The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [150]
The barrier of mangrove, which had looked so tangled and forbidding from the boat, now seemed a refuge, a safe haven. Picking his way through the minefield of ventilators, he went crashing into the vegetation.
The mangrove branches were pliable and sinuous; they bent without breaking and snapped back like whips. When they closed around him, it was as if he had passed into the embrace of hundreds of scaly limbs. They grew so thick he could not see beyond a few feet; the river disappeared from view, and if it were not for the incline of the slope he would have been unable to judge whether he was heading away from the water or not. Then, all at once, the barrier ended and he broke through to a grassy clearing dotted with a few trees and palms. He sank to his knees; his clothes were in shreds and his body was covered in cuts and scratches. Flies were settling on his skin and clouds of mosquitoes were hovering above.
He could not bring himself to look around the clearing. This was where it would be, if it was here on the island — but what was he thinking of ? He could not recall the word, not even the euphemisms Fokir had used: it was as if his mind, in its panic, had emptied itself of language. The sounds and signs that had served, in combination, as the sluices between his mind and his senses had collapsed: his mind was swamped by a flood of pure sensation. The words he had been searching for, the euphemisms that were the source of his panic, had been replaced by the thing itself, except that without words it could not be apprehended or understood. It was an artifact of pure intuition, so real that the thing itself could not have dreamed of existing so intensely.
He opened his eyes and there it was, directly ahead,a few hundred feet away. It was sitting on its haunches with its head up, watching him with its tawny, flickering eyes. The upper parts of its coat were of a color that shone like gold in the sunlight, but its belly was dark and caked with mud. It was immense, of a size greater than he could have imagined, and the only parts of its body that were moving were its eyes and the tip of its tail.
At first his terror was such that he could not move a muscle. Then, collecting his breath, he pushed himself to his knees and began to move slowly away, edging backward into the thickets of mangrove, keeping his eyes fixed on the animal all the while, watching the tip of its twitching tail. Only when the branches had closed around him did he rise to his feet. Turning around, he began to push his way through the enclosing greenery, oblivious now to the thorns and splinters that were tearing at his limbs. When at last he broke through to the mudbank, he fell forward on his knees and covered his eyes with his forearm as he tried to prepare himself for the moment of impact, for the blow that would snap the bones of his neck.
“Kanai!” The shouted sound of his name made him open his eyes just long enough to see Piya, Fokir and Horen running toward him across the bank. Now once again he fell forward on the mud and his mind went dark.
When next he opened his eyes, he was on his back, in the boat, and a face was taking shape above him, materializing slowly against the blinding brightness of the afternoon sun. He came to understand that it was Piya, that she had her hands under his shoulders and was trying to prop him up.
“Kanai? Are you OK?”
“Where were you?” he said. “I was alone so long on that island.”
“Kanai, you were there just ten minutes,” she said. “Apparently it was you who sent Fokir away. He came hurrying back to get us and we came as quickly as we could.”
“I saw it, Piya. I saw the tiger.” Now Horen and Fokir crowded around him too, so he added in Bangla, “It was there, the cat — I saw it.”
Horen shook his head. “There was nothing there,” he said. “We looked, Fokir and I. We looked and saw nothing. And if it had been there, you wouldn’t be here now.”
“It was there, I tell you.” Kanai’s body was shaking so much