Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

They would find it strange, two women turning up after dark with wet hair and clothes. I thought about explaining this to Gabriela but I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere. Outside it seemed the rain had abated somewhat, though we still had to duck forward against the strength of the wind. We made our way as quickly as we could, our feet making impressions on the sand. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I caught glimpses of Grace ’s truncated hull.

All the dormitory doors were shut. ‘Upstairs,’ Gabriela shouted into the wind. I heard the dull clap of thunder in the distance, and the rain came down hard again, pouring over the concrete steps as we attempted to make our way up. I banged on the first door. When there was no reply, I travelled down the corridor and tried the other three, pounding my fists as hard as I could. Gabriela too. They probably couldn’t hear anything. We went back to the first door and tried again, shouting to be let in. It finally opened and we were ushered inside before the rain followed us in. Tube lights illuminated the room, windowless except for a small opening near the ceiling, which was criss-crossed with metal bars. Rain was coming in through this opening, and someone had placed a bucket and a few bits of clothing underneath.

There were maybe twenty men in the room. I didn’t recognise any of them. ‘Mo?’ Gabriela said. ‘Mo?’

‘Have any of you seen the boy?’ Zubaida asked. ‘We’re looking for him.’

‘Who sent you?’ someone asked.

‘No one. But he’s been missing all day and we can’t find him.’

Someone offered me a dry cloth. I wiped my face and passed it to Gabriela, who did the same. ‘Could he be somewhere in the building?’ I asked.

‘Could be.’ Two men offered to search, ducking out into the rain. It was awkward, looking around for something to do while we waited.

‘Are the storms always like this in summer?’ I asked one of the men.

‘Worse,’ he said.

‘Which crew are you?’

‘Cutting,’ he said.

I nodded. The beds were bunked three high. Underneath the beds and against the walls their things were jammed together, battered trunks and plastic buckets and cups and plates made of tin. A clothes line, heavy with lungis and gamchas, hung between the beds. Some of them had photographs of wives and children pinned to the side of their bunks.

‘How long has Mo been on the beach?’ I asked. ‘Does anyone know?’

‘Was here when I came,’ someone said. ‘That was three years ago.’

‘They tell me he was born here,’ another chimed in.

Again, I was struck with how little I knew. How few questions I’d asked. ‘Doesn’t he have any people?’

The door opened again. The two men who had gone in search of Mo reappeared. ‘No one’s seen him,’ they said, water pooling around their feet. ‘Boss sir says you should go back.’

‘Mr Ali is here?’

‘In the office.’

‘We’re going,’ I said to Gabriela.

‘Can you tell him,’ one of them said, ‘that you came to look for the boy? He doesn’t like us to walk around.’

Gabriela said to give them my phone number. ‘In case Mo turns up.’

I obeyed, writing it down on a piece of paper, knowing they didn’t have mobile phones, and that they probably couldn’t read anyway, but it made me feel better too, because now I was also starting to worry. I had never known Mo to be anywhere but on the beach or at the apartment. Sometimes he shopped for our food at the market. But the market would be closed now. I wished again that he had told me more about this girl, his friend. The guilt pricked at me again, but there was no point in staying here. I was wet and cold. We would explain everything to Ali and then go home.

Ali was calling someone on the landline when we struggled back through the storm and into his office. I was aware of the clothes sticking to me, and of Gabriela, whose pale blouse was showing the outline of her bra. Ali gestured for us to come in, listening to someone on the other end. ‘Yes, sir. Of course. We will do all the accounting, of course. Storm came without warning, sir.’ It must be Harrison. ‘Very sorry, sir. Yes, yes. I will do it immediately, of course.’

‘Something the matter?’ I asked when he’d hung up. I noticed we had neglected to return the biscuits to his drawer.

‘It’s the storm. We are trying to assess the damage.’

His phone rang again. He excused himself and wandered into the corridor, speaking in a low voice. ‘Forgive me,’ he said when he returned. ‘Sir is very concerned. Please, sit down. You were looking for me? In this storm?’

‘We are in search of Mo,’ Gabriela said. ‘Have you seen him?’

I didn’t have time to signal to her. ‘You came out in this storm to look for the boy?’ Ali was confused, almost offended, that we would make such an effort and put ourselves in an embarrassing situation just for the sake of Mo.

