The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [61]
“No,” said Nilima, “and Moyna’s sick with worry. I’ve asked her to show you around the hospital because I thought it would take her mind off this thing for a bit.”
There was a tapping sound on the front door, and Nilima responded by calling out, “Moyna? Is that you?”
“Yes, Mashima.”
“Esho. Come.”
Kanai turned around to see a young woman standing at the entrance with her sari drawn over her head. A stream of sunlight flooding in from the open doorway had cast her face into shadow, so that all he could see of her was the three glinting points of her earrings and her nose stud: in the dark oval of her face they seemed to shine like stars in a constellation.
“Moyna, this is Kanai-babu,” said Nilima. “He’s my nephew.”
“Nomoshkar,” she said, stepping in.
“Nomoshkar.” The light had caught her face now, and seeing her close up, Kanai saw that the kajol had spilled over the rims of her eyes. Her complexion was dark and silky and her raven-black hair shone with oil. Her face was marked by a sharply outlined brow and a prominent jaw; he could tell at a glance that she was not one to be shy of pitting her will against the world. Yet from the redness of her eyes it was clear she had been crying.
“Listen, Kanai,” said Mashima, switching to English so as not to be understood by Moyna. “Be careful with this girl — she’s clearly very upset.”
“Of course,” said Kanai.
“Righty-o, then,” said Nilima. “I suppose you had better be going.”
Righty-o? It was not often that Kanai heard his aunt speak English, and he was struck by her distinctive and unexpected diction. Her Bengali, after years of living in the tide country, had almost converged with the local dialect, having been stripped of the inflections of her urban upbringing. But her English, possibly because she spoke it so rarely, had survived like a fern suspended in amber, untouched by time and unspoiled by the rigors of regular usage, a perfect specimen of a tongue learned in the schools of the Raj. It was like listening to a lost language, the dialect of a vanished colonial upper middle class, spoken with the crisp enunciation once taught in elocution classes and debating societies.
AS THEY WERE starting down the path to the hospital, Kanai said to Moyna, “Did Mashima tell you I knew your mother-in-law?”
“No!” cried Moyna, throwing him a look of surprise. “Mashima didn’t mention it. Did you really know her?”
“Yes,” said Kanai. “I did. It was a long time ago, of course. She must have been about fifteen. And I was younger.”
“What was she like?”
“What I remember is her tej,” Kanai said. “Even at that age she was very spirited.”
Moyna nodded. “I’ve heard people say she was like a storm, a jhor.”
“Yes,” said Kanai. “That’s a good way of putting it. Of course, you never knew her yourself, did you?”
“No,” said Moyna. “I was just a baby when she died. But I’ve heard many stories about her.”
“Does your husband talk about her?”
Moyna’s face had brightened in speaking of Kusum, but now, at the mention of Fokir, it fell again. “No,” she said. “He never speaks of her. I don’t think he remembers much of her either. After all, he was very little when she died —” She shrugged, cutting herself short, and Kanai thought it better to let the subject drop.
They were nearing the hospital now, and seeing the building close up gave Kanai a renewed appreciation of the sheer scale of Nilima’s achievement. It was not that the building was overly large or particularly striking in its design; a mere two stories high, it was built in the shape of a squat shoebox. Its outer walls were painted gray, while the windows and the railings of its long corridors were outlined in white. There was a garden in front, planted largely with marigolds. Yet, plain as it was, in this tide country setting where mud and mildew encrusted everything, the building’s crisp lines and fresh paint were enough to give it the exclamatory salience of a skyscraper. Kanai could tell that the mere sight of it gave heart to the people it served.
This was clearly the effect it had on Moyna, for there was a noticeable