"Sea of Poppies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ghosh Amitav)

Three

Kalua lived in the Chamar-basti, a cluster of huts inhabited only by people of his caste. To enter the hamlet would have been difficult for Deeti and Kabutri, but fortunately for them, Kalua's dwelling lay on the periphery, not far from the main road to Ghazipur. Deeti had passed that way many times before and had often seen Kalua lumbering about, in his cart. To her eyes, his dwelling did not look like a hut at all, but had more the look of a cattle-pen; when she was within hailing distance of it, she came to a halt and called out: Ey Kalua? Ka horahelba? Oh Kalua? What're you up to?

After three or four shouts there was still no answer, so she picked up a stone and aimed it at the doorless entrance of his dwelling. The pebble vanished into the unlit darkness of the hut and a tinkle of pottery followed to tell her that it had struck a pitcher or some earthenware object. Ey Kalua-ré! she called out again. Now something stirred inside the hut and there was a deepening of the darkness around the doorway until at last Kalua showed himself, stooping low to make his way out. Following close behind, as if to confirm Deeti's notion that he lived in a cattle-pen, were the two small white oxen that pulled his cart.

Kalua was a man of unusual height and powerful build: in any fair, festival or mela, he could always be spotted towering above the crowd – even the jugglers on stilts were usually not so tall as he. But it was his colour rather than his size that had earned him the nickname Kalua – 'Blackie' – for his skin had the shining, polished tint of an oiled whetstone. It was said of Kalua that as a child he had shown an insatiable craving for meat, which his family had satisfied by feeding him carrion; being leather-makers, it was their trade to collect the remains of dead cows and oxen – it was on the meat of these salvaged carcasses that Kalua's gigantic frame was said to have been nourished. But it was said also that Kalua's body had gained at the expense of his mind, which had remained slow, simple and trusting, so that even small children were able to take advantage of him. So easily was he duped, that on his parents' passing, his brothers and other relatives had not had the least difficulty in cheating him of the little that was his rightful due: he had raised no objection even when he was evicted from the family dwelling and sent to fend for himself in a cattle-pen.

At that time, help had come to Kalua from an unexpected quarter: one of Ghazipur's most prominent landowning families had three young scions, thakur-sahibs, who were much addicted to gambling. Their favourite pastime was to bet on wrestling matches and trials of strength, so on hearing of Kalua's physical prowess, they had sent an ox-cart to fetch him to the kothi where they lived, on the outskirts of town. Abé Kalua, they said to him, if you were to be given a reward, what would you want?

After much head-scratching and careful thought, Kalua had pointed to the ox-cart and said: Malik, I would be glad to have a bayl-gari like that one. I could make a living from it.

The three thakurs had nodded their heads and said that he would get an ox-cart if only he could win a fight and give a few demonstrations of his strength. Several wrestling matches followed and Kalua had won them all, defeating the local pehlwans and strongmen with ease. The young landlords earned a good profit and Kalua was soon in possession of his reward. But once having gained his ox-cart, Kalua showed no further inclination to fight – which was scarcely a surprise, for he was, as everyone knew, of a shy, timid and peaceable disposition and had no greater ambition than to make a living by transporting goods and people in his cart. But Kalua could not escape his fame: word of his deeds soon filtered through to the august ears of His Highness, the Maharaja of Benares, who expressed a desire to see the strongman of Ghazipur pitted against the champion of his own court.

Kalua demurred at first, but the landlords wheedled, cajoled and finally threatened to confiscate his cart and oxen, so to Benares they went and there, on the great square in front of the Ramgarh Palace, Kalua suffered his first defeat, being knocked unconscious within a few minutes of the bout's start. The Maharaja, watching in satisfaction, remarked that the outcome was proof that wrestling was a trial not just of strength, but also of intelligence – and in the latter field Ghazipur could scarcely hope to challenge Benares. All Ghazipur was humbled and Kalua came home in disgrace.

