The Hungry Tide (46 page)

“Signs, marks — like we saw yesterday. A whole trail of them, running from the trees to the water and back.”

Kanai looked again and caught sight of a few depressions in the ground. But the bank at this point was colonized mainly by stands of garjon, a species of mangrove that breathed through spear-like “ventilators” connected by subterranean root systems. The surface of the bank was pierced by so many of these upthrust organs that it was impossible to distinguish between one mark and another. The depressions that had caught Fokir's eye looked nothing like the sharply defined marks of the night before. They seemed to Kanai to be too shapeless to signify anything in particular; they could just as well have been crabs' burrows or runnels formed by the retreating water.

“See how they form a track?” Fokir said. “They go right to the edge of the water. That means they were made after the tide had ebbed — probably just as we were heading this way. The animal must have spotted us and come down to take a closer look.”

The thought of this, a tiger coming down to the water's edge in order to watch their progress across the mohona, was just far-fetched enough to make Kanai smile.

“Why would it want to look at us?” said Kanai.

“Maybe because it smelled you,” said Fokir. “It likes to keep an eye on strangers.”

There was something about Fokir's expression that convinced Kanai he was playing a game with him, perhaps unconsciously, and the thought of this amused him. Kanai understood all too well how the dynamics of their situation might induce Fokir to exaggerate the menace of their surroundings. He himself had often stood in Fokir's place, serving as some hapless traveler's window on an unfamiliar world. He remembered how, in those circumstances, he too had often been tempted to heighten the inscrutability of the surroundings through subtly slanted glosses. To do this required no particularly malicious intent; it was just a way of underscoring the insider's indispensability: every new peril was proof of his importance, each new threat evidence of his worth. These temptations were all too readily available to every guide and translator — not to succumb was to make yourself dispensable; to give in was to destroy the value of your word, and thus your work. It was precisely because of his awareness of this dilemma that he knew too that there were times when a translator's bluff had to be called.

Kanai pointed to the shore and made a gesture of dismissal. “Those are just burrows,” he said, smiling. “I saw crabs digging into them. What makes you think they have anything to do with the big cat?”

Fokir turned to flash him a bright, white smile. “Do you want to know how I know?”

“Yes. Tell me.”

Leaning over, Fokir took hold of Kanai's hand and placed it on the back of his neck. The unexpected intimacy of this contact sent a shock through Kanai's arm and he snatched his hand back — but not before he had felt the goosebumps bristling on the moist surface of Fokir's skin.

Fokir smiled at him again. “That's how I know,” he said. “It's the fear that tells me.” Rising to a crouch, Fokir directed a look of inquiry at Kanai. “And what about you?” he said. “Can you feel the fear?”

These words triggered a response in Kanai that was just as reflexive as the goosebumps on Fokir's neck. The surroundings — the mangrove forest, the water, the boat — were suddenly blotted from his consciousness; he forgot where he was. It was as though his mind had decided to revert to the functions for which it had been trained and equipped by years of practice. At that moment nothing existed for him but language, the pure structure of sound that had formed Fokir's question. He gave this inquiry the fullest attention of which his mind was capable and knew the answer almost at once: it was in the negative; the truth was that he did not feel the fear that had raised bumps on Fokir's skin. It was not that he was a man of unusual courage — far from it. But he knew also that fear was not — contrary to what was often said — an instinct. It was something learned, something that accumulated in the mind through knowledge, experience and upbringing. Nothing was harder to share than another person's fear, and at that moment he certainly did not share Fokir's.

“Since you asked me,” Kanai said, “I'll tell you the truth. The answer is no, I'm not afraid, at least not in the way you are.”

Like a ring spreading across a pool, a ripple of awakened interest passed over Fokir's face. “Then tell me,” he said, leaning closer, “if you're not afraid, there's nothing to prevent you from taking a closer look. Is there?”

His gaze was steady and unblinking, and Kanai would not allow himself to drop his eyes: Fokir had just doubled the stakes, and it was up to him now to decide whether he would back down or call his bluff.

