Anila's Journey (22 page)

She was at her bookcase now, picking books down and flicking through them, returning them to the shelves
.

“It's so difficult to pick a book for someone,” she said over her shoulder, “and my father has collected quite a few unfortunate ones.”

I would have preferred to look for myself but I knew she was determined to make a choice for me so I stayed still and stared at the pictures
.

“I think you might enjoy these, Anila.” Miss Hickey put three books into my hands
.

“
The Natural History of Birds, Intended for the Amusement and Instruction of Children,
By Samuel Galton,” I read
.

She beamed at me. “Of course the birds in it are the birds of England for the most part, I am sure.”

“The Female,”
and I stopped. “I don't know this word.”

“Quixote,”
she said, pronouncing the strange word as quicksot. “A brave but foolish knight-at-arms in an old story from Spain and the lady in the book you are holding is his equal of today. And this last one is
Aesop's Fables,
very old folk stories from the Greek. The animals and birds in them are as human as ourselves, as devious and as cunning. Your dear mother might enjoy hearing some of those.”

When we returned at last to the painting room my mother was standing up, stretching her arms out in relief. She gave me the little Ganesha to hold and I rubbed his belly for luck, before putting him down on Mr Hickey's table of brushes and paints. The painting was secure on its support, and seemed larger than I remembered from the last time. Or perhaps it looked that way because so much had happened on its surface since then
.

Mr Hickey had conjured up my mother just as she had sat, with her arms and her head turned in a graceful way. Every shot and glimmer of her green silks seemed to move as they did in life. He had found the glossy black for her hair, and had worked life into that also, so that you could believe her braid would toss any moment if a breeze came past the pillars on the porch. Her skin, for which I had not believed he would ever find the colours, looked as alive as if there was blood under it
.

But he had not yet filled in her face, nor the silver jewellery she wore, and she had no feet. There was no wall behind her and the couch was a shape merely, and went without its fine rug. Lord Ganesha had yet to appear though my mother's right hand was clearly settled round something. I hoped it was our good fortune
.

FOR ALL HIS GREAT SIZE
, Madan had a touch as gentle as my mother's. He and Mr Walker laid the boy out on some cushions in the cabin and Madan produced a jar of dark neem oil from one of his cupboards.

“You did well to cool him with the water,” he said to me, his huge hands spreading the salve over the boy's limbs and belly. “You probably saved his life.”

Benu had told them everything, or almost everything. My parched throat hurt me and after answering a few questions I felt too weary to speak further. But when I mentioned to Madan that the buffaloes had been calling to be milked he at once left the cabin to stand on deck and stare in the direction of the village. It was dark by then but when he came back inside he reported that there were no fires there yet, no sounds.

We stood around awkwardly, watching Madan's ministry, all of us, that is, except Carlen. He was on the bank fiddling with his fire, but this time I knew he was not being callous.

When Benu and I had stumbled back to our mooring place with the boy, Carlen had been the first to meet us. His face went paler than ever, if that was possible, when he saw the child, and I thought for a moment that he was going to be as sick as he had made me that morning. But no, he came forward and lifted the boy from us as if he weighed no more than an infant. He held him and rubbed his back gently, as if he had a very young baby in his arms. Then he carried him on board the boat.

Now he came in with a clay cup and I could smell his telltale mint in the steam rising from it.

“Get the boy to drink this,” he said to Madan. “It will cool him on his inside too; it heals.”

Madan saw to it that the boy took a few small sips. He was sitting up now, and we put a blanket round his shoulders, for there was the fear that his fever would give way to a deadly cold. He spoke some words but they were so jumbled we did not understand him.

Only Madan had any idea of what he was saying and that was because of his great knowledge of the different people who lived along the river. But even so his great brow furrowed over and over as he tried to piece the child's halting tale together. It was dark except for the red glow of the fire on the bank by the time we understood what had happened that dreadful day.

“He has no name, he says, none that he remembers. His master called him Slave.”

“Oh, Madan, we must find him a name,” I said. “We must think of a proper good name.”

Madan nodded grimly, but Carlen flinched at my words, I noticed. His hands were clenched tight round the empty clay cup now while Madan was talking but I had seen him touch the soles of the boy's feet very gently once or twice as if he were a baby.

The boy did not know how old he was. He was a tribal boy from a place away to the east, the only one of his people to survive a terrible disease. A great landowner, a zamindar, had found the starving boy crawling among the dead bodies of his village people and had taken him back to his own home.

“But none of the servants there would let him share their space and so the zamindar gave the boy to his own brother, a crazy man.”

This was the man who lived in the tumbledown brick house with the peepul tree and the fish tank. He ruled over the people in the little hamlet as if he were a rajah. He could be kind, he could be cruel, the boy said. But because he was mad, nobody knew which he would be on any day of the calendar.

“He might beat the boy in the morning and give him sweet payesh in the afternoon. He made him dig holes in the orchard one day and fill them up again the next.”

Madan shook his head as he told us these things. But there was worse, he warned us.

A little girl in the village grew fond of the boy and had asked him to catch a fish for her family. But he had no skill to do this because he was not allowed to mix with the other boys in the village. Instead one morning he took a fish from his master's tank. The old man had found him standing by the water with the net and the fish still gasping in it. Unfortunately that day – today – was one of the master's bad days.

First the master had locked him inside the house and the boy thought he would get away with a beating. The master left and was gone a long while.

“When he came back,” Madan told us, “he took the boy to the courtyard and tied his arms to the tree. Then he mixed a pot of sugar and hot water and brushed this all over the child with a horse brush. He told him then that he had ordered all the villagers, even the old ones, to the next hamlet, where he had gathered some players to put on a putul naach, a puppet show. They went because they were so afraid of him, even though there was a day's work to be done.”

