“Take them, Padraig, take them,” he said without hesitation. I was bent over in tears, and the two pictures grew dim as I held them in my hands.
In the morning, Madgy reappeared, and I had another loaf for her, which she munched on with a right good will. I made for the Portmaster’s office and sensed Madgy Finn stop as I strode inside. The man looked up and saw that I was dressed prosperously.
“I am a County Sligo man who has been in India,” I said.
“India?” he exclaimed. “Bless me! They raised a good sum in that worst year.”
“I came to enquire of the ship
Rose of Erin,
which sailed with the schoolmaster Mr. Malachi O’Flaherty, my friend Brendan McCarthaigh, and a small girl child. Will it please you, sir, to look up your records and tell me which port in Canada they sailed for?”
“Ahhh,” he said, drawing a long breath, “you’d want to know that, would you?” He drew in his breath again and asked, “And sir, who are you to want to know that, if I may ask?”
“Is it privy information I ask, sir?” I said with some heat. But then, as I have learnt from you, Doorgadass-Babu, I cooled my tone. You taught me that when I need information, and fast, I should never raise my voice. I took out a sovereign—aye, a full gold one—and fingering it, said, “I have an interest in that ship, sir.”
I have noticed the British crown stamped on round yellow metal arouses respect and piety in the beholder, but unaccountably, Mr. Scully’s
face grew bleak. A shadow had fallen across the open doorway. I turned around and saw Father Conlon.
“So it is Padraig Aherne I see, is it?” he asked as if in great dudgeon.
“What is that to you?” I countered, too bitter even to say his name. My impatience had the better of me, Doorgadass-babu. This interfering bullyman was responsible for my Brigid being spirited away by her feckless da, that last time I had seen her upon this earth. This priest had foiled my hopes of happiness. My anger had found an object on which to place my burden of pain.
“I will tell you all you need to know,” he began. “You will not need Seamus Scully for that. Keep your coin away, man,” he barked.
“You had gone off without a word, Padraig, and left your mother mourning till the day she died,” he thundered at me. I had no answer. I had. I did. I lowered my head now, struck anew by guilt.
“You whored a child on Brigid Shaughnessy, and she died in the agony of that childbirth,” he declared as if it were a verdict, a tone of satisfaction in his voice.
“I was going to marry her, Father, for I did love her truly.”
“Aye, love her you did,” he said, making it sound sordid.
I felt the surge of my rage, could feel my fists ball up, the sudden fire in my blood. He was a coward, using his collar to browbeat me in my shame and grief.
“I mean to go to find my child, my friend, and my old teacher. I shall take care of them, so help me God. They shall not want for anything.”
“They shall not want, eh, Aherne?” the priest sneered. “You take the tone of God Himself to ensure that wee bastard’s future and fortune, do ye?”
Try as I might to control my rage, I caught him by his throat and
hurled him upon the door. His head rebounded off the thick oak, and he slumped on his knees. It was unthinkable that I had struck a priest, but Madgy chortled with glee. I watched him get up and climb down the stairs unsteadily. He walked a dozen steps away, then turned and glared at me, a stain of blood marking where his cheek had struck the metal bolt. His eyes were steady now, and he looked at me with malevolence.
“Go to your damnation, Padraig Aherne,” he spat.
“And you to yours, priest,” I shot back.
“The
Rose of Erin
never reached Canada. It struck an iceberg and sank. The know-it-all schoolmaster, his pupil Brendan McCarthaigh, and your bastard drowned in the ocean.” With that, he turned and walked away, as my world turned black. I stumbled up the stairs and banged on the door.
“Tell me, tell me, Mr. Scully,” I cried, “Open up or I will break down this door.”
“ ’Tis true, ’tis true,” Scully screamed from within, “the
Rose of Erin
was lost at sea.”
I hammered blows upon the door until he opened it an inch. As I barged in, pushing with my shoulder, the man fell back shivering in fright. He skulked behind his desk, on which lay thick ledgers. I pointed at them. “Yes,” he said hastily, “the Harbourmaster’s records.” He scurried to look for the relevant one. I could scarcely breathe. The news is false—it is just Father Conlon’s malice, I told myself, forcing myself to hold still.
Scully opened a large volume. There it was: the entry record of the sinking of the
Rose of Erin.
I forced myself to read it, uncomprehending at first, letters coiling inextricably into each other, until they finally settled, firm and final as gravestones.
Scully picked at my sleeve. He was holding a torn page from an
old newspaper which had been kept as a memento between the pages. I snatched it from him and read: The captain and some crew of the
Rose of Erin
had been found on a drifting lifeboat by an English merchant ship a few days sail from Canada. They had all perished of cold and thirst. The newspaper did not mention any other survivors.
