Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide

“Yes, but people’s lives matter more.” Nilima had inclined her head to catch a glimpse of the hospital. A row of people could be seen on the second floor, braving the wind in order to look at the floodwaters.

“Just think of all the people who’ve been saved by that cyclone shelter,” Nilima said. “And it was Nirmal who convinced us to build it. If it weren’t for his peculiar interest in geology and meteorology we would never have thought of it.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Nilima. “Making us build it was probably the most important thing he did in his whole life. You can see the proof of that today. But if you’d told him that, he’d have laughed. He’d have said, ‘It’s just social service — not revolution.’”

THE DIMINUTION OF the noise was the first indication of the eye’s arrival. The sound didn’t stop; it just pulled back a little, and as it retreated the wind slowed down and seemed almost to die. Piya opened her eyes and was amazed by what she saw. A full moon hung above the top of what seemed to be a whirling stovepipe that reached far into the heavens. The light of the moon, shining through this spinning tube, illuminated the still center of the storm.

Stretching away from them in every direction, as far as Piya’s eye could reach, was a heaving carpet of leaves. Almost nothing was visible of the water’s surface; the usual ripples, eddies and currents had disappeared under this layer of green. As for the island itself, it was entirely submerged, and its shape could be deduced only from the few thickets of trees whose uppermost reaches were still visible above water. These trees had a skeletal, forlorn look; few had any branches remaining and there was scarcely one that still had a leaf attached. Many had been snapped in half and reduced to shattered stumps.

A white cloud floated down from the sky and settled on the remnants of the drowned forest. It was a flock of white birds, and they were so exhausted as to be oblivious of Piya and Fokir. Piya loosened the knot in the sari and pushed back from the tree to stretch her aching limbs. One of the birds was so close she was able to pick it up in her hands: it was trembling and she could feel the fluttering of its heart. Evidently the birds had been trying to stay within the storm’s eye. How far had they flown? Piya could not imagine. Releasing the bird, she rested against the tree.

Fokir, she noticed, was already standing, balancing on the branch and stretching his legs. She had the impression that he was looking around urgently, searching for another branch to move to. But there was nothing in sight: their tree had lost all its limbs except the one they were sitting on.

Fokir lowered himself to a crouch and touched her knee, making a small, barely perceptible gesture. She saw that he was pointing into the distance to another thicket of trees. Following his finger, she saw a tiger pulling itself out of the water and into a tree on the far side of the island. It seemed to have been following the storm’s eye, like the birds, resting whenever it could. It became aware of their presence at exactly the same moment they spotted it; although it was several hundred yards away, she could tell that it was an immense animal, so large it seemed incredible that the tree could sustain its weight. Without blinking, the tiger watched them for several minutes; during this time it made no movement other than to twitch its tail. She could imagine that if she had been able to put a hand on its coat, she would have been able to feel the pounding of its heart.

The tiger seemed to sense the storm’s return, for it glanced over its shoulder before slipping off the branch. They saw its head bobbing in the water for a few minutes and then the moonlight dimmed and the roar of the wind filled their heads again.

Piya swung her legs on the branch and turned quickly to resume her position. When she was facing the tree, they looped the sari around the trunk and Fokir tied it in a knot. They had barely had time to get back in place when the storm was upon them. Again the air was full of hurtling projectiles.

But something had changed and it took Piya a moment to register the difference. The wind was now coming at them from the opposite direction. Where she had had the tree trunk to shelter her before, now there was only Fokir’s body. Was this why he had been looking for a branch on another tree? Had he known right from the start that his own body would have to become her shield when the eye had passed? She tried to break free of his grasp, tried to pull him around so that for once she could be the one who was sheltering him. But his body was unyielding and she could not break free of it, especially now that it had the wind’s weight behind it. Their bodies were so close, so finely merged, that she could feel the impact of everything hitting him, she could sense the blows raining down on his back. She could feel the bones of his cheeks as if they had been superimposed on her own; it was as if the storm had given them what life could not; it had fused them together and made them one.

EVEN THOUGH it was moving very slowly, the Megha had covered two-thirds of the distance to Garjontola when a boat appeared in the distance — the first to be seen in hours.

It was a bright, crisp day, cool but windless. Although the level of the water had been declining steadily since the passage of the storm, the mangroves were still mostly submerged. The water’s surface was covered in an undulating carpet of green, while the forest — or what little could be seen of it — was completely denuded of leaves, stripped down to trunks and stalks. With the drowning of the landscape the channels’ shores had disappeared, making navigation doubly difficult. As a result, since its departure from Lusibari at dawn, the Megha ’s speed had rarely risen above a crawl.

Horen was the first to recognize the craft in the distance. With its hood gone, its appearance was so changed that neither Kanai nor Moyna had thought to associate it with Fokir’s boat. But Horen had built the boat with his own hands, and it had been with him for many years before he passed it on: he knew it at once. “That’s Fokir’s boat,” he said. “I’m sure of it. The storm’s ripped off the hood, but the boat is the same.”

“Who’s in it?” Kanai asked, but this elicited no response from Horen.

Kanai and Moyna went to stand in the Megha ’s bow. The water seemed to congeal as the two craft inched toward each other. In a while Kanai realized that there was only one person on the boat: it was impossible to tell who it was, man or woman, for the figure was caked from head to toe in mud. Moyna’s hands, like his own, were fastened on the gunwale, and he saw that her knuckles had paled, just like his own. Even though they were right next to each other, a chasm seemed to open between them as they peered into the distance at the boat, trying to guess whom it was carrying toward them.

“It’s her,” Moyna said at last, in a whisper that rose quickly to a cry. “I can see. He’s not there.” Balling her hands into fists, she began to pound the marital bangles on her head. One of them broke, drawing blood from her temple.

Kanai snatched at her wrists to keep her from hurting herself. “Moyna, wait!” he said. “Wait and see…”

She froze and again they stared across the water, as if hypnotized by the approaching boat.

“He’s not there! He’s gone.” Moyna’s legs folded under her and she dropped to the deck. There was an outbreak of pandemonium as Horen came running out of the wheelhouse, shouting to Nogen to cut the engine. Between the two of them, Horen and Kanai carried Moyna into one of the cabins and laid her on a bunk.