Chapter 30

   He’s married. I am bent down, taking my shoes off, when I hear him say, “I would like you to meet my wife.” I look up and there beside him is… Mrs. Patel. “Hello,” she says, extending her hand and smiling. “Piscine has been telling me lots about you.” I cant say the same of her. I had no idea. She’s on her way out, so we talk only a few minutes. She’s also Indian but has a more typically Canadian accent. She must be second generation. She’s a little younger than him, skin slightly darker, long black hair woven in a tress. Bright dark eyes and lovely white teeth. She has in her arms a dry-cleaned white lab coat in a protective plastic film. She’s a pharmacist. When I say “Nice meeting you, Mrs. Patel,” she replies, “Please, make it Meena.” After a quick kiss between husband and wife, she’s off on a working Saturday.
   This house is more than a box full of icons. I start noticing small signs of conjugal existence. They were there all along, but I hadn’t seen them because I wasn’t looking for them.
   He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
   Is she the nemesis of my digestive tract?
   “I’ve made a special chutney for you,” he says. He’s smiling.
   No, he is.

Chapter 31

   They met once, Mr. and Mr. Kumar, the baker and the teacher. The first Mr. Kumar had expressed the wish to see the zoo. “All these years and I’ve never seen it. It’s so close by, too. Will you show it to me?” he asked.
   “Yes, of course,” I replied. “It would be an honour.”
   We agreed to meet at the main gate the next day after school.
   I worried all that day. I scolded myself, “You fool! Why did you say the main gate? At any time there will be a crowd of people there. Have you forgotten how plain he looks? You’ll never recognize him!” If I walked by him without seeing him he would be hurt. He would think I had changed my mind and didn’t want to be seen with a poor Muslim baker. He would leave without saying a word. He wouldn’t be angry-he would accept my claims that it was the sun in my eyes-but he wouldn’t want to come to the zoo any more. I could see it happening that way. I had to recognize him. I would hide and wait until I was certain it was him, that’s what I would do. But I had noticed before that it was when I tried my hardest to recognize him that I was least able to pick him out. The very effort seemed to blind me.
   At the appointed hour I stood squarely before the main gate of the zoo and started rubbing my eyes with both hands.
   “What are you doing?”
   It was Raj, a friend.
   “I’m busy.”
   “You’re busy rubbing your eyes?”
   “Go away.”
   “Let’s go to Beach Road.”
   “I’m waiting for someone.”
   “Well, you’ll miss him if you keep rubbing your eyes like that.”
   “Thank you for the information. Have fun on Beach Road.”
   “How about Government Park?”
   “I can’t, I tell you.”
   “Come on.”
   “Please, Raj, move on!”
   He left. I went back to rubbing my eyes.
   “Will you help me with my math homework, Pi?”
   It was Ajith, another friend.
   “Later. Go away.”
   “Hello, Piscine.”
   It was Mrs. Radhakrishna, a friend of Mother’s. In a few more words I eased her on her way.
   “Excuse me. Where’s Laporte Street?”
   A stranger.
   “That way.”
   “How much is admission to the zoo?”
   Another stranger.
   “Five rupees. The ticket booth is right there.”
   “Has the chlorine got to your eyes?”
   It was Mamaji.
   “Hello, Mamaji. No, it hasn’t.”
   “Is your father around?”
   “I think so.”
   “See you tomorrow morning.”
   “Yes, Mamaji.”
   “I am here, Piscine.”
   My hands froze over my eyes. That voice. Strange in a familiar way, familiar in a strange way. I felt a smile welling up in me.
   “Salaam alaykum, Mr. Kumar! How good to see you.”
   “Wa alaykum as-salaam. Is something wrong with your eyes?”
   “No, nothing. Just a bit of dust.”
   “They look quite red.”
   “It’s nothing.”
   He headed for the ticket booth but I called him back.
   “No, no. Not for you, master.”
   It was with pride that I waved the ticket collector’s hand away and showed Mr. Kumar into the zoo.
   He marvelled at everything, at how to tall trees came tall giraffes, how carnivores were supplied with herbivores and herbivores with grass, how some creatures crowded the day and others the night, how some that needed sharp beaks had sharp beaks and others that needed limber limbs had limber limbs. It made me happy that he was so impressed.
   He quoted from the Holy Qur’an: “In all this there are messages indeed for a people who use their reason.”
   We came to the zebras. Mr. Kumar had never heard of such creatures, let alone seen one. He was dumbfounded.
   “They’re called zebras,” I said.
   “Have they been painted with a brush?”
   “No, no. They look like that naturally.”
   “What happens when it rains?”
   “Nothing.”
   “The stripes don’t melt?”
   “No.”
   I had brought some carrots. There was one left, a large and sturdy specimen. I took it out of the bag. At that moment I heard a slight scraping of gravel to my right. It was Mr. Kumar, coming up to the railing in his usual limping and rolling gait.
   “Hello, sir.”
   “Hello, Pi.”
   The baker, a shy but dignified man, nodded at the teacher, who nodded back.
   An alert zebra had noticed my carrot and had come up to the low fence. It twitched its ears and stamped the ground softly. I broke the carrot in two and gave one half to Mr. Kumar and one half to Mr. Kumar. “Thank you, Piscine,” said one; “Thank you, Pi,” said the other. Mr. Kumar went first, dipping his hand over the fence. The zebra’s thick, strong, black lips grasped the carrot eagerly. Mr. Kumar wouldn’t let go. The zebra sank its teeth into the carrot and snapped it in two. It crunched loudly on the treat for a few seconds, then reached for the remaining piece, lips flowing over Mr. Kumar’s fingertips. He released the carrot and touched the zebra’s soft nose.
   It was Mr. Kumar’s turn. He wasn’t so demanding of the zebra. Once it had his half of the carrot between its lips, he let go. The lips hurriedly moved the carrot into the mouth.
   Mr. and Mr. Kumar looked delighted. “A zebra, you say?” said Mr. Kumar.
   “That’s right,” I replied. “It belongs to the same family as the ass and the horse.”
   “The Rolls-Royce of equids,” said Mr. Kumar.
   “What a wondrous creature,” said Mr. Kumar.
   “This one’s a Grant’s zebra,” I said.
   Mr. Kumar said, “Equus burchelli boehmi.”
   Mr. Kumar said, “Allahu akbar.”
   I said, “It’s very pretty.”
   We looked on.

