by Philip Roy
I knew that Radji was kind of tricking me—I had promised to take him there only after he had died, if he died—but I respected him for tricking me, because that’s what I would have done in his shoes. In fact, there were a lot of things about Radji that reminded me of myself. I thought we were very much alike.
But there were problems with taking a bus or a train. Where would we hide the sub for so long? And though I could probably take Hollie on a train, what would I do with Seaweed? I knew he would hang around the sub for several days as long as he could see it. But I was uncomfortable leaving him for any longer than a few days. And the sub would have to be really well hidden. I would have to think about it a lot first.
In the meantime, I wanted to visit Old Goa. There were interesting ruins there, including some of the earliest Christian churches in India, from when the Portuguese had come to the subcontinent hundreds of years ago. We didn’t have to return to sea to get to Old Goa, but we did have to enter the harbour again, sneak past that destroyer and sail up another river. I figured we could follow a barge downstream and scoot across the harbour at night on the surface with our lights on. That was actually legal if we flew the Indian and Canadian flags and let the coastguard inspect us. But we’d get stopped for sure if they saw us, and they’d probably force us to moor the sub for a couple of weeks while they inspected it, and who knows what would happen then? They’d know we were the sub they thought they had sunk, and maybe they’d even arrest us. I’d rather just sneak across the harbour pretending to be a boat.
We waited for twilight then pulled out at periscope depth behind a noisy barge. Radji took his spot at the periscope. He was feeling much better. So was Hollie, who spent a lot of time licking his paws and rubbing his face with them. Seaweed sat around looking bored. I knew he wanted out but I didn’t want to let him out until we had cleared the harbour and were on our way up the river that flowed past Old Goa. I didn’t want to leave behind any of my crew in India.
The ride downstream was faster than the ride up. It wasn’t as late as I would have liked when we entered the harbour but at least it was dark. A few hundred feet from the river mouth the barge veered to port, so we surfaced, turned on our lights and veered to starboard. We could see the destroyer sitting out in the centre of the harbour, lit up like a giant Christmas tree. I was comforted by the thought that she’d never fire a missile into her own harbour. And since we were riding the surface just like any other vessel, she could only detect us visually, which was unlikely in the dark. The greater danger was of someone else spotting us and reporting us. But with any luck we’d be on the other river before a chase could begin.
Radji was really helpful crossing the harbour. He kept his eyes peeled on the water the whole time and gave me constant reports. He could identify vessels fairly well since he had been living in a harbour for quite a while—how long exactly I didn’t know because he wouldn’t tell me. “There’s a ferry crossing in front of us.”
“How far?”
“Far. Maybe five miles?”
“Yes, I see it on radar. Actually, that’s just a mile. It’s hard to tell sometimes, especially at night. Keep checking the destroyer, okay? If you see any lights moving away from her let me know immediately. That will mean she’s putting boats in the water. If she does that, we have to disappear quickly.”
“Okay.”
The mouth of the river was about ten miles from the mouth of the harbour, which was four miles wide where it opened into the Arabian Sea. I steered to hug the shore as we crept around the point at Dona Paula into the river that would bring us to Old Goa. Luckily, no one challenged us. If anyone spotted us we would never have known anyway.
We went up the river in the middle of night. There were lights on the riverbanks here and there but the water was dark. We tied up beneath an old wooden dock in a small industrial area, just below where the map said Old Goa was. I took a quick peek when I let Seaweed out and tied the sub to the posts. The portal was jutting up only four inches; the hull was completely submerged. It was a decent hiding spot beneath the dock, between old barges and old machinery. It sure didn’t look like there would be ruins and churches here, but the book said there were. We had tea and toast and went to bed. I listened to Radji cry out again before I fell asleep. It was the same as before; he was crying out to stop someone.
In the early afternoon we snuck out from underneath the old pier, climbed the bank and went in search of Old Goa. We found it right above the industrial zone after we passed through some trees. It appeared as if in a fairy tale. There were ancient ruins and a gigantic cathedral—the church of St. Francis of Assisi. It was incredible inside and out. So were the ruins. For hours we wandered around in the hot sun, exploring alleyways between fallen stones and vast open courtyards and crumbling walls. But the St. Francis church was really special. It was in great shape. It was the biggest church I had ever seen, and the first one Radji ever entered. No one stepped in our way to stop us, although I put Hollie in the tool bag when we went inside. We lit candles and stared at paintings and stained glass windows and statues. Radji asked me a lot of questions, which I found kind of hard to answer. He was particularly interested in angels, and he couldn’t understand why there was only one god. Outside, we bought bottled water, chai and snacks at roadside vendors, sat in the shade and ate them. It was a very relaxed and enjoyable afternoon.
By evening, we were still sitting in the shade of the great church, playing chess, when we were interrupted by a rather strange old lady. She was dressed in white linen, like a saint, and wearing an extremely wide-brimmed hat. Her face was old and wrinkled. Her eyes were blue and shiny. She stopped to watch us play and seemed lost in concentration.
Finally, she spoke. “Well, look here—east meets west.”
I looked up at her. “What?”
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“I’m from Newfoundland. Canada.”
