River of Smoke(6)

But any suggestion to this effect was sure to meet with an explosive rebuke from Deeti: Bon-dyé! she would cry; are you a fol dogla or what? Don’t be ridikil: the whole thing, from start to fini took just a few minits, and all that time, it was nothing but jaldi-jaldi, a hopeless golmal, tus in dezord. It was a mirak, believe me, that the five managed to get away – and none of it would have been possible if not for that Serang Ali. It was he who set up the escape, that one; it was all his doing. The lascars were all in on it, of course, but it was so carefully planned that the Captain was never able to pin it on them. It was a marvel of a scheme, the kind of mulugande that only a burrburrya like the Serang could think up: they waited till the storm had driven the guards and maistries below deck and into their cumra. Then they sealed them inside by jamming their hatches. As for the officers, the Serang timed it so that they broke out during the change of watch, when both Malums were off deck. Ah Fatt the Cheeni, who was the quickest on his feet, was given the job of shutting the hatch of the officers’ cuddy – what he did instead was to send the first mate to lanfer with a sandokann between his ribs – but that wasn’t to be discovered until the boat was gone. Me, when Jodu let me out and I came on deck, I thought vreman I’d lost my sight. It was so dark nothing was vizib except when the lightning flashed – and tulétan the rain, coming down like hail, and the thunder, dhamak-dhamak-dhamkaoing as if to deafen you. My job was only to cut your granper down from the mast, where they had tied him, but what with the rain and wind, you can’t imagine how difisil it was …

To hear this description was to assume that the scene had ended after no more than a few minutes of frantic activity – and yet, in almost the same breath that she gave this account of it, Deeti would claim also that the duration of the Parting had lasted for as much as an hour or two of ordinary time. Nor was this the only paradox of the experiences of that night. Later, Paulette would confirm that she had been beside Deeti from the moment when Kalua was lowered into the boat until the second when Zachary bundled them back below deck; in all that time, she swore, Deeti’s feet had never left the Ibis, not for a single instant. But her insistence made no dent in Deeti’s certainty about what had happened in those scant few minutes: she never varied in her avowal that the reason why she had portrayed herself as she had was because she had been picked up and whirled away into the sky, by a force that was none other than the storm itself.

No one who heard Deeti on this subject could doubt that in her own mind she was certain that the winds had lofted her to a height from which she could look down and observe all that was happening below – not in fear and panic, but in unruffled calm. It was as if the tufaan had chosen her to be its confidant, freezing the passage of time, and lending her the vision of its own eye; for the duration of that moment, she had been able to see everything that fell within that whirling circle of wind: she had seen the Ibis, directly below, and the four figures that were huddled under the shelter of the quarter-deck’s companion-way, herself being one of them; some distance to the east, she had noticed a chain of islands, pierced by many deep channels; she had seen fishing boats, sheltering in the islands’ bays and coves, and other strange unfamiliar craft, scudding through the channels. Then, in the same way that a parent leads a child’s gaze towards something of interest, the storm had tipped back her chin to show her a craft that was trapped within its windy skirts – it was the Ibis’s fleeing longboat. She saw that the fugitives had made use of the stillness of the storm’s eye to race across the water to the nearest of the islands; she saw them leaping from the boat, and then, to her astonishment, she saw them turning the boat over, and pushing it out where the current could seize it and carry it away …

All this – this succession of visions and images – had been granted to her, Deeti would insist later, in a matter of a few seconds. And it was plain enough that if her testimony were true, then the visions could not have lasted any longer than that – for the arrival of the storm’s eye had provided a respite not only for the fleeing fugitives, but also for the guards and maistries. With the abating of the winds, they had begun to hammer at the jammed hatch of their cumra; it would take them only a minute or two to break through and then they would come pouring out …

It was Zikri-Malum who saved us, Deeti would add. If not for him, it would have been a gran kalamité – there was no telling what the silahdars and overseers might have done to the three of us if they had found us on deck. But the Malum, he got us on our feet and pushed us back into the dabusa, with the other migrants. Thanks to him we were out of sight when the guards and overseers burst out on deck …