Anuradha Roy - Sleeping On Jupiter

Floating on his back, he opened his eyes against the light. The sky was now a bright cobalt and an aeroplane crossed it miles above him, toy-sized. After the boat was done he would make a plane. He hadn’t told Nomi how in each of his boats he tucked in a letter to his father. Nobody knew about it. A handwritten note, barely legible, on a piece of paper that he then wrapped in cling-film and twisted into a roll that fitted inside the boat’s cabin. The letter would sink unseen, along with the boat, somewhere far away.

He felt weightless, his limbs loose and limp. Nomi’s story of missing her train came back to him. How she had said, “Don’t you feel like disappearing from your life sometimes?”

He stopped moving his legs, felt his feet fall away down, felt them pull him in after them. Something was sucking him downward and outward.

The dog he battered had lived. Lame, blinded in one eye, but alive. He had fed it scraps of meat and bowls of milk every day in atonement. The dog would drag itself away when he came with the food to its street corner. It would inch back to eat only when Suraj was out of sight.

He would not move his arms. He would not move at all. The sea could have him. Out there somewhere his wife was drinking beer, eating sandwiches, making love with his friend, and that dog was dying.

His legs followed his feet, his hips followed his legs. He sank further down. Nothing mattered any longer but this sense of letting go and never having to try again. Not his wife, not her lover, not the dog, not the first boat that he made at sixteen and sailed alone after his father died. When the water closed over him, all sound disappeared. Not another living thing in the world, nothing to go back to.

Just when his lungs felt as if they would blow up and he was about to open his mouth and let the water fill him and take him, he found he had instead erupted into the air gasping, coughing and flailing. He struggled to stay up, sank, let out a choking cry for help as he swallowed a bellyful of seawater. Thrashing around with all he had in him, he fought himself out of the water again. A boat had appeared from somewhere, it was bobbing next to him. It was painted green and yellow. Four fishermen were looking at him over its side, saying things he could not hear. One of the fishermen pushed an oar in his direction. He managed to get his hands on it.

He was dragged into the boat, fell against rusted tin and nets and ropes. The four men looked at him, pulled at their oars. He was very far from the shore, they said, these were dangerous waters with strong undertows and people were often sucked under. The fishermen were bare-bodied, their arms were sinews and muscles and veins held in by parchment-skin. Each man wore a head-cloth against the sun. It was more than half way up the sky now, fierce enough already to have burnt away the dawn.

Suraj sat gasping for breath, listening to the fishermen cackling about their lousy luck, tossing insults and jokes back and forth. After an entire night at sea all they had caught was a man! What’s a man good for, eh? Can you eat a man? Can you fry it and feed it to your children? Now a fish: you can use all parts of a fish from its head to its fins to its tail. You can chew on its spine. You can fry its roe or eat your rice with its oil. The tiny ones you can eat whole: heads, bones, eyes and all, fried to a salty crunch. Fish can swim and sing and fly, they can even kill men. If not fish, a woman was a better find. If you fish a woman out of the water you can lay her or sell her or set her to work. But what use is a man? If you had netted a man you might as well throw him back in.

One of the fishermen pointed at him and said, “You’ll be back as a big fish in your next life. And we’ll catch you.”

The boat stank of fish and kerosene oil. Suraj could see damp boards, cans and rags, a tangle of dead squid in a net. The oars sliced the water with slow splashes. One of the fishermen bared a mouthful of yellow teeth and said, “Wanted to die? There are better ways.” Suraj heard their words as if from far away. His head was brimming with water.

When they reached the shore the men forgot all about him, busying themselves hauling their boat in, unloading their nets. The beach was more crowded with early morning walkers and fisherwomen. Suraj needed to find that tea stall, but did not know which way to go. Sand in both directions, infinity curving inward and out. Where was his hotel? He had thought he had swum straight, but he must have gone far out in a diagonal. Nothing was familiar on this stretch. He sat on the ground, limp as a puppet without its strings. He could not move, not yet. He watched the fishermen. It was hard work, pulling in those heavy nets and ropes, tugging and rolling in unison. Their teeth jutted out in their thin faces as they grimaced with the effort. They were like their own boats, bony spines for keels, ribs for frames.

He watched them until the sun had dried the seawater on him into sparkling, itchy salt crystals. When they had finished their work and were about to leave he went up to one of them and said, “I’ve got no money on me now, but tell me the way to the hotels and if one of you comes with me, I want to, I mean. .” He had nothing but the trunks he was wearing, he was crippled without his clothes and mobile. He wished he had his wallet and could give them all the money in it.

When one of the men had taken him back to the tea stall he found his clothes in a heap on the bench, where he had left them. The phone was gone. Johnny Toppo said, “Babu, what do I know? I didn’t touch that bundle. You left it, I was serving customers. The bundle was there — nobody came near it.” Then something seemed to occur to him and he yelled “Raghu!”

Far down in the other direction, Suraj could see that the boy who had been struggling with an iron bucket was now talking to a man — he could not be sure, but he thought it was the surly guide with the long red fingernail, the fellow who had taken him through the temple. They paid no attention to Johnny Toppo’s shout. Suraj felt a deep fatigue overtake him and sat down on the sand to wait.

Johnny Toppo strode forward, cupped his mouth with his palms and yelled at the top of his voice. “Raghu! You little prick. Are you deaf? I swear today’s your last day with me, I swear it. I’ve had enough.”

This time the boy appeared to hear Johnny Toppo. He left the guide in mid-sentence and ran towards the tea stall, arrived panting. Johnny Toppo snarled, “Take your time, you’ll have plenty now that you’re sacked. This Babu left his telephone with his clothes here, have you seen it?”

Raghu shrugged and said, “I’ve got better things to do than look after someone’s old clothes.” Johnny Toppo flung his arm out and hit the boy’s head. “Rude bastard,” he said. “Better things to do, eh?”

He turned the boy around and patted his clothes. His hand stopped when he reached a pocket on the boy’s shorts.

The boy shouted, “I haven’t taken his phone! This is my phone! I just got it, this minute.”

Johnny Toppo picked up his iron ladle from the pan steaming with tea. The stall was hot and smoky, he was sweating from being at the stove.

“Your phone, eh?” he said. “What d’you take me for? An old donkey? Your phone, you lazy scum? Where did you get the money for a phone?”

He slammed the ladle into the boy’s back. “Did you steal the money from me, or the phone from him?” he shouted. “My shop’s got no place for thieves.”

The boy howled with pain. “I haven’t taken it, I haven’t taken it! This is my phone! That temple Babu gave it to me!” He pulled out the phone from his pocket. “See Babu,” he begged, holding it towards Suraj, “is this your phone?”

Johnny Toppo had the boy by a tuft of his hair. He hit him again. The more Raghu howled, the harder came the ladle until Suraj snapped out of his stupor and managed to stand up. He held Johnny Toppo’s arms back and shouted, “Stop! Stop right now. That’s not mine! Leave him alone! He’s a kid!”