The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [71]
Fokir pulled the oars in after a last, powerful stroke and the boat’s bow nudged into the mud. Then he rose to his feet and, as if by magic, his lungi became a loincloth, transformed by a single flick of his wrist. Swinging his legs over the side, he dropped into the water and gave the boat a push that sent it plowing deep into the bank. Piya, sitting in the bow, found herself lodged halfway up the bank, with a tangled barrier of mangrove blocking off the slope ahead.
After lifting Tutul off the boat, Fokir made a beckoning motion with his arm, and she understood that he was asking her to follow him off the boat. But where was he going? She sketched an interrogatory gesture, and he responded by pointing in the direction of the island’s interior, past the first barrier of mangrove.
“In there?”
Now he was beckoning again, motioning to her to hurry. She hesitated for a moment, held back by her aversion to mud, insects and dense vegetation, all of which were present aplenty on the shore. In any other circumstances she would not even have considered heading into forest cover of that kind, but with Fokir it was different. Somehow she knew she would be safe.
“OK. I’m coming.” Rolling her pants up to her knees, she swung her bare feet over the gunwale. The mud parted under her weight, sucking her feet in with a wet slurping sound. She was taken completely by surprise for the mud hadn’t seemed deep at all when Fokir was running up the bank. The slight forward momentum of her body as she came off the boat was enough to unbalance her: the grip of the mud pulled her ankles backward, away from her center of gravity. Suddenly she was tipping over, falling face forward, extending her arm to keep herself from slamming into the mud. But at just the right moment, Fokir appeared directly in front of her, with his body positioned to block her fall. She landed heavily on his shoulder and once again found herself soaking in the salty smell of his skin. In blocking her fall, she had thrown her arms around his torso, as though he were a pillar or a tree trunk, and one of her hands had caught hold of his shoulder blade, digging into the recess between muscle and bone. Her other hand had slid down his bare skin, coming to rest on the small of his back, and for an instant she was paralyzed with embarrassment. Then she became aware of Tutul’s voice somewhere nearby — he was laughing at her discomfiture, in childish delight — and she began to pull away from Fokir, withdrawing her fingers gingerly. When he put a steadying hand under her elbow, she saw he was laughing too, but not in a way that seemed unkind — he seemed to be amused more by her surprise at the depth of the mud than by her fall.
After she was on her feet again he enacted a little pantomime to show her how to negotiate the bank: lifting up a foot, he curled his big toe like a crab’s claw and dug it into the mud. She tried it herself, and it worked for a couple of steps, but then her foot slipped again. Fortunately, he was still beside her and she held on to his arm until they had left the mud behind and pushed their way into the tangle of greenery that lined the shore.
She saw now he had a machete with him. He went ahead of her, swinging the blade and clearing a path through the dense foliage. Soon the green barrier came to an end and they broke through to a grassy clearing dotted with stunted palm trees.
Tutul ran ahead to the far side of the clearing and stopped in front of what seemed to be a small shack built on stilts. On approaching closer she saw it was not a shack at all but a leaf-thatched altar or shrine: it reminded her distantly of her mother’s puja table, except that the images inside didn’t represent any of the Hindu gods she was familiar with. There was a large-eyed