Sea of Poppies (27 page)

The clearing around the pyre was illuminated by many small fires, so when Hukam Singh's body was carried out of his dwelling, in procession, and laid upon the mound, Kalua had a clear view. Following close behind was a second procession, and upon its entry into the clearing, Kalua saw that it was headed by Deeti, in a resplendent white sari – except that she was slumped over, barely upright: she would not have been able to stand on her own feet, much less walk, had she not been supported by her brother-in-law, Chandan Singh, and several others. Half dragged and half carried, she was brought to the pyre and made to sit cross-legged on it, beside her husband's corpse. Now there was an outbreak of chanting as heaps of kindling were piled around her, and doused with ghee and oil to ready them for the fire.

On the sandbank, Kalua bided his time, counting, counting, to calm himself: his main asset, he knew, was neither his power nor his agility, but rather the element of surprise – for even he, with all his strength, could not hope to fight off fifty men or more. So he waited and waited, until the pyre was lit and everyone was intent upon the progress of the flames. Now, still keeping to the shadows, he crept down to the edge of the crowd and rose to his feet. Unloosing a roar, he began to whirl the bamboo platform above his head, holding it by the end of its rope. The heavy, sharp-edged object became a blur,
cracking heads and breaking bones, clearing a path through the crowd – people fled from the hurtling projectile, like cattle scattering before some whirling demon. Racing to the mound, Kalua placed the platform against the fire, scrambled to the top, and snatched Deeti from the flames. With her inert body slung over his shoulder, he jumped back to the ground and ran towards the river, dragging the now-smouldering bamboo rectangle behind him, on its rope. On reaching the water, he thrust the platform into the river and placed Deeti upon it. Then, pushing free of the shore, he threw himself flat on the improvised raft and began to kick his heels in the water, steering out towards midstream. All of this was the work of a minute or two and by the time Chandan Singh and his cohorts gave chase, the river had carried Kalua and Deeti away from the flaming pyre, into the dark of the night.

The raft wobbled and spun as the currents swept it downstream, and every once in a while, a slick of water would run streaming over its surface. Under the impact of these dousings, the fog that clouded Deeti's mind began slowly to dispel and she became aware that she was on a river and there was a man beside her, holding her in place with his arm. None of this was surprising, for it was in exactly this way that she had expected to awaken from the flames – afloat in the netherworld, on the Baitarini River, in the custody of Charak, the boatman of the dead. Such was her fear of what she would see that she did not open her eyes: every wave, she imagined, was carrying her closer to the far bank, where the god of death, Jamaraj, held sway.

At length, when the journey showed no signs of ending, she plucked up the courage to ask how long the river was and how far the destination. There was no answer, so she called out the name of the boatman of the dead. Then, through the whisper of a deep, hoarse voice it was made known to her that she was alive, in the company of Kalua, on the Ganga – and there was no destination or aim to their journey except to escape. Even then she did not feel herself to be living in the same sense as before: a curious feeling, of joy mixed with resignation, crept into her heart, for it was as if she really had died and been delivered betimes in rebirth, to her next
life: she had shed the body of the old Deeti, with the burden of its karma; she had paid the price her stars had demanded of her, and was free now to create a new destiny as she willed, with whom she chose – and she knew that it was with Kalua that this life would be lived, until another death claimed the body that he had torn from the flames.

Now there was a soft lapping and grinding, as Kalua nudged the raft to shore, and when it was lodged in the sand, he picked her up in his arms and placed her on the bank. Then, lifting up the raft, he disappeared into a stand of tall rushes, and when he came back to fetch her, she saw that he had laid the platform down in such a way as to turn it into a palette, a small, level island, hidden within the riverbank's greenery. After he had laid her on this bamboo floor, he drew back, as if to retreat and go elsewhere, and she understood that he was afraid, unsure of how she would respond to his presence, now that she was safe on land. She called to him, Kalua, come, don't leave me alone in this unknown place, come here. But when he lay down, she too was afraid: all of a sudden she was aware of how cold her body was, after its long immersion, and of the sopping wetness of her white sari. She began to shiver, and her hand, shaking, came upon his and she knew that he too was trembling, and slowly their bodies inched closer: as each sought the other's warmth, their damp, sodden clothing came unspooled, his langot and her sari. Now it was as though she was on the water again: she remembered his touch and how he had held her to his chest with his arm. On the side of her face that was pressed to his, she could feel the gentle abrasion of his unshaved cheek – on the other side, which was flattened against the deck, she could hear the whispering of the earth and the river, and they were saying to her that she was alive, alive, and suddenly it was as if her body was awake to the world as it had never been before, flowing like the river's waves, and as open and fecund as the reed-covered bank.

Afterwards, when she lay enveloped in his arms, he said, in his rough, hoarse voice:
Ká sochawá?
What're you thinking?

. . . Thinking how you saved me today;
sochat ki tu bacháwelá
. . .

It was myself I saved today, he said in a whisper. Because if you had died, I couldn't have lived;
jinda na rah sakelá
. . .