Chapter 32

   There are many examples of animals coming to surprising living arrangements. All are instances of that animal equivalent of anthropomorphism: zoomorphism, where an animal takes a human being, or another animal, to be one of its kind.
   The most famous case is also the most common: the pet dog, which has so assimilated humans into the realm of doghood as to want to mate with them, a fact that any dog owner who has had to pull an amorous dog from the leg of a mortified visitor will confirm.
   Our golden agouti and spotted paca got along very well, conentedly huddling together and sleeping against each other until the first was stolen.
   I have already mentioned our rhinoceros-and-goat herd, and the case of circus lions.
   There are confirmed stories of drowning sailors being pushed up to the surface of the water and held there by dolphins, a characteristic way in which these marine mammals help each other.
   A case is mentioned in the literature of a stoat and a rat living in a companion relationship, while other rats presented to the stoat were devoured by it in the typical way of stoats.
   We had our own case of the freak suspension of the predator-prey relationship. We had a mouse that lived for several weeks with the vipers. While other mice dropped in the terrarium disappeared within two days, this little brown Methuselah built itself a nest, stored the grains we gave it in various hideaways and scampered about in plain sight of the snakes. We were amazed. We put up a sign to bring the mouse to the public’s attention. It finally met its end in a curious way: a young viper bit it. Was the viper unaware of the mouse’s special status? Unsocialized to it, perhaps? Whatever the case, the mouse was bitten by a young viper but devoured-and immediately-by an adult. If there was a spell, it was broken by the young one. Things returned to normal after that. All mice disappeared down the vipers’ gullets at the usual rate.
   In the trade, dogs are sometimes used as foster mothers for lion cubs. Though the cubs grow to become larger than their caregiver, and far more dangerous, they never give their mother trouble and she never loses her placid behaviour or her sense of authority over her litter. Signs have to be put up to explain to the public that the dog is not live food left for the lions (just as we had to put up a sign pointing out that rhinoceros are herbivores and do not eat goats).
   What could be the explanation for zoomorphism? Can’t a rhinoceros distinguish big from small, tough hide from soft fur? Isn’t it plain to a dolphin what a dolphin is like? I believe the answer lies in something I mentioned earlier, that measure of madness that moves life in strange but saving ways. The golden agouti, like the rhinoceros, was in need of companionship. The circus lions don’t care to know that their leader is a weakling human; the fiction guarantees their social well-being and staves off violent anarchy. As for the lion cubs, they would positively keel over with fright if they knew their mother was a dog, for that would mean they were motherless, the absolute worst condition imaginable for any young, warm-blooded life. I’m sure even the adult viper, as it swallowed the mouse, must have felt somewhere in its undeveloped mind a twinge of regret, a feeling that something greater was just missed, an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude reality of a reptile.

