Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (16 page)

He introduced himself as Kasa’s grandfather. ‘Thank you,’ he said in a voice that sounded like dry, raspy leaves. ‘We are very grateful for your help.’

‘You should wait to thank me until after I’ve killed the tiger,’ said Bah Hem. To his surprise, the jest was met with solemn silence.

The grandfather joined them at the table and Maina served them tea and a plate of coconut sweets.

‘How’s your father?’ asked Bah Hem.

Maina and Kasa exchanged a look.

Their grandfather answered, ‘He’s keeping poorly; we can only hope for the best.’

The nearest medical clinic, he explained, was over an hour away in Haflong. They had brought medicine for him, but it didn’t seem to have helped.

‘When do you think you can start the hunt?’ asked Kasa.

Bah Hem felt four pairs of eyes boring into him, even the cat seemed to be waiting for an answer.

‘Whenever you like.’

‘There’s no need for our guest to stay up tonight,’ interrupted the old man. ‘He has had a long journey, let him rest.’

That night Bah Hem might as well have kept watch. Despite being a sound sleeper in mostly any circumstances—knobbly forest floors, dank circuit house beds, cramped train berths—he was kept awake by a feeling that something was amiss and unnatural. His room was bare yet comfortable, and he lay there staring into the darkness, with a peculiar heaviness in his chest. It didn’t help that close to midnight strange noises echoed from the other end of the house. Whimpering that changed to low moans of pain and then to cries of great distress. It must be Kasa’s father, he thought. Except sometimes, the sounds seemed inhuman. Finally, exhausted and wide awake, Bah Hem crept out of the room to investigate. A pair of glassy green eyes stared at him in the corridor—it was the cat. If Noru wasn’t asleep, he wouldn’t be far behind. At the end of a narrow corridor, the door to the invalid’s room was slightly ajar, just enough for him to peer through into murky lantern-lit dimness. He could see the edge of a thin mattress next to which sat Maina and her grandfather. The girl was crying softly while the old man had his hand out, muttering under his breath. Bah Hem couldn’t see the suffering man, but he could hear him. As the cries rose to a dreadful shriek, a touch on his elbow startled him. He looked down at Noru, cradling the cat in his arms.

‘Father is wounded.’ It was the first time Bah Hem had heard the boy speak. Before Bah Hem could ask who had wounded him, Noru walked away to the kitchen where the wood fire lay low and dying.

The next morning, Bah Hem arose after a few hours of sleep, unrefreshed and restless. Despite warm sunshine bathing the small village and lapping over the paddy fields below, he was still uneasy. He would prefer to leave soon, he thought, as he ate breakfast, a plate of small puffy puris and spicy potato. After his meal, determined to carry out his mission, he asked Kasa to show him around the village, and the outskirts where the tiger had been sighted. It didn’t take them long to walk through the settlement; women sat in front of their huts cleaning rice or spreading thick red chillies out to dry. Children ran up and stopped at a distance, staring at them curiously, pointing to Bah Hem and whispering among themselves. At the foot of the hill, on the other side, a dense forest began—‘That’s where the army camp is…’ pointed out Kasa. The people of the village would gladly have stayed away from them if it weren’t for a path running through the forest to Malangpa, a neighbouring market village. ‘We can’t stop using the road…how would we survive without the bazaar?’ said Kasa. ‘They’re vile creatures. Our women aren’t safe. My sister…’ he began and then stopped. Bah Hem could see why the people here kept a wary distance from him. Their distrust of outsiders had only deepened with the army’s presence. Kasa also showed him where the tiger had been sighted—drinking water at a pond near the paddy fields, in the bamboo thickets near the village, and mostly pacing near the edge of the forest.

‘We’ll keep watch from seven-thirty this evening,’ said Bah Hem. Kasa agreed but added, ‘I must warn you, at that time it’s difficult to see in the mist.’

Bah Hem said he’d been on shoots in far more difficult conditions.

‘I’m sure…but you don’t know the Jatinga mist. Even birds get disoriented. They fly into our torches and die. Or sometimes, they lie on the ground waiting for us to kill them.’

