I remember that particular summer morning which marked the great fork in my life, though I had no inkling of it as I neared the Maidan. I noticed beautiful frangipani blossoms on the pavement. Overhead, the tree was covered with the pale ivory and yellow flowers, and the entire lane beside the museum was fragrant. Just as I bent to pick one, I was startled by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. I had faced away from Chowringhee Road. I have returned to this moment so many times later in my memory that I am certain of that. I had not seen my shadow, although it was morning: I must have been facing east. The sound echoed off the walls of the Indian Museum and the verandahs and arcades of the commercial building on the corner and the red bulk of Lloyd’s Bank, making it difficult to locate its exact source. I looked quickly towards the end of the lane. Before I could turn around, someone crashed into me, and I hit my head sharply on a cast-iron railing and fell on the pavement, momentarily dazed.
A young Bengali, his dhoti bunched at the knees, was running hard. He made straight for a shoulder-high boundary wall. I drew my gun, calling out to him to stop, but before I could take aim, the thin youth dropped something and, scrambling over the wall, disappeared from sight. Broken pieces of glass embedded in the cement along the top of the wall revealed a smear of blood on one of them. The object he had dropped on the pavement was a book.
Dashing back towards the Chowringhee, pistol still in hand, I turned the corner and saw Tegart’s car halfway up the sidewalk,
its windshield shattered. At the corner of the pavement, his dog lay dead. Tegart sprang out from the narrow passage between adjacent buildings, pointing his gun, his face pale but his manner impassive as he looked about him. There was a cut on Tegart’s cheek, bleeding from a shard of the windshield, which he wiped absently with a clenched fist.
The early morning street was completely deserted; besides, no one wanted to be questioned as a witness. This was as expected, for the miscreants made a habit of shooting informers—or witnesses—and our interrogation methods were not exactly gentle.
“Well, Aherne?” Sir said under his breath, and I told him what I had seen, adding “There’s blood on him. Also, he dropped this.” I gave him the book.
Sir opened the flyleaf, on which was inscribed in fancy green ink:
S. M.
Duff Hostel
“Well done,” said Tegart. The book was a university text of English essays. He shook it, and an unmailed postcard fell out. Tegart examined it closely.
“It’s written to an address in Abdulpur in the Barisal postal district,” he said. “East Bengal Province.” He tucked it back into the book and handed it to me. “The killer reads English essays,” he said softly, “Charles Lamb’s ‘Dream Children’ has margin notes in royal blue ink.”
I glanced at the notes.
Same handwriting
, I noted.
“Aherne?” Tegart’s voice cut through my thoughts.
“Duff Hostel, Sir?”
“Yes, Aherne, students with initials SM. That hostel is for Hindu boys from outside the city, and likely he’ll be running to familiar territory.” He added, “The rooms are shared.”
“I’ll look for the table that holds bottles of royal blue and green ink,” I told him. “That’s the color of the writing on the flyleaf.”
Sir looked pleased. “By the time we get there, he will have escaped,” said Sir.
“I’ll pick up all his mail—and books. I’ll see if the handwriting matches any other documents.” He nodded. “Shall I go to Headquarters after that to check for a list of accomplices, Sir?”
“Not you, Aherne. I’ll have Lumsden do the paperwork,” said Sir, adding, “You had a good look at him, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You didn’t see anyone else?” I shook my head.
“If he is from Barisal,” continued Tegart, “I’ll need you to go to the docks. You started the chase, Robert. I’ll let you finish it.” He flashed me one of his rare smiles. He was a hunter at heart.
“Robert,” he whispered, “no reason to discuss this matter, now or later, with anybody else.” I wondered why he was calling me by my first name now.
“But why did he have a book with him?” Sir whispered to himself.
• • •
F
EW STUDENTS WERE
left at the hostel and only four SMs: Satyendra Mutsuddi, Santimoy Mitra, Somenath Mookerjee, and Sibapada Mohanty. Mutsuddi and Mohanty were fat, thus clearly not suspect. Motilal had malarial fever and could barely stir. Mitra was missing. And he was the only student who had a half-empty bottle
of green ink, besides the more common royal blue fountain-pen ink beside his desk. I rapidly checked his books, and the handwriting on the flyleaves and notes matched.