Chapter 33

   He shows me family memorabilia. Wedding photos first. A Hindu wedding with Canada prominently on the edges. A younger him, a younger her. They went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Had a lovely time. Smiles to prove it. We move back in time. Photos from his student days at U of T: with friends; in front of St. Mike’s; in his room; during Diwali on Gerrard Street; reading at St. Basil’s Church dressed in a white gown; wearing another kind of white gown in a lab of the zoology department; on graduation day. A smile every time, but his eyes tell another story.
   Photos from Brazil, with plenty of three-toed sloths in situ.
   With a turn of a page we jump over the Pacific-and there is next to nothing. He tells me that the camera did click regularly-on all the usual important occasions-but everything was lost. What little there is consists of what was assembled by Mamaji and mailed over after the events.
   There is a photo taken at the zoo during the visit of a V.I.P. In black and white another world is revealed to me. The photo is crowded with people. A Union cabinet minister is the focus of attention. There’s a giraffe in the background. Near the edge of the group, I recognize a younger Mr. Adirubasamy.
   “Mamaji?” I ask, pointing.
   “Yes,” he says.
   There’s a man next to the minister, with horn-rimmed glasses and hair very cleanly combed. He looks like a plausible Mr. Patel, face rounder than his son’s.
   “Is this your father?” I ask.
   He shakes his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
   There’s a pause of a few seconds. He says, “It’s my father who took the picture.”
   On the same page there’s another group shot, mostly of schoolchildren. He taps the photo.
   “That’s Richard Parker,” he says.
   I’m amazed. I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance. Unfortunately, it’s black and white again and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn’t even realize that his picture is being taken.
   The opposing page is entirely taken up by a colour photo of the swimming pool of the Aurobindo Ashram. It’s a nice big outdoor pool with clear, sparkling water, a clean blue bottom and an attached diving pool.
   The next page features a photo of the front gate of Petit Seminaire school An arch has the school’s motto painted on it: Nil magnum nisi bonum. No greatness without goodness.
   And that’s it. An entire childhood memorialized in four nearly irrelevant photographs.
   He grows sombre.
   “The worst of it,” he says, “is that I can hardly remember what my mother looks like any more. I can see her in my mind, but it’s fleeting. As soon as I try to have a good look at her, she fades. It’s the same with her voice. If I saw her again in the street, it would all come back. But that’s not likely to happen. It’s very sad not to remember what your mother looks like.”
   He closes the book.

