Amitav Ghosh - The Circle of Reason

Late that night Karthamma’s groans started again. By sunrise the cabin was shivering to her screams. The men sat on the steps and stared at the curtain; they could only guess at what was happening inside. They heard a fist pounding on the cabin wall, and Zindi shouting curses. At times the oil-drums rang out as though someone had been thrown against them; at others, eerily, the noise stopped and torrents of words came pouring out of the cabin. In those pauses the Professor would lean forward and listen intently. Once he nodded at the others and said: It’s those forms again. She wants them right now, God help her.

At that Rakesh, who was combing his hair distractedly, rose and fetched a bucket of water. We have to do something, he said helplessly.

A moment later Zindi’s huge bulk stumbled backwards through the curtains and collapsed on to the steps. She sat huddled forward, bent almost double, trying to catch her breath. She saw the others watching her and threw up her hands. What can I do? she said, her voice cracking with exhaustion. The mad bitch is going to kill it and herself, too. It’s all we can do to keep her hands from her womb, and how long can we go on?

She looked hopelessly at the Professor: Can’t you do something?

Professor Samuel took off his spectacles and polished them on his vest, lips pursed. Then, squinting thoughtfully at the cabin, he said: Yes, I think there is something we can do.

She jumped to her feet: What? What will you do?

Wait, he said, fitting his spectacles on again. You’ll see. He turned to Alu: Have you got any paper? Printed paper — paper with fine, close print on it?

Alu nodded. The Professor slapped him on the back. Come on, then. They hurried back to the stern, and Professor Samuel threw aside the tarpaulin sheet that covered their bundles and pulled out his tin suitcase. With deft, controlled haste he unlocked his tin suitcase and took out a pair of trousers, a tie and a black cotton jacket. Dropping his lungi he stepped into his trousers, pulled the jacket on over his vest and wound the tie quickly around his neck. Alu, he shouted, get me the paper, quick.

Untying his bundle of clothes Alu took out the copy of the Life of Pasteur that Gopal had given him and very carefully tore off a page. Despite its age the paper was stiff and crisp. The Professor snatched it from him and, taking a pen out of his jacket, drew a straight line at the bottom of the page. Beside it he wrote in English: ‘Signed.’

You think it’ll work? Alu asked. Oh, yes, said the Professor, she’s in no state to tell the difference between a form given to her by a government babu and a sheet of paper held under her nose by a suited-booted stranger …

He broke off in dismay, looking down at his bare feet. No shoes, he muttered. No shoes.

She won’t look at your feet, Alu said.

Let us hope so, the Professor said, and straightening his jacket he hurried forward to the cabin. At the curtain he stopped and looked back at Alu and Rakesh. Alu waved him on. Looking studiedly downwards, Professor Samuel stepped into the cabin.

They heard him talking rapidly to Zindi. Then his voice changed, rose into a high official monotone and they couldn’t understand him any longer. They heard gasps and a long rattling sigh and after that silence, and then a scream, but of a kind very different from that to which they had grown accustomed: the full, disbelieving cry of a woman in labour.

The Professor stumbled out of the cabin and sat on the steps looking blankly at his feet. Alu prised the sheet of paper out of his fingers. Three shaky Malayalam characters were sprawled across the paper. He rolled the page into a ball and tossed it over the side.

Later, after the bustle and the cries in the cabin had ceased, Zindi came smiling up to the deck. She had a baby cradled in her arms. They all crowded around her to look. It was a boy, very small and wrinkled, dark like his mother and still slimy with her blood. His umbilical cord lay curled on his stomach.

Karthamma still hasn’t seen him, Zindi said. She’s fast asleep. Her face creased into a smile as she looked at Professor Samuel: Maybe she’ll beat you up once she knows what you did.

Kulfi-didi brought warm water and they washed the child and laughed at his shrill, resentful screams. Zindi swaddled it in her tarha and hugged the bundle to her breast and kissed it. My eyes, she said, he will be like my own two eyes to me.

Hajji Musa, standing beside her, tickled the child’s chin and said: It’s a fine boy and where could it grow up better than in the house of Zindi the Apple?

Then it was Rakesh’s turn. He raised his hand to tickle it but his courage ebbed away at the last moment and he dropped his hand and stood staring, shaking his head. Boss, he said in wonder, boss …

And so the child was given his name.

That night, while the others were crowding into the bows in their eagerness to get their first glimpse of al-Ghazira, Alu was sitting alone in the stern, trailing his line, savouring the silence, when he saw Zindi weaving her way down the passage towards him. With a long sigh she settled herself beside him. I’m tired, she said. God give me strength. She had changed into a fresh black fustan and tied a new scarf around her head.

She sighed again and patted his hand. Do you know now? she asked. Are you going to come to my house in al-Ghazira?

I can’t tell yet. Alu’s reply was barely audible. I’ll have to wait and see.

Bring the others if you like — Rakesh and Samuel. They’re all right, and it so happens that for once I have room now.

She peered closely at him: Well?

Alu shrugged: I don’t know …

Zindi sat absolutely still for a moment looking at his lumpy, swollen potato face. Then she hammered her fist on the deck. Idon’knowyet Idon’knowyet, she mimicked him. What do you know? Do you know anything at all?

Alu rose quickly to his feet but she shot out a hand and pulled him down again. He jerked his leg back but her fist had closed on it like a clamp. Pulling himself up again he braced himself against the rails and tried to kick his leg free.

Zindi smiled at him, immense and immovable. Why so shy? she said. Where can you run to?

Then in one quick movement she pulled him down and planted a hand in his crotch. She laughed, and he could feel her breath hot on his cheek. Now, she said, let’s see if you know about anything at all.

She tore open the knot in his pajamas and pushed them down to his knees. Good, she whispered in his ear, so there is something you know. With a flick of her wrists she flung her skirts back over her waist, baring a dark, surging pile of a belly and trunk-like thighs. She took hold of the small of his back and with one powerful heave of her shoulders, pulled him astride her.

So that was how Alu first saw the lights of al-Ghazira peering over Zindi’s shoulder, half-smothered by her breasts, her gasps loud in his ears. He gazed at the distant pinpricks of light and his dazzled sight meshed with every other sense in his body till the lights grew and clamoured and burnt like suns, swallowing the voices suddenly risen around him: Professor Samuel in some distant part of the boat, voice high with excitement — You see, Chunni, I only realized too late that it was I who was wrong, not the shopkeepers, not the obstetricians, but I; and then Zindi spent and fighting for her wind — Never again, don’t dare, don’t dare try this again, don’t even dare look at me again; and somewhere else — Do you understand that, Chunni? I was wrong because there aren’t any queues there, it’s near those lights that the queues are, because there aren’t any queues without money; and Zindi’s hot breath again — And don’t ever talk about this in al-Ghazira, not if you want to live, for if Abu Fahl even imagines this, even dreams of it, you’ll be holding bricks together till the Judgement for he’ll cut you into pieces and feed you into a cement-grinder; and still the lights grew, and it did not matter whether they burnt in al-Ghazira or the moon, any more than it matters to an insect whether a fire burns in a lamp or a furnace, for through a century and a half the same lights have shone in one part of the globe or another, wherever money and its attendant arms have chosen to descend on peoples unprepared for its onslaughts, and for all of those hundred and fifty years Mariamma ’s avatars have left that coast for those lights carrying with them an immense cargo of wanderers seeking their own destruction in giving flesh to the whims of capital.