Inside the box under his bed, I found no letters—just clothes, a tin of puffed rice, and an unfinished jar of mango chutney. The shirts were for a thin youth. I flung off the mattress from the bed, revealing a good number of envelopes and postcards: family letters, all from a village called Abdulpur near Barisal.
I remembered reasoning that if Tegart was right, Santimoy Mitra would probably have fled home to Barisal, and the only quick way to do it was by boat. It would be too late for that very night, for I knew that the tide would have gone.
When I returned right away to Tegart’s private office, Sir showed me the exact location of Abdulpur. He did not give me any official orders on paper, but sent me home for the night, instructing me where to meet him very early next morning. I was to arrive dressed as a North Indian merchant and plan to be absent from Calcutta for a week or so
: On vacation,
Sir decreed.
A covered carriage picked me up near the Esplanade. The gas street lights were beginning to pale under the first hazy glimmer, but I could make out Tegart’s form in the black interior of the carriage.
“A young man with a bandaged hand and no luggage left by boat yesterday,” he said. “About ten years ago, exactly at that spot, there had been an attempt. An Englishman, Ernest Day, was killed. Shot through the head. He was wearing a white shirt and khaki pants.” That was Sir’s usual attire, and Ernest Day had been about Tegart’s build. I knew the case.
“Take as long as you need, but report only to me when you return. Only me.”
I nodded, taking it in.
“I wish I could go myself,” added Tegart, “but the Viceroy might be visiting Calcutta and I need to be present here. I’d have taken this vacation.” He smiled bleakly. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he added, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Robert,
enjoy
it.”
He did not speak again until we reached the river. I understood that I was to get down there. From his corner of the carriage, Tegart handed me a bundle. It held a small compass that looked like a watch, a folded map, and a black pistol.
“Untraceable,” he said, looking at me. “Get rid of it after. You’ll get yours back when you return.” He held out his hand for my service revolver, which I handed over wordlessly.
“No trial, Robert,” he whispered, his arm on my shoulder, “no trial.”
I nodded in the darkness. “Good luck,” he added. “Irishman to Irishman.” He had never thought me Irish before, I mused, unsure whether he was playing a private game with my head. His carriage rolled quickly away.
The sailboat, the least conspicuous of vessels, eased into the shadowy river. I knew little of Barisal, of boats, or the watery, muddy delta of riverine Bengal. We sailed downstream with the wide pull of the current, towards the mouth of the nocturnal sea.
• • •
H
UGGING THE COAST,
which seemed nothing more than a low green hedge under enormous skies, we followed the river south and then east for two days. We passed delta islands verging on the sea, covered with mangroves, and every now and then numbers of egrets and parrots would rise, the egrets like wedges of paper, the parrots hurtling out like green projectiles, squawking and separating and coalescing into a mass again, seeking thicker
tree cover after their short, clamorous flights. On the afternoon of the third day I saw an enormous blue snake, its speckled back glistening in the falling sun. It wove its way, undulating along with the boat for a while, and then, just as silently, slid from sight. Between stretches of mangrove, crocodiles resembling charred driftwood lay on sparse bits of sand.
Now the boat was headed north, upriver and away from the sea. We could not see the far bank, as if we were still sailing up another corner of the sea. Then it narrowed, although that simply meant that the distant other bank hove into view. On the near bank I could see some signs of habitation: the occasional mosque; a clutch of huts; saris hung out to dry; a temple or two, with small slices of green or saffron flags hanging limp in the still air.
On the fourth day, we neared Barisal just as the sun began its rapid tropical descent. I got off alone at a landing where I would easily pass for a North Indian in my
kurta-pyjama
and a bania-merchant’s low skullcap, which hid my hair.
Compass in hand, I knew exactly where to go along the darkening river.
• • •
I
WARILY APPROACHED
the dilapidated mansion close to the riverbank, having passed swamp-like fields and a straggle of miserable huts. When I came upon a deep and wide lake, a
deeghi,
behind this house of the Mitras, I became aware of a searing thirst. Crouching at the edge, I took a deep draught of water which smelt of moss and the rain of old monsoons, quite unlike the water I was used to in the city.
