Anila's Journey

by Mary Finn

  Mr Walker spoke such fine Bangla. But when he put the bamboo to his mouth he blew a tune that a monkey might have done better. No matter. Manik was entranced with this addition to his musical powers and in a day or so he was making his own compositions. Fishermen blew a conch or gave a wah wah cheer when they saw the tiny boy piping away at the prow of our boat.

  Whenever this happened Benu’s eyes would find mine and each time I found myself smiling back so that we surely looked, both of us, as if we were fond new parents preening over their clever little one.

  “What do you think will happen to Manik when we arrive back in the city?” I asked Benu one morning. I kept my voice low though Madan and Mr Walker were huddled together up forward, in conversation. “Will he stay with your family?”

  “Unless the sahib has a plan my father will decide,” he said. “I already have three brothers younger than me. But Manik is…”

  Benu paused. He tilted his head back and squeezed his eyes tightly shut and then finished his words in a rush. “He is the sweetest to me.”

  There was no time to spare while Benu was at the tiller, which was most of the time our boat was under sail. But I wanted to help him draw and make his letters. I had pages left over now in my notebooks, and very little reason to draw any more myself, as all my sketching was done and the finished work, with paints, required to be worked at a desk. So I tore some blank leaves from my notebook and spent a day making an alphabet in English and Bangla for Benu. For each sound I drew a beast or a bird, just as long ago my father had done for me. Except for one. My “B” was a picture of Benu himself, swimming, with his long hair loose in the water. I left the pages and some pencils underneath his red head wrap while he swam.

  I had another matter on my mind too as we travelled, and Madan, who had a hawk’s eye for all that he was a boatman, must have spotted the way I kept looking to the riverbanks on our right-hand side.

  One morning he asked me to sit with him and mind the sail as it swung.

  “Two nights ago I sent word ahead to my brother to go to Arjun’s house,” he said. “Arjun knows that you are coming back downriver. He wept when he heard that his daughter is dead. Then he asked questions, so many questions about you, but all my poor brother could say was that perhaps he should meet you. So it is arranged. We will be there tomorrow.”

  I hadn’t guessed we were so close. I joined my hands in gratitude to Madan. But he looked at me so hard then that I felt he required something else from me. His voice was changed when he continued.

  “Perhaps you fear he will not have any place in his heart for you. Don’t begin a tale in your head that hasn’t been told yet. That is women’s way, always.”

  I bit my lip. Madan, of all the world, to say such a rough thing!

  “You should wear a sari for this meeting with the grandfather, not those.”

  He jerked a huge thumb at the trousers that had so taken his fancy before, though it was true they had looked more respectable on that first occasion. Now they had all the stains of the riverbank on them, stains that would never wash out. I had no intention of wearing them when I met Arjun. I nodded my assent, my obedience, to Madan but my stomach was biting me. Why was he suddenly unkind?

  He cleared his throat.

  “I worry about my boy.”

  He looked away for a moment while I stared at him. Did he mean Benu or Manik? I could not quite judge so I said nothing.

  Madan tensed his great shoulders then and I could see the channels of his throat stand out, as thick as his own boat ropes.

  “He has a tender heart, you know.”

  I nodded. At last we were agreed on something.

  “He likes to write and draw, as I do, Madan. He has a talent for it and an interest. I could help him, if you would permit me. The skill might bring him…”

  Madan brought down his fist on the gunwale so hard that I feared something must have broken, his bone or the polished wood. I flinched.

  “I see him following your movements, girl, every one of them, whatever the skill is in that. It is obvious that you are not for him. That is not your fault. But everything you do is dust for him. So.”

  He gestured with his great arms, a beggar’s gesture, with the palms up. Madan was pleading with me to leave his son alone.