“All right,” Kanai said, not without some reluctance. “Let's go.”

Fokir nodded and turned the boat using a single oar. When the bow pointed toward the shore he started to row. Kanai glanced across the water: the river was as calm as a floor of polished stone and the currents etched on its surface appeared almost stationary, like the veins in a slab of marble.

“Fokir, tell me something,” said Kanai.

“What?”

“If you're afraid, then why do you want to go there — to that island?”

“My mother told me,” Fokir said, “that this was a place where you had to learn not to be afraid. And if you did, then you might find the answer to your troubles.”

“Is that why you come here?”

“Who's to say?” He shrugged, smiling, and then he said, “Now, can I ask you something, Kanai-babu?”

He was smiling broadly, leading Kanai to expect he would make some kind of joke. “What?”

“Are you a clean man, Kanai-babu?”

Kanai sat up, startled. “What do you mean?”

Fokir shrugged. “You know — are you good at heart?”

“I think so,” Kanai said. “My intentions are good, anyway. As for the rest, who knows?”

“But don't you ever want to know for sure?”

“How can anyone ever know for sure?”

“My mother used to say that here in Garjontola, Bon Bibi would show you whatever you wanted to know.”

“How?”

Fokir shrugged again. “That's just what she used to say.”

As they drew close to the island a flock of birds took wing, breaking away from the upper level of the canopy and swirling in a cloud before settling down again. The birds were parrots, of a color almost indistinguishable from the emerald tint of the mangroves; for a moment, when they rose in the air together, it was as though a green mane had risen from the treetops, like a wig lifted by a gust of wind.

The boat picked up speed as it approached the bank and Fokir's final stroke rammed the prow deep into the mud. Tucking his lungi between his legs, he dropped over the side of the boat and went running over the bank to examine the marks.

“I was right,” cried Fokir triumphantly, dropping to his knees. “These marks are so fresh they must have been made within the hour.”

To Kanai the depressions looked just as shapeless as they had before. “I don't see anything,” he said.

“How could you?” Fokir looked up at the boat and smiled. “You're too far away. You'll have to get off the boat. Come over here and look. You'll see how they go all the way up.” He pointed up the slope to the barrier of mangrove looming above.

“All right, I'm coming.” Kanai was turning to jump when Fokir stopped him. “No. Wait. First roll up your pants and then take your slippers off, or else you'll lose them in the mud. It's better to be barefoot.”

Kanai kicked off his sandals and rolled his trousers up to his knees. Then, swinging his feet over the gunwale, he dropped over the side and sank into the mud. His body lurched forward and he reached quickly for the boat, steadying himself against the gunwale: to fall in the mud now would be a humiliation too painful to contemplate. He pulled his right foot carefully out of the mud and planted it a little way ahead. In this fashion, by repeating these childlike steps, he was able to get across to Fokir's side without mishap.

“Look,” said Fokir, gesturing at the ground. “Here are the claws and there's the pad.” He turned to point up the slope. “And see, that's the way it went, past those trees. It might be watching you even now.”

There was a mocking note in his voice that stung Kanai. He stood up straight and said, “What are you trying to do, Fokir? Are you trying to frighten me?”

“Frighten you?” said Fokir, smiling. “But why would you be frightened? Didn't I tell you what my mother said? No one who is good at heart has anything to fear in this place.”

Then, turning on his heel, Fokir went back to the boat, across the mudbank, and reached under the hood. When he straightened up again, Kanai saw that he had drawn out his dá.

As Fokir advanced toward him, blade in hand, Kanai recoiled reflexively. “What's that for?” he said, raising his eyes from the instrument's glistening edge.

“Don't be afraid,” said Fokir. “It's for the jungle. Don't you want to go and see if we can find the maker of these marks?”

Even in that moment of distraction, Kanai noticed — so tenacious were the habits of his profession — that Fokir was using a different form of address with him now. From the respectful
apni
that he had been using before, he had switched to the same familiar
tui
Kanai had used in addressing him: it was as though in stepping onto the island, the authority of their positions had been reversed.

