by Neil Grant
‘Such a scandal. It was very bad back then. It is not good even now, Rudra. But then – a high-caste boy and a low-caste girl – absolutely not. We snuck around like this in Kolkata – the biggest city where no one would ever see us.
‘His family were one of the richest in the Sundarbans. And I was the orphan child of a honeyman. But your dadu had a very strong mind. When I turned eighteen, against his family’s wishes, we were married.’
‘Did you go back to the Sundarbans straight after you were married?’
‘Not at first, Rudra,’ Didima answers. ‘I was scared of the ghosts. And a little afraid of your dadu’s family. But when your dadu’s father died, we were compelled. And I found that rather than holding bad memories of tigers and such, that it was still very much my home.
‘And that is the story of the tiger and the child, my grandson. It is your story too. Today, I am giving this to you.’
Rudra smiles at her. He picks up a flat stone and skims it across the mirrored surface of the creek. Two, three, four, five, six rings and it is gone.
14
THAT AFTERNOON RUDRA IS WITH MAGGS up on the boulders in Dark Corner. They would come here as kids, slipping behind the rocks when dry weather sponged the water from the pools and allowed access. There are caves here – hidden; narrow-mouthed and shallow, just big enough for a child with a torch and a taste for adventure. But they stay outside now, too grown for those games.
‘My great-grandfather was killed by a tiger,’ says Rudra.
Maggs is splayed over a boulder, his head resting on tree root. ‘That’s pretty awesome.’
‘Not for him.’
‘True.’
‘Or my Didima.’ Rudra pulls a gumleaf from an overhanging branch and chews on it. It is bitter and pungent. ‘Imagine it, Maggs – getting torn apart by a tiger.’
‘Yeah … nah.’
‘He was a honeyman, my great-grandfather. He’d go with the other honeymen into the forest and collect wild honey. They had all these rituals they’d do to keep the Tiger God happy.’
‘Tiger God?’
‘He’s called Dokkhin-something and he’s mad for human flesh.’ Rudra spits the mangled leaf onto the rock. ‘There are things that make him angry – disrespecting the forest, taking what you shouldn’t, stuff like that.’
‘What did your great-grandfather do to piss him off?’
‘I don’t think it was him. Not directly. One of the guys in his boat washed a pot in the water or threw his ciggie in. And the tiger charmer hadn’t been able to do his thing.’
‘There was a tiger charmer?’
‘Yeah. These guys that knew the right words to say; the rituals to make the forest workers safe. But at certain times they just couldn’t – like if the moon was wrong. That’s where my great-grandfather came unstuck.’
‘When he was killed?’
‘First him, then four others. When word of the man-eater spread, a white bloke arrived and hunted him down. Left his skin to rot and took the skull from the Sundarbans.’
Maggs props himself up and looks at Rudra. ‘You mean a skull like the one Cord has such a thing for?’
Rudra can feel the blood pounding at his temples, an empty grinding inside him. He looks beyond the shadowed fringe cast by the forest to the magnesium flare of the beach and bay. The whistling kite swoops at the water and pulls up, triumphantly with a fish in its talons. Rudra takes a deep breath and continues. ‘My great-grandmother was given some money by the hunter. Enough to get her and Didima to Kolkata where she was left in an orphanage. She never saw her mother again.’
‘She did okay for herself though,’ says Maggs. ‘Had a daughter who came here and made you – part human, part weirdo.’
Rudra ignores the comment. ‘In a strange way it was the hunter who made it all possible by giving my grandmother the money that allowed them to go to Kolkata. Which then made it possible for Didima to meet my grandfather and go to school.’
Out on the bay, a fishing boat returns, trawling a cloud of noisy gulls.
‘How is Didima anyways?’
‘She’s sick.’
‘Seems like a tough old chook.’
‘Still says she’s dying and, that when she does, she wants to go home.’
‘That’s a bit mad – come all the way here just to die and go home. Kind of a waste of a trip, don’t you think.’
‘I don’t know how we’d do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Get her home. We got basically no money. Really we got minus money, even with what Mum brings in.’