  I did not know where to look. I felt more stupid than I had ever felt in my life. I recognized the truth in what Madan said. Perhaps I had always known it. Perhaps that was indeed women’s way, to seek a brother whenever the boy has a heart as big as the world. But what else might have been done? Should I have run away from that evil orchard and said nothing? Should I have been cold or distant ever after to gentle Benu, my helpmate?

  “If we offend, it is with our good will.”

  For the first time in an age, I thought of Miss Hickey, and missed her quick and open mind. Those were her words. Well, no, they were Shakespeare’s, but she had made them hers. She always spoke them with a laugh, to excuse me, or anyone else, who had made a genuine mistake in conduct. Later she showed me how the words themselves were full of mischief.

  If there was an answer with no deceit in it for Madan, she would have given it to me. But perhaps there was none.

  Nor was he finished.

  “And let me tell you another thing,” he said. “Because of the child and the dead man I don’t know how far upriver I can travel again in safety. The sahib and you, you need never see us again. But a cast stone sends ripples for all time.”

  All of us are borne along on the great river, Anila. Even the birds that fly above it and never touch it.

  I had touched it. I had cast a stone.

  I thanked Madan for his words and his advice and moved away to sit in the cabin. I did not look to the tiller once, not even when I heard Manik begin to pick out a new tune on his flute.

  That night I went to my tent immediately after I had bathed. I had no appetite. I was sure Madan had not intended it, but now I found I was looking forward more with eagerness than with apprehension to meeting my mother’s people. They might judge me, and judge me harshly, for not better resembling my mother. But they would be different company and they would not know all the dark things that we on board knew.

  ARJUN

  WHEN THE DAY CAME I chose to wear my blue sari. What saddened me as I smoothed down its folds and patted the embroidery into place was that I had not brought my mother’s beautiful mulberry-green sari. That would have been a proper splendour to show to her father.

  Mr Walker stepped out first when our boat swung alongside the little ghat and he handed me down as if I were a lady arriving on the steps of Chandpal itself. Manik leant from the jetty and plucked a sweet-smelling yellow water flower. To put in my braid, he said. Then he set to running up and down the timbers, laughing as they shook.

  “They are coming,” Madan said. He pointed.

  Along the path from the village a little procession of people was approaching, men and women, with some children dancing along in front and around them. One man was ahead of the others, a short man, lean, very upright.

  Mr Walker gave a soft squeeze to my elbow and went to stand some feet away. He reached out for Manik and held him lightly by the shoulders. Hari and Benu stood by, rooted like sentries. Suddenly Madan was beaming.

  “Arjun!” he said.

  I thought my head would burst. I walked forward because they were close to us now though I could hardly see one face from another. My eyes were full, ready to spill.

  I knelt down to honour my grandfather, touching his feet that were long and thin, touching the soil that he stood on, my mother’s own earth.

  His hands raised me and I truly did feel the course of our common blood, like a shock along my arms, making gooseflesh in the morning’s warmth. He put his hand on my lowered head to bless me and tipped my chin up. We stared at each other, both of us looking for the person who had linked us, who stood there as surely as we did. I could feel her all about, in the soft air from the river, in the breaths we sh
ared as we stood.

  I saw a man who was not old, though his hair was white and short-cropped, even spiky. His face was smooth, with fine web lines round his eyes. He was darker than my mother but his face had the same oval shape, the same straight nose and small and perfect ears. His eyes were black like hers and they were full of wonder.

  “Anila,” he said at last. “You are welcome home, daughter.”

  Then the group broke and people surged forward to touch me and tell me who they were.

  First to speak was Arjun’s grandniece, my cousin Meenakshi, who told me that a feast was waiting for all our party in his house. She was older than me, quite a bit older, and some of the children were hers. She pointed them out, laughing at each one’s name. She had my mother’s even teeth.

  She pushed forward her own grandfather, Arjun’s brother, my old uncle. He had tears in his eyes when he reached to touch my head.

  “Annapurna was the light of the river,” he said. “As her mother was before her. And you too, tall like a swan.”