Kanai looked at the tangled barrier of mangrove ahead and knew that it would be madness to walk into that with Fokir: his dá could slip, anything could happen. It was not worth the risk.

“No,” said Kanai. “I'm not going to play this game with you anymore, Fokir. I want you to take me back to the bhotbhoti.”

“But why?” said Fokir with a laugh. “What are you afraid of ? Didn't I tell you? A man like yourself should have nothing to fear in this place.”

Stepping into the mud, Kanai shouted over his shoulder, “Stop talking nonsense. You may be a child, but I'm not —”

Then suddenly it was as though the earth had come alive and was reaching for his ankle. Looking down, he discovered that a rope-like tendril had wrapped itself around his ankles. He felt his balance going and when he tried to slide a foot forward to correct it, his legs seemed to move in the wrong direction. Before he could do anything to break the fall, the wetness of the mud slapped him full in the face.

At first he was completely immobile: it was as though his body were being fitted for a mold in a tub of plaster. Trying to look up, he discovered that he could not see: the mud had turned his sunglasses into a blindfold. Scraping his head against his arm, he shook the glasses off and allowed them to sink out of sight. When Fokir's hand descended on his shoulder, he brushed it off and tried to push himself to his feet on his own. But the consistency of the mud was such as to create a suction effect and he could not break free.

He saw that Fokir was smiling at him. “I told you to be careful.”

The blood rushed to Kanai's head and obscenities began to pour from his mouth: “
Shala, banchod, shuorer bachcha.
”

His anger came welling up with an atavistic explosiveness, rising from sources whose very existence he would have denied: the master's suspicion of the menial; the pride of caste; the townsman's mistrust of the rustic; the city's antagonism toward the village. He had thought he had cleansed himself of these sediments of the past, but the violence with which they spewed out of him now suggested that they had only been compacted into an explosive and highly volatile reserve.

There had been occasions in the past — too many of them — when Kanai had seen his clients losing their temper in like fashion: when rage had made them cross the boundaries of selfhood, transporting them to a state in which they were literally beside themselves. The phrase was apt: their emotions were so intense as almost to spill outside the physical boundaries of their skin. And almost always, no matter what the proximate cause, he was the target of their rage: the interpreter, the messenger, the amanuensis. He was the life preserver that held them afloat in a tide of incomprehension; the meaninglessness that surrounded them became, as it were, his fault, because he was its only named feature. He had survived these outbursts by telling himself that such episodes were merely a professional hazard — “nothing personal” — it was just that his job sometimes made him a proxy for the inscrutability of life itself. Yet, despite his knowledge of the phenomenon, he was powerless to stop the torrent of obscenities that were pouring out of his mouth now.

When Fokir offered a hand to help him up, he slapped it aside: “
Ja,
shuorer bachcha, beriye ja!
Get away from me, you son of a pig!”

“All right, then,” said Fokir. “I'll do as you say.”

Raising his head, Kanai caught a glimpse of Fokir's eyes and the words withered on his lips. In Kanai's professional life there had been a few instances in which the act of interpretation had given him the momentary sensation of being transported out of his body and into another. In each instance it was as if the instrument of language had metamorphosed — instead of being a barrier, a curtain that divided, it had become a transparent film, a prism that allowed him to look through another set of eyes, to filter the world through a mind other than his own. These experiences had always come about unpredictably, without warning or apparent cause, and no thread of similarity linked these occasions, except that in each of them he had been working as an interpreter. But he was not working now, and yet it was exactly this feeling that came upon him as he looked at Fokir: it was as though his own vision were being refracted through those opaque, unreadable eyes and he were seeing not himself, Kanai Dutt, but a great host of people — a double for the outside world, someone standing in for the men who had destroyed Fokir's village, burnt his home and killed his mother; he had become a token for a vision of human beings in which a man such as Fokir counted for nothing, a man whose value was less than that of an animal. In seeing himself in this way, it seemed perfectly comprehensible to Kanai why Fokir should want him to be dead — but he understood also that this was not how it would be. Fokir had brought him here not because he wanted him to die, but because he wanted him to be judged.