For a moment, I felt disappointed because I was sure they would set up a tall tent about the pole, and I would be deprived of the sight of their alien festivity. But no one brought any cloth or canvas. Next, the men gathered at the base of the tall wooden stake and began to rotate it. A single rope attached to its top began to spin out, until its motion resembled a diaphanous umbrella. A glint caught my eye. When the men stopped spinning the column, the rope became visible as its speed slowed and a hook at its end, whistling about in a circle, could plainly be seen, and then with a clatter it rested by the upright pole. The shiny fishhook, or so it looked to me, hung about shoulder height.
The drums began to beat, gaining in tempo, until all eyes were riveted on the centre. All the sailors were crowded on the deck, craning their necks. On the upper deck, Captain Connolly was looking at the spectacle through his telescope. Noticing the young toff who had emerged from his cabin—no longer pink because of seasickness—our captain offered it to him. I was amused that the young lord had to stand on tiptoe. A sharp cry rang out from the crowd, and I turned back to the gathering.
Where he came from I do not know, but the tallest man I had ever seen in my life came, awkward on unnaturally long legs, through the parting crowd. Naked but for a cloth that flapped about those shanks, he was entirely covered with some ashen powder. So were the matted tangles of his hair. He raised his head, and in a great bellow, uttered just one word, which began in deep sibilance and ended in a hollow groaning cry:
S H I I V A A !
The crowd began to moan and sway. Amid the terrible blaring from long snaking horns, and the drums sounding in frenzy, I thought I beheld a forest of branches and shivering leaves as everybody in the crowd raised their hands and swayed, quivering their outstretched fingers, the very mimesis of a forest as a great storm breaks over the land. The unnaturally tall man—he seemed nine or ten feet tall—lunged for the dangling rope, caught the hook, and in a single movement, plunged it into his flesh near the shoulder. The pole had begun its rapid twirl, and lifted the man away in its wild rotation over the heads of the crowd, at what appeared an inhuman height. From under his legs two stilts fell away: So that was the mystery of his great height.
But the shiny hook in his flesh, his unearthly circuit overhead, his outstretched arms made nothing of that little trick. He
would be dead, he would bleed to death, the sinews of his shoulder would be sundered, and he would be flung from that whirling height, to lie gasping his last breath, blood pooling about his limbs. I watched, thrilled and dreadstruck at the same time. The drumming reached its climax, and the blaring of the native trumpets tore through our senses, and then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. The men spinning the pole fell away from it as if in dead exhaustion, the rope slowed and swooped down towards the column. Hands reached out and caught the flying man. The arms of the crowd stopped waving, fingers outstretched for a frozen instant, and then fell back. In that moment, the man was hoisted on to his stilts, and the hook, unfleshed, clanked on the pole and hung limp, smeared in blood. Everything was utterly still. The ashen man raised his outstretched hands now, and with fingers fluttering like leaves, loped off through the parted crowd, disappearing among the trees.
The hunched crowd raised one whispered murmur,
Shiva, Shiva,
and then, carrying the pole and hooked rope among them, melted away into the interior, never even looking in our direction. The ground was utterly empty within moments and the silence, except for the susurration of the river, was complete.
I stood clutching the deck rail and wondered if I had dreamt it all.
• • •
W
E HAD SAILED
past the village up a vast channel that bent sharply westward when we came in sight of a town. The houses on its outskirts came right down to the riverbank, huts and shops scattered about, and banks of stairs led down to the river from some of the
larger houses. People in small boats were making for the riverbank. Landry leant over the rail, surveying the land, and said, “Barisal,” spitting it out like an expletive.
At this riverside town we took in potable water and fruits. I was told these were mangoes and everybody feasted on them. Great blue flies flew in from nowhere at their sweet odor, and no one was out of humour. With the tide, the ship would have to weigh anchor and sail in great haste, cross Chandpur, and make for Dacca, where it would be safe when the first onslaught of monsoon came. Then, having deposited the great lord’s son, the ship would glide downstream to the Bay of Bengal, make a westerly pass up the Hooghly in an easy sail to the port of Calcutta. So said Hanratty, and Landry nodded in agreement. Rotting teeth or no, Landry was a veteran.
