Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

RAIN WAS ARROWING down from the sky as Kanai slipped out of the hospital and began to run toward the Guest House. The drops felt more like pellets than rain: they had the bite of liquid metal and each created a small crater in the mud.

There were no lights in Nilima’s window, but this did not surprise Kanai. The Trust’s generator had not been turned on all day, and to light a lantern was probably not worth the trouble because of the drafts and the wind.

He hammered on her door. “Mashima! Are you there?” A minute passed and he beat his fist on the door again. “Mashima! It’s me, Kanai.” He heard her fumbling with the latch and shouted, “Be careful!”

The warning made no difference. The moment the latch came undone, the door was snatched out of her hand and slammed back against the wall. A stack of files fell off a shelf and a storm of paper went circling around the room. Nilima staggered back, shaking a wrenched wrist, and Kanai hurried to shut the door. Putting an arm around her, he led her to her bed.

“Does it hurt? How bad is it?”

“It’ll be all right,” she said, putting her hands together on her lap. “I’m so glad to see you, Kanai — I was getting very worried about you.”

“But why are you still down here?” Kanai said urgently. “You should be upstairs in the Guest House.”

“Why there?”

“The river’s bound to flood,” said Kanai. “And you don’t want to be trapped in here when it does. If the water gets high enough it’ll be in here too.” He glanced around the room, assessing its contents. “Let’s spend a few minutes putting together your most essential things. Some we’ll take upstairs with us; the rest we’ll pile up on your bed. It’s high enough that they’ll be safe.”

Nilima pulled out a couple of suitcases and, working together, they quickly filled one with files and papers. Into the other went some clothes and such food as Nilima had on hand in her small kitchen — a little rice, dal, sugar, oil and tea.

“Now wrap some towels around yourself,” Kanai said. “It’s raining so hard we’ll be soaked before we can get around the house to the stairs.”

When Nilima was ready, he put the suitcases outside and led her through the door. The color of the sky was even darker now and the lashing rain had churned the earth into mud. Kanai pulled the door shut and locked it; then, with the suitcases in his hands and Nilima holding on to his elbow, he led her around to the stairs.

They were drenched by the time they reached the shelter of the stairwell, but the extra layers of covering had kept Nilima dry underneath. Unwinding the towels, she wrung them out before following Kanai up the stairs. Once they stepped into the Guest House, the storm seemed suddenly to recede. With the shutters securely fastened, the wind could be heard but not felt: it was strangely pleasurable to be able to listen to it from within the safety of four solid walls.

Kanai put the suitcases down and reached for one of Nilima’s wrung-out towels. After drying his hair, he pulled off his mud-soaked shirt and wrapped the towel around his shoulders. Nilima, meanwhile, had seated herself at the dining table.

“Kanai,” she said, “where are the others? Piya? Fokir?”

“We couldn’t find Piya or Fokir,” Kanai said grimly. “We had to leave them behind. We waited as long as we possibly could, and then Horen said we had to go. We’re going to return tomorrow to look for them.”

“So they’re going to be outside?” Nilima said. “During the storm?”

Kanai nodded. “Yes. There was nothing to be done.”

“Let’s hope —” Nilima didn’t finish her sentence, and Kanai cut in.

“And I have some other bad news.”

“What?”

“The notebook.”

“What about it?” she said, sitting up in alarm.

Kanai went around the table and sat beside her. “I had it with me till this morning,” he said. “I was bringing it back here, but I slipped in the water and it was swept out of my hands.”

Her mouth shaped itself into a horrified circle as she took this in.

“You can’t imagine how I feel,” he said. “I would have done anything to save it.”

She nodded, collecting herself. “I know. Don’t blame yourself,” she said softly. “But tell me, Kanai, did you read it?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

She looked closely at him. “And what was it about?”

“Many different things,” he said. “History, poetry, geology — many things. But mainly it was about Morichjhãpi. He wrote all of it in the course of one day and the better part of a night. He must have finished writing just hours before the assault started.”

“So it doesn’t describe the attack?”

“No,” said Kanai. “By that time he’d given it to Horen, who had left Morichjhãpi earlier that day with Fokir. It was a lucky thing: that’s how it survived.”

“What I don’t understand,” Nilima said, “is how it got into his study.”

“It’s a strange story,” Kanai said. “Horen wrapped it up very carefully in plastic with the intention of sending it to me. But it got lost, then it was found again recently. Horen gave it to Moyna, who slipped it into the study.”

Nilima fell silent as she thought about this. “Tell me, Kanai,” she said, “did Nirmal say why he didn’t leave the notebook to me?”

“Not in so many words,” Kanai said. “But I suppose he felt you wouldn’t be very sympathetic.”

“Sympathetic?” Rising angrily to her feet, Nilima began to pace the room. “Kanai, it’s not that I wasn’t sympathetic. It’s just that my sympathies had a narrower focus. I am not capable of dealing with the whole world’s problems. For me the challenge of making a few little things a little better in one small place is enough. That place for me is Lusibari. I’ve given it everything I can, and yes, after all these years it has amounted to something. It’s helped people; it’s made a few people’s lives a little better. But that was never enough for Nirmal. For him it had to be all or nothing, and of course that’s what he ended up with — nothing.”

“Except for the notebook,” Kanai corrected her. “He did write that.”

“And that’s gone too now,” said Nilima.

“No,” said Kanai. “Not in its entirety. A lot of it is in my head, you know. I’m going to try to put it back together.”

Nilima put her hands on the back of his chair and looked into his eyes. “And after you’ve put together his notebook, Kanai,” she said quietly, “will you put my side of it together too?”

Kanai could not fathom her meaning. “I don’t understand.”

“Kanai, the dreamers have everyone to speak for them,” she said. “But those who’re patient, those who try to be strong, who try to build things — no one ever sees any poetry in that, do they?”

He was moved by the directness of her appeal. “I do,” he said. “I see it in you —” Suddenly the dining table began to rattle and he was cut short. Somewhere in the distance was a rushing sound, powerful enough to make itself heard above the gale.

Kanai went to the shutters and put his eye to a chink between the slats of wood. “It’s the tidal surge,” he said to Nilima. “It’s coming down the channel.”

A wall of water was shooting toward them. On its side, where it was cut off by the embankment, a huge plume of spray was shooting into the air. The island was filling with water, like a saucer tipped on its side, as the wave encircled it. Kanai and Nilima watched aghast as the water rose and kept rising, up the flight of stairs that led into Nilima’s flat, stopping just short of the door.

“It’ll take a long time to get the water out of the soil again, won’t it?” Kanai said.