The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [159]
In the morning the sky was bright and clear but a torrent was still raging under their feet: the floodwaters were so high they reached most of the way up the tree trunk. Looking around them, they saw that they were not the only people to take shelter in a tree: many others had saved their lives in a similar fashion. Whole families, young and old alike, were sitting on branches. When greetings were shouted from one tree to another, they learned that they had been blown nearly thirty miles from where they had been when the storm hit. They had been carried across the border and thrust ashore near the Agunmukha (“fire-mouthed”) River, not far from the town of Galachipa.
“It’s in Bangladesh now,” Horen said. “In Khulna District, I think.”
They spent two days in the tree, without food or any additional water. When the floodwaters subsided they tried to make their way to the nearest town. They had not gone far before they turned back: it was as if they were in the vicinity of some terrible battlefield massacre. There were corpses everywhere, and the land was carpeted with dead fish and livestock. They found out that three hundred thousand people had died.
“Like Hiroshima!” said Kanai under his breath.
Horen and Bolai were fortunate soon to meet up with some fishermen who had managed to salvage their own boat. Making their way along unfrequented creeks and khals, they had slipped back into India.
That was Horen’s experience of a cyclone, and the memory of it would last him through a second lifetime — he never wanted to have it repeated.
Horen finished his story just as Garjontola was coming into view.
A carpet of crimson light lay on the island’s watery threshold, covering the dolphin pool and stretching all the way to the sun, now setting on the far side of the distant mohona. The angle of the light was such that any boat, even a very low one, would have cast a long shadow. But there were no boats or other vessels in sight. Piya and Fokir had not returned.
A GIFT
AT SUNSET, taking a reading of the boat’s position, Piya saw that they were still a good seven miles from Garjontola. She knew then that it would be impossible to get back to the Megha by the end of the day — but it wouldn’t matter much, she decided; there was no reason to think that Horen would be especially worried. He would know that they had gone too far afield to make it back by nightfall.
She guessed that Fokir had come to the same conclusion, for it soon became clear that he was looking for a place to anchor the boat for the night. A likely spot showed itself just as the last glow of daylight was fading from the sky — a stretch of water where a small channel flowed, at a right angle, into a wider one. At this time, with the water at its height, even the narrower channel looked like a river of substantial size, but Piya knew that when the tide turned it would shrink to a comfortable creek. The land on every side was thickly forested and the failing light gave the mangroves the look of a solid barricade of greenery.
There was a patch of relatively calm water where the channels met, and it was here that Fokir dropped anchor. Before doing so, he made a gesture that took in their surroundings and told Piya the name of the place: Gerafitola.
Once the boat was at anchor, Piya noticed that the moon had risen. It was almost perfectly spherical, except for a thin shaving missing on one side. Around it was a halo with a faint copper tint. The moist, unmoving air seemed to have a magnifying effect, for this moon was larger and brighter than any she could ever remember seeing.
As she was taking in the sight, Fokir crawled through the boat’s hood and came to sit beside her; raising a finger, he traced an arc on the darkening purple backdrop of the sky. When Piya shook her head to tell him she