The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [70]
“What line, Horen?”
“Didn’t you say they were lost, Saar?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s what happened, then. They crossed the line by mistake and ended up on one of Dokkhin Rai’s islands. Whenever you have a storm like that — one that appears so suddenly out of nowhere — you know it’s the doing of Dokkhin Rai and his demons.”
I grew impatient and said, “Horen! A storm is an atmospheric disturbance. It has neither intention nor motive.”
I had spoken so sharply that he would not disagree with me, although he could not bring himself to agree either. “As to that, Saar,” he said, “let us leave each other to our beliefs and see what the future holds.”
Here was a man, I thought, whom the Poet would have recognized: “filled with muscle and simplicity.”
I have gone on at too great a length — hours have passed, the ink in my ballpoint is running down. This is what happens when you have not written for years: every moment takes on a startling clarity; small things become the world in microcosm.
Kusum and Horen have left me here with Fokir. They have gone to find out if the rumors are true; if Morichjhãpi is soon to be attacked, and if so, when the assault will come.
To think of all the years when I had nothing but time and yet wrote not one word. And now, like some misplaced, misgendered Scheherezade, I am trying to stave the night off with a flying, fleeting pen . . .
GARJONTOLA
THE FINAL RUN brought Fokir’s boat into shallow water within a few feet of the shore. Piya’s guess had been amply confirmed by this time: her soundings showed that there was a half-mile-long depression in the sheltered crook of the river’s elbow. The declivity formed a gentle, kidney-shaped basin with a rounded bottom and sides: although the drop exceeded twenty-five feet in some places, on average it was only some fifteen feet deeper than the rest of the riverbed. The pool, in short, was similar in most particulars to those frequented by the Orcaella of the Mekong during the dry season.
With the water running high, the band of mud on the shore had thinned to the width of a few paces, and the mangroves’ trunks were at last at eye level, neither above nor below the boat. The water was so shallow here that there was no point in taking soundings; for the first time in hours, Piya went “off effort,” dropping her binoculars and resting her eyes on the greenery of the shore. Presently her gaze was drawn to what seemed to be a fragment of brick lying in the mud. She looked more closely and her glasses confirmed her impression: this was indeed a bit of broken brick, and it was not the only one — the shore was littered with them. Examining the tangled greenery, she discovered that some of the mangroves were growing out of mud walls, while others had chunks of brick entwined in their roots.
She called out to Fokir, “Look — there.” He turned to glance at the shore and nodded. “Garjontola,” he said with a gesture in that direction. She guessed that this was the name of whatever settlement had once stood there. “Garjontola?” He nodded in confirmation. She was glad to know the name and noted it quickly: the dolphins’ tidal pool, she decided, would be named after this abandoned village — “the Garjontola pool.”
All of a sudden Tutul jumped to his feet, rocking the boat. Looking up from her notebook, she saw that he was pointing into the middle distance, to a tree that was taller than the others, more like a birch than a mangrove: it was slender-limbed with light-colored bark and foliage that seemed almost silvery against the dense, heavy green of the surrounding mangroves.
At the end of the run, Fokir surprised her by turning the boat’s bow in the direction of the shore. This was the closest she had been to the forest, and she felt as though she were facing it for the first time: before, it had been either half submerged or a distant silhouette, looking down on the water from the heights of the shore. Staring at it now, she was struck by the way the greenery worked to confound the eye. It was not just that it was a barrier, like