‘Why?’

‘We believe it’s a mercy.’

‘Don’t you leave the birds to fly away?’

‘It’s not what they would want us to do.’

After that they both fell silent; Kasa polished his shotgun with a rag, while Bah Hem paced and smoked a cigarette.

That evening, after quick cups of strong black tea, Bah Hem and Kasa stepped out with their rifles slung over their shoulders. In this half-light, with the moon and cloudy shadows, Kasa reminded him more than ever of his eldest son. The slope of his jaw, the way his mouth was set, and the look in his eyes, like Nathaniel just before he played a football match or while he wrestled with a catch on his fishing line. Bah Hem remembered the stories he’d told Nathaniel on his sickbed—a pang shot through him sharper than the thorns of the jara tenga his hand accidentally brushed against.

‘Those birds you told me about,’ asked Bah Hem, ‘when do they fly to Jatinga?’

‘During these months,’ the boy answered, ‘up until November.’

‘Do they come every year?’

Kasa nodded. ‘Every year since even my grandfather can remember.’

Bah Hem hesitated. ‘Have you killed any?’

‘Yes. Many. I told you,’ the boy stopped and looked at the older man, ‘it’s a mercy.’

They had almost reached the edge of the settlement, the mist lying thick and vast before them like the sea, blurring the lights of the village.

‘You stay here.’ Bah Hem indicated a cluster of flowering hibiscus bushes. ‘I’ll move further down the slope…closer to the forest.’

Bah Hem stowed himself behind a clump of soil and tufty undergrowth—it could be a long wait. The stillness of the evening around him was broken only by the dismal howling of dogs, and the shrill chirping of crickets. He brushed away a spider that crawled over his hand. Somewhere, he could hear a rustle—of leaves, wings? he couldn’t tell—and he thought about the birds that lay waiting to die. He remembered an afternoon three weeks before Nathaniel’s death; his son had had a particularly bad night and was almost unrecognizable as the nineteen-year-old who’d left Shillong only six months earlier. The doctor had broken the news to them as gently as he could—that there wasn’t much hope, that the chemotherapy wasn’t working. The disease was rapidly spreading to the nervous system, after which… ‘It would be best to take him home,’ the doctor suggested, ‘make him as comfortable as possible.’ Bah Hem had refused; he would stay here as long as it would take for his son to get better. There was no other way. That afternoon, standing by the window, watching his son sleep, he tried to will the doctor’s words out of his head.

Then Nathaniel awoke. ‘Papa,’ he called quietly.

Bah Hem had rushed to his side. Was there anything he needed? Was he comfortable enough? Should he call the nurse?

His son shook his head. It was an effort for him to move. Infections, small and insidious, had wracked his body to shreds. ‘I had a dream, papa. Of where I would go after this…’

‘You mustn’t speak of…’

Nathaniel tried to lift his hand. ‘I can feel it. This immense warmth and light. But something won’t let me go…’

He drifted away and fell asleep, exhausted from the effort. The next day Bah Hem asked the doctor if they could take Nathaniel home. It was, he hoped, as Kasa had said, an act of mercy.

Somewhere in the darkness a chorus of drunken cries rang out, a party of soldiers were staggering back to the camp. Bah Hem’s eyes burned from the strain—it was difficult to see in the fog—and his shoulders ached from the weight of the gun. They’d been waiting two hours. If the tiger didn’t show up tonight, he would have to stay longer in this place. He felt weary and dispirited. It didn’t bode well, it wasn’t the right mood for a hunt.

Yet when he heard a short, sharp hiss from Kasa, his thoughts cleared, and the ache was forgotten. The creature had been sighted. Bah Hem shifted his position and trained his eyes towards the clearing before the forest.