Madan was shaking his head and his voice was a little unsteady.

“Then he hit the boy in the face and went off on his horse to see the puppets himself. If you had not found him, Miss Anila…”

“This would not happen where I come from,” Hari muttered. “These are savage people.”

Benu looked directly at Mr Walker.

“I would like to kill that man, sahib,” he said. His forehead was knotted and a little vein throbbed in his jaw.

“And you think you could run from that family's revenge?” his father said. He glanced quickly at Mr Walker.

“We must be gone from here before it is light,” he said.

Mr Walker nodded grimly. “I am of the same opinion, Madan. Indeed, I'm beginning to think we may have journeyed far enough upriver as it is. We have our unknown bird, Anila, or a very good chance of it, at any rate. I've seen the salt trade at work. Perhaps this terrible happening is signal enough for us to turn back. We are gone, what is it, nine days, Madan?”

Madan nodded but said nothing. My heart quickened.

Mr Walker did not speak for a while. The energy that was such a part of his nature seemed quite absent so that I felt he was almost a stranger. But this night Carlen was also behaving oddly. Perhaps I was too.

“Poor benighted child,” Mr Walker said at last. “Well, we have rescued him now and so we must race ahead of any consequences. I will not endanger any person here. The man is clearly and cruelly mad and the people are living in terror of him. And I cannot even report him to Fort William because of all the salt depots around here.”

He hit his knee hard. I knew he felt powerless. I felt it myself but it was so much worse for him, being in command of our journey and yet having to watch this evil deed go free of punishment.

“Sahib, the English would support the zamindar and his family members anyhow, because they bring in the taxes.” Madan lifted his shoulders and looked round at all of us. “Never mind. Word can be spread along the river. Things can happen. But I believe, as you do, that we should turn back now.”

There was a silence. Then Carlen spoke.

“We should call the boy Manik.”

We all looked at him and I think everyone was showing a different kind of confusion. Madan, Benu and Hari had not expected to hear a child's pet name in Bangla coming from Carlen's lips. I was taken aback by the softness in his voice. He stared directly at me as he said the name again.

“Manik. It means little jewel. Look at him. He knows you saved him.”

The boy was sitting up now and he had a fistful of our spiced rice halfway to his mouth. His swellings had gone down though you could still see the hateful bite tracks the ants had made over his skin. His thick curly hair, clean now, was tied back with a yellow handkerchief that could only have been Mr Walker's for I could see an E and a W on it worked in red thread. The boy's huge eyes took us in, one by one, but they always came back to rest on me.

“Manik is a perfect name,” said Mr Walker. “Now we should let him sleep, and ourselves too, so that we can leave here before sunup tomorrow. Nine days perhaps, returning – yes, that's good enough time to meet my dates. Tomorrow we'll head downriver. And, for sure, we are none of us likely to forget this place.”

We started for our sleeping places. When I left the boat for my tent Madan was making the boy comfortable in the cabin between himself and Benu. Hari had stayed behind in the cabin too. Carlen was not to be seen but his bedding was spread out on deck.

I hugged myself in the cool air. Truly I felt hopeful that tomorrow at last I might make a bargain with Carlen – he had been almost friendly to me. But one bother stood between me and my sleep, bone-tired and sore though I was.

I did not think I was ready to say goodbye to our life on the river.

HERONS WOKE ME NEXT MORNING
, squabbling and shouting their news to each other, but so early that there was just one thin silver line of light setting out on its journey across the lowest part of the sky. At any other mooring place Madan would have looked around for anything that might disturb our sleep. But he had not noticed the herons' nests last night.

Or perhaps he had, I thought. For the birds had certainly got me up before daybreak. Perhaps I should wake everyone?

I would bathe first. My shoulders still pained me a little and the cool water would be soothing, the live flow like a mother's hands on my skin, kind Ganga.

On the boat I saw a small face peering over the gunwale, looking upriver towards me and I waved. The water would be good for Manik too but perhaps it was not safe for him to venture out until we had left this place far behind. I set out to walk to the spot where I had seen the otters.

“Anila, come back. Now!”

Mr Walker's voice had an edge in it. When I reached the tents again, he and Hari, Madan and Benu were standing on the bank. I realized then that they had been up before me but there was no fire, no breakfast. No Carlen.

“I don't know where the wretched man has got to, but we will have to leave shortly or goodness knows what wrath we will be facing from that village. Get the tents down and then let everyone get on board, so that we can cast off in an instant.”

He stared off towards the dark line of trees that screened the village. Then he gestured towards the fields all around and the river path. But if he were trying to make Carlen appear he had no success.

“He's taken my pistol so he must be looking for a hare or a duck or something to vary our diet. He told me he was sick of fish. But now is not the time for such a pastime.”

Benu wrinkled his nose in disgust at the idea of such flesh-eating. Then he and Hari set to dismantling the tents as best they could, though I noticed that they made very rude work of folding them up. Manik was watching everything from the deck but Madan quickly shooed him into the cabin where the Venetians were tightly closed and he would not be seen.

When we had packed everything away Madan looked at me. Mr Walker was still on the bank, pacing the length of the boat, back and forward, always looking towards the village. His face was drawn tight over its bones and his hair looked damp, as if the day was already hot which it was not. He looked ill, I thought.

“I do not think he is gone shooting ducks, do you?”

Even as Madan was saying the words my heart dropped down. He was right of course. The passion that had seized Carlen yesterday at the sight of poor tortured Manik had not been content to busy itself in caring for him. He had gone now to avenge the cruelty in the way he best understood. That left all of us now in some danger surely but that was not what had shaken me.

“Oh, Madan, Carlen knows where my father is but he won't tell me. And now he's gone.”