A terrifying but human sound assaults his ears. The morsel on his tongue turns to clay. His hairs stand on end. It’s a man’s voice, a keening.
A figure in a loincloth is beating its chest, crying out to the heavens. Philipose recognizes the scissored front incisors that raise the upper lip like a tentpole. It’s the boatman from the jetty, a man who still teases Philipose, calling him “Swimming Master.” He hesitantly walks in the man’s direction. The boatman’s dugout, a hollowed-out matchstick, sits dragged up to the bank. On it he ekes out a living, transporting only solitary passengers like the fishmonger and her basket. But when the river is like this, the man must be hard-pressed to fill his belly— Wait, what is the bundle of rags at the man’s feet? A baby! Philipose sees the tiny, bloated, immobile face and eyes just like those of the dying Caesar. Was the baby bitten by an ettadi?
The shrieking boatman pounds his head on the palm tree until Philipose restrains him. He spins around, his black face staring up in fear, his crazed eyes bloodred like a mongoose’s, as he looks at the figure who towers over him, a boy who is half his age. Recognition dawns.
“A snake, was it?” Philipose says gently.
The boatman shakes his head and resumes wailing. “Monay . . . please do something! You have education . . . save him!”
Philipose squats down to get a better look, wishing the man would stop screaming. Education? What good will anything he learned in school do here? He gingerly touches the baby’s chest. He’s shocked when it heaves effortfully. Despite that, no air seems to get past the lips. The baby’s neck is strangely swollen. Something white, like the coagulated latex from a rubber tree, peeks out behind the froth of saliva.
“Stop it! Please!” he commands the keening boatman. Overcoming his revulsion, Philipose probes the baby’s mouth with his index finger. The white rubbery peel is bloody at the edges. He tugs and it comes easily at first; he must rip the last bit free. The tiny chest heaves and now there’s a rattle of air—the sound of life! That was common sense, not education. Just a matter of removing what clogged the mouth. But after a few breaths, the baby makes a strangling sound, the chest heaves hugely, the mouth opens and shuts like a fish’s, but air isn’t going in. The sight is agonizing, distressing—Philipose’s own breathing feels painful. He reaches in deeper this time and pulls free a big, chunky, bloody rubber peel. Air enters with a honk, like the cry of a gander, rattling in its passage, as if pebbles are loose in the windpipe.
“Saar! I knew it! I knew you could save my child!”
No more “Swimming Master”? I’m Saar now? He says to the boatman, “Listen. We must take the baby to some clinic.”
“How, with the river like this?” the boatman wails once more. “And with no money and—”
“Stop!” Philipose interrupts, shouting. “I can’t think with you screaming.” But the boatman doesn’t stop. That maddening sound and the baby’s desperate battle for air drive Philipose into a frenzy. In the next instant, forgetting his feud with the river, Philipose snatches the baby in his arms, then shoves the boatman so hard that the man topples back into his dugout. Before he can rise, Philipose tosses the baby into its father’s lap, then shoves the boat into the river. He jumps in at the last moment. “Come on!” Philipose cries. “Paddle!”
“My God! What have you done?” the boatman yells. Philipose relieves him of the baby, and the boatman automatically scrabbles in the canoe’s bottom for his paddle as the powerful current rocks the dugout and threatens to capsize them. The boatman reflexively does the only thing that he can to keep them afloat: he points the prow into the current. Just like that they’re in the clutches of the river, sailing down the center at breakneck speed. Glancing to the side, Philipose sees the river churn white on the shore, tearing out a new bank. “We’re doomed!” the boatman wails.
Philipose screams, “Paddle! Paddle!” Water hammers down from the sky. The river’s roar is impossibly loud and it makes human groans. The canoe rises and drops, and Philipose feels his stomach fly to his mouth and he must clutch the baby tight to keep it from being flung free. Is it really possible to travel at this speed? A broad wall of water rises up on one side of them and the swell casually pours into the canoe. What was a roar has turned into an even louder hiss, as though she laughs at their folly. Philipose is experiencing true terror for the first time in his life.
“Shiva, Shiva!” shrieks the boatman. “We are going to die!”
Ammachi, I broke my promise. True, he didn’t enter the water alone, but a useless boatman doesn’t count. But I’m not in the water, just on it. The useless boatman is beyond paddling, letting the boat twist and turn and be carried wherever the river chooses. The sight of the man infuriates Philipose. He is too proud to confess his fear, or acknowledge his mistake. He reaches forward and slaps the boatman’s face as hard as he can. “Show some real courage, idiot! Keep us straight! Are you only good for making fun of my swimming? Don’t you want to save your child? Paddle.”
The boatman digs his oar into water that is as thick and angry as boiling paddy. Philipose bails frantically with one hand. He glances down and the baby has stopped breathing again. Blindly he shoves two fingers down the small throat, feeling milk teeth scrape on his knuckles. He claws at rubbery material until he feels air fluting past his fingers. The chest moves again.
It should end any second, yet somehow, second after second, they race on. They are flying past the stationary trees, moving faster than a speeding train. He bails for his life. How long can this go on? How long have they been in the river? How soon before they capsize?
The nightmare feels like it cannot end, then, suddenly, at a sharp curve in the river, the dugout is spun away from the center and shoots backward into a churning, flooded canal. With a splintering of wood, they slam into a hidden obstacle—a submerged boat jetty—sitting under stone steps. Philipose leaps out, holding the gasping baby aloft. At the last second, the dazed boatman jumps to shore, the recoil of his leap propelling the canoe out like a dart into the waterway and then into the boiling confluence, where it is immediately pulled under. On seeing this, Philipose shakes uncontrollably. Not from cold, but from anger at his own stupidity. He could have died! He recalls Queequeg’s floating casket: it buoyed life. Just not Queequeg’s.
Clutching the baby, his legs wobbly, Philipose scrambles up the steep, slippery laterite stairs cut into the bank, the boatman breathing heavily behind him. The steps end at a wooden gate.
Part Four
CHAPTER 30
Dinosaurs and Hill Stations
1936, AllSuch Estates, Travancore-Cochin