Sea of Poppies (21 page)

The gomusta's fist closed on the locket as he broke off to glance again at his watch. Your father, Miss Lambert – how well he knew our language. I used to marvel as I listened to him speak . . .

But now, even as the gomusta continued, in the same sonorous tones, Paulette heard his words as though they were being spoken by her father, in French: . . . a child of Nature, that is what she is, my daughter Paulette. As you know I have educated her myself, in the innocent tranquillity of the Botanical Gardens. She has had no teacher other than myself, and has never worshipped at any altar except that of Nature; the trees have been her Scripture and the Earth her Revelation. She has not known anything but Love, Equality and Freedom: I have raised her to revel in that state of liberty that is Nature itself. If she remains here, in the colonies, most particularly in a city like this, where Europe hides its shame and its
greed, all that awaits her is degradation: the whites of this town will tear her apart, like vultures and foxes, fighting over a corpse. She will be an innocent thrown before the money-changers who pass themselves off as men of God . . .

‘Stop!' Paulette raised her hands to her ears, as if to shut out her father's voice. How wrong he was! How mistaken he had always been in his understanding of her, making her into that which he himself wished to be, rather than seeing her for the ordinary creature that she was. Yet, even as she chafed against his judgement, Paulette's eyes misted over at the thought of those childhood years, when she and her father had lived with Jodu and Tantima, as though their bungalow were an island of innocence in a sea of corruption.

She shook her head, as if to rid herself of a dream: So what did you tell him then, Nob Kissin Baboo – about the worth of the locket?

The gomusta smiled, tugging at his tikki. ‘After careful considerations I clarified that passage to France, even in steerage, would definitely be costing more than this locket. Maybe two-three similar items would be required. For the cost of this one he could send only up to
Mareech-díp
.'

Mareech-díp?
She wrinkled her eyebrows, wondering what place he could be thinking of: the expression meant ‘pepper-island' but she had never heard it used before. Where is that?

‘The Mauritius Islands, they call in English.'

O les îles Maurice? cried Paulette. ‘But that is where my mother was born.'

‘That is what he told,' the gomusta said, with a thin smile. ‘He said: Let Paulette go to Mauritius – it is like her native-place. There she can cope up with the joys and agonies of life.'

And then? Did you get him the money?

‘I told him to come back after some days and funds would be there. But how he is to come? Expired, no, after one week?' The gomusta sighed. ‘Even before, I could tell that his conditions were already parlous. Eyes were red and tongue was wheatish colour, indicating stoppages of bowels-movement. I advised to him: Lambert-sahib, just for some days, kindly refrain from meateating – vegetarian stool is easier to pass. But no doubt he ignored, leading to untimely demise. After that I had too much difficulties
in obtaining back the item. The moneylender had already delivered at pawnshop; and so on and so forth. But as you see, now it is again in my possession.'

Only then did it occur to Paulette that he need not have told her any of this: he could have kept the money for himself and she would never have known any better. ‘I am truly grateful to you for bringing back the locket, Nob Kissin Baboo,' she said. Unthinkingly she extended a hand towards his arm, only to see him back away as if from a hissing snake. ‘I do not know how you to remercy.'

The gomusta's head reared in indignation and he switched back to Bengali: What do you think, Miss Lambert? Do you think I would keep something that is not my own? I may be man of commerce in your eyes, Miss – and in this age of evil, who is not? – but are you aware that eleven generations of my ancestors have been pandas at one of Nabadwip's most famous temples? One of my forefathers was initiated into the love of Krishna by Shri Chaitanya himself. I alone was not able to fulfil my destiny: it is my misfortune . . .

‘Even now I am searching Lord Krishna left and right,' continued the gomusta. ‘But what to do? He is not heeding . . .'

But even as he was extending his hand towards Paulette's open palm, the gomusta hesitated and drew back his arm. ‘And the interest? My means are deficient, Miss Lambert, and I am saving for higher purpose – to build temple.'

‘You shall have the money, never fear,' said Paulette. She saw a look of doubt enter the gomusta's eyes, as though he were already beginning to rethink his generosity. ‘But you must let me have the locket: it is my mother's only picture.'