She nodded with approval. “And where are you from?”
Radji raised his head from the game very reluctantly. He looked at her but he couldn’t believe that she was actually speaking to him, and so he dropped his head again.
“He’s from Kochi,” I said.
“Is he? Well, my name is Melissa Honeychurch. I live not too far away from here. You two are an unlikely pair. How did you meet?”
I stared more closely at her. I wondered why she wanted to know. I also wondered how to answer her. “We met in Kochi.”
“And you’re travelling together?”
“Umm . . . yes.”
“And how are you travelling?”
Now she was getting nosy. I wished she would stop asking questions. “By boat,” I said. I dropped my head and hoped she would just go away. But she didn’t. She kept watching the game.
“He needs a bath,” she said suddenly, as if it were her job to go around and tell people when they needed a bath. I looked at her and thought: what a strange person. She looked right back at me. “You do, too,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
MELISSA HONEYCHURCH DIDN’T mind telling people what she thought, whether they liked it or not. She wasn’t afraid of anybody. I liked that about her. I didn’t like that she was so bossy though. But something she said caught my attention. She said she lived in a lovely old house on a lovely piece of land beside a lovely river. She said she kept an English garden and that she had an ancient wheelbarrow, a Jaguar she kept in a garage and a riverboat she kept in a boathouse, but that the boathouse needed attention and she was too old to do it by herself.
“A Jaguar,” Radji asked?
“It’s a car, not a cat.”
It was the boathouse I was interested in. “Would you consider renting your boathouse to us for a week so that we can go to Varanasi?”
“Rent my boathouse? Why on earth would you ever want to rent my boathouse?” She looked at me suspiciously. “Why don’t you just keep your boat outside like everybody else? And you look awfully young to have your own boat. Whe
rever are your parents?”
“My mother died when I was born. My father lives in Montreal. I live on my boat.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Well, something doesn’t add up here. I don’t know what it is. Why don’t you just keep your boat outside like everybody else?”
I didn’t want to tell her why exactly. “I just don’t want anything to happen to it.”
She frowned and shook her head. “No. There’s more to it than that.”
I just stared at her. If she didn’t want to rent it that was okay.
“I’ll tell you what, young man . . . what is your name?”
“Alfred. And this is Radji.”
She smiled at Radji and he smiled back, but it didn’t look like a real smile.
“I’ll tell you what, Alfred. I’ll make you a deal.”
“A deal?”
“Yes. I’ll let you use my boathouse for as long as you like if you will go to Mumbai and bring my brother back to me.”
“Why doesn’t he just come by himself?”
“He can’t; he’s deceased.”
I wondered what his disease was but didn’t want to ask. “How long has he been sick?”
“Many years. I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t matter now. I never met him.”
“You never met him?”
“No. We had the same father but different mothers. I always meant to go and see him but . . . well, life just flows on, you know, like a river. But now it is time for him to come to me. There is nowhere else for him to go.”
“Are you sure he wants to?”
She looked at me strangely. “Well, that’s what he said he wanted. He wrote me a letter awhile back, when he first became ill.”
“Oh. So . . . how would we pick him up? And why don’t you just go yourself?”
“I never go to Mumbai. I once had a very bad experience there. I’ll never go back. I have an address where my brother has been kept for three years now. A Mr. Singh is keeping him. You could take the overnight train and be back in a day and a half.”
“And if we do that you will let us use your boathouse?”
“For as long as you like.”
“How far upriver do you live?”
“Oh . . . thirty-five miles or so. The roads are not too bad.”
“Do you know how deep the river is?”
“How deep the river is? Well it’s deep enough for a boat, that’s for sure. How big is your boat?”
“It’s twenty feet long.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. I’m sure you don’t need more than five or six feet for a boat of that size. The river is plenty deep for that.”
I wasn’t so certain. But I sure would love to leave the sub inside a secure boathouse while we went to Varanasi. “Okay. I agree.”
Melissa broke into a smile. I wondered what it would be like helping her brother onto the train. He must have been pretty sick if he couldn’t make the trip by himself. Or maybe he was just too old. I sure hoped his disease wasn’t contagious.
Melissa said she would tie a red scarf to a post at the bottom of her property. We couldn’t miss it. I told her we liked to sail at night and would arrive early in the morning. She stared at me as if I were a creature from another planet. “You are a strange young man,” she said, then wished us good sailing and left.
I took Radji’s queen with my knight, forced his king into a corner and checkmated him with a pawn. Radji took a deep breath, shook his head with disbelief, like a farmer whose field had been spoiled by rain, then put the pieces inside the folding board. We headed back to the sub. It was twilight when we came over the bank and saw two men fishing on the old wooden dock, directly above the sub. Rats. We were hungry and tired. We wanted to eat and catch some sleep before sailing upriver. But first we had to sit on the bank and watch them catch a couple of small fish and put them into a bucket. It felt like the twilight was going to last forever. They tied up their lines, stood there in the dark and chatted. I felt like going down and telling them to hurry up. Finally they left and we could go down, crawl under the dock and into the sub. We had a plate of beans, bread and sardines. We washed it down with tea and went to bed.