‘I think you worry too much, Rudra. Leave some stuff for your parents to do.’
He rises from sleep like air in a bottle of oil. His skin feels slick with another tiger dream but his mouth is dry. He tries to reorientate himself. There are the walls of Wallace’s spare room, a tiny window showing winking reflections over the creek, a dark doorway. There is Didima sitting on the bed, her legs like mangrove roots. There is her hair set like smoke above her. There are her worried eyes.
‘It’s alright, Rudra. You were dreaming,’ she says. ‘I will make you some warm milk with turmeric and honey.’
‘It’s okay, Didima, I’m fine.’
‘Nonsense. It is no trouble.’ She struggles out of bed, slipping on her flattened sandals. A clank of a pot on the stove, the snick and flare of a match. After a moment, she appears at the doorway with two enamel mugs in her hand.
‘Come, we’ll sit outside, Rudra. It will calm you.’
They sit in the plastic chairs in front of the house. The stars are sprayed like milk froth over the headland.
‘What did you dream of?’ she asks.
‘It was nothing,’ says Rudra. ‘I’ve already forgotten.’
Didima wobbles her head to show that it is okay if he doesn’t want to talk, that she will talk instead.
‘Listen,’ she says, ‘while I tell you the story about the singing fish. This is a nice story with no bad dreams attached.’ She smooths her sari over her knees and looks up to the sky as if willing the words to arrive. Finally, she starts, ‘When I was young girl, before my father was killed by that terrible tiger, my mother’s cousin returned from Ceylon where he had made his fortune in mining tin. It was very unusual for people from poor villages to travel in those times but he was quite unlike anyone I have ever met. He was a bit of a show-off; I remember this, although I was young. But he brought a great many gifts into our poor house and he would sit me on his knee and tell me stories.’
She pauses to sip her milk. Rudra notices his has grown a skin and he pulls at it with his finger and drags it up the corner of the mug and into his mouth.
‘My mother’s cousin was from a town on the east coast of Ceylon. Do you know the story of Ceylon, Rudra?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘About King Ravana, capturing the lovely Sita and taking her away to his kingdom of Lanka? About the loyal monkey general Hanuman helping Rama to rescue her with a monkey army and building a bridge from Lanka to India? And when they walked back through India, people placing lamps on their doorsteps to welcome light, in the form of the lovely Sita, back into the world? This is where we now have the Diwali festival of lights.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t know it matters for the purposes of this story, Rudra, other than I thought when I was a child that Ceylon …’ She places her hand on Rudra forearm and whispers, ‘It’s now even called Sri Lanka,’ nods at this conclusive proof, then continues, ‘ … was a strange and magical place.’
‘Why are you telling me this story?’
‘To pull you away from your dream. It will help. Warm milk for the body, story for the mind. Now listen to my mother’s cousin’s story. One night – a good full moon in the sky – he hired a boat and an oarsman to visit the Kallady Lagoon. The lagoon was splashed with moonlight. It was very, very beautiful. The air smelled of coconut oil and sandalwood.
‘When he got to the Lady Mannin
g Bridge, the oarsman stopped the boat. It was quiet, just the sound of water around the feet of the bridge. Then the oarsman pushed one of his oars deep into the water, blade first. He motioned for my mother’s cousin to put his ear to the handle of the oar.’ Didima stops and blows into her cup, even though the milk is now tepid.
‘And then what?’
‘Well, I will tell you, Rudra. There was a sound. Soft at first, like a pinkie humming around the wet rim of a glass. Then other sounds joined – the slow sawing of a violin bow, the pluck of a single guitar string. Soon it was a whole chorus. The oarsman said, Oorie coolooroo cradoo. Words in Tamil, so many vowels, like bird language. A pigeon singing in a forest. My mother’s cousin said those words in Tamil and then he whispered them, into my tiny ear, in Bangla. And now I will tell you in English – thrice removed. That oarsman believed the sound was made by crying shells.’
‘Crying shells?’
