Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Presently Professor Samuel began to talk about queues.

If you want to understand queues — understand them seriously, that is — you have to begin by admitting that you know nothing about them. They aren’t simple things, queues. Whole books have been written about them — in America, in Poland, Japan, Czechoslovakia … People see queues and they think, Why, here’s a simple thing, I’ll just go and join it. But it’s not simple, not at all. They’re there before you see them; they have nothing to do with you. They were there before you came along and they’ll be there after you leave. A queue’s not just one man or two men or ten men standing in a line. Even if those two men or ten men weren’t there you’d still have a queue, stretching away in principle. It’s a thing of the mind, with its own humours and properties.

Squinting short-sightedly at the cabin wall, the Professor chipped away a flake of blue-grey paint to reveal a minute but very detailed elephant standing under a coconut palm: it wasn’t as though he’d sprung from his mother’s womb with all that he knew of queues hanging on him ready-made like a polyester shirt. For that matter, nobody in Tellicherry Science College where he had taught these last eight long years had known anything about queues: nobody had time for anything but government quarters, convents for their children, the price of fish, quarrels in the Municipal Council, who the Sub-Collector was, where he was being transferred, who’s in, who’s out …

It was just pure chance, if there was such a thing. One day, passing through Cochin on his way to the station, he had stopped at a library in a small college; not a big library, but quiet, a nice place to spend an hour. And there it was on an almost-empty statistics shelf, its blue hardboard cover plastered with dust and perforated by weevils. He’d picked it up idly — it hadn’t looked very interesting — The Theory of Markov Processes . And it wasn’t very interesting for the most part; he’d almost put it back on the shelf. But then somehow his thumb had caught on the last chapter — ten sparse pages on the Theory of Queues. That was how it began …

The Professor stiffened and swallowed his sentence. Look! he dug Alu urgently in the ribs. It’s her. It’s her again: Zindi at-Tiffaha.

They saw the back of her head first, wrapped in a yellow scarf. It rose slowly, like a winter sun, above the roof of the cabin. Then, swaying gently, she turned into the passageway. Her head and hands seemed incongruously small now, almost misshapen beside the immense rolling bulk of her body: she looked as though her body had somehow outgrown her extremities. She saw her path blocked by the three men and stopped, arms akimbo, eyes narrowed against the sun. Her face was very dark, but only in patches, as though it had been scorched unevenly by the sun, and it glistened under a sheen of sweat. Her cheeks hung down in heavy, muscular jowls, every fold of them quivering with vitality. In Mahé she had been inexpertly swathed in a sari; now she wore a black dress which enveloped her in a cocoon of cloth, billowing outwards where great quivering breasts rested on her stomach and then ballooning over her massive hips to fall to the ground like a tent, over her feet.

In one hand she held a red folding umbrella printed with flowers. She pointed the umbrella at the men and pressed a knob. It flew open, almost leaping out of her grip, and the men flinched and shrank back. She raised the umbrella and swept past them towards the screen of oil-drums which hid the slop-bucket. They could see the umbrella even after she had disappeared behind the oil-drums; it hung poised above the rim, like a small flowered dome.

Squinting at the umbrella, the Professor leant towards Alu and whispered: Yes, no doubt about it. No doubt about it at all. What they say is true — she’s a madam. It’s stamped on her — you can see it in everything she does. And anyway, if she wasn’t, why would she be herding these poor women across the sea? Why would she be keeping them shut away like prisoners in the cabin? I tell you, she’s going to sell them into slavery in al-Ghazira. Something like that. Or worse.

But they don’t look like prisoners, Rakesh said timidly, smoothing his oil-sleek hair. They seemed quite happy to come on to the boat. Of course we couldn’t see Karthamma properly, but that woman she calls Kulfi — the pale gori one in the white widow’s sari — she sits up front in the evenings and laughs and chats with Hajji Musa. Chunni, too, the other one. They seem quite as happy to be going as us.

Rakesh stopped as a low rumbling groan shook the cabin walls. The Professor cocked his head and nodded in quiet triumph: Yes, you’ll soon see how happy they are. We’ll be hearing more of that soon, much more. I’ll tell you one thing — we’re going to go through hell, stuck here in the middle of the sea with this woman starting her labour.

In the engine compartment below deck Sajjan jerked hard on a cord and twice the engine whirred. Once it beat momentarily into life and then spluttered out again. They heard Hajji Musa quietly urging him to try again.

There was a splash of water behind the oil-drums and then the umbrella rose as Zindi stood to shake her skirts out. She turned and lurched purposefully towards the Professor. Squatting beside him, she stared hard into his face.

You’re good at this, han ? she rapped out in fluent guttural Hindi. Good at talking? Talk for hours, talk, talk, no thought for other people’s headaches and worries, just talk, talk, any shit, any filth that comes into your mind? You think we can’t hear you down there?

The Professor edged away. Zindi thrust her face within an inch of his; a black mole with a single hair, twitching like an insect’s antenna, sat on a deep line at the corner of her mouth. All right, she said, we all want to hear some more talk from you now, some real talk. What are you going to do about this boat? Are you going to fiddle with your balls while we die in the middle of the sea or are you going to do something?

Professor Samuel swallowed and shut his eyes.

What can we do? Rakesh appealed to her. You tell us — what can we do? We don’t know anything about engines.

His voiced trailed off. Of course, he said, peering at the horizon, we could row …

Yes, row, said Zindi. That’s the answer. Hang your cocks over the side and twitch hard. That’ll get us to al-Ghazira by sunset.

There was a sudden pounding on the cabin wall. An instant later a half-strangled shriek shook the deck. The pounding grew till Mariamma began to rock, sending circles rippling outwards towards the horizon. Zindi whirled around and rushed down to the cabin. Soon after, the hammering weakened into feeble knocks. I told you, the Professor said with mournful satisfaction. I told you.

Later, when the sun had dipped low in the sky and a cool evening breeze was gently rocking Mariamma , Alu found himself suddenly shaken out of a doze. Professor Samuel was crouching over him. I’m not going to die like this, he said, his voice shaking. I’m not going to die floating on a boat in the middle of the sea. We have to do something. It’s our duty towards those poor women. Get up. How can you sleep now? Get up. We have to do something.

Alu heaved himself up and limped over to the wheelhouse with the Professor following close behind. Hajji Musa was sitting in the shade of the wheelhouse, holding up a filter while Sajjan polished it with a rag. They were surrounded by grimy bits of machinery.

How much longer, Hajji? Alu said.

The Hajji shrugged and thrust an open palm at the heavens: Who knows?

Criminals, villains, the Professor muttered into Alu’s ear in English. Bringing helpless men and women out to die like animals on the sea. Why is the government not doing something?