Hanratty wanted to impress me with all he knew and held forth with gusto. “In Calcutta you’ll see the might of the East India Company, its great numbers of soldiers, white and black, the red Writers’ Building for clerks, and Fort William where we’ll be escorted in a group.”
That set me thinking. It would be far harder to escape from a fort. In the next few hours I stealthily packed my few clothes and some scanty supplies. Gathering them within a piece of torn canvas to keep them dry, I hid them under my shirt. When night fell, and everyone sank into sleep, I wound some rags around my palms and found a deserted spot on deck. Under the merest sliver moon in the sky, I slid down a rope, went into the water without a splash and, holding the bundle above my head, let the tide take me away from the ship. I drifted an hour or so before reaching a bathing ghat with its crumbled steps leading into the river.
There was nothing here except for a dim heap of a temple in
the distance and a cremation ground surrounded by trees such as I had seen from the ship. I walked to an enormous tree, took off my wet clothes, and lay down under its low branches. I would arise, Padraig once more. That night, on the edge of a burning-ground where Hindus bore their dead to be cremated by the river, I consigned Alexander Blackburn to the past forever. I stretched out under the dense banyan tree and slept like the dead.
I dreamt of Mullaghmore again and woke up with a heavy head, hungry and unsure how much of the day was gone. The tendrils that dropped from the great limbs of the tree and the undergrowth that rose from the fecund earth made a twilit world around me. From between twigs and saplings, strange flowers opened their palms to the miserly light. From my nest, I watched a line of people carrying something with great care and placing it at the water’s edge, chanting in a low musical tone with a sobbing cry that was part of it. I thought back to the slave song I had heard off the Afric coast, but this was different. They squatted around their burden, singing, making no attempt to console each other, intent on completing some grave ritual by the riverside.
As inexplicably as they had come, they withdrew single file beyond the far trees, raising again the melancholy song with the cry woven within it, and then were lost to my sight. The last thing about them was the cry that rose like a fish in the surface of the quiet spreading about us.
A swift eddy roiled the trees. The heavy branches of the banyan swayed over me, and the watery weight of the air stirred, and soon a mighty wind howled overhead. I came away from under the tree canopy and saw that the sky was loaded with indigo clouds, so tumultuously low that it seemed they would crush the earth itself. A blue spark jittered across the sky, blinding me momentarily, and
a gleam played upon the crashing and froth-tormented waters of the wide river. With a sharp cackle some great bird, its wings impossibly bent, crashed to the ground and, quivering, lay still. Its neck was twisted and its wings cracked by the wind. Heavy groaning filled the sky, and the close thunder shook through my body and the earth drummed underfoot. I flung myself to the ground, hands over my ears, thinking,
The monsoon, this is the monsoon
. The Company ship, caught in such a storm, would certainly have more immediate worries, unless they took me for drowned and dead. That would be fortuitous.
Rain began to fall on the hot earth and thwapped down in great drops, bursting open before my eyes. The waters were in a boil. I could see now what those praying ones had left at the bank. Something fluttered, as the wind snapped about it. I raced breathlessly to the river’s edge, the rain hitting me in great slapping gusts against my face. A few more seconds and the reaching hands of the river would grasp and snatch it away. It was a long package, one end already in the black water, but what caught my eye now was the part which was not swaddled.
It was a face, its lips blue, but faintly moving, choking under the flinging rain.
Picking up the burden and throwing it over my shoulder, I ran through the walls of falling water, stopping briefly to snatch my canvas bundle from under the tree, my feet squelching, towards the broken temple. Two nightbirds skittered out, screeching into the rain. There was a dingy stony smell of the cool floor, but it was dry. The lightning lit and jagged through the riverscape of tormented trees and water, while the sound of rain heaved and drowned all else.
He lay inert, but not yet cold. I felt no breath in his nostrils.
I unwrapped the cloth. Within it lay a thin child, and I understood that those men had left him for dead. Hastily I opened the stopper of the small bottle of rum I had purloined from the ship and poured it between his lips. I slapped his cheeks gently and rubbed his palms, then gathered all my force of breath and blew into his open helpless mouth, desperately willing him to breathe. I pressed my head upon his chest, but could hear nothing but the throbbing rain. As I sat up, I saw his eyes flicker, a small light in them, as if he had seen something very wonderful and unexpected, and a tear rolled down his left eye. He looked at me, eyes dilated.