‘That’s what the oarsman said. But my mother’s cousin said it was fish that made the music. Singing fish. They are famous in Batticaloa.’
‘Singing fish.’
‘You can even look them up in the any such encyclopaedia. There are many doubting Thomases but I heard this story with my own ears.’
‘But fish can’t sing, Didima.’
‘How do you know that, Rudra?’
‘I just know it. Fish can’t sing. I mean, I’ve heard of fish like sooty grunters making noises, but singing, Didima, that is something completely different.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only things that feel sing.’
‘Like birds?’
‘Yes, I reckon birds feel things – happiness, sadness, anger.’
‘But not fish.’
‘No. Fish don’t feel anything.’
‘You are talking about emotions, Rudra?’
‘Yes, they don’t feel emotions. They’re cold-blooded. They just act on … on …’
‘Instinct – is this the word you are looking for?’
‘Yes, instinct.’
‘How do you know they do not feel anything?’
‘Because they’re fish and I just know they don’t.’
‘I think until you’ve been a fish, Rudra, you cannot say what they are feeling.’
‘That’s just stupid.’
‘I heard this story when I was a child, Rudra, and from that moment on I have always treated everything as if it has the potential to sing.’
‘This is getting weird, Didima.’
They sit there for a moment, listening to the bay slowly pashing the sand from Dark Corner to the inlet. Then, Didima speaks.
‘Us water people think the sea is silent, that it will give up everything without complaining, forever. It makes it easy for us to take – like stealing sweeties from child. If you don’t protest then we think you are agreeing, even when you are giving up your very life. But there is always the fish song, Rudra – a protest so quiet, we believe it is not there.’
Didima wipes at her eyes with the corner of a hankie. ‘Your mother was such a sweet child, you know. Always so sweet. Like coconut ladoos I would tell her, sweeter even, like chomchom or rosogolla.’ She smiles. ‘I wish she hadn’t gone so far away.’
‘Why did she leave India, Didima?’
‘You have not asked her?’
‘It never came up.’
‘I’m not really sure it is my place to tell you, Rudra. But I will anyway. Because I am your didima and I promised you your stories.’ She takes a quick sip of her hot milk and, clearing her throat, begins. ‘We gave Nayna everything we could. She grew up with love and when the time came, we sent her to boarding school to be educated in all the things that would bring her into the world. We didn’t want her to always have river mud between her toes. It was a lot of money, Rudra, and by this time the family fortunes were not so high. It is true that your dadu’s family were once rich, but fortunes rise and fall with the tides.’
‘But,’ says Rudra, smiling, ‘Dadu was a solution-wala.’
Didima doesn’t smile, not this time. ‘He was, Rudra. But sometimes when the problem is so hard the solution is a nut hidden inside a bitter fruit.’
It is not dawn yet and won’t be for a few hours. Rudra wishes for sunrise and for a good ending to the story. But Didima, backlit by the porch light, looks into her empty cup. He prods her. ‘What happened next, Didima?’
‘Oh, Rudra, I am sad even thinking of it.’ She pauses. ‘Nayna was at Calcutta University – Bachelor of Science with Physics Honours – such a clever one. The university educated some very important women. Nayna’s hero was Kadambini Ganguly, who became a doctor in the time of the Britishers – one of the first women to graduate from university in such times.
‘Nayna had such big dreams. And why not? Times were changing, life for women was getting better and better. For some women, Rudra, not all. Things were not perfect.’ She presses her fist to her mouth. ‘But the expense. Fees were one thing, and then accommodation for Nayna, and food expense.’ Didima shakes her head in the remembering, the weight of the debt pressing down on her even after all this time. ‘Your dadu’s family had some dowry things set aside. You know what dowry is, Rudra. It is the price a family must pay to a groom for the upkeep of a bride.’
‘That’s good, Didima. Money was what you needed.’
‘It wasn’t enough money that Nayna could be brought through university and we would not also starve. And then what after that? What of her future? So,’ says Didima, looking at Rudra gravely, ‘that is when your dadu came up with the solution.’
