Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Shireen had listened to the discussion with only half an ear; it was Freddie who was uppermost in her mind that morning. She had thought of little else but of how she might contrive to see him without anyone learning of it.

Fortunately it happened that Dinyar had an errand to run in Hong Kong that day. Hearing him call for the Mor ’s cutter, Shireen had made up a story about needing to visit Sheng Wan village, to buy provisions. As luck would have it she had run into Freddie within minutes of stepping off the cutter.

‘Listen, Freddie,’ she said to him now. ‘There is a reason why I came to see you today.’

‘Yes?’

‘There is something I want to tell you — something important.’ Freddie nodded: ‘So then tell, lah.’ And when she hesitated he added with a smile: ‘Do not worry — I will not say anything to anyone.’

Shireen fortified herself with a deep breath and then a string of words came tumbling out with her scarcely being aware of it: ‘Freddie, you should know that Mr Karabedian has asked me to marry him.’

To her surprise Freddie took the disclosure in his stride, quite literally. Without missing a breath or a step he said: ‘And what your answer was, eh?’

‘I told him I wanted to talk to you first.’

‘Why me?’

‘But of course, I had to talk to you first, Freddie,’ said Shireen. ‘You have known Zadig Bey all your life — he has been like a second father to you. I do not want to do anything that might hurt you.’

‘Hurt me?’

Freddie glanced at her with a raised eyebrow: ‘Why it will hurt me, eh, if you marry Zadig Bey? I will be happy for him — and for you too. You should not worry about me — or Father also.’

A weight seemed to tumble off Shireen’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, Freddie.’

Acknowledging this with a grunt he shot her a sidewise glance: ‘But what about all your Parsis, eh? What they will say if you marry Zadig Bey? They are very strict, ne?’

Shireen sighed. ‘They will cut me off, I suppose. Even my daughters will, at least for a while. And I will probably never again be able to enter a Fire Temple: that will be the hardest part. But no one can take my faith from me, can they? And maybe, in a few years, people will forget.’

They had come to a sharp bend in the path now and as they turned the corner Shireen caught sight of Dinyar: he was walking briskly towards them.

Freddie too had come to a stop beside her. ‘Oh, see there,’ he said, under his breath. ‘One of your Parsis.’

It had not occurred to Shireen that Freddie might be acquainted with her nephew. ‘Do you know Dinyar?’ she said.

‘Only by sight, lah,’ said Freddie. ‘He know me too but will not speak.’

‘Why not?’

Freddie’s lips curled into a crooked smile: ‘Because I am half-caste bastard, ne?’ he said. ‘He is afraid of me.’

‘But why should Dinyar be afraid of you?’

Freddie flashed her another smile. ‘Because he also have made half-caste bastard, lah. In Macau. He know I know. That is why he is afraid.’

Freddie smiled again as she stared at him, her eyes widening in shock. ‘Now I must go, lah. Goodbye.’

*

The tide happened to be coming in when Neel tumbled headlong into the Pearl River: it was to this fact that he owed the preservation of his life — if the current had been flowing in the other direction then he would have been swept towards the raft, to be picked off by British sharpshooters. Instead he was carried in the other direction, towards Whampoa.

Neel had never before been out of his depth in a river; his experience of swimming consisted of paddling around pukurs and jheels — the placid ponds of the Bengal countryside. He had never encountered anything like the surge of the Pearl River’s incoming tide. For the first minutes he could think of nothing but of fighting his way to the surface to gulp in a few breaths.

As he was tumbling through the murky waters he caught a glimpse of a dark trail swirling around his limbs: one end of it seemed to be stuck to his right hip. Thinking that some floating object had attached itself to his body he twisted his head around to take a closer look. He saw then that the trailing ribbon was his own blood, flowing out of a wound. Only then did he become conscious of a sharp, stabbing pain in his flank. Flailing his arms he pushed himself to the surface and shouted for Jodu: Tui kothay? Tui kothay re Jodu?

Twenty feet away, a head, bobbing in the water, turned to look in his direction. A few minutes later Jodu’s arms were around Neel’s chest, pulling him towards the shore, into a thicket of reeds and rushes.

Leaning heavily on Jodu, Neel staggered out of the water but only to collapse on the bank. There was a long rent in his banyan, and underneath it, just above his hip, was a gaping wound where a musket-ball had entered his flesh.

The bullet had to have hit him when he was about to jump, or even perhaps as he was falling. In the tumult of the moment he had not been aware of it — but the pain seemed to have been waiting to waylay him for it assailed him now with a force that made him writhe and thrash his arms.

Lie still!

Neel gritted his teeth as Jodu examined the wound.

The ball’s gone too deep, Jodu said. I won’t be able to get it out, but maybe I can stop the bleeding.

Pulling off the bandhna that was tied around his forehead, Jodu tore it into strips and bound up the wound.

In the meantime the cannon- and gun-fire from the British warships had continued uninterrupted. Jodu and Neel were not far from the fighting, for the current, strong as it was, had brought them only a few hundred yards upriver from the Cambridge . Now, suddenly, there was an explosion that shook the breath out of them: the Cambridge had erupted, throwing up a solid tower of flame. The column climbed to a height of over three hundred feet, ending in a black cloud that was shaped like the head of a mushroom. A few seconds later debris began to rain down and Neel and Jodu had to crouch down, with their arms wrapped protectively around their heads. They did not look up even when the top half of a ship’s mast, thirty feet in length, landed nearby, with a huge thud. It had fallen out of the sky like a javelin, burying itself in the riverbank a few yards away.

A few minutes later there was another powerful explosion, on the river this time. When the smoke cleared they saw that a section of the raft had been destroyed. Within moments dead fish began to float up from below, clogging the river’s surface.

Soon they spotted puffs of smoke heading in their direction. Peering through the rushes they saw that a British steamer had pushed through the shattered raft and was moving rapidly upriver, swivel-guns twitching and turning. Suddenly a fusillade slammed into an already crippled war-junk; then another stream of fire hit something on the shore.

Neel and Jodu flattened themselves on the bank as the steamer swept past, unloosing bursts of fire, apparently at random. In a few minutes a second steamer appeared and went paddling after the first. Then came a couple of corvettes.

After the vessels had passed, Jodu climbed to the top of the bank.

There are some abandoned sampans nearby, he said, after looking around. The owners must have taken fright and run away. Once it gets dark I’ll get one.

Neel nodded: he knew that if they could get to the Ocean Banner Monastery they would be safe, at least for a while.

Shortly before nightfall Jodu slipped away, to return soon after, in a covered sampan. He had changed into some clothes he had found inside the boat: a tunic and loose trowsers, the usual garb of Cantonese boat-people. Of his face, almost nothing was visible: the upper part was hidden by a conical hat and the lower by a bandhna, tied like a scarf around his nose and mouth.