I rolled my eyes and lowered my voice. ‘It’s her,’ I said, glancing at Gabriela over my shoulder. ‘She’s become … attached.’

Ali nodded knowingly, as if foreign women came to the beach and took people under their wing all the time. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘You could send out a search party,’ Gabriela said, putting her damp palms on his desk. ‘We haven’t been able to find him anywhere.’

He moved his eyes to his lap, to the other side of the room, the ceiling, anything to avoid looking at her. ‘Please don’t worry, madam. The boy is used to these types of storms. You will see, he’ll turn up tomorrow, grinning from ear to ear. I assure you, he’s perfectly safe.’

Gabriela shook her head, looking as if she was about to cry. ‘I have a bad feeling,’ she said again.

‘Gabi,’ I said, ‘Mr Ali knows what he’s talking about. Let’s go home. Maybe Mo’s come looking for us. And if he’s still missing tomorrow, we’ll make some calls.’

‘Yes,’ Ali said. ‘If he hasn’t turned up by morning — which I’m sure he will — we will investigate further.’

I led her away. ‘Thank you, Mr Ali.’

‘Shall I escort you home?’

‘No, really, it’s not far.’ At the door, I paused. ‘What are you doing here so late yourself, Mr Ali?’

He waved his hand in front of his face. ‘There is the matter of your friend’s piano. We are going to transport it first thing tomorrow morning. Sir has ordered an air-conditioned truck to carry it to Dhaka. But the storm has made it difficult. Nothing to worry about. Please, go home.’

Outside, the darkness was thickened by rain. We paused for a moment, as if by standing there we would find a trace of Mo. Gabriela suddenly broke away and started running towards the sea. I followed her, and after a few paces I almost knocked into the group of men gathered on shore. I could hear Gabriela’s voice asking, in her awkward Bangla, for Mo. More men crowded onto the beach. Through the dense sheets of water, I could make out a milky moon, and as I was forced further towards the water’s edge, I saw lights illuminating the breached hull of Grace . The crowd grew around me, pressing against me, water falling from above, and, it seemed, also from the sides and from below, and very quickly my hair was plastered against my face and I was soaked through. I felt a hand grabbing my elbow, and when I turned around Gabriela was gesturing for me to bring my ear close to her mouth. ‘They’re angry about the piano,’ she said.

I looked around at the workers. They had pulled themselves into a semicircle, and in the middle was the man with the heavy forehead who had taken me to see the injured men. He raised his arm up now, throwing his voice into the crowd.

‘The chair is coming!’ someone said. I lost sight of Gabriela. My eyes adjusted to the half-dark, and I made out a crude wooden ramp laid against the side of Grace . A few minutes later, a knot of men came out, balancing something very large and heavy on their shoulders. The crowd around me shifted, raising their voices higher. The men on the ramp started to move. It was a large rectangular crate. There were three men at the bottom, while the others pushed from above. Everyone started shouting as they made their way, inch by inch, down the ramp. I stood transfixed, understanding now that it was the piano — your piano, Elijah — that they were trying to manoeuvre out of the ship, and every second seemed to stretch as we waited, and they were halfway down and the shouts of anger turned into cheers, as if it had gone from being a protest to a crowd at a cricket match. I heard laughter. Then, it happened: one of them hesitated, broke the pattern, his arms going down when they should have been up, and everything moved very quickly after that: the crate rolling over on its side, pulling everyone to the edge of the ramp, the leader telling them to hold on, hold steady, but from where I was standing, I could see there was no way they were going to save it, so I ran towards them and shouted for them to let go, let go, save yourselves, it doesn’t matter, telling everyone to stand back, because it was going to fall and they would be crushed beneath it, and they rushed back and allowed it to fall, twenty, thirty feet below them, the crate breaking open like an egg, and the sound, a thousand notes being played all at once, the clap of every hammer against every string, the rain a drone of accompaniment, and then the rip of breaking wood, a tearing, ugly sound, and the instrument spilling out from inside, in pieces of black and bone, and then, a flash of colour, a human cry among the sound of breaking, a body, falling and then another, tumbling together and matching the cries of the piano as it shattered above and below them, and finally we saw, pinned under a piece of the crate and the heavy lid of the piano, their arms around each other, a pair of children. And before I blacked out, I heard a voice. ‘My girl,’ the voice said, ‘my girl. My girl.’