Now, in the distance, she heard a footfall that she knew to be the sound of the khidmutgar returning from the boathouse. This made her suddenly desperate, for it mattered very much to her that no one at Bethel should know of this dealing between herself and Mr Burnham's gomusta – not because she took any pleasure in deceiving her benefactor, but only because she did not wish to provide them with any further material for their recurrent indictments of her father and his godless, improvident ways. She lowered her voice and whispered urgently in English: ‘Please Baboo Nob Kissin; please, I beg you . . .'

At this, as if to remind himself of his better instincts, the gomusta reached up and gave his tikki a tug. Then, opening his fingers, he allowed the cloth-wrapped locket to fall into Paulette's waiting hands. He stepped back just as the door opened to admit the khidmutgar, who had returned to let them know that the boat was ready.

‘Come, Baboo Nob Kissin,' said Paulette, making an effort to be cheerful. ‘I will walk you to the boathouse. Come: to there one goes!'

As they were walking through the house, towards the garden, Baboo Nob Kissin came suddenly to a halt beside a window that looked towards the river: he raised his hand to point and Paulette saw that a ship had entered the rectangular frame – the chequered flag of the Burnham firm was clearly visible on the vessel's mainmast.

‘
Ibis
is there!' cried Baboo Nob Kissin. ‘At last, by Jove! Master waiting, waiting, all the time breaking my head and collaring me – why my ship is not coming? Now he will rejoice.'

Paulette flung open a door and went hurrying across the garden towards the riverfront. Mr Burnham was standing on the schooner's quarter-deck, waving a hat triumphantly in the direction of Bethel. He was answered by the crew of the caique, who waved back from the boathouse.

While the men were waving, on ship and shore, Paulette's gaze strayed towards the river and she caught sight of a dinghy that seemed to have come loose from its moorings: it was floating adrift, with no one at the helm. Caught by the river's current, it had been pulled out to midstream and was on its way to a collision with the oncoming schooner.

Paulette choked on her breath as she looked more closely: even from that distance, the boat looked very much like Jodu's. Of course there were hundreds of similar dinghies on the Hooghly – yet, there was only one that she herself had known intimately: that was the boat on which she was born and on which her mother had died; it was the boat she had played in as a child and in which she had travelled with her father, to collect specimens in the mangrove forests. She recognized the thatch, the crooked turn of the prow, and the stubby jut of the stern: no, there could be no doubt that it was Jodu's boat, and it was just a few yards from the
Ibis
, in imminent danger of being rammed by its knife-edged cutwater.

In a desperate attempt to avoid a collision, she began to mill her arms through the air, shouting as loud as she could. ‘Look out! Dekho! Dekho!
Attention!
'

After weeks of anxious wakefulness at his mother's side, Jodu had slept so deeply as to be unaware that his boat had slipped its moorings and was drifting out into mid-river, right into the path of the ocean-going ships that were using the incoming tide to make their way to Calcutta. The
Ibis
was almost upon him when the flapping of her foretopsail roused him; the sight that met his eyes was so unexpected that he could not immediately respond: he lay motionless in the boat, his gaze locked on the protruding bill of the vessel's carved figurehead, which seemed now to be bearing directly down on him, as if to snatch him from the water like prey.

Lying as he was, flat on his back, on the bamboo slats of his dinghy, Jodu could have been an offering to the river, set afloat on a raft of leaves by some pious pilgrim – yet he did not fail to recognize that this was no ordinary ship bearing down on him, but an iskuner of the new kind, a ‘gosi ka jahaz', with agil-peechil ringeen rather than square sails. Only the trikat-gavi was open to the wind and it was this distant patch of canvas that had woken him as it filled and emptied with the early morning breeze. Some half-dozen lascars sat perched like birds on the crosswise purwan of the trikatdol, while on the tootuk beneath the serang and the tindals were waving as if to catch Jodu's attention. He could tell, because their mouths were open, that they were shouting too, although nothing was audible of their voices because of the sound of the wave created by the ship's knife-like taliyamar as it cut through the water.

The iskuner was so close now that he could see the green glint of the copper that sheathed the taliyamar; he could even see the shells of the siyala-insects that were clinging to the wet, slime-covered surface of the wood. If his boat were to take the impact of the taliyamar squarely in its flank, it would split, he knew, like a bundle of twigs hit by a falling axe; he himself would be pulled under by the suction of the wake. All this while, the long oar that served as the dinghy's rudder was only a step and a stretch away – but by the time he leapt to put his shoulder to the handle, it was too late to
significantly alter the boat's course; he was able to turn it just enough so that instead of being hit smack in the middle, the boat bounced off the hull of the
Ibis
. The impact rolled the dinghy steeply to one side, at exactly the moment when the ship's bow-wave was crashing down on it, like a breaker on a beach; the hemp ropes snapped under the weight of the water, and the logs flew apart. As the boat was disintegrating under him, Jodu managed to catch hold of one of the logs; he clung on as it bobbed under and back again to the top. When his head was clear of the water, he saw that he had floated almost to the stern of the ship, along with the rest of the wreckage; now he could feel the powerful suction of the awari beginning to tug at the log he was holding on to.