Chapter 34

   Father said, “We’ll sail like Columbus!”
   “He was hoping to find India,” I pointed out sullenly.
   We sold the zoo, lock, stock and barrel. To a new country, a new life. Besides assuring our collection of a happy future, the transaction would pay for our immigration and leave us with a good sum to make a fresh start in Canada (though now, when I think of it, the sum is laughable-how blinded we are by money). We could have sold our animals to zoos in India, but American zoos were willing to pay higher prices. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, had just come into effect, and the Window on the trading of captured wild animals had slammed shut. The future of zoos would now lie with other zoos. The Pondicherry Zoo closed shop at just the right time. There was a scramble to buy our animals. The final buyers were a number of zoos, mainly the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the soon-to-open Minnesota Zoo, but odd animals were going to Los Angeles, Louisville, Oklahoma City and Cincinnati.
   And two animals were being shipped to the Canada Zoo. That’s how Ravi and I felt. We did not want to go. We did not want to live in a country of gale-force winds and minus-two-hundred-degree winters. Canada was not on the cricket map. Departure was made easier-as far as getting us used to the idea-by the time it took for all the pre-departure preparations. It took well over a year. I don’t mean for us. I mean for the animals. Considering that animals dispense with clothes, footwear, linen, furniture, kitchenware, toiletries; that nationality means nothing to them; that they care not a jot for passports, money, employment prospects, schools, cost of housing, healthcare facilities-considering, in short, their lightness of being, it’s amazing how hard it is to move them. Moving a zoo is like moving a city.
   The paperwork was colossal. Litres of water used up in the wetting of stamps. Dear Mr. So-and-so written hundreds of times. Offers made. Sighs heard. Doubts expressed. Haggling gone through. Decisions sent higher up for approval. Prices agreed upon. Deals clinched. Dotted lines signed. Congratulations given. Certificates of origin sought. Certificates of health sought. Export permits sought. Import permits sought. Quarantine regulations clarified. Transportation organized. A fortune spent on telephone calls. It’s a joke in the zoo business, a weary joke, that the paperwork involved in trading a shrew weighs more than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in trading an elephant weighs more than a whale, and that you must never try to trade a whale, never. There seemed to be a single file of nit-picking bureaucrats from Pondicherry to Minneapolis via Delhi and Washington, each with his form, his problem, his hesitation. Shipping the animals to the moon couldn’t possibly have been more complicated. Father pulled nearly every hair off his head and came close to giving up on a number of occasions.
   There were surprises. Most of our birds and reptiles, and our lemurs, rhinos, orang-utans, mandrills, lion-tailed macaques, giraffes, anteaters, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, zebras, Himalayan and sloth bears, Indian elephants and Nilgiri tahrs, among others, were in demand, but others, Elfie for example, were met with silence. “A cataract operation!” Father shouted, waving the letter. “They’ll take her if we do a cataract operation on her right eye. On a hippopotamus! What next? Nose jobs on the rhinos?” Some of our other animals were considered “too common,” the lions and baboons, for example. Father judiciously traded these for an extra orang-utan from the Mysore Zoo and a chimpanzee from the Manila Zoo. (As for Elfie, she lived out the rest of her days at the Trivandrum Zoo.) One zoo asked for “an authentic Brahmin cow” for their children’s zoo. Father walked out into the urban jungle of Pondicherry and bought a cow with dark wet eyes, a nice fat hump and horns so straight and at such right angles to its head that it looked as if it had licked an electrical outlet. Father had its horns painted bright orange and little plastic bells fitted to the tips, for added authenticity.
   A deputation of three Americans came. I was very curious. I had never seen real live Americans. They were pink, fat, friendly, very competent and sweated profusely. They examined our animals. They put most of them to sleep and then applied stethoscopes to hearts, examined urine and feces as if horoscopes, drew blood in syringes and analyzed it, fondled humps and bumps, tapped teeth, blinded eyes with flashlights, pinched skins, stroked and pulled hairs. Poor animals. They must have thought they were being drafted into the U.S. Army. We got big smiles from the Americans and bone-crushing, handshakes.
   The result was that the animals, like us, got their working papers. They were future Yankees, and we, future Canucks.