Shh! Don't say any more. Always superstitious, she shuddered at the mention of death.

But where will we go now? he said. What will we do? They'll hunt for us everywhere, in the cities and the villages.

Although she had no more of a plan than he did, she said: We'll go away, far away, we'll find a place where no one will know anything about us except that we are married.

Married? he said.

Yes.

Squirming out of his arms, she wrapped herself loosely in her sari and went off towards the river. Where are you going? he shouted after her. You'll see, she called over her shoulder. And when she came back, with her sari draped over her body like a veil of gossamer, it was with an armload of wild-flowers, blooming on the bank. Plucking a few long hairs from her head, she strung the flowers together to make two garlands: one she gave to him, and the other she took herself, lifting it up above his head and slipping it around his neck. Now he too knew what to do and when the exchange of garlands had bound them together, they sat for a while, awed by the enormity of what they had done. Then she crept into his arms again and was swept into the embracing warmth of his body, as wide and sheltering as the dark earth.

O
nce the
Ibis
had been berthed, Zachary and Serang Ali opened the account books and paid the crew their accumulated addlings. Many of the lascars disappeared immediately into the gullies of Kidderpore, with their copper and silver coins carefully hidden in the folds of their clothing. Some would never see the
Ibis
again, but some were back in a matter of days, having been robbed or cheated, or having squandered their earnings in toddyshacks and knockingdens – or having discovered, simply, that life ashore was far more attractive when you were at sea than when your feet were a-trip on the slick turf of lubber-land.

It would be some time yet before the
Ibis
could be accommodated at the Lustignac dry docks in Kidderpore, where she was to be repaired and refurbished. During the time she was moored in the river, only a skeleton crew remained on board, along with Zachary and Serang Ali. Although shrunken in size, the crew continued to function much as at sea, being divided into two pors, or watches, each of which was headed by a tindal; as at sea, each por was on deck for four hours at a stretch, except during the chhota-pors, which were the two-hour dogwatches of dawn and dusk. The safety of port came at the price of an increased risk of pilferage and theft, so there was no slackening in the vigilance required of the por; nor was there any easing in the pace of work on board, for there were inventories to be made, inspections to be completed and most of all, a great deal of cleaning to be done. Serang Ali made no secret of his view that a sailor who would send his ship untended to the dry dock was worse than the worst shorebound scum, worse than a ma-chowdering pimp.

Gali was one domain of the Laskari tongue in which no one could outdo the serang: in no small measure was it because of the
fluency of his swearing that Jodu held him in unbounded respect. It was a matter of great disappointment to him that his regard was entirely unreciprocated.

Jodu knew well enough that freshwater-jacks like himself were held in contempt by ocean-going lascars: often, while rowing past some towering three-master, he had looked up to see a grinning seacunny or kussab shouting taunts, calling him a stick-man – a
dandiwálá
– and spinning out insults about the uses to which sticks could be put. For taunts and jibes, Jodu was well-prepared and would even have been glad of, but the serang would allow no familiarities between him and the other lascars: indeed he lost no opportunity to make it clear that he had taken Jodu into the crew against his will and would prefer to see him gone. If he had to be put up with, at Zachary's insistence, then it would only be as a topas, the lowliest of lascars – a sweeper, to scrub piss-dales, clean heads, wash utensils, scour the decks and the like. To make things as unpleasant as possible, he even made Jodu saw his jharu in half: the shorter the broom, he said, the cleaner the work – this way you'll be so close to the droppings you'll know what the tatti was made of when it went in the mouth. On the serang's right foot, there was a single, carefully tended toenail, a half-inch in length and filed to a sharp point. When Jodu was on all fours, scouring the deck, the serang would sometimes steal up to kick him:
Chal sálá!
You think it hurts to be spiked in the stern? Be glad it's not a cannon up your gundeck.

During his first weeks on the
Ibis
, the serang would not allow Jodu to go below for any reason other than to clean the heads: even at night, he had to sleep on deck. This was a problem only when it rained, which didn't happen often – at other times, Jodu was by no means the only hand to be looking for the ‘softest plank on deck'. It was thus that he was befriended by Roger Cecil David, known as Rajoo-launder to his shipmates. Tall and thin, Rajoo had the upright mien of a tent-pole, and a complexion that almost matched the tarry tint of the schooner's masts. Having been raised in a succession of Christian missions, he liked to wear shirts and trowsers, and was often to be seen in a cloth cap – not for him the lungis and bandhnas of the other lascars. These were ambitious tastes for a ship-launder, and they earned him much derision – not least because his garments
were patched together from scraps of sailcloth. The joke about him, in short, was that he was the schooner's third dol – a human mizzen-mast – and his forays into the ringeen were often accompanied by much hilarity, with the foretopmen vying with each other to make cracks at his expense. The possibilities of suggestion here were very rich, for unlike sailors elsewhere, lascars often spoke of their ships in the masculine, referring to the vessels' masts as their manhood – the word for which was much the same as the commonly used term for ‘ship's-boy', with but a syllable removed.