  I was tall here, I realized. I was even a little taller than Arjun.

  The small boys had discovered Manik and they all ran away like rabbits towards the house and the food. Meenakshi called warnings after them. The girls followed them, giddy with the outrage. Only the littlest one stayed, a tiny girl with a covering of wispy curls, shorter than a boy’s. I handed her my flower, which she held in front of her as if it were made of china.

  “Little Jonaki,” said Meenakshi proudly. “We nearly lost her to the fever. But look at her now.”

  Her name meant firefly. How pretty! I picked Jonaki up and then led my grandfather to meet Mr Walker. They shook hands like Englishmen. But in a moment, Arjun had found Mr Walker’s Bangla speech to be an astonishing thing and he called his brother and the other men over to hear it.

  “Listen to the sahib,” he said to them. “He is better than any of the storytellers who come to the village.”

  Mr Walker smiled at that, with real pleasure. He told a joke about the English that made the men laugh. He ran a hand across his brow to push back his straying hair and just then he looked as he had done the first time I met him. I thought suddenly, this is what he is good at, this is his work, talking easily so that others will chat to him and share their knowledge. He had done so with Madan, with the saltworkers and, long ago, surely this was what he did to win the respect of the horse thief, Carlen.

  He had done exactly so with me.

  As we began to walk towards Arjun’s thatched house, Meenakshi told me what she remembered of my mother.

  “I was seven or eight when she left. They were very bad times so Arjun felt she would have a better life with the sahib who loved her. He always feared she would die like her mother. That was a time of famine. It’s better now, we do well enough here. Annapurna was always kind to me, she told me stories and sang songs to me. She was a clever person.”

  She looked at me curiously.

  “All those men! And you are not married? To the sahib? Or that handsome fisherman with you, he looks a suitable boy, are you betrothed?”

  My heart jumped. I dared not look round but I hoped Benu was not nearby to hear her, nor his father either. Meenakshi’s voice was the kind that carried.

  “To Mr Walker? Oh no, Meenakshi, but he is the kindest man in the world. And Benu, why he’s no older than I am. You see, I live in the English city now and girls there do not marry so young.”

  “And your father, he allows you to travel around in this way with men? Or is he dead too?”

  She was a little blunt, perhaps, Meenakshi was. But I told her then some of what I had rehearsed to tell Arjun. It was not indeed so very different from the truth, only in my story there was never a Malati or a Hemavati, never a Mr Bristol, nor any big house in Old Court House Street, only the kindness of our good neighbours the Hickeys after we suffered the mysterious loss of my father, their countryman. My father, who was now to be restored to me, as if in a fairy tale.

  But Meenakshi lost the final details of my story because as we ducked our heads and came into Arjun’s house she caught sight of her oldest boy with rice in his hand and grains dropped on the clean swept floor. She roared and banished him outside though I begged her not to. I was glad that Manik had done nothing so terrible and I rubbed his head as we settled ourselves on the floor to eat. Arjun insisted I sat beside him. Even the little girls sat, thrilled into silence. Meenakshi would not sit down with such a company of men but she stood close by to hear our stories.

  It was a real feast we had, with river shrimps and white fish, rice, spiced vegetables and dal in different colours, bright as paint, with sweet coconut and payesh and lots of creamy milk to pour from neat clay jugs. Mr Walker was given the honour of a bamboo spoon to eat with but he too had a leaf for a plate, like the rest of us. He ate well and looked happy, I thought, and my old uncle had his full attention. From what I could hear both of them were intent on talking about the old tales. They were showing off in their way, I realized, just as the small boys were, all of them trying to capture the eyes of Madan and Benu, the giant boatman and his handsome son.

  I told Arjun that I still had my mother’s Durga altar, the same one at which she prayed for him, every day of her life. He bowed his head.

  “That Durga, I remember it well,” he said slowly. “It was her mother’s and, before that, her grandmother’s.”