Chapter 35

   We left Madras on June 21st, 1977, on the Panamanian-registered Japanese cargo ship Tsimtsum. Her officers were Japanese, her crew was Taiwanese, and she was large and impressive. On our last day in Pondicherry I said goodbye to Mamaji, to Mr. and Mr. Kumar, to all my friends and even to many strangers. Mother was apparelled in her finest sari. Her long tress, artfully folded back and attached to the back of her head, was adorned with a garland of fresh jasmine flowers. She looked beautiful. And sad. For she was leaving India, India of the heat and monsoons, of rice fields and the Cauvery River, of coastlines and stone temples, of bullock carts and colourful trucks, of friends and known shopkeepers, of Nehru Street and Goubert Salai, of this and that, India so familiar to her and loved by her. While her men-I fancied myself one already, though I was only sixteen-were in a hurry to get going, were Winnipeggers at heart already, she lingered.
   The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, “Should we get a pack or two?”
   Father replied, “They have tobacco in Canada. And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We don’t smoke.”
   Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are the bookshops Higginbothams’? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother’s mind as she contemplated buying cigarettes.
   Animals were sedated, cages were loaded and secured, feed was stored, bunks were assigned, lines were tossed, and whistles were blown. As the ship was worked out of the dock and piloted out to sea, I wildly waved goodbye to India. The sun was shining, the breeze was steady, and seagulls shrieked in the air above us. I was terribly excited.
   Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

Chapter 36

   The cities are large and memorably crowded in India, but when you leave them you travel through vast stretches of country where hardly a soul is to be seen. I remember wondering where 950 million Indians could be hiding.
   I could say the same of his house.
   I’m a little early. I’ve just set foot on the cement steps of the front porch when a teenager bursts out the front door. He’s wearing a baseball uniform and carrying baseball equipment, and he’s in a hurry. When he sees me he stops dead in his tracks, startled. He turns around and hollers into the house, “Dad! The writer’s here.” To me he says, “Hi,” and rushes off.
   His father comes to the front door. “Hello,” he says.
   “That was your son?” I ask, incredulous.
   “Yes.” To acknowledge the fact brings a smile to his lips. “I’m sorry you didn’t meet properly. He’s late for practice. His name is Nikhil. He goes by Nick.”
   I’m in the entrance hall. “I didn’t know you had a son,” I say. There’s a barking. A small mongrel mutt, black and brown, races up to me, panting and sniffing. He jumps up against my legs. “Or a dog,” I add.
   “He’s friendly. Tata, down!”
   Tata ignores him. I hear “Hello.” Only this greeting is not short and forceful like Nick’s. It’s a long, nasal and softly whining Hellooooooooo, with the ooooooooo reaching for me like a tap on the shoulder or a gentle tug at my pants.
   I turn. Leaning against the sofa in the living room, looking up at me bashfully, is a little brown girl, pretty in pink, very much at home. She’s holding an orange cat in her arms. Two front legs sticking straight up and a deeply sunk head are all that is visible of it above her crossed arms. The rest of the cat is hanging all the way down to the floor. The animal seems quite relaxed about being stretched on the rack in this manner.
   “And this is your daughter,” I say.
   “Yes. Usha. Usha darling, are you sure Moccasin is comfortable like that?”
   Usha drops Moccasin. He flops to the floor unperturbed.
   “Hello, Usha,” I say.
   She comes up to her father and peeks at me from behind his leg.
   “What are you doing, little one?” he says. “Why are you hiding?”
   She doesn’t reply, only looks at me with a smile and hides her face.
   “How old are you, Usha?” I ask.
   She doesn’t reply.
   Then Piscine Molitor Patel, known to all as Pi Patel, bends down and picks up his daughter.
   “You know the answer to that question. Hmmm? You’re four years old. One, two, three, four.”
   At each number he softly presses the tip of her nose with his index finger. She finds this terribly funny. She giggles and buries her face in the crook of his neck.
   This story has a happy ending.