It was barely a shadow, a dark form in the mist, but it moved, treading carefully, its grace defeated by a terrible limp. It paced restlessly, head hung low, moving in and out of the dull moonlight. If he wanted a clear shot, he would have to get closer. Kasa was behind him, breathing heavily, his eyes burning with a strange light. They crept down the slope, taking care to keep the creature in sight. The tiger was resting now, licking its wounded paw. For a moment it looked up and let out a low growl. Finally, Bah Hem settled to take a shot. He unclasped the safety catch, waited for a moment’s breath, and pulled the trigger. In a second, the animal crumpled to the ground, roaring in pain.

‘Got it,’ said Bah Hem and glanced at his companion.

Kasa’s face was wet with tears.

They left the creature where it was—‘our people will clear it in the morning’—checking only to see that it was dead. Its eyes stared sightless, curiously human eyes filled with pain that hadn’t left even in death. They walked back to the hut in silence. Bah Hem was exhausted. It hadn’t been a good hunt. He was left with none of the heady exhilaration that accompanied a kill.

Back at the house, the grandfather was standing at the door.

Kasa uttered one word. ‘Father?’

The old man shook his head.

Kasa melted into the shadows inside.

Bah Hem put away his gun and warmed himself by the kitchen fire. Maina and Noru were nowhere in sight. The warmth and tiredness closed in on him; he must have dozed.

It was a strangely dreamless sleep, as though his mind had completely shut out the world. When he opened his eyes, the grandfather was sitting nearby wrapped in his chador, his shadow long and limbless against the wall.

‘Where’s Kasa?’ asked Bah Hem.

‘He is resting.’

‘I’m sorry about your son.’

The fire was sinking but neither made an attempt to revive it.

The grandfather’s voice was low and toneless. ‘Five evenings ago, when Maina was walking back from Malangpa, a group of army men started harassing her in the forest. This had happened before, but this time there were more men teasing her, frightening her. Suddenly, she said, out of nowhere a tiger flung itself on them…it gave her time to run away. She heard shots but she didn’t look back. That same evening my son fell ill.’ He paused before asking, ‘Do you find that strange?’

Without waiting for an answer, the old man continued. ‘They say all over this region—in Sohra and Jirang and other far-flung corners—there are what people call shape-shifters, men whose souls can inhabit animals…’ He left the sentence dangling like a broken fishing line.

‘If what you’re saying is true, then I killed your son.’

The old man shook his head. ‘No, you didn’t. His spirit was wounded. You only set it free.’

For some inexplicable reason, Bah Hem wanted to laugh so it would swallow his grief.

‘How would men change into animals? Do they utter some mantra? Or drink some magic potion that gives them fur and a tail? Or…or is it hereditary? A family secret passed on from father to son.’ He sounded hysterical.

The old man looked at him with pity. ‘It can only be done out of love.’

When he left the room, Bah Hem was still seated by the fire, watching it glow resolutely, a dull core of heat undying at the centre, the wood releasing all its tender memories of the earth.

Pilgrimage

You who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season

—Shehecheyanu blessing

W
hen he wasn’t looking, Barisha slipped rice into his bag. A small plastic container of red-husked uncooked grain that he probably wouldn’t notice on his travels. If there was nothing she could do to keep him from leaving, perhaps this would somehow bring him back. Every time she left Shillong, her mother would do the same—‘to always bring you home safely’. It was what the Khasis believed, that rice, commonplace and ordinary, carried the power of the earth where it was grown, and would lead you back to where you belonged.

He, whom she had loved so deep and for so long, was leaving in search of something they both couldn’t quite put a finger on. He was an Ashkenazim Jew who’d grown up, like her, in Shillong, brought up by parents who’d long forsaken their quest for a distant promised homeland. Their ancestors had fled Germany with many others and reached Calcutta; from there a group of them made their way to the hills of Assam. His parents didn’t want to leave. ‘Not yet,’ they said, ‘perhaps some day.’ But they weren’t serious. Their life and friends were in Shillong, built from scratch. They were comfortable. For him, though, it was different. Barisha had known it all along, through their many years together. There had never been a departure so foretold. He was leaving—‘for a year or two, I’ll see what I can find’—and there was no question really of her going along. Wordlessly, she understood this was one of those things he needed to do alone, his own personal aisha. It was too heavy for him to disregard, the weight of the history of the world.