But not long afterwards, stories began to blow back that gave a different accounting of Kalua's defeat. It was said that on taking Kalua to Benares, the three young landlords, being seized by the licentious atmosphere of the city, had decided that it would be excellent sport to couple Kalua with a woman. They had invited some friends and taken bets: could a woman be found who would bed this giant of a man, this two-legged beast? A well-known baiji, Hirabai, was hired and brought to the kotha where the landlords were staying. There, with a select audience watching from the shelter of a marbled screen, Kalua had been led into her presence wearing nothing but a langot of white cotton around his waist. What had Hirabai expected? No one knew – but when she saw Kalua, she was rumoured to have screamed: This animal should be mated with a horse, not a woman…

It was this humiliation, people said, that cost Kalua the fight at Ramgarh Palace. Thus went the story that was told in the galis and ghats of Ghazipur.

It so happened that of all the people who could vouch for the truth of this tale, Deeti herself was one. This is how it came about: one night, after serving her husband his meal, Deeti had discovered that she had run short of water; to leave the dishes unwashed overnight was to invite an invasion of ghosts, ghouls and hungry pishaches. No matter: it was a bright, full-moon night and the Ganga was but a short walk away. Balancing a pot on her hip, she made her way through the waist-high poppies towards the silver gleam of the river. Just as she was about to step out of the poppy field, on to the treeless bank of sand that flanked the water, she heard the sound of hoofs, some distance away: looking to her left, in the direction of Ghazipur, she saw, in the light of the moon, four men on horses, trotting towards her.

A man on a horse never meant anything but trouble for a lone woman, and where there were four, riding together, the signs of danger were all too clear: Deeti lost no time in hiding herself among the poppies. When the horsemen had approached a little, she saw that she had been mistaken in thinking that they were four in number: there were only three mounted men; the fourth was following on foot. She took this last man to be a groom but when the men had come closer still, she saw that the fourth man had a halter around his neck and was being led like a horse. It was his size that had caused her to mistake him for a horseman: she saw that he was none other than Kalua. Now she recognized the horsemen too, for their faces were well known to everyone in Ghazipur: they were the three sport-loving landowners. She heard one of them call out to the others – Iddhar, here, this is a good spot; there's no one around – and she knew from his voice that he was drunk. When they were almost abreast of her, the men dismounted; of their three horses, they tied two together, turning them out to graze in the poppy fields. The third horse was a large black mare, and this animal they led towards Kalua, who was himself being held as if by a tether. Now she heard a whimpering, sobbing sound as Kalua fell suddenly to his knees, clutching at the thakurs' feet: Mái-báp, hamke máf karelu… forgive me, masters… the fault wasn't mine…

This earned him volleys of kicks and curses:

… You lost on purpose, didn't you, dogla bastard?

… Do you know how much it cost us…?

… Now let's see you do what Hirabai said…

By pulling on his halter, the men forced Kalua to his feet and pushed him stumbling towards the mare's swishing tail. One of them stuck his whip into the fold of Kalua's cotton langot and whisked it off with a flick of his wrist. Then, while one of them held the horse steady, the others whipped Kalua's naked back until his groin was pressed hard against the animal's rear. Kalua uttered a cry that was almost indistinguishable in tone from the whinnying of the horse. This amused the landlords:

… See, the b'henchod even sounds like a horse…

… Tetua dabá dé… wring his balls…

Suddenly, with a swish of its tail, the mare defecated, unloosing a surge of dung over Kalua's belly and thighs. This excited yet more laughter from the three men. One of them dug his whip into Kalua's buttocks: Arre Kalua! Why don't you do the same?

Ever since the night of her wedding, Deeti had been haunted by images of her own violation: now, watching from the shelter of the poppy field, she bit the edge of her palm, to keep from crying out aloud. So it could happen to a man too? Even a powerful giant of a man could be humiliated and destroyed, in a way that far exceeded his body's capacity for pain?

In averting her eyes, her attention was drawn to the two grazing horses, which had strayed into the poppy field and were now quite close to her: another step and she would be within reach of their flanks. It was the work of a moment to find a poppy pod that had already shed its leaves; in falling, they had left behind a crown of sharp, dry prickles. Creeping towards one of the horses, she made a hissing sound as she dug the spiky pod into its withers. The animal reared, as if in response to a snakebite, and galloped off, pulling its tethered companion along in its flight. The horse's panic was instantly communicated to the black mare; in breaking free it lashed out with its hind legs, hitting Kalua in the chest. The three landlords, after standing a moment nonplussed, went racing off in pursuit of their mounts, leaving Kalua unconscious in the sand, naked and smeared in dung.

