by Amitav Ghosh
To take care of another human being – this was something Neel had never before thought of doing, not even with his own son, let alone a man of his own age, a foreigner. All he knew of nurture was the tenderness that had been lavished on him by his own care-givers: that they would come to love him was something he had taken for granted – yet knowing his own feelings for them to be in no way equivalent, he had often wondered how that attachment was born. It occurred to him now to ask himself if this was how it happened: was it possible that the mere fact of using one’s hands and investing one’s attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing whatever to do with the response of the object of one’s care – just as a craftsman’s love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated?
After swaddling his cell-mate in a dhoti, Neel propped him against the neem tree and forced a little rice down his throat. To put him back on his verminous charpoy would be to undo all the cleaning he had done, so he made a nest of blankets for him in a corner. Then he dragged the filthy bedstead to the well, gave it a thorough scrubbing and placed it, top down, in the open, as he had seen the other men do, so that the sunlight would burn away its pale, wriggling cargo of blood-sucking insects. Only after the job was done did it occur to Neel that he had lofted the stout bedstead on his own, without any assistance – he, who by family legend had been sickly since birth, subject to all manner of illness. In the same vein, it had been said of him, too, that he would choke on anything other than the most delicate food – but already many days had passed since he’d eaten anything but the cheapest dal and coarsest rice, small in grain, veined with red and weighted with a great quantity of tooth-shattering conkers and grit – yet his appetite had never been more robust.
Next day, through a complicated series of exchanges, involving the writing of letters to chokras and jemadars in other wards, Neel struck a bargain with a barber for the shaving of his cell-mate’s head and face.
In all my years of hair-cutting, said the barber, I’ve never seen anything like this.
Neel looked over the barber’s shoulder at his cell-mate’s scalp: even as the razor was shaving it clean, the bared skin was sprouting a new growth – a film that moved and shimmered like mercury. It was a swarming horde of lice, and as the matted hair tumbled off, the insects could be seen falling to the ground in showers. Neel was kept busy, drawing and pouring bucketfuls of water, so as to drown the insects before they found others to infest.
The face that emerged from the vanished matting of hair and beard was little more than a skull, with shrunken eyes, a thin beak of a nose, and a forehead in which the bones had all but broken through the skin. That some part of this man was Chinese was suggested by the shape of his eyes and the colour of his skin – but in his high-bridged nose and his wide, full mouth, there was something that hinted also at some other provenance. Looking into that wasted face, Neel thought he could see the ghost of someone else, lively and questing: although temporarily exorcized by the opium, this other being had not entirely surrendered its claim upon the site of its occupancy. Who could say what capacities and talents that other self had possessed? As a test, Neel said, in English: ‘What is your name?’
There was a flicker in the afeemkhor’s dulled eyes, as if to indicate that he knew what the words meant, and when his head dropped, Neel chose to interpret the gesture not as a refusal but as a postponement of a reply. From then on, with his cell-mate’s condition improving steadily, Neel made a ritual of asking the question once a day and even though his attempts to communicate met with no success, he never doubted that he would soon have a response.
The afternoon that Zachary came on board the Ibis, Mr Crowle was on the quarter-deck, pacing its width with a slow, contemplative tread, almost as if he were rehearsing for his day as Captain. He came to a halt when he caught sight of Zachary, with his ditty-bags slung over his shoulder. ‘Why, lookee here!’ he said in mock surprise. ‘Blow me if it isn’t little Lord Mannikin hisself, primed to loose for the vasty deep.’
Zachary had resolved that he would not allow himself to be provoked by the first mate. He grinned cheerfully and dropped his ditty-bags. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Crowle,’ he said, sticking out a hand. ‘Trust you’ve been well?’
‘Oh do you now?’ said Mr Crowle, shaking his hand brusquely. ‘Truth to tell, I wasn’t sure we’d have the pleasure o’yer company after all. Thought ye’d claw off and cut the painter, to be honest. Tofficky young tulip like y’self – reckon’d y’might prefer to find gainful employment onshore.’
‘Never entered my mind, Mr Crowle,’ said Zachary promptly. ‘Nothing’d make me give up my berth on the Ibis.’
‘Too soon to tell, Mannikin,’ said the first mate with a smile. ‘Much too early yet.’
Zachary shrugged this off, and over the next few days, what with stowing provisions and tallying the spare equipment, there was no time for any but the most perfunctory exchanges with the first mate. Then, one afternoon, Steward Pinto came aft to let Zachary know that the schooner’s contingent of guards and overseers was in the process of embarking. Curious about the newcomers, Zachary stepped out to the quarter-deck to watch, and within a few minutes he was joined at the fife-rail by Mr Crowle.
The guards were for the most part turbaned silahdars – former sepoys with bandoliers crossed over their chests. The overseers were known as maistries, prosperous-looking men in dark chapkans and white dhotis. What was striking about them, maistries and silahdars alike, was the swagger with which they came aboard: it was as if they were a conquering force, that had been deputed to take possession of a captured vessel. They would not demean themselves by shouldering their own baggage; they deigned only to carry weapons and armaments – lathis, whips, spears and swords. Their firearms, which consisted of an impressive cache of muskets, gunpowder and tamancha handguns, were carried aboard by uniformed porters and deposited in the schooner’s armoury. But as for the rest of their luggage, it fell to the lascars to fetch, carry and stow their belongings and provisions, to the accompaniment of many a kick, cuff and gali.
