Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

Kanai’s head filled with visions of the ways in which the tide country dealt out death. The tiger, people said, killed you instantly, with a swipe of its forepaw, breaking the joint between your shoulder and neck. You felt no pain when it happened; you were dead already of the shock induced by the tiger’s roar just before the moment of impact. There was undeniably a quality of mercy to this — to the human mind, at least. Wasn’t this why people who lived in close proximity with tigers so often regarded them as being something more than just animals? Because the tiger was the only animal that forgave you for being so ill at ease in your translated world?

Or was it because tigers knew of the horror of a reptilian death? It’s the crocodile, he remembered, that most loves the water’s edge: crocodiles can move faster on mud than a man can run on grass; the clay doesn’t impede them; because of their sleek underbodies and their webbed feet they can use its slipperiness to their advantage. A crocodile, it’s said, will keep you alive until you drown; it won’t kill you on land; it’ll drag you into the water while you’re still breathing. Nobody finds the remains of people who’re killed by crocodiles.

Every other thought vanished from his mind. Rising to a crouch, he began to push himself backward, higher up the bank, unmindful of the rooted spear points raking his skin. As he retreated up the bank, the mud thinned and the mangrove’s shoots grew taller and more numerous. He could no longer see the ripple in the water, but it did not matter: all he wanted was to get as far from the river as possible.

Rising gingerly to his feet, he took a step and almost immediately there was an excruciating pain in the arch of his foot: it was as though he had stepped on the point of a nail or on a shard of glass. In wrenching out his foot, he caught a glimpse of a mangrove’s ventilator, sunk deep in the mud: he had jabbed his foot directly into its spear-like point. Then he saw that the spores were everywhere around him, scattered like booby traps; the roots that connected them ran just below the surface, like camouflaged tripwires.

The barrier of mangrove, which had looked so tangled and forbidding from the boat, now seemed a refuge, a safe haven. Picking his way through the minefield of ventilators, he went crashing into the vegetation.

The mangrove branches were pliable and sinuous; they bent without breaking and snapped back like whips. When they closed around him, it was as if he had passed into the embrace of hundreds of scaly limbs. They grew so thick he could not see beyond a few feet; the river disappeared from view, and if it were not for the incline of the slope he would have been unable to judge whether he was heading away from the water or not. Then, all at once, the barrier ended and he broke through to a grassy clearing dotted with a few trees and palms. He sank to his knees; his clothes were in shreds and his body was covered in cuts and scratches. Flies were settling on his skin and clouds of mosquitoes were hovering above.

He could not bring himself to look around the clearing. This was where it would be, if it was here on the island — but what was he thinking of? He could not recall the word, not even the euphemisms Fokir had used: it was as if his mind, in its panic, had emptied itself of language. The sounds and signs that had served, in combination, as the sluices between his mind and his senses had collapsed: his mind was swamped by a flood of pure sensation. The words he had been searching for, the euphemisms that were the source of his panic, had been replaced by the thing itself, except that without words it could not be apprehended or understood. It was an artifact of pure intuition, so real that the thing itself could not have dreamed of existing so intensely.

He opened his eyes and there it was, directly ahead,a few hundred feet away. It was sitting on its haunches with its head up, watching him with its tawny, flickering eyes. The upper parts of its coat were of a color that shone like gold in the sunlight, but its belly was dark and caked with mud. It was immense, of a size greater than he could have imagined, and the only parts of its body that were moving were its eyes and the tip of its tail.

At first his terror was such that he could not move a muscle. Then, collecting his breath, he pushed himself to his knees and began to move slowly away, edging backward into the thickets of mangrove, keeping his eyes fixed on the animal all the while, watching the tip of its twitching tail. Only when the branches had closed around him did he rise to his feet. Turning around, he began to push his way through the enclosing greenery, oblivious now to the thorns and splinters that were tearing at his limbs. When at last he broke through to the mudbank, he fell forward on his knees and covered his eyes with his forearm as he tried to prepare himself for the moment of impact, for the blow that would snap the bones of his neck.

“Kanai!” The shouted sound of his name made him open his eyes just long enough to see Piya, Fokir and Horen running toward him across the bank. Now once again he fell forward on the mud and his mind went dark.

When next he opened his eyes, he was on his back, in the boat, and a face was taking shape above him, materializing slowly against the blinding brightness of the afternoon sun. He came to understand that it was Piya, that she had her hands under his shoulders and was trying to prop him up.

“Kanai? Are you OK?”

“Where were you?” he said. “I was alone so long on that island.”

“Kanai, you were there just ten minutes,” she said. “Apparently it was you who sent Fokir away. He came hurrying back to get us and we came as quickly as we could.”

“I saw it, Piya. I saw the tiger.” Now Horen and Fokir crowded around him too, so he added in Bangla, “It was there, the cat — I saw it.”

Horen shook his head. “There was nothing there,” he said. “We looked, Fokir and I. We looked and saw nothing. And if it had been there, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“It was there, I tell you.” Kanai’s body was shaking so much that he could hardly get the words out of his mouth. Piya took hold of his wrist in an effort to calm him.

“Kanai,” she said gently, “it’s all right. You’re safe now. We’re with you.”

He tried to answer, but his teeth were chattering and his breath kept getting caught in his throat.

“Don’t try to talk,” Piya said. “I’ve got a sedative in my first-aid bag. I’ll give it to you when we get to the Megha. What you need is a good rest. You’ll feel much better afterward.”

DAYLIGHT WAS FADING when Piya put away her data sheets and stepped out of her cabin. As she passed Kanai’s cabin, she paused to listen at his door: he had slept through the afternoon, after taking the pill she had given him, but she sensed he was awake now for she could hear him moving about inside. She raised her hand to knock, thought better of it and went on her way, across the deck and to the bow.

With the setting of the sun Garjontola, all but engulfed by the rising tide, had turned into a faint smudge of land outlined against the darkening sky. In the dying light the island seemed to be drifting peacefully to sleep. But just as Piya was stepping up to the bow, the dark blur was lit up by tiny points of phosphorescence. The illumination lasted only an instant and then the island went dark again. But a moment later the lights twinkled once more, in perfect synchrony: there were thousands, possibly millions, of glowing pinpricks of light, just bright enough to be seen across the water. As her eyes grew used to the rhythm of the flashing, she was able to make out the sinuous shapes of roots and branches, all outlined by the minuscule gleams.