It took Deeti a while to summon the courage to take a closer look. When it became clear that the landlords were really gone, she crept out of her hiding-place and lowered herself to a squatting position beside Kalua's unconscious body. He was lying in shadow so she couldn't tell whether he was breathing or not. She put out a hand to touch his chest, but only to snatch it back: to think of touching a naked man was bad enough – and when that man was of Kalua's station, wasn't it almost a plea for retribution? She cast a furtive glance around her, and then, in defiance of the world's unseen presence, she put out a finger and allowed it to fall on Kalua's chest. The drumbeat of his heart reassured her and she quickly withdrew her hand, preparing to dart back into the poppies if his eyes showed any sign of coming open. But they remained shut and his body lay so peacefully inert that she felt no fear in examining him more closely. She saw now that his size was deceptive, that he was quite young, with no more than a faint feathering of hair on his upper lip; lying crumpled in the sand, he was no longer the dark giant who called at her home twice a day, without speaking, or allowing himself to be seen: he was just a fallen boy. Her tongue clicked involuntarily at the sight of the dung around his middle; she went to the riverside, pulled up a handful of rushes and used them to wipe away the smears. His langot was lying nearby, glowing white in the moonlight, and this too she fetched and fastidiously opened out.

It was when she was dropping the langot over him that her eyes were drawn, despite herself, to focus on his nakedness – somehow, even as she was cleaning him, she had managed not to take it in. She had never before, in a state of consciousness, been so close to this part of a man's body and now she found herself staring, both in fear and curiosity, seeing again that image of herself on her wedding night. As if of its own accord, her hand snaked out and laid itself down, and she felt, to her amazement, the softness of mere flesh: but then, as she grew accustomed to his breathing, she became aware of a faint stirring and swelling, and suddenly it was as if she were waking to a reality in which her family and her village were looking over her shoulder, watching as she sat with her hand resting intimately upon the most untouchable part of this man. Recoiling, she went quickly back into the field, where she hid herself among the poppies and waited as she had before.

After what seemed like a long time, Kalua rose slowly to his feet and looked around himself, as if in surprise. Then, knotting his langot around his loins, he staggered away, with a look of such confusion that Deeti was certain – or almost – that he had been totally unconscious of her presence.

Two years had passed since then, but far from fading, the events of that night had attained a guilty vividness in her memory. Often, as she lay beside her opium-dazed husband, her mind would revisit the scene, sharpening the details and refreshing certain particulars – all of this without her permission and despite her every effort to steer her thoughts in other directions. Her discomfort would have been greater still if she had believed that Kalua had access to the same images and recollections – but she had, as yet, seen no sign that he remembered anything from that night. Still, a nagging doubt remained, and since then she had always taken good care to avoid his eyes, shrouding her face in her sari whenever he was near.

So it was with some apprehension that Deeti observed Kalua now, from the shelter of her faded sari: the folds of fabric betrayed nothing of the concentration with which she watched for his response to her presence. She knew that if his eyes or his face were to betray any knowledge, any recollection, of her part in the events of that night, then she would have no option but to turn on her heel and walk away: the awkwardness would be too great to ignore, for not only was there the question of what the landlords had tried to do to him – the shame of which might well destroy a man if he knew that it had been witnessed – but there was also the shamelessness of her own curiosity, if that was indeed all it was.

To Deeti's relief, the sight of her seemed to kindle no spark in Kalua's dull eyes. His massive chest was clothed in a discoloured, sleeveless vest, and around his waist he was wearing his usual dirty cotton langot – out of the folds of which his oxen were now picking bits of straw, grass and fodder while he stood in front of his shack, shifting his weight between his pillar-like legs.

Ka bhailé? What's happening? he said at last in his hoarse, unmindful way, and she felt sure now that if he'd ever had any memory of that night, his slow, simple mind had long since lost track of it.