In the middle of the night I woke Radji and told him to get up and take his post at the periscope. I knew he was tired, and I knew that he was only ten, and part of me wanted to let him sleep, but another part of me believed that since he had stowed away on my sub, he had to earn his keep. It was not a free ride. That was the part of me that was the captain. Besides, I figured it was good for him.
I gave him a glass of juice first. Then we took our places, I started the engine and we headed upstream with the portal just a foot above the surface and the hatch wide open. Seaweed rode on top of it. As with the other river, the banks were often bare, sometimes tree-lined, or industrial or strewn with barges. There were very few houses close to the water. Perhaps upstream there would be. All the same, I told Radji to keep a close lookout for people. If we were spotted I wanted to know, although I didn’t know what sense anyone would make of a seagull riding upstream on what probably looked like the top of a metal barrel. In the dark they probably wouldn’t see anything anyway.
The first twenty-five miles were easy. With the engine running we cut eighteen knots through the water. The river was flowing against us at three knots, so our true speed against the bank was fifteen knots, but with all the twisting and turning it took about two hours to cover twenty-five miles. Then it became trickier because it grew shallower. I had to watch the sonar screen closely and zigzag in places, and that slowed us down quite a bit. The last five miles were particularly difficult, and took us another two hours, so the sun was already coming up when Radji spotted the red scarf. He called out excitedly when he saw it. Looking out through the periscope was Radji’s favourite thing to do, next to playing chess.
I came as close to the bank as I dared. To do that, I had to pump air into the tanks and bring the hull above the surface. Now we were exposed. I saw the roof of Melissa’s house and I saw the boathouse. It certainly needed work; it was leaning to one side like a rotten pumpkin. But it was big enough, although we would have to surface completely to get inside. I moored the sub to the boathouse and dropped anchor too, just in case the river felt like pulling the sub away and dragging the boathouse along with it. I had learned not to trust rivers.
We inflated the kayak, climbed in—all four of us—and paddled a few feet to the bank. We jumped out, I pulled the kayak up onto the grass and we wandered over to Melissa’s house. It was a white, one-storey, mortared house, yellowed with age, with a red, clay-tiled roof and tall windows that opened out like French doors. It looked like a vanilla cake with pink frosting. There was grass growing in the eavestroughs. There were flowers and weeds growing all around the walls of the house, and they looked like good places for snakes to hide. I wanted to remember to ask her about that. Something moved on the roof. Looking up, I saw monkeys in the trees.
Chapter Fifteen
I SMELLED COFFEE. Melissa was awake. I looked down at Hollie and he looked up at me. “There are snakes here, Hollie. Snakes. Watch out for snakes, okay?”
There was a wooden veranda that wrapped around the house. The branches of trees reached down and touched it as if the trees were trying to make the house part of the forest. The monkeys had the run of the roof. I didn’t trust those monkeys. I didn’t know why, but there was something about their movement that just struck me as untrustworthy. They were small, brown, skinny monkeys with long tails. They ran around quickly, stopped suddenly and stared to see if we were watching, as if they were hiding something. Hollie sniffed at them from the ground. I didn’t think he trusted them either. “Watch out for the monkeys too, Hollie.” I knew that he would.
We stepped onto the porch and our feet made hollow drum sounds, almost like music. Melissa came to the door and spoke from the other side of a dark mosquito screen. “Well. You made it up the river all right. Where is your boat?”
>
“I tied it to your boathouse.”
“Yes, well, you will have to remove my boat first before you can put yours inside. You can tie mine up on the riverbank for the while. Do come in. I’ve just made coffee.”
We left our sneakers on the porch and entered the house in bare feet. Melissa’s house was beautiful inside. At a glance it looked like a museum to me. There was lots of really old, fancy, carved furniture. There were paintings, tapestries and photographs on the walls— mostly old ones, and some very beautiful ones. There was one photograph in particular, of a young woman standing in a field, staring out at the vastness. The girl reminded me of Melissa in a way, and I wondered if it was her when she was young. She led us into the kitchen where we sat down at the table, and she served us very dark coffee with cream and sugar. Radji was shy about coming inside. He watched me put cream and sugar in my coffee and did everything exactly the way I did it. Melissa put a plate of cookies in front of us and I took one, broke a piece off and gave it to Hollie, so Radji did the same.
“How big is your boat?” I asked.
“Not so big. I suppose it is fifteen feet or so. It is a rowboat. It is very old but very dependable. My father had it for years and years before me. That is the way things are in India— people keep things for a very long time.”
I took a bite of the cookie. It was old too. “When did you move here?”
“What, to this house?”
“No, to India.”
She looked at me strangely. “My dear young man, I was born here. I’ve lived in India all my life, except for a few years in a finishing school in London. Awful place!”
“Oh.” I gave the rest of my cookie to Hollie. Radji didn’t. He was enjoying them more than I was. “May I take a look at your boat?”
“Yes, by all means. Come. I’ll show it to you.”
We stood up but Radji stayed where he was. He looked at me, waiting for me to tell him what to do. “We’ll be right back, Radji. Enjoy the cookies.”