‘Here! Here!' he heard a voice shouting in English, and looked up to see a curly-haired man, whirling a weighted rope above his head. The line snaked out and Jodu succeeded in getting a grip on it just as the ship's stern was sweeping past, sucking the remains of his boat under its keel. The turbulence spun him around and around, but in such a way as to wrap the rope securely around him, so that when the sailor began to pull, at the other end of the line, his body broke quickly free of the water and he was able to use his feet to scramble up the iskuner's side and over the bulwark, to collapse in a heap on the after-tootuk.

While lying on the scrubbed planks, coughing and spluttering, Jodu became aware of a voice, speaking to him in English, and he looked up to see the bright-eyed face of the man who had thrown him the rope. He was kneeling beside him, saying something incomprehensible; arrayed behind him were the looming figures of two sahibs, one tall and bearded, the other big-bellied and bewhiskered: the latter was armed with a cane, which he was tapping excitedly on the tootuk. Fixed as he was, under the scrutiny of the sahibs' eyes, Jodu became suddenly aware that he was naked except for the thin, cotton gamchha that was wrapped around his waist. Lowering his chest to his knees, he hunched his body into a defensive huddle and tried to shut their voices out of his head. But soon enough he heard them calling out the name of one Serang Ali; then a hand fell on his neck, forcing him to look up into a sternly venerable face, with a thin moustache.

Tera nám kyá?
What's your name? said the serang.

Jodu, he said, and added quickly, in case this sounded too childish: That's what people call me, but my good-name is Azad – Azad Naskar.

Zikri Malum's gone to get some clothes for you, continued the serang, in broken Hindusthani. You go below deck and wait. Don't need you under our feet while we're berthing.

Keeping his head lowered, Jodu followed Serang Ali off the quarter-deck and through the staring phalanx of the crew, to the hatch that led down to the 'tween-deck. There's the dabusa, said the serang. Stay down there till you're sent for.

Standing on the lip of the dabusa, with his feet on the ladder, Jodu became aware of a sickly, fetid odour, welling upwards from the darkness below: it was a smell that was at once offensive and disturbing, familiar and unrecognizable, and it became stronger as he descended. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he looked around and saw that he had entered a shallow, empty space, unlit but for the shaft of light that was pouring through the open hatch. Although as wide as the vessel, the dabusa had a close, cramped feel – partly because its ceiling was not much taller than a man, but also because it was divided, by timber ribs, into open compartments, like cattle-pens. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, Jodu stepped warily into one of these pens and immediately stubbed his toe upon a heavy iron chain. Falling to his knees, he discovered that there were several such chains in the pen, nailed into the far beam: they ended in bracelet-like clasps, each fitted with eyeholes, for locks. The weight and heft of the chains made Jodu wonder what sort of cargo they were intended to restrain: it occurred to him that they might be meant for livestock – and yet the stench that permeated the hold was not that of cows, horses or goats; it was more a human odour, compounded of sweat, urine, excrement and vomit; the smell had leached so deep into the timbers as to have become ineradicable. He picked up one of the chains, and on looking more closely at the bracelet-like clasps, he became convinced that it was indeed meant for a human wrist or ankle. Now, running his hands along the floor, he saw that there were smooth depressions in the wood, of a shape and size that could only have been made by human
beings, over prolonged periods of time. The depressions were so close to each other as to suggest a great press of people, packed close together, like merchandise on a vendor's counter. What kind of vessel would be equipped and outfitted to carry human beings in this way? And why had the serang sent him, Jodu, down here to wait, out of sight of other people? Suddenly he remembered stories, told on the river, of devil-ships that would descend on the coast to kidnap entire villages – the victims were eaten alive, or so the rumour went. Like an invasion of ghosts, unnamed apprehensions rushed into his mind; he pushed himself into a corner and sat shivering, falling gradually into a trance-like state of shock.