Ey-ré Kalua, she said, that man of mine is unwell at the factory; he has to be brought home.

He gave this some thought, cocking his head, and then nodded: All right; I'll bring him back.

Gaining confidence, she took out the package she had prepared and held it up in her hand: But this is all I can give you in payment, Kalua – don't expect anything more.

He stared at it: What is it?

Afeem, Kalua, she said briskly. At this time of year, what else do people have in their houses?

He began lumbering towards her, so she placed the package on the ground and stepped quickly back, clutching her daughter to her side: in the full light of day, it was unthinkable that any kind of contact should occur between herself and Kalua, even that which might result from the passing of an inert object. But she kept careful watch, as he picked up the leaf-wrapped package and sniffed its contents; it occurred to her to wonder, fleetingly, whether he, too, was an opium-eater – but she dismissed the thought instantly. What did it matter what his habits were? He was a stranger, not a husband. Yet, she felt oddly glad when, instead of putting the opium away for his own use, he broke the lump in two and fed the halves to his oxen. The animals chewed contentedly as he tied them to his yoke, and when the cart had drawn abreast of her, she climbed in with her daughter and sat facing backwards, with her legs dangling over the edge. And so they made their way towards Ghazipur, sitting at either end of the cart's bamboo platform, so far apart that not even the loosest of tongues could find a word to say, by way of scandal or reproach.

On that very afternoon, five hundred miles to the east of Ghazipur, Azad Naskar – known universally by his nickname, Jodu – was also preparing to embark on the journey that would bring him athwart the bows of the Ibis and into Deeti's shrine. Earlier that day, Jodu had buried his mother in the village of Naskarpara, using one of his last coins to pay a molla-shaheb to read the Qur'an over her freshly dug grave. The village was some fifteen miles from Calcutta, in a featureless stretch of mud and mangrove, on the edge of the Sundarbans. It was little more than a huddle of huts, clustered around the tomb of the Sufi fakir who had converted the inhabitants to Islam a generation or two before. If not for the fakir's dargah the village might well have melted back into the mud, its inhabitants not being the kind of people to tarry long in one place: most of them earned their living by wandering on the water, working as boatmen, ferry-wallahs and fishermen. But they were humble folk, and few among them possessed the ambition or impetuosity to aspire to jobs on ocean-going ships – and of that small number, none had ever aspired more ardently to a lascar's livelihood than Jodu. He would have been long gone from the village if not for his mother's health, their family circumstances being such that in his absence, she was sure to have suffered complete neglect. Through the duration of her illness, he had tended to his mother in a fashion that was both impatient and affectionate, doing what little he could to provide some comfort in her last days: now, he had one final errand to perform on her behalf, after which he would be free to seek out the ghat-serangs who recruited lascars for deep-water ships.

Jodu, too, was a boatman's son, and he was, by his own reckoning, no longer a boy, his chin having become suddenly so fecund in its crop of hair as to require a weekly visit to the barber. But the changes in his physique were so recent and so volcanic that he had yet to grow accustomed to them: it was as if his body were a smoking crater that had just risen from the ocean and was still waiting to be explored. Across his left eyebrow, the legacy of a childhood mishap, there was a deep gash where the skin showed through, with the result that when seen from a distance, he seemed to have three eyebrows instead of two. This disfigurement, if it could be called that, provided an odd highlight to his appearance, and years later, when it came time for him to enter Deeti's shrine, it was this feature that was to determine her sketch of him: three gently angled slashes in an oval.

