The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [173]
At the far end of the ground-floor veranda stood the diminutive figure of a small boy. Winding his way through the crowd, Kanai went up to him. “Tutul?”
The boy didn’t recognize him and made no answer, so Kanai squatted on his heels and said, “Tutul, where’s your mother?”
Tutul nodded at one of the wards, and just as Kanai was rising to go toward it Moyna came hurrying out, dressed in her white nurse’s uniform. She stared at his wet lungi and mud-caked shirt: it was clear she hadn’t recognized him.
“Moyna,” said Kanai. “It’s me, Kanai.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth as she took this in. “But what happened to you, Kanai-babu?”
“Never mind that, Moyna,” he said. “Listen. I have to tell you something —”
She cut him short. “And where are they — my husband and the American?”
“That’s what I was about to tell you, Moyna,” he said. “They’re at Garjontola — we had to leave them there.”
“You left them behind?” Her eyes flared in angry indignation. “With the cyclone coming — you left them in the jungle?”
“It wasn’t my decision, Moyna,” Kanai said. “It was Horen who decided. He said there was nothing else to be done.”
“Oh?” The mention of Horen seemed to calm her a little. “But what will they do out there, with no shelter, nothing?”
“They’ll be all right, Moyna,” Kanai said. “Fokir will know what to do, don’t worry. Others have survived storms on that island, his grandfather included.”
Moyna nodded in resignation. “There’s nothing to be done now. All we can do is pray.”
“Horen wanted me to tell you he’s going to go back for them as soon as the storm blows over. I’ll be going too — he’s going to come here to pick me up.”
“Tell him I want to come too,” said Moyna, taking hold of Tutul’s hand. “Be sure to tell him.”
“I will,” said Kanai with a glance in the direction of the Guest House. “And now I’d better go and see how Mashima is.”
“Take her upstairs to the Guest House,” Moyna said. “I’ve closed the shutters. You’ll be fine up there.”
THE WAVE
THE MINUTES CREPT BY and the objects flying through the air grew steadily larger. Where first there had been only twigs, leaves and branches, there were now whirling coconut palms and spinning tree trunks. Piya knew that the gale had reached full force when she saw something that looked like a whole island hanging suspended above their heads: it was a large clump of mangroves, held together by the trees’ intertwined roots. Then Fokir’s hand tightened on her shoulder and she caught a glimpse of a shack spinning above them. She recognized it immediately: it was the shrine he had taken her to in the interior of Garjontola. All at once the bamboo casing splintered and the images inside went hurtling off with the wind.
The stronger the gale blew, the more closely her body became attuned to the buffers between which she was sandwiched: the tree in front and Fokir behind. The branch they were sitting on was positioned so that it was on the sheltered side of the tree, pointing away from the wind. This meant that Piya and Fokir, sitting astride the branch, were facing in the direction of the wind, taking advantage of the “shadow” created by the tree’s trunk. But for this lucky circumstance, Piya knew, they would have been pulverized by the objects the gale was hurling at them. She felt it in her bones every time a branch broke off or a flying object struck the tree; at times the wood would creak and shudder under the force of these collisions and the roll of fabric around her waist would bite into her skin. Without the sari they would long since have been swept off their perch.
Sitting behind her, Fokir had his fingers knotted around her stomach. His face rested on the back of her neck and she could feel his stubble on her skin. Soon her lungs adapted to the rhythm of his diaphragm as it pumped in and out of the declivity of her lower back. Everywhere their bodies met, their skin was