And speaking of work, said Jodu. What about our exchange? Do you think they're going to let me take your place on the mast?
Rajoo pulled a doubtful face: I spoke to Mamdoo-tindal today, but he said he'd have to try you out first.
When?
They did not have to wait long for an answer. On returning to the main deck, Jodu heard a voice shouting down from aloft: You there! Stick-man! Jodu looked up to see Mamdoo-tindal looking down from the kursi of the foremast, beckoning with a finger. Come on up!
This was a test, Jodu knew, so he spat on his palms and muttered a bismillah before reaching for the iskat. Less than halfway up, he knew his hands were scraped and bleeding – it was as if the hempen rope had sprouted thorns – but his luck held. Not only did he get to the kursi, he even managed to wipe his bloody hands on his hair before the tindal could see his cuts.
Chalega! said Mamdoo-tindal, with a grudging nod. It'll do – not bad for a dandi-wala…
For fear of saying too much, Jodu responded only with a modest grin – but if he had been a king at a coronation, he could not have felt more triumphant than he did as he eased himself into the kursi: what throne, after all, could offer as grand a view as the crosstrees, with the sun sinking in the west, and a river of traffic flowing by below?
Oh you'll like it up here, said Mamdoo-tindal. And if you ask nicely, Ghaseeti might even teach you her way of reading the wind.
Reading the wind? How?
Like this. Stepping on the purwan, the tindal laid himself down and turned his legs to point at the horizon, where the sun was setting. Then, lifting his feet, he shook out his lungi, so that it opened out like a funnel. When the tube of cloth filled with wind, he gave a triumphant moan. Yes! Ghaseeti predicts that the wind will rise. She feels it! It's on her ankles, on her legs, its hand is inching its way up, she feels it there…
On her legs?
In her wind-maker, you faltu-chute, where else?
Jodu laughed so hard he almost fell out of the kursi. There was only one thing, he realized, with a twinge of regret, that could have made the joke still more enjoyable, and that was if Paulette had been there to share it with him: this was the kind of silliness that had always delighted them both.
It did not take long for Neel to discover that his cell-mate's torments were ordered by certain predictable rhythms. His paroxysms of shivering, for instance, would begin with a mild, almost imperceptible trembling, like that of a man in a room that is just a little too cold for comfort. But these gentle shivers would mount in intensity till they became so violent as to tip him off his charpoy, depositing his convulsing body on the ground. The outlines of his muscles would show through the grime on his skin, alternately contracting into knots and then briefly relaxing, but only to seize up again: it was like looking at a pack of rats squirming in a sack. After the convulsions subsided, he would lie unconscious for a while and then something inside him would stir again; his breathing would grow laboured and his lungs would rattle, yet his eyes would remain closed; his lips would begin to move and form words, and he would pass into the grip of a delirium that somehow permitted him to remain asleep, even as he tossed from side to side, in a frenzy of movement, while shouting aloud in his own language. Then a fire would seem to come alight under his skin and he would begin to slap himself all over, as if to snuff out the spreading flames. When this failed, his hands would become claws, gouging into his flesh as if to rip off a coating of charred skin. Only then would his eyes come open: it was as if his exhausted body would not allow him to wake up until he had tried to flay himself.
Horrible as these symptoms were, none of them affected Neel as much as his cell-mate's chronic incontinence. To watch, hear and smell a grown man dribbling helplessly on the floor, on his bed, and on himself, would have been a trial for anyone – but for a man of Neel's fastidiousness, it was to cohabit with the incarnate embodiment of his loathings. Later, Neel would come to learn that not the least of opium's properties is its powerful influence on the digestive system: in proper doses it was a remedy for diarrhoea and dysentery; taken in quantity it could cause the bowels to freeze – a common symptom in addicts. Conversely, when withdrawn abruptly, from a body that had grown accustomed to consuming it in excess, it had the effect of sending the bladder and sphincter into uncontrollable spasms, so that neither food nor water could be retained. It was unusual for this condition to last for more than a few days – but to know this would have provided little comfort to Neel, for whom every minute spent in the proximity of his dribbling, leaking, spewing cell-mate had a duration beyond measure. Soon, he too began to shiver and hallucinate: behind the lids of his closed eyes, the lashings of shit on the floor would come alive and send out tentacles that dug into his nose, plunged into his mouth and took hold of his throat. How long his own seizures lasted Neel did not know, but from time to time he would open his eyes to catch sight of the faces of other convicts, gaping at him in amazement; in one of these moments of wakefulness, he noticed that someone had opened the gratings of the cell and placed two objects inside: a jharu and a scoop, like those used by sweepers for the removal of night-soil.
If he was to keep his sanity, Neel knew he would have to take hold of the jharu and scoop; there was no other way. To rise to his feet and take the three or four steps that separated him from the jharu took as intense an effort as he had ever made, and when he was finally within touching distance of it, he could not prevail upon his hand to make contact: the risk involved seemed unimaginably great, for he knew that he would cease to be the man he had been a short while before. Closing his eyes, he thrust his hand blindly forward, and only when the handle was in his grasp did he allow himself to look again: it seemed miraculous then that his surroundings were unchanged, for within himself he could feel the intimations of an irreversible alteration. In a way, he was none other than the man he had ever been, Neel Rattan Halder, but he was different too, for his hands were affixed upon an object that was ringed with a bright penumbra of loathing; yet now that it was in his grip it seemed no more nor less than what it was, a tool to be used according to his wishes. Lowering himself to his heels, he squatted as he had often seen sweepers do, and began to scoop up his cell-mate's shit.
Once having started, Neel found himself to be possessed by a fury for the task. Only one part of the cell did he leave untouched – a small island near the waste-bucket, where he had pushed his cell-mate's charpoy in the hope of keeping him confined in a single corner. As for the rest, he scrubbed the walls as well as the floor, washing the refuse into the gutter that drained the cell. Soon many another convict was stopping by to watch him at work; some even began to help, unasked, by fetching water from the well and by throwing in handfuls of sand, of a kind that was useful in scouring floors. When he went into the courtyard, to bathe and wash his clothes, he was offered a welcome at several of the cooking-fires where meals were being prepared.
… Come, here… eat with us…
While he was eating, someone asked: Is it true that you know how to read and write?
Yes.
In Bengali?
In English too. And also Persian and Urdu.
A man approached, on his haunches: Can you write a letter for me then?
To whom?
The zemindar of my village; he wants to take some land away from my family and I want to send him a petition…
At one time, the daftars of the Raskhali zemindary had received dozens of such requests: though Neel had rarely taken the trouble to read them himself, he was not unfamiliar with their phrasing. I'll do it, he said, but you will have to bring me paper, ink and a quill.