Jodu's boat, inherited years before from his father, was a clumsy affair, a dinghy made from hollowed-out logs and bound together with hemp ropes: within hours of his mother's burial, Jodu had loaded it with his few remaining possessions and was ready to leave for Calcutta. With the current behind him, it did not take long to cover the distance to the mouth of the canal that led to the city's docks: this narrow waterway, recently excavated by an enterprising English engineer, was known as Mr Tolly's Nullah, and for the privilege of entering it, Jodu had to hand the last of his coins to the keeper of its tollhouse. The narrow canal was busy, as always, and Jodu took a couple of hours to make his way through the city, past the Kalighat temple and the grim walls of Alipore Jail. Emerging into the busy waterway of the Hooghly, he found himself suddenly in the midst of a great multitude of vessels – crowded sampans and agile almadias, towering brigantines and tiny baulias, swift carracks and wobbly woolocks; Adeni buggalows with rakish lateen sails and Andhra bulkats with many-tiered decks. In steering through this press of traffic, there was no avoiding an occasional scrape or bump and for each of these he was roundly shouted out by serangs and tindals, coksens and bosmans; an irritable bhandari threw a bucket of slop at him and a lewd seacunny taunted him with suggestive gestures of his fist. Jodu responded by imitating the familiar shouts of sea officers – 'What cheer ho? Avast!' – and left the lascars gaping at the fluency of his mimicry.

After a year spent in rural seclusion, it made his spirits soar to hear these harbour-front voices again, with their outpourings of obscenity and abuse, taunts and invitations – and to watch the lascars swinging through the ringeen made his own hands grow restless for the feel of rope. As for the nearby shore, his gaze kept straying from the godowns and bankshalls of Kidderpore, to the twisting lanes of Watgunge where the women sat on the steps of their kothis, painting their faces in preparation for the night. What would they say to him now, those women who'd laughed and turned him away because of his youth?

Beyond Mr Kyd's shipyard, the traffic on the water thinned a little, and Jodu had no difficulty in pulling up to the embankment at Bhutghat. This part of the city lay directly opposite the Royal Botanical Gardens, on the far side of the Hooghly, and the ghat was much used by the Gardens' staff. Jodu knew that one of their boats would pull up here sooner or later, and sure enough, one such appeared within the hour, carrying a young English assistant curator. The lungi-clad coksen at the helm was well-known to Jodu, and once the sahib had stepped off, he pushed his own boat closer.

The coksen recognized him at once: Arré Jodu na? Isn't that you – Jodu Naskar?

Jodu made his salams: Salam, khalaji. Yes, it's me.

But where have you been? the coksen asked. Where's your mother? It's more than a year since you left the Gardens. Everyone's been wondering…

We went back to the village, khalaji, said Jodu. My mother didn't want to stay on after our sahib died.

I heard, said the coksen. And there was some talk that she was ill?

Jodu nodded, lowering his head: She died last night, khalaji.

Allah'r rahem! The coksen shut his eyes and muttered: God's mercy on her.

Bismillah… Jodu murmured the prayer after him and then added: Listen, khalaji – it's for my mother that I'm here: before she died she told me to be sure to find Lambert-sahib's daughter – Miss Paulette.

Of course, said the coksen. That girl was like a daughter to your mother: no ayah ever gave a child as much love as she did.

… But do you know where Paulette-missy is? It's more than a year since I last saw her.

The coksen nodded and raised a hand to point downriver: She lives not far from here. After her father died she was taken in by a rich English family. To find her, you'll have to go to Garden Reach. Ask for the mansion of Burnham-sahib: in the garden there's a chabutra with a green roof. You'll know it the moment you see it.

Jodu was delighted to have achieved his end with such little effort. Khoda-hafej khálaji! Waving his thanks, he pulled his oar from the mud and gave it a vigorous heave. As he was pulling away, he heard the coksen talking excitedly to the men around him: Do you see that boy's dinghy? Miss Paulette – the daughter of Lambert-sahib, the Frenchman – she was born in it: in that very boat…

Jodu had heard the story so many times, told by so many people, that it was almost as if he had witnessed the events himself. It was his kismat, his mother had always said, that accounted for the strange turn in their family's fate – if she hadn't gone home to her own village for Jodu's birth, it was certain that their lives would never have embraced Paulette.

It had happened soon after Jodu was born: his boatman father had come in his dinghy to fetch his wife and child from her parents' home, where she had gone for the delivery. They were on the Hooghly River when a brisk, squally wind had started to blow. With the day nearing its end, Jodu's father had decided that he would not risk crossing the river at that time: it would be safer to spend the night by the shore and make another attempt the next morning. Keeping to the bank, the boat had arrived eventually at the brick-bound embankment of the Royal Botanical Gardens: what better resting-place could there be than this fine ghat? Here, with the boat safely moored, they had eaten their evening meal and settled in to wait out the night.

