Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

That night, being off-watch till midnight, Zachary had taken to his bunk soon after dinner and had drowsed off almost at once, remaining fast asleep until the deckhouse bell began to clang. Waking instantly, he pulled on a pair of trowsers, and went racing to the stern to look for signs of the man who had fallen overboard. The vigil was a short one, for everyone knew that the silahdar's chances of survival in that choppy sea were too slim to warrant taking in the sails or bringing the ship about: by the time either manoeuvre was completed he would be long gone. But to turn your back on a drowned man was not easy, and Zachary stayed at the stern well after there was any purpose to be served by lingering.

By the time he went down to his cabin again, the offender had been roped to the mainmast, and the Captain was down in his state-room, closeted with Bhyro Singh and his translator, Baboo Nob Kissin. An hour later, as Zachary was preparing to go on deck for his watch, Steward Pinto knocked on his door to say that the Captain had sent for him. Zachary stepped out of his cabin to find the Captain and Mr Crowle already seated around the table, with the steward hovering in the background with a tray of brandy.

Once they had all been served, the Captain dismissed Steward Pinto with a nod: 'Off with you now. And don't let me find you lurking about on the quarter-deck.'

'Sahib.'

The Captain waited for the steward to disappear before he spoke again. 'It's a bad business, gentlemen,' he said gloomily, twirling his glass. 'A bad business – worse than I thought.'

'He's a bruiser, that black bastard,' said Mr Crowle. 'I'll sleep easier after I've heard him singing the hempen croak.'

'Oh he'll hang for sure,' said the Captain. 'But be that as it may, it's not my place to sentence him. Case needs to be heard by a judge in Port Louis. And the subedar, in the meanwhile, will have to content himself with a flogging.'

'Flogged and hung, sir?' said Zachary incredulously. 'For the same offence?'

'In the subedar's eyes,' said the Captain, 'the murder is the least of his crimes. He says that if they were at home, this man'd be cut up and fed to the dogs for what he's done.'

'What's he done, sir?' said Zachary.

'This man' – the Captain looked down at a sheet of paper, to remind himself of the name – 'this Maddow Colver; he's a pariah who's run off with a woman of high caste – a relative of the subedar, as it happens. That's why this Colver signed up – so he could carry the woman off to a place where she'd never be found.'

'But sir,' said Zachary, 'surely his choice of wife is not our business? And surely we can't let him be flogged for it while he is in our custody?'

'Indeed?' said the Captain, raising his eyebrows. 'I am amazed, Reid, that you of all people – an American! – should pose these questions. Why, what do you think would happen in Maryland if a white woman were to be violated by a Negro? What would you, or I, or any of us, do with a darkie who'd had his way with our wives or sisters? Why should we expect the subedar and his men to feel any less strongly than we would ourselves? And what right do we have to deny them the vengeance that we would certainly claim as our due? No sir…' The Captain rose from his chair and began to pace up and down the cuddy, as he continued: '… no sir, I will not deny these men, who have served us faithfully, the justice they seek. For this you should know, gentlemen, that there is an unspoken pact between the white man and the natives who sustain his power in Hindoosthan – it is that in matters of marriage and procreation, like must be with like, and each must keep to their own. The day the natives lose faith in us, as the guarantors of the order of castes – that will be the day, gentlemen, that will doom our rule. This is the inviolable principle on which our authority is based – it is what makes our rule different from that of such degenerate and decayed peoples as the Spanish and Portuguese. Why, sir, if you wish to see what comes of miscegenation and mongrelism, you need only visit their possessions…'

Here the Captain came abruptly to a stop and planted himself behind a chair: '… And while I am about this, let me speak plainly with both of you: gentlemen, what you do in port is your affair; I hold no jurisdiction over you onshore; whether you spend your time in bowsing-kens or cunny-warrens is none of my business. Even if you should choose to go a-buttocking in the blackest of shoreside holes, it is none of my concern. But while at sea and under my command, you should know that if any evidence of any kind of intercourse with a native, of any mould, were ever to be brought against one of my officers… well, gentlemen, let me just say that man could expect no mercy from me.'

Neither mate had any response to this and both averted their eyes.

'As for this Maddow Colver,' the Captain continued, 'he will be flogged tomorrow. Sixty strokes, to be administered by the subedar at noon.'

'Did you say sixty, sir?' said Zachary in awed disbelief.

'That's what the subedar's asked for,' said the Captain, 'and I have awarded it to him.'

'But might he not bleed to death, sir, the coolie?'

'That remains to be seen, Reid,' said Captain Chillingworth. 'Certainly the subedar will be none too sorry if he does.'

Shortly after daybreak Paulette heard her name being whispered through the air duct: Putli? Putli?

Jodu? Rising to her feet, Paulette put her eye to the duct. I want to get a good look at you, Jodu; move back.

He stepped away and she gave an involuntary gasp. In the scant light from the cracks in the bulwarks, she saw that his left arm was suspended from his neck by an improvised sling; his eyes were swollen and blackened, the whites barely visible; his wounds were still oozing blood and the fabric of his borrowed banyan was striped with stains.

Oh Jodu, Jodu! she whispered. What did they do to you?

It's only my shoulder that hurts now, he said, with an attempt at a smile. The rest looks bad but it doesn't hurt as much.

Suddenly angry, Paulette said: It's that Munia; she's such a…

No! Jodu broke in. You can't blame her; it's my own fault.

Paulette could not deny the truth of this. Oh Jodu, she said. What a fool you are: why did you do something so stupid?

There was nothing to it, Putli, he said offhandedly. It was just a harmless time-passing thing. That's all.

Didn't I warn you, Jodu?

Yes, you did, Putli, came the answer. And others did too. But let me ask you: didn't I warn you about trying to get on this ship? And did you listen? No – of course not. You and I, we've always been like that, both of us. We've always been able to get away with things. But I suppose some day it stops, doesn't it? And then you have to start all over again.

This alarmed Paulette, not least because introspection had always been utterly foreign to Jodu; never before had she heard him speak in this vein.

And now, Jodu? she said. What's going to happen to you now?

I don't know, he said. Some of my shipmates say the whole tamasha will be forgotten in a day or two. But others think I'll be a target for the silahdars until we get into port.

And you? What do you think?

He took his time in answering, and when he spoke it was with an effort. For myself, Putli, he said, I'm done with the Ibis . After being beaten like a dog in front of everyone, I would rather drown than stay afloat in this cursed ship.

There was something implacable and unfamiliar in his voice and it made her glance at him again, as if to reassure herself that it was indeed Jodu who had spoken. The sight that met her eyes offered no such comfort: with his bruises and his swollen face and bloody clothes, he looked like the chrysalis of a being new and unknown. She was reminded of a tamarind seed that she had once wrapped in layers of damp cloth: after a fortnight of watering, when a tiny shoot had poked its head through, she had undone the wrappings to look for the seed – but in vain, for nothing remained of it but tiny shell-like fragments.