“I’m Padraig,” I said, as much to him as myself. “Do not fear. I am alive.”
He tried to raise his palm, but could only manage a faint movement of his fingers. I reached and held them gently. Words would not do. I held my palm to his cold forehead. After a while, I gathered the twigs that lay nearby and under the awning, and lit a fire. It threw my looming shadow on the wall. The boy looked at it with dread. I put my palms together and moved my fingers. A shadow-bird fluttered on the wall.
The boy smiled. Then he sank into sleep. Once in a while I thought he lay too still and leant over him, anxious, until I felt his faint intaken breath. This soothed my heart. The night passed slowly into a still dawn.
• • •
I
N THE LAST
entire day, I had not been able to give the child anything but a few sips of water. I had nothing to eat, though I had been quick the night before to gather a large amount of dry kindling
from under the trees to keep the fire going. I sat by the still child, the tongue of fire in the large nest of ashes and ember the only thing that moved.
Inside the temple floor, at its centre, I found a strange mound, about waist high, like a black digit. On it were vivid streaks of vermilion. To its right, embedded in the ground, stood a trident. Near it I found a stone bowl, none too clean, which I scoured with the soil at the river-edge and filled with cool water. Mangoes hung plentiful from the thick branches. I knew about the tall coconuts and their nourishing milk and fruit. It was impossible to climb any of these, but one of the clustered fruits had fallen earlier that day with a thud. On hearing that coconut fall, a villager had come out of the trees. When he saw me, and before I could call him and seek help, he turned on his heel and ran off. I cursed him to my heart’s content and went about my business.
I picked up the coconut, split it on the stone floor, and gathered its dense water in the bowl. I gave the boy a sip. He lay still, but towards noon of the second day he began to shake with a chill, so I fed the fire. I took off my shirt—for I was warm, what with the fire and my fretting anxiety about this boy and my own future. I had eaten several mangoes whose pulp had slopped on my trousers. I washed them, my only pair, in the river, and coming back, laid them near the fire to dry.
It was late afternoon now. I crouched naked, as the rain tapered off, wondering what to do next. Should I seek help from the nearest village? Surely the Company ship had departed, being in a hurry to deposit the young lord in Dacca. But I did not want to chance being seen, for a deserter is whipped, sometimes to death itself. In the sudden silence after the rain, I brooded about the child. Although he had taken some sips of coconut water, he did not want any food. His breath had grown very shallow, and I
feared he was surely drifting towards death. The low flame lit his emaciated face. Death was writ large on it.
What instinct there lies in humans, perhaps ingrained in us from the time of unhoused Adam—or more likely, wandering ousted Cain—but I knew that there were people prowling about among the trees that ringed this old temple. Something told me not to dash out, or to show myself. I crept to the darkest corner of the doorway to peer. The shadows in the trees made a chiaroscuro before me. The sinking sun sent out a blazing shaft that must have nigh blinded anyone looking at the temple, which lay under a tangle of shadows of the encroaching wall-rupturing banyan. I spied a straggle of villagers, the group getting larger, by ones and twos, as others joined them holding scythes, spear-like sticks, a number of machetes. Among them, I saw two uniformed sailors, Hanratty and Landry.
They know I am here
, I thought frantically,
What can I do?
The ancient wily Druid blood in me must have prompted my head, for I was not aware of any conscious thought, just a few flickered pictures.
I did not retrieve my trousers. I reached into the dead ashes which lay in a swath, holding the live embers only at the centre. With the crumbly ashes, I rapidly smeared myself. I freed my kerchief. My hair, which had grown long, and my bushy uncut beard, like my hair, spread out, plentiful and black. I poured great handfuls of ash and rubbed it into my skin, front and back, into my hair and beard. I wrenched the trident from the ground in an afterthought, as much for effect as for defense. I would not die alone, I was determined, and I had no other weapon about me. Then I calmed myself. I wanted to master the situation. I would not dart out as if I were a cornered animal and let my assailants rejoice that they had surprised me. No, I would do the unexpected.