The leader of the paltan, Subedar Bhyro Singh, was the last to step on board, and his entry was the most ceremonious of all: the maistries and silahdars received him as though he were a minor potentate, forming ranks and bowing low to offer their salams. A large, barrel-chested, bull-necked man, the subedar stepped on deck wearing a spotless white dhoti and a long kurta with a shimmering silk cummerbund: his head was wrapped in a majestic turban and he had a stout lathi tucked under his arm. He curled his white moustaches as he surveyed the schooner, looking none too pleased until his eyes fell on Mr Crowle. He greeted the first mate by beaming broadly and joining his hands together and Mr Crowle, too, seemed glad to see him, for Zachary heard him muttering, under his breath, ‘Well, if it isn’t old Muffin-mug!’ Then he called out aloud, in the most cordial tone that Zachary had yet heard him employ: ‘A very good day to you, Subby-dar.’
This unusual display of affability prompted Zachary to ask: ‘Friend of yours, Mr Crowle?’
‘We’ve shipped together in the past, and it’s always the same, inn’it, for us Rough-knots? “Shipmates afore strangers, strangers afore dogs”.’ The first mate’s lip curled as he looked Zachary up and down. ‘Not that ye’d know about that, Mannikin, not in the company y’keep.’
This caught Zachary unawares: ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mr Crowle.’
‘Oh don’t y’now?’ The first mate gave him a grimace of a smile. ‘Well, maybe it’s best that way.’
Here, before he could be pressed any further, the first mate was taken away by Serang Ali to oversee the fidding of the foremast, and Zachary was left to puzzle over the meaning of what he had said. As luck would have it, the Captain went ashore that night so the two mates dined alone, with Steward Pinto waiting on them. Scarcely a word was said until Steward Pinto carried in some chafing-dishes and laid them on the table. From the smell, Zachary could tell tha
t they were about to be served a dish for which he had once expressed a liking, prawn curry with rice, and he gave the steward a smile and a nod. But Mr Crowle, in the meanwhile, had begun to sniff the air suspiciously and when the steward removed the covers from the dishes, a snarl of revulsion broke from his lips: ‘What’s this?’ He took one look inside and slammed the lid back on the curry. ‘Take this away, boy, and tell cookie to fry up some lamb chops. Don’t y’ever set this mess o’quim-slime in front o’me again.’
The steward rushed forward, mumbling apologies, and was about to remove the containers when Zachary stopped him. ‘Wait a minute, steward,’ he said. ‘You can leave that where it is. Please bring Mr Crowle what he wants, but this’ll do just fine for me.’
Mr Crowle said nothing until the steward had disappeared up the companionway. Then, squinting at Zachary with narrowed eyes, he said: ‘Ye’re awful familiar with these here lascars, in’ye?’
‘We sailed together from Cape Town,’ said Zachary, with a shrug. ‘I guess they know me and I know them. That’s all there is to it.’ Reaching for the rice, Zachary raised an eyebrow: ‘With your permission.’
The first mate nodded, but his lips began to twitch in disgust as he watched Zachary helping himself. ‘Was’t them lascars as taught y’ter t’stomach that nigger-stink?’
‘It’s just karibat, Mr Crowle. Everyone eats it in these parts.’
‘Do they so?’ There was a pause and then Mr Crowle said: ‘So is that what y’feeds on, when ye’re up there with the Nabbs and Nobs and Nabobs?’
Suddenly Zachary understood the allusion of that afternoon; he glanced up from his plate, to find Mr Crowle watching him with a smile that bared the points of his teeth.
‘I’ll bet ye’thought I wouldn’t find out, didn’yer, Mannikin?’
‘About what?’
‘Yer hobnobbin with the Burnhams and such.’
Zachary took a deep breath and answered quietly, ‘They invited me, Mr Crowle, so I went. I thought they’d asked you too.’
‘Right! And black’s the white o’me eye!’
‘It’s true. I did think they’d asked you,’ said Zachary.
‘Jack Crowle? Up at Bethel?’ The words emerged very slowly, as if they had been dragged up from the bottom of a deep well of bitterness. ‘Not good enough to get through that front door, is Jack Crowle – not his face, nor his tongue, nor his hands neither. Missus’d worry about stains on her linen. If ye’re born with a wooden ladle, Mannikin, it don’t matter if y’can eat the wind out o’a topsail. There’s always the little Lord Mannikins and Hobdehoys and Loblolly-boys to gammon the skippers, and pitch slum to the shipowners. Ne’er mind they don’t know a pintle from a gudgeon, nor a pawl from a whelp, but there they are – at the weather end of the quarterdeck, with Jack Crowle eating their wind.’
‘Listen, Mr Crowle,’ said Zachary slowly, ‘if you think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, let me tell you, you’re half a clock off course.’