I bided my time. Like that silent feathered hunter—the horned owl of night, neither white nor black, but a stubborn brown—I
would strike with surprise and resolve. It had clearly been a grand house once, with a row of stately painted pillars in blues and scarlet, peeling and faded now, and adding to the air of desolation, banyan saplings grew out of cracks that ran all over the building. The front of the mansion sank within shadows cast by a vast peepul tree, a cracked dome looming above. A feeble moon appeared in the eastern sky. A jackal yowled, and some nocturnal creatures made their urgent way. A lamp appeared at a broken window, but the rest of the house lay dark.
As I hid under the trailing dreadlocks of a banyan, I was chilled by a premonition that something was watching me. Was it Death’s raptor eye measuring the distance for its swoop? I could not shake the awareness of that presence.
In the stillness of early night, as the crickets were beginning their chorus, I was startled by a howl of lamentation which turned into a wail, a long sob, making my hair stand on end.
Pistol in hand, I slipped through the open door that stood ajar and found myself standing in a long hallway with a chessboard pattern of black and white marble, facing two louvered doors of wood encrusted with dust, no footmarks on the dusty floor, or clean patches on the grimy knobs to indicate that they had been in recent use.
A kerosene lamp shed smudged light on a flat platform at the end of the hall, upon which lay the rigid figure of a man, draped to his waist in a length of marmoreal cotton. Creeping closer, even in this dimness I instantly recognized the high cheekbones, pointed jaw, and arched eyebrows of the fugitive.
Aiming my gun at the centre of his chest, I tried to shake him awake with my other hand. I noticed his eyes were half open, the pupils dull. He was stone cold.
A terrible cry rose in the desolate room, and so startled was
I—who had thought myself surprised already—that I hit my hand hard against the edge of a table as I whirled around, dropping the gun, which clattered on the dirty marble and slid across a couple of black and white squares.
From where I stood, I spied an old man kneeling in a far corner, his frail shoulders shaking. Struggling to get up, his skeletal arms stretching, twig-like fingers scraping the wall, he paid no attention to me. I could hear his laboured breath, and coming close, smelt the peculiar odour of age and misery. His frail rib cage and thin shanks confirmed that I had nothing to fear from such unarmed decrepitude. He looked at me, taking in my North Indian dress, and said in halting Urdu, “There is nothing to rob here.” He said it without ire or disgust, as if commenting that there was dust on the floor, or that it was night.
“I came for him,” I replied in Bengali, pointing at the draped figure.
“My grandson has been taken,” said the old man, “already.”
His thin face, though lined and very aged, was intelligent and his eyes calmly studied me. His simple dhoti, wrapped in the rural Bengali style, grazed his bony ankles as he moved slowly to the taktaposh, just a plank on four legs, and knelt beside the dead young man, caressing him.
“They grow up so fast,” he said to himself ruminatively. “He was to join the provincial judiciary. Such dreams in a country without independence.”
I let him ramble on, wondering if I had come all this way for nothing and whether I should walk back now to the boat dock, or stay in this broken mansion until dawn.
“Will you light the other lamp for me?” asked the old man.
I fished matches from my pocket and lit the lamp, rotating the
knob to raise the wick. Sitting cross-legged on the floor by its glow, I lit a Woodbine and, taking a long drag, choked. Staring in disbelief, I saw Santimoy Mitra pointing my gun straight at my chest. I might have pounced upon him, but seeing his finger fidgeting on the trigger, I stayed still.
“I . . . I . . .” stammered Santimoy, “I had . . . n-nothing to . . . to d-do with . . . with th-the shooting. . . .” His voice quivered with the effort to finish his sentence. What kind of terrorist was this? The gun jerked up in his hand, and then tilted down uncertainly. “I . . . am-m innocent, Mr. T-Tegart,” he sounded frantic, “b-believe me.”
I looked sharply at him. How could a Bengali terrorist
not
know his quarry? Nonetheless, here we were in a remote East Bengal village. All he had to do was aim true, and I was done for. Then he could simply fling my body in the river, and it would disappear, tugged by the powerful current to the sea.
The old man was still on the edge of the taktaposh, paying no heed to either of us, tending to the identical body.