  He heard the story of my father then and was shaken. His face changed and in its lines I could see my mother’s rare temper gathering like a storm.

  “I have never heard of such a thing. A man to forget his family?”

  Mr Walker must have had one ear turned in our direction for he leant forward now.

  “With respect, sir, Patrick Tandy acted like a hero,” he said to Arjun. He laid out better than I had done, the details of my father’s story, the ship, the slaves, the wicked rock that had stolen his memories.

  “Only the prayers of your own dear daughter kept him from meeting a hero’s death. Her blessings have now restored him to Anila in a way that is closer to enchantment than anything I have heard before in my life. We can only imagine how the poet Kalidasa would have been thrilled to hear such a story told along the great river.”

  My grandfather sat still for a moment. Then he nodded. But I could hardly keep from reaching out and clasping Mr Walker’s hands inside my own. I had thought him unmoved by Carlen’s letter but I was wrong. His pain had been too strong at the time and I had demanded overmuch of him.

  “Then you have been alone in the world all this time, my child?” my grandfather asked. He reached forward and ran a finger, ever so gently, down my nose, so that I knew he wished to mark in particular this feature that we, all three generations, shared.

  But I had not been alone, of course, and Arjun marvelled then when I told him about the Hickeys and their horses and their great garden going down to the river where the ships ran by, day and night, with the tides from the sea.

  “You would see budgerows passing by too,” I told him, remembering what my mother had told me of her father’s ambition. “But the ships we could see are taller than the tallest palms and their sails are like fields.”

  “Then Annapurna must have thought of me often,” he said, sadly. “We loved boats, the two of us.”

  From my bag I took out the drawing of my mother and handed it to my grandfather. There was not much light in the house but I could see Annapurna’s beautiful face quite clearly, for Mr Hickey’s outlines were strong.

  “You hold it in front for me,” he said.

  He stared so long at the drawing and so intensely that I thought he was moved beyond speech again. But then he motioned for me to put it away.

  “I cannot really see what you are showing me. I know it is there but I cannot say what it is. I think my eyes have been fixed on the river for too long. But don’t be upset, child. I see your mother when I look at you.”

  FROM THE SACRED PLACES

  FOR ALL THEIR WIS
H to make haste, Mr Walker and Madan were happy to let my mother’s people keep them from the river until late that same day. More visitors arrived, more people were fed. Meenakshi spun like a top and lost patience with everyone in the household.

  Each person had come to look at me, they said, though for some I suspected Meenakshi’s food was the bigger attraction. They all said the same things, that my mother had been good and beautiful and that I was full of good fortune to have grown and prospered as I had. Some touched me as if I were a fount of good luck. I gave up trying to remember their names.

  All of my own party cleverly extricated themselves from these ceremonies. Once when I walked outside to bid proper farewell to the most ancient of the visitors, I saw Benu on the path talking with a girl of my age, a girl from the village who had not come inside. Shy Benu was talking! Manik was leaning back against his legs, tired for once, and Benu was stroking his hair. He didn’t see me or, if he did, he didn’t look my way.

  I was not sure how I felt about that.

  While I was inside being dutiful an important arrangement was under deliberation outside. Meenakshi heard the first noises of the matter from the small children who ran in and out, panting out their news as payment for a few extra morsels. Each time she sent out a wiser and older child to listen and provide us with more details. How I longed to go out myself!

  That was how I heard that Manik, our little Manik, was to stay in the house with Arjun.

  “Another mouth for me to feed,” Meenakshi grumbled happily. “A real boy for your grandfather to train for his boat. A grandson delivered as a gift from the river herself!”

  Mr Walker had hummed and hawed a little about this decision, we heard next. He felt that he should take the boy to the city and have him taught the ways of a scholar, for Manik had shown himself to be a clever child. Or else that Madan himself should take the boy, he said, for the child already loved Benu like a brother.

  “But Benu loves him like a brother too!” I blurted out.