killed you instantly, with a swipe of its forepaw, breaking the joint between your shoulder and neck. You felt no pain when it happened; you were dead already of the shock induced by the tiger’s roar just before the moment of impact. There was undeniably a quality of mercy to this — to the human mind, at least. Wasn’t this why people who lived in close proximity with tigers so often regarded them as being something more than just animals? Because the tiger was the only animal that forgave you for being so ill at ease in your translated world?

Or was it because tigers knew of the horror of a reptilian death? It’s the crocodile, he remembered, that most loves the water’s edge: crocodiles can move faster on mud than a man can run on grass; the clay doesn’t impede them; because of their sleek underbodies and their webbed feet they can use its slipperiness to their advantage. A crocodile, it’s said, will keep you alive until you drown; it won’t kill you on land; it’ll drag you into the water while you’re still breathing. Nobody finds the remains of people who’re killed by crocodiles.

Every other thought vanished from his mind. Rising to a crouch, he began to push himself backward, higher up the bank, unmindful of the rooted spear points raking his skin. As he retreated up the bank, the mud thinned and the mangrove’s shoots grew taller and more numerous. He could no longer see the ripple in the water, but it did not matter: all he wanted was to get as far from the river as possible.

Rising gingerly to his feet, he took a step and almost immediately there was an excruciating pain in the arch of his foot: it was as though he had stepped on the point of a nail or on a shard of glass. In wrenching out his foot, he caught a glimpse of a mangrove’s ventilator, sunk deep in the mud: he had jabbed his foot directly into its spear-like point. Then he saw that the spores were everywhere around him, scattered