Part Two.
The Pacific Ocean


Chapter 37

   The ship sank. It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp. Things bubbled at the surface and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw something in the water.
   I cried, “Richard Parker, is that you? It’s so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop! Richard Parker? Richard Parker? Yes, it is you!”
   I could see his head. He was struggling to stay at the surface of the water.
   “Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker! Don’t give up, please. Come to the lifeboat. Do you hear this whistle? Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! You heard right. Swim, swim! You’re a strong swimmer. It’s not a hundred feet.”
   He had seen me. He looked panic-stricken. He started swimming my way. The water about him was shifting wildly. He looked small and helpless.
   “Richard Parker, can you believe what has happened to us? Tell me it’s a bad dream. Tell me it’s not real. Tell me I’m still in my bunk on the Tsimtsum and I’m tossing and turning and soon I’ll wake up from this nightmare. Tell me I’m still happy. Mother, my tender guardian angel of wisdom, where are you? And you, Father, my loving worrywart? And you, Ravi, dazzling hero of my childhood? Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can’t bear it! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee!”
   I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
   He would not make it. He would drown. He was hardly moving forward and his movements were weak. His nose and mouth kept dipping underwater. Only his eyes were steadily on me.
   “What are you doing, Richard Parker? Don’t you love life? Keep swimming then! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Kick with your legs. Kick! Kick! Kick!”
   He stirred in the water and made to swim.
   “And what of my extended family-birds, beasts and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can’t reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there’s so little fish to catch?”
   His head was barely above water. He was looking up, taking in the sky one last time. There was a lifebuoy in the boat with a rope tied to it. I took hold of it and waved it in the air.
   “Do you see this lifebuoy, Richard Parker? Do you see it? Catch hold of it! Humpf! I’ll try again. Humpf!”
   He was too far. But the sight of the lifebuoy flying his way gave him hope. He revived and started beating the water with vigorous, desperate strokes.
   “That’s right! One, two. One, two. One, two. Breathe when you can. Watch for the waves. Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee!”
   My heart was chilled to ice. I felt ill with grief. But there was no time for frozen shock. It was shock in activity. Something in me did not want to give up on life, was unwilling to let go, wanted to fight to the very end. Where that part of me got the heart, I don’t know.
   “Isn’t it ironic, Richard Parker? We’re in hell yet still we’re afraid of immortality. Look how close you are! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Hurrah, hurrah! You’ve made it, Richard Parker, you’ve made it. Catch! Humpf!”
   I threw the lifebuoy mightily. It fell in the water right in front of him. With his last energies he stretched forward and took hold of it.
   “Hold on tight, I’ll pull you in. Don’t let go. Pull with your eyes while I pull with my hands. In a few seconds you’ll be aboard and we’ll be together. Wait a second. Together? We’ll be together. Have I gone mad?”
   I woke up to what I was doing. I yanked on the rope.
   “Let go of that lifebuoy, Richard Parker! Let go, I said. I don’t want you here, do you understand? Go somewhere else. Leave me alone. Get lost. Drown! Drown!”
   He was kicking vigorously with his legs. I grabbed an oar. I thrust it at him, meaning to push him away. I missed and lost hold of the oar.
   I grabbed another oar. I dropped it in an oarlock and pulled as hard as I could, meaning to move the lifeboat away. All I accomplished was to turn the lifeboat a little, bringing one end closer to Richard Parker.
   I would hit him on the head! I lifted the oar in the air.
   He was too fast. He reached up and pulled himself aboard.
   “Oh my God!”
   Ravi was right. Truly I was to be the next goat. I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat. Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to his head, all weapons drawn. His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth.
   I turned around, stepped over the zebra and threw myself overboard.

