The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [176]
“Except for the notebook,” Kanai corrected her. “He did write that.”
“And that’s gone too now,” said Nilima.
“No,” said Kanai. “Not in its entirety. A lot of it is in my head, you know. I’m going to try to put it back together.”
Nilima put her hands on the back of his chair and looked into his eyes. “And after you’ve put together his notebook, Kanai,” she said quietly, “will you put my side of it together too?”
Kanai could not fathom her meaning. “I don’t understand.”
“Kanai, the dreamers have everyone to speak for them,” she said. “But those who’re patient, those who try to be strong, who try to build things — no one ever sees any poetry in that, do they?”
He was moved by the directness of her appeal. “I do,” he said. “I see it in you —” Suddenly the dining table began to rattle and he was cut short. Somewhere in the distance was a rushing sound, powerful enough to make itself heard above the gale.
Kanai went to the shutters and put his eye to a chink between the slats of wood. “It’s the tidal surge,” he said to Nilima. “It’s coming down the channel.”
A wall of water was shooting toward them. On its side, where it was cut off by the embankment, a huge plume of spray was shooting into the air. The island was filling with water, like a saucer tipped on its side, as the wave encircled it. Kanai and Nilima watched aghast as the water rose and kept rising, up the flight of stairs that led into Nilima’s flat, stopping just short of the door.
“It’ll take a long time to get the water out of the soil again, won’t it?” Kanai said.
“Yes, but people’s lives matter more.” Nilima had inclined her head to catch a glimpse of the hospital. A row of people could be seen on the second floor, braving the wind in order to look at the floodwaters.
“Just think of all the people who’ve been saved by that cyclone shelter,” Nilima said. “And it was Nirmal who convinced us to build it. If it weren’t for his peculiar interest in geology and meteorology we would never have thought of it.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” said Nilima. “Making us build it was probably the most important thing he did in his whole life. You can see the proof of that today. But if you’d told him that, he’d have laughed. He’d have said, ‘It’s just social service — not revolution.’”
THE DIMINUTION OF the noise was the first indication of the eye’s arrival. The sound didn’t stop; it just pulled back a little, and as it retreated the wind slowed down and seemed almost to die. Piya opened her eyes and was amazed by what she saw. A full moon hung above the top of what seemed to be a whirling stovepipe that reached far into the heavens. The light of the moon, shining through this spinning tube, illuminated the still center of the storm.
Stretching away from them in every direction, as far as Piya’s eye could reach, was a heaving carpet of leaves. Almost nothing was visible of the water’s surface; the usual ripples, eddies and currents had disappeared under this layer of green. As for the island itself, it was entirely submerged, and its shape could be deduced only from the few thickets of trees whose uppermost reaches were still visible above water. These trees had a skeletal, forlorn look; few had any branches remaining and there was scarcely one that still had a leaf attached. Many had been snapped in half and reduced to shattered stumps.
A white cloud floated down from the sky and settled on the remnants of the drowned forest. It was a flock of white birds, and they