The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [90]
“Who was that?” said Piya to Kanai.
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Kanai. “That was Moyna, Fokir’s wife.”
“Oh?”
Moyna was so unlike the wife she had envisaged for Fokir that it took Piya a moment to absorb this. Presently she added, “I should have guessed.”
“Guessed what?”
“That she was his wife. Her son has her eyes.”
“Does he?”
“Yes,” said Piya. “And what was she doing here?”
“She was delivering this tiffin carrier.” Kanai held up the steel containers. “Our dinner’s inside. Moyna’s brought it for us from the hospital’s kitchen.”
Piya’s attention drifted away from Kanai to the woman who was Fokir’s wife. She felt a twinge of envy at the thought of her going back to Fokir and Tutul while she returned to the absence upstairs. This embarrassed her and to cover up she smiled at Kanai and said briskly, “She isn’t at all like I expected.”
“No?”
“No.” Now again Piya found herself fumbling for the right words. “I mean, she’s very attractive, isn’t she?”
“You think so?”
Piya knew she should drop the matter, but instead she went on, as if she were picking at a scab. “Yes,” she said. “I think she’s quite beautiful, in a way.”
“You’re right,” said Kanai smoothly, recovering himself. “She’s very striking. But she’s more than that: in her own way, she’s an unusual and remarkable woman.”
“Really? How?”
“Just think of the life she’s led,” said Kanai. “She’s struggled to educate herself against heavy odds. Now she’s well on her way to becoming a nurse. She knows what she wants — for herself and her family — and nothing is going to keep her from pursuing it. She’s ambitious, she’s tough, and she’s going to go a long way.”
There was an edge to his voice that implied a comparison of some kind and Piya could not help wondering how she herself would fare by these lights — she who’d never had much ambition and had never had to battle her circumstances in order to get her education. In Kanai’s eyes, she knew, she must appear hopelessly soft and spoiled, a kind of stereotype. And she could not blame him for seeing her in this way — any more than she could blame herself for seeing him as an example of a certain kind of Indian male, overbearing, vain, self-centered — yet, for all that, not unlikable.
Piya switched to a more neutral subject. “And are Moyna and Fokir from around here? From Lusibari?”
“No,” said Kanai. “Both she and Fokir are from another island, quite a long way off. It’s called Satjelia.”
“Then how come they live here?”
“Partly because she’s training to be a nurse and partly because she’s trying to give her son an education. That’s why she was so upset that Fokir had taken him away on this fishing trip of his.”
“Does she know I was on the boat with them these last couple of days?”
“Yes,” said Kanai. “She knows all about it — about the guard taking the money, about your fall and about Fokir diving in after you. She knows about the crocodile — the little boy told her everything.”
Piya noted the mention of the boy: did this mean Fokir hadn’t said much about the trip, or that he had given Moyna a different account? She wondered if Kanai knew the answer to either of these questions, but she could not bring herself to ask. Instead, she said, “Moyna must be curious about what I’m doing here.”
“She certainly is,” said Kanai. “She asked me about it and I explained you’re a scientist. She was very impressed.”
“Why?”
“As you can imagine,” said Kanai, “she has a great respect for education.”
“Did you tell her we’re going to visit them tomorrow?”
“Yes,” said Kanai. “They’ll be expecting us.”
They were back upstairs now in the