They had not been long asleep when they were woken by a clamour of voices. A lantern had appeared, bringing with it the face of a white man: the sahib had thrust his face under their boat's thatched hood and uttered many words of frantic gibberish. It was clear he was very worried about something, so they were not surprised when one of his servants intervened to explain that there was a dire emergency; the sahib's pregnant wife was in great pain and in desperate need of a white doctor; there were none to be had on this side of the river, so she had to be taken to Calcutta, on the other bank.

Jodu's father had protested that his boat was too small to attempt a crossing, with no moon above, and the water churning beneath shifting winds. Far better that the sahib take a big bora or a budgerow – some boat with a large crew and many oars; surely there were some such at the Botanical Gardens?

So there were, came the answer; the Garden did indeed have a small fleet of its own. But as luck would have it, none of those boats were available that night: the head curator had commandeered them all, in order to take a party of his friends to the annual Ball of the Calcutta Exchange. The dinghy was the only boat presently moored at the ghat: if they refused to go, two lives would be lost – the mother's as well as the child's.

Having herself recently suffered the pains of childbirth, Jodu's mother was touched by the evident distress of the sahib and his mem: she added her voice to theirs, pleading with her husband to accept the commission. But he continued to shake his head, relenting only after the handing over of a coin, a silver tical worth more than the value of the dinghy itself. With this unrefusable inducement the bargain was sealed and the Frenchwoman was carried on board, in her litter.

One look at the pregnant woman's face was enough to know that she was in great pain: they cast off at once, steering towards Calcutta 's Babughat. Even though it was windy and dark, there was no difficulty in setting a course because the lights of the Calcutta Exchange had been especially illuminated for the annual Ball and were clearly visible across the river. But the winds grew stronger and the water rougher as they pulled away from the shore; soon the boat was being buffeted with such violence that it became difficult to hold the litter still. As the rolling and tossing increased, the memsahib's condition grew steadily worse until suddenly, right in midstream, her waters broke and she went into the throes of a premature labour.

They turned back at once, but the shore was a long way off. The sahib's attention was now focused on comforting his wife and he could be of no help in the delivery: it was Jodu's mother who bit through the cord and wiped the blood from the girl's tiny body. Leaving her own child, Jodu, to lie naked in the boat's bilges, she took his blanket, wrapped the girl in it, and held her close to her dying mother. The child's face was the last sight the memsahib's eyes beheld: she bled to death before they could return to the Botanical Gardens.

The sahib, distraught and grieving, was in no position to deal with a screaming infant: he was greatly relieved when Jodu's mother quietened the baby by putting her to her breast. On their return, he made another request – could the boatman and his family stay on until an ayah or wet-nurse could be engaged?

What could they say but yes? The truth was that Jodu's mother would have found it hard to part from the girl after that first night: she had opened her heart to the baby the moment she held her to her breast. From that day on, it was as if she had not one child but two: Jodu, her son, and her daughter Putli – 'doll' – which was her way of domesticating the girl's name. As for Paulette, in the confusion of tongues that was to characterize her upbringing, her nurse became Tantima – 'aunt-mother'.

This was how Jodu's mother entered the employment of Pierre Lambert, who had but recently come to India to serve as the assistant curator of Calcutta 's Botanical Gardens. The understanding was that she would stay only until a replacement could be found – but somehow no one else ever was. Without anything ever being formally arranged, Jodu's mother became Paulette's wet-nurse, and the two children spent their infancy lying head-to-head in her arms. Such objections as Jodu's father might have had disappeared when the assistant curator bought him a new and much better boat, a bauliya: he soon went off to live in Naskarpara, leaving behind his wife and child, but taking his new vessel with him. From that time on, Jodu and his mother saw him but rarely, usually at the beginning of the month, around the time when she was paid; with the money he took from her, he married again and sired a great number of children. Jodu saw these half-siblings twice a year, during the 'Id festivals, when he was made to pay reluctant visits to Naskarpara. But the village was never home to him in the way of the Lambert bungalow, where he reigned as Miss Paulette's favoured playmate and mock-consort.