Chapter 38

   I don’t understand. For days the ship had pushed on, bullishly indifferent to its surroundings. The sun shone, rain fell, winds blew, currents flowed, the sea built up hills, the sea dug up valleys-the Tsimtsum did not care. It moved with the slow, massive confidence of a continent.
   I had bought a map of the world for the trip; I had set it up in our cabin against a cork billboard. Every morning I got our position from the control bridge and marked it on the map with an orange tipped pin. We sailed from Madras across the Bay of Bengal, down through the Strait of Malacca, around Singapore and up to Manila. I loved every minute of it. It was a thrill to be on a ship. Taking care of the animals kept us very busy. Every night we fell into bed weary to our bones. We were in Manila for two days, a question of fresh feed, new cargo and, we were told, the performing of routine maintenance work on the engines. I paid attention only to the first two. The fresh feed included a ton of bananas, and the new cargo, a female Congo chimpanzee, part of Father’s wheeling and dealing. A ton of bananas bristles with a good three, four pounds of big black spiders. A chimpanzee is like a smaller, leaner gorilla, but meaner-looking, with less of the melancholy gentleness of its larger cousin. A chimpanzee shudders and grimaces when it touches a big black spider, like you and I would do, before squashing it angrily with its knuckles, not something you and I would do. I thought bananas and a chimpanzee were more interesting than a loud, filthy mechanical contraption in the dark bowels of a ship. Ravi spent his days there, watching the men work. Something was wrong with the engines, he said. Did something go wrong with the fixing of them? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone will ever know. The answer is a mystery lying at the bottom of thousands of feet of water.
   We left Manila and entered the Pacific. On our fourth day out, midway to Midway, we sank. The ship vanished into a pinprick hole on my map. A mountain collapsed before my eyes and disappeared beneath my feet. All around me was the vomit of a dyspeptic ship. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt shock. I felt a great emptiness within me, which then filled with silence. My chest hurt with pain and fear for days afterwards.
   I think there was an explosion. But I can’t be sure. It happened while I was sleeping. It woke me up. The ship was no luxury liner. It was a grimy, hardworking cargo ship not designed for paying passengers or for their comfort. There were all kinds of noises all the time. It was precisely because the level of noise was so uniform that we slept like babies. It was a form of silence that nothing disturbed, not Ravi’s snoring nor my talking in my sleep. So the explosion, if there was one, was not a new noise. It was an irregular noise. I woke up with a start, as if Ravi had burst a balloon in my ears. I looked at my watch. It was just after four-thirty in the morning. I leaned over and looked down at the bunk below. Ravi was still sleeping.
   I dressed and climbed down. Normally I’m a sound sleeper. Normally I would have gone back to sleep. I don’t know why I got up that night. It was more the sort of thing Ravi would do. He liked the word beckon; he would have said, “Adventure beckons,” and would have gone off to prowl around the ship. The level of noise was back to normal again, but with a different quality perhaps, muffled maybe.
   I shook Ravi. I said, “Ravi! There was a funny noise. Let’s go exploring.”
   He looked at me sleepily. He shook his head and turned over, pulling the sheet up to his cheek. Oh, Ravi!
   I opened the cabin door.
   I remember walking down the corridor. Day or night it looked the same. But I felt the night in me. I stopped at Father and Mother’s door and considered knocking on it. I remember looking at my watch and deciding against it. Father liked his sleep. I decided I would climb to the main deck and catch the dawn. Maybe I would see a shooting star. I was thinking about that, about shooting stars, as I climbed the stairs. We were two levels below the main deck. I had already forgotten about the funny noise.
   It was only when I had pushed open the heavy door leading onto the main deck that I realized what the weather was like. Did it qualify as a storm? It’s true there was rain, but it wasn’t so very hard. It certainly wasn’t a driving rain, like you see during the monsoons. And there was wind. I suppose some of the gusts would have upset umbrellas. But I walked through it without much difficulty. As for the sea, it looked rough, but to a landlubber the sea is always impresive and forbidding, beautiful and dangerous. Waves were reaching up, and their white foam, caught by the wind, was being whipped against the side of the ship. But I’d seen that on other days and the ship hadn’t sunk. A cargo ship is a huge and stable structure, a feat of engineering. It’s designed to stay afloat under the most adverse conditions. Weather like this surely wouldn’t sink a ship? Why, I only had to close a door and the storm was gone. I advanced onto the deck. I gripped the railing and faced the elements. This was adventure.
   “Canada, here I come!” I shouted as I was soaked and chilled. I felt very brave. It was dark still, but there was enough light to see by. Light on pandemonium it was. Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited. What I had before me was a spectacle of wind and water, an earthquake of the senses, that even Hollywood couldn’t orchestrate. But the earthquake stopped at the ground beneath my feet. The ground beneath my feet was solid. I was a spectator safely ensconced in his seat.