‘Which was?’
‘The money was not so great. Enough only for a dowry and a small wedding. There were other items – saris, silk and whatnot, handed down also. But we couldn’t have the pick of the bachelors in the Sundarbans. And Kolkata was not even possible. Oh, Rudra, your dadu and I married for love, but it was a hard road. To push against tradition is a difficult thing; maybe even impossible in the long run.’
‘What did Mum do when she found out?’
‘The timing could not have been more terrible. She was home on a break and excited about an opportunity to study in Australia. A part-scholarship was possible, but still it was so much money. Then we sat her down and told her of her baba’s solution. We brought the steel box from its hiding place and showed her the money and the nice clothing. We told her we were doing this for her.’ A sob rises in her – unbidden, a bubble of pure despair. ‘Your dadu and I had married for love and now this.’ She uses her sari to blot the tears from her cheeks. ‘At first my Nayna was happy, thinking she could use the money to get to Australia. But your dadu explained to her it was not possible – that if she went to Australia to study we could not afford the ongoing costs – the food money, a place to stay and whatnot. It was the long-term solution your dadu was thinking of. He kept repeating that: long-term solution in English, as if that somehow made it all better.
‘It was not the crying or the shouting, Rudra, it was my Nayna’s eyes I remember. We had betrayed her so deeply.
‘The next morning I made her breakfast – curds with honey, a nice hot cup of cha. But she was gone. And the box was gone with her.’
‘She stole from you, Didima.’
‘It was us that stole from her, really. Who could blame her for doing what she did. To raise a child believing one thing, then to do entirely another. We knew it wasn’t right, your dadu and I, but I am not sure how we could have done a different thing.’
‘You could have given her the money to go to Australia,’
‘And then we would have lost her forever.’
‘You did anyway.’
Didima purses her lips. ‘We did.’
‘It’s okay, Didima. You got her back.’
‘But her baba never saw her sweet face again, and for that I am always sad. She wrote to us once she was at university in Sydney, then again when she was married to your father. I kept writing to her but the letters from her end dried up. Your dadu said
I should leave her alone, that she must take her own course now. But I am an Indian mother and I love fiercely and I love forever and I never forget my child.
‘When I got her letter with news of her marriage it had one email address at the top. Of course, I could never send such a thing but your Aunty Bansari’s clever son, he was able.’
‘I have an Aunty Bansari?’
‘She is not your real aunty, she’s your dadu’s cousin, but never mind – her son is very clever and he sent an email to your mother telling her of her baba’s death. And when I sold our house, I came here.’
‘But why did Mum never go home?’
‘I think you need to ask her that. But maybe she was ashamed to give up what she had fought for. I cannot actually know her mind.’
They sit there for a while in the semi-silence. The mopokes call down from the forest above. The water licks at the pier and the rocks. Wind rattles in the leaves of darkened trees.
‘I think I’ll go back to bed now,’ says Rudra.
‘No more bad dreams.’
‘Hot milk and stories are the cure.’ But, in truth, those stories are now hanging inside him like the wallaby carcass in the shed. Rudra has no language to absorb them into himself. What can he make of a fish with the potential to sing or a girl (his mother, he realises with a shock) denied? He looks at his didima, into the eye of this storm that is engulfing him; her at the centre of it all, calmly sipping her hot milk.
As Rudra slips under the single sheet, he tries to not think about the tiger. But of course in this game when you try not to think of a thing, then you do. For a long time, he sits staring into the demon black above his bed. But eventually, everyone must sleep.
The tiger walks on the soft pad of paws. Deep in the jungle where the light is striped and supple and bends over broadleaved plants, winding up lianas until it runs across the canopy.
The tiger bends to drink, pushing its tongue to the water and bringing it into its mouth. It hears the cry of an animal, feeling it down deep in its stomach. Ears turn, trying to locate the sound. It begins to run towards the sound. Towards the blood. And the sight – the quiver of the animal’s flank, eyes widening in the blue-black shadowlight. And it is on it. A mouth clamped hard around its neck.