As for Paulette, the first language she learnt was Bengali, and the first solid food she ate was a rice-and-dal khichri cooked by Jodu's mother. In the matter of clothing she far preferred saris to pinafores – for shoes she had no patience at all, choosing, rather, to roam the Gardens in bare feet, like Jodu. Through the early years of their childhood they were all but inseparable, for she would neither sleep nor eat unless Jodu was present in her room. There were several other children in the bungalow's quarters, but only Jodu was allowed free access to the main house and its bedrooms. At an early age, Jodu came to understand that this was because his mother's relationship with her employer was special, in a way that required her to remain with him until late at night. But neither he nor Putli ever referred to this matter, accepting it as one of the many unusual circumstances of their peculiar household – for Jodu and his mother were not the only ones to be cut off from their own kind; Paulette and her father were perhaps even more so. Rarely, if ever, did white men or women visit their bungalow, and the Lamberts took no part in the busy whirl of Calcutta 's English society. When the Frenchman ventured across the river, it was only for what he liked to call 'busy-ness': other than that he was wholly preoccupied with his plants and his books.

Jodu was more worldly than his playmate, and it did not escape him that Paulette and her father were at odds with the other white sahibs: he had heard it said that the Lamberts were from a country that was often at war with England, and at first it was to this that he attributed their apartness. But later, when his shared secrets with Putli deepened in import, he came to understand that this was not the only difference between the Lamberts and the English. He learnt that the reason why Pierre Lambert had left his country was that he had been involved, in his youth, in a revolt against his king; that he was shunned by respectable English society because he had publicly denied the existence of God and the sanctity of marriage. None of this mattered in the least to the boy – if such opinions served to insulate their household against other sahibs then he could only be glad of them.

But it was neither age nor sahibdom, but a much subtler intrusion that loosened the bonds between the children: at a certain moment Putli began to read, and then there was not enough time in the day for anything else. Jodu, on the other hand, lost interest in letters as soon as he learnt to decipher them; his own inclinations had always drawn him towards the water. He laid claim to his father's old boat – Putli's birthplace – and by the age of ten had become adept enough in its use, not just to serve as a boatman for the Lamberts but also to accompany them when they travelled in search of specimens.

Odd as their household was, its arrangements seemed so secure, permanent and satisfying that none of them were prepared for the disasters that followed on Pierre Lambert's unexpected death. He perished of a fever before he could set his affairs in order; shortly after his passing, it was discovered that he had accumulated substantial debts in furthering his researches – his mysterious 'busy-ness' trips to Calcutta were revealed to have consisted of surreptitious visits to moneylenders in Kidderpore. It was then too that Jodu and his mother paid the price of their privileged association with the assistant curator. The resentments and jealousies of the other servants and employees were quickly made manifest in angry accusations of deathbed theft. The hostility became so acute that Jodu and his mother were forced to slip away, in their boat. Left with no other option, they returned to Naskarpara, where they were given grudging refuge by their step-family. But years of comfortable bungalow-living had left Jodu's mother unfit for the privations of village life. The irreversible decline of her health started within a few weeks of their arrival and did not end until her death.

Altogether, Jodu had spent fourteen months in Naskarpara: in that time he had neither seen Paulette nor received any word from her. On her deathbed his mother had thought often of her old charge and had begged Jodu to meet with Putli one last time, so that she would know, at least, how much her old ayah had missed her in the last days of her life. Jodu, for his part, had long been aware that he and his erstwhile playmate would one day be reclaimed by their separate worlds and he would have been content to leave it at that: if not for his mother, he would not have set out to look for Paulette. But now that he knew he was nearing the place where she lived, he found himself growing both eager and apprehensive: Would Putli agree to meet him, or would she have him turned out by the servants? If he could but see her face to face, there'd be so much to talk about, so much to tell. Looking ahead, downriver, he spotted a little pavilion with a green roof and quickened his pace.