   It was when I looked up at a lifeboat on the bridge castle that I started to worry. The lifeboat wasn’t hanging straight down. It was leaning in from its davits. I turned and looked at my hands. My knuckles were white. The thing was, I wasn’t holding on so tightly because of the weather, but because otherwise I would fall in towards the ship. The ship was listing to port, to the other side. It wasn’t a severe list, but enough to surprise me. When I looked overboard the drop wasn’t sheer any more. I could see the ship’s great black side.
   A shiver of cold went through me. I decided it was a storm after all. Time to return to safety. I let go, hotfooted it to the wall, moved over and pulled open the door.
   Inside the ship, there were noises. Deep structural groans. I stumbled and fell. No harm done. I got up. With the help of the handrails I went down the stairwell four steps at a time. I had gone down just one level when I saw water. Lots of water. It was blocking my way. It was surging from below like a riotous crowd, raging, frothing and boiling. Stairs vanished into watery darkness. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was this water doing here? Where had it come from? I stood nailed to the spot, frightened and incredulous and ignorant of what I should do next. Down there was where my family was.
   I ran up the stairs. I got to the main deck. The weather wasn’t entertaining any more. I was very afraid. Now it was plain and obvious: the ship was listing badly. And it wasn’t level the other way either. There was a noticeable incline going from bow to stern. I looked overboard. The water didn’t look to be eighty feet away. The ship was sinking. My mind could hardly conceive it. It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
   Where were the officers and the crew? What were they doing? Towards the bow I saw some men running in the gloom. I thought I saw some animals too, but I dismissed the sight as illusion crafted by rain and shadow. We had the hatch covers over their bay pulled open when the weather was good, but at all times the animals were kept confined to their cages. These were dangerous wild animals we were transporting, not farm livestock. Above me, on the bridge, I thought I heard some men shouting.
   The ship shook and there was that sound, the monstrous metallic burp. What was it? Was it the collective scream of humans and animals protesting their oncoming death? Was it the ship itself giving up the ghost? I fell over. I got to my feet. I looked overboard again. The sea was rising. The waves were getting closer. We were sinking fast.
   I clearly heard monkeys shrieking. Something was shaking the deck, A gaur-an Indian wild ox-exploded out of the rain and thundered by me, terrified, out of control, berserk. I looked at it, dumbstruck and amazed. Who in God’s name had let it out?
   I ran for the stairs to the bridge. Up there was where the officers were, the only people on the ship who spoke English, the masters of our destiny here, the ones who would right this wrong. They would explain everything. They would take care of my family and me. I climbed to the middle bridge. There was no one on the starboard side. I ran to the port side. I saw three men, crew members. I fell. I got up. They were looking overboard. I shouted. They turned. They looked at me and at each other. They spoke a few words. They came towards me quickly. I felt gratitude and relief welling up in me. I said, “Thank God I’ve found you. What is happening? I am very scared. There is water at the bottom of the ship. I am worried about my family. I can’t get to the level where our cabins are. Is this normal? Do you think-”
   One of the men interrupted me by thrusting a life jacket into my arms and shouting something in Chinese. I noticed an orange whistle dangling from the life jacket. The men were nodding vigorously at me. When they took hold of me and lifted me in their strong arms, I thought nothing of it. I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in th air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.

Chapter 39

   I landed with a trampoline-like bounce on the half-unrolled tarpaulin covering a lifeboat forty feet below. It was a miracle I didn’t hurt myself. I lost the life jacket, except for the whistle, which stayed in my hand. The lifeboat had been lowered partway and left to hang. It was leaning out from its davits, swinging in the storm, some twenty feet above the water. I looked up. Two of the men were looking down at me, pointing wildly at the lifeboat and shouting. I didn’t understand what they wanted me to do. I thought they were going to jump in after me. Instead they turned their heads, looked horrified, and this creature appeared in the air, leaping with the grace of a racehorse. The zebra missed the tarpaulin. It was a male Grant, weighing over five hundred pounds. It landed with a loud crash on the last bench, smashing it and shaking the whole lifeboat. The animal called out. I might have expected the braying of an ass or the neighing of a horse. It was nothing of the sort. It could only be called a burst of barking, a kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha put out at the highest pitch of distress. The creature’s lips were widely parted, standing upright and quivering, revealing yellow teeth and dark pink gums. The lifeboat fell through the air and we hit the seething water.