The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [95]
“My ears?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
I led him down the stairs and across the fields. People must have stared to see us, me in my flapping white dhoti with my umbrella unfurled against the sun, and Fokir in his ragged shorts racing along at my heels. I went right up to the embankment and put my left ear against the clay. “Now put your head on the bãdh and listen carefully. Tell me what you hear and let’s see if you can guess what it is.”
“I hear a scratching sound, Saar,” he said in a while. “It’s very soft.”
“But what is making this sound?”
He listened a while longer and then his face lit up with a smile. “Are they crabs, Saar?”
“Yes, Fokir. Not everyone can hear them but you did. Even as we stand here, untold multitudes of crabs are burrowing into our bãdh. Now ask yourself: how long can this frail fence last against these monstrous appetites — the crabs and the tides, the winds and the storms? And if it falls, who shall we turn to then, comrade?”
“Who, Saar?”
“Who indeed, Fokir? Neither angels nor men will hear us, and as for the animals, they won’t hear us either.”
“Why not, Saar?”
“Because of what the Poet says, Fokir. Because the animals
“already know by instinct
we’re not comfortably at home
in our translated world.”
NEGOTIATIONS
LIKE EVERY OTHER trainee nurse, Moyna lived in the Lusibari Hospital’s staff quarters. This was a long, barracks-like building situated close to the island’s embankment. It was on the periphery of the Trust’s compound, about a five-minute walk from the Guest House.
The space allotted to Moyna was on the far side of the building and consisted of one large room and a small courtyard. Moyna was waiting on her threshold when Kanai and Piya arrived. Joining her hands, she greeted them with a smiling “Nomoshkar” and ushered them into the courtyard, where a few folding chairs had been put out to await their arrival.
Piya looked around as she was seating herself. “Where’s Tutul?”
“In school,” said Kanai after relaying the question to Moyna.
“And Fokir?”
“There.”
Turning her head, Piya saw that Fokir was squatting in the dwelling’s doorway, half hidden by a grimy blue curtain. He did not look up and offered no greeting nor any sign of recognition: his eyes were lowered to the ground and he seemed to be drawing patterns with a twig. He was wearing, as usual, a T-shirt and a lungi, but somehow in the setting of his own home his clothes looked frayed and seedy in a way Piya had not thought them to be before. There was a fugitive sullenness about his posture that suggested he would rather be anywhere but where he was: she had the impression it was only under great pressure (from Moyna or his neighbors?) that he had consented to be present at this occasion.
It stung Piya to see him looking like this, beaten and afraid. What was he afraid of, this man who hadn’t hesitated to dive into the river after her? She would have liked to go up to him, to look into his eyes and greet him in a straightforward, ordinary way. But she thought better of it, for she could tell from his stance that, with Moyna and Kanai present, this would only add to his discomfiture.
Kanai too was watching Fokir. “I thought only parrots could sit like that,” he said to Piya in a whispered aside.
It was then that Piya noticed that Fokir was not squatting on the floor as she had thought. There was a raised lintel at the bottom of the doorframe and it was on this that he had seated himself, squatting on his haunches and using his toes to grip the wood, like a bird perching on the bar of a cage.
Since Fokir clearly wanted to have no part of the conversation, Piya decided it might be best to address his wife. “Will you translate for me, please?” she said to