‘Oh, I know y’for what y’are Mannikin,’ the first mate growled. ‘Ye’re a snob’s cat, full o’piss and tantrums. I’se seen the likes o’yer before with yer pretty face and yer purser’s grins. I know y’mean nothing but trouble, for y’self and fer me. Best y’get off this barkey while y’can: save me as much pain as yer goin’ter save y’self.’
‘I’m just here to do a job, Mr Crowle,’ said Zachary stonily. ‘And nothing’s going to stop me doing it.’
The first mate shook his head: ‘Too soon to tell Mannikin. It’s a couple of days yet afore we weigh. Time enough that something could happen to help yer change yer mind.
For the sake of preserving the peace, Zachary bit back the rejoinder that sprang to his tongue and ate the rest of his dinner in silence. But the effort of keeping himself under control left his hands shaking, his mouth dry, and afterwards, to calm himself, he took a couple of turns around the main deck. Bursts of animated conversation were welling out of the fo’c’sle and the galley, where the lascars were eating their evening meal. He stepped up to the fo’c’sle deck, leant his elbows on the saddle of the jib-boom, and looked down at the water: there were many lights flickering on the river, some hanging from the sterns and binnacles of moored ships, and some lighting the way for the flotilla of boats and dinghies that were weaving between the cables of the ocean-going fleet. One of these rowboats was pulling towards the Ibis with a number of drunken voices echoing out of it. Zachary recognized the boat as Jodu’s, and a twinge shot up his spine as he remembered the night when he’d sat in it, arguing with Paulette.
Turning away, Zachary peered into the looming darkness upriver: he knew that Paulette was in a village somewhere north of Calcutta – he had been alarmed to hear from Jodu that she had been ill and was being looked after by friends. When the boat pulled up beside the schooner, he was powerfully tempted to jump into it and row off, to go looking for her. The impulse was so strong that he might have obeyed it, if not for one thing: it stuck in his craw that Mr Crowle would imagine that he had succeeded in running him off the Ibis.
Fifteen
With the rains over, the sunlight turned crisp and golden. The dry weather speeded Paulette’s recovery and she decided to leave for Calcutta, to put in motion the plan that had been gestating in her mind through her illness.
The first step required a private meeting with Nob Kissin Baboo and she gave the matter much thought before setting off. Burnham Bros.’s main offices were on Calcutta’s fashionable Strand Road, but the firm’s dockside premises were in a dingy corner of Kidderpore, a half-hour’s boat ride away: this distance Baboo Nob Kissin Pander was required to traverse almost daily, in the discharge of his duties, and being of a thrifty turn of mind, he chose usually to travel on the crowded kheya-boats that transported people up and down the waterfront.
The Burnham compound in Kidderpore was a large one, consisting of several godowns and bankshalls. The shed that served as the gomusta’s private daftar lay in one corner of the compound, adjoining a lane. When prospective clients wished to avail themselves privately of Baboo Nob Kissin’s services as a bespoke moneylender, it was there, Paulette knew, that they went to meet with him. This, for instance, was what her father had done – but for herself, in her current situation, the risks attendant upon venturing into a property owned by her former benefactor were too great to make this a comfortable option; she decided instead to waylay the gomusta as he stepped off his ferry, at the nearby ghat.
The ghat in question – known as Bhutghat – proved to be ideal for her purposes: it was narrow enough to be kept easily under watch, and sufficiently busy for a lone woman to loiter without attracting attention. Better still, it was overlooked by an ancient tree, growing on a knoll: the tree was a banyan and its hanging roots formed a beard so dense as to offer easy concealment. Slipping inside this tangled thicket Paulette came upon a root that had looped down in such a way as to form a swinging bench. Here she seated herself, rocking gently, and watched the ghat through a gap in the carefully draped folds of cloth that covered her face.
Her vigil almost came to naught, for the gomusta was so changed, with his long, shoulder-length hair, that he was nearly gone before she recognized him: even the way he walked seemed different, with smaller steps and swaying hips, so she took the precaution of following for a minute or two before she accosted him with a sibilant whisper: Gomusta-babu . . . shunun . . . listen . . .
He spun around in alarm, looking from the river’s edge to the nearby lane. Although Paulette was well within the ambit of his gaze, his eyes, which were lined with a thin touch of kajal, passed without check over her sari-shrouded face.
Paulette hissed again, but in English this time: ‘Baboo Nob Kissin . . . it’s me . . .’
This surprised him even more but brought him no closer to recognizing her; on the contrary he began to mutter prayers, as if to ward off a ghost: Hé Radhé, hé Shyam . . .
‘Nob Kissin Baboo! It is me, Paulette Lambert,’ she whispered. ‘I am her
e, look!’ When his bulging eyes had turned in her direction, she whisked her sari momentarily off her face. ‘You see? It is me!’
The sight of her made him leap backwards in shock, so that he landed heavily on the toes of several passers-by – but the drizzle of abuse that rained down on him went unheeded for his attention was transfixed on Paulette’s sari-shrouded face. ‘Miss Lambert? Why, I cannot believe! You have turned up in my backside? And wearing native garbs also. So nicely you have hidden your face I could not tell . . .’