This short story explores the connection between anarchy and our perception of the reality of the external world: under anarchy, prophets and philosophers alike have turned away from this world to a supra-sensible world, somehow more "real" than the world.
I climbed the companionway up to the first-class deck. I sat on a leatherette chair in the darkness. I remembered the legend above me.
P.S.OSTRICH, YEAR OF (sic) BUILT 1929 BY GARDEN REACH WORKSHOP, CALCUTTA, RENOVATED AND DIESELISED
It seemed appropriate that on this funereal night I was on a British-period relic. The river was a graveyard – both natural and man-made, made by Lenin. How many bodies had he dumped into the Rupsha?
In my stress, I seemed to see into the past – the ghosts of English men and women, drinks in hand, joked and lounged in the lightless deck. I was with the dead.
And the mosquitoes.
Around 3:00, I heard Laila’s bangles in the saloon. I tiptoed up the narrow path between the cabins and the railing on the right. The frogs at the Poshur had been right. The moon was now obscured by dense clouds.
The steamer started, with two melancholy blasts of the horn. The engine hummed. Laila, I was sure, would make no move before we were out of Khulna and on the River Poshur.
The cabin door opened, lighting the narrow passage beside the railing. Glass bangles clinked above the swish of the waves. Laila stepped out and closed the door. She turned to make sure I was there, before cabin 6. The strong breeze dragged at her hair. She opened the door again and made a beckoning motion, smiling.
“What? Are you getting romantic, Laila? I’m dog-tired after my meeting with those gun dealers – they strike a hard bargain. Bastards! Ok! Ok!”
He stepped out. The door closed. He heard me, and turned. I plunged the knife – as deep as it would go – into his belly. It was the knife from the back, bangles screaming, that surprised him. The whites of his eyes enlarged abruptly, then diminished, then disappeared. We hauled him over the railing after I pulled out my knife.
Maria, raised in the Mafia and educated by the gangs of New York, is hunting the man who killed her Akalina, and she will kill anyone who gets in her way.