I stumbled away towards the quay where last they had touched land, this Ireland. A fishing boat was getting ready to leave.
“Where do you head, friends?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could muster.
“To Galway, sir, if you’re for it.”
“Aye, ’twill do,” I said, throwing my satchel on deck.
They pushed off directly. As we went into the early-morning glimmer, floating on this murderous sea, I saw on the beach Poor Madgy Finn, dancing round and round, her voice singing a cracked song, the burden of which I could not catch over the water. It sounded like “Moo—ma—gy, Moo—maa—gy!” in a mad ecstasy, over and over again.
From Galway, I caught a ship to Liverpool, where after a single night of drinking at a portside tavern, I took a ship straight back to Calcutta.
The voyages I had undertaken are my testaments of loss, I have thought in my grief during these months on the seas. I would see the blue around me and wonder if my child had the blue of her mother’s eyes. I could barely watch the reds of sunsets without recalling the texture of my mother’s hair, its flaming abundance. I was sure that my daughter would inherit that. At other times I wondered if she had her mother’s sweet nature or my mother’s bold irrepressible heart. And when night came, my soul was seeped in its colours of despond, bitterly awake to the injustice of it all. I would have exchanged my years of life with Brendan’s short one, for he had known my child, cradled her,
stood where I should have been. I would exchange my joyless life for that death.
On the bleak endless water, I had no one to mourn with, only the ones to mourn for.
After ten months and twenty-seven days I have returned to Calcutta, which I mean to make my home now, not knowing any other. Your people are mine, Doorgadass-Babu, for you had saved my desperate life once and soothed my heart—but that such knowledge and sorrow awaited me, I would not have known.
Come soon to my house when next you are in Calcutta. I await you eagerly, sir. You will see, I promise, I shall forthwith learn to speak Bengali, not with the disdainful accent of the English, but as a native Bengali does. For the nonce, as you have taught me, I am working at my business, which grows apace. I have received good counsel from your friend Prince Dwarkanath Tagore. He is a grand man indeed. I am learning my way.
I have no pity for the Englishman in my trade, though I deal in his territory. I exact my price with no let or mercy. I have discovered that the English have great respect for money, but then it is a rare man who does not. I keep my wary distance from them. What I feel most amazed by is how many of my landsmen work willingly for them. What magic do these English have? Or is it the headiness of power over others that corrupts us, even in our innocent sleep—and the English are no different from any of us, but for chance or history or happenstance. In that case, why is it that the Irish have suffered so much, for so many centuries?
Will a time come when the Irish will raise their sudden hands, holding whatever poor improvised weapons they can find? And what will the English call them then? Heroes of their own destiny, or brigands, merchants of terror—besmirching their desperate courage and
lack of standing armies for chivalric battles which always favour the great powers and their sciences of war?
The English have their cannons, their ships, and their factories. But I feel that the Irish will not forever be the followers of the likes of Daniel O’Connell, who sought Irish freedom under English laws. He called off the Great Meeting of Clontarf—and was hauled to a British jail. We shall rise, Doorgadass-Babu. I hope to see that day. We shall be irrepressible brothers in that struggle—Irish and Indian. But I also know that our peoples will need to find themselves—in their own proud, rightful angers.
I remain,
Your most loyal and respectful friend,
Padraig Robert Aherne
I thought of the anguish Padraig had endured, and what a balm my grandmother Kalidasi must have been to him. With her, Padraig took back what he could from Death, naming his only son after his lost friend.
I held out the papers, and noticed Santimoy looking at me, eyes full of compassion. In him, I had seen only a fleeing figure, a frightened subject to be chased and shot dead. Now I looked at him, truly for the first time. He smiled shyly at me.
“When did Doorgadass-babu receive this letter from my grandfather?”
“He didn’t,” said the old man. “My father died in Burma not long after Padraig Aherne wrote him. This was among his papers brought back to me. I never returned to Calcutta, never cared for cities. We had all we needed here. I kept the letter, meaning to send it back to Mr. Aherne, who had urged me many times to come to Calcutta where business was thriving, but I never did. Years later I heard that Mr. Aherne had died. I had not yet returned the letter.”
“May Mr. Aherne have his g-grandfather’s letter?” asked Santimoy.
Ramkumar put it in my hands as I held them open. I bowed my head. I was to give my father the news of his half sister’s birth and death.
“Please call me Robert,” I said.
• • •
“W
HAT WILL YOU
d-do now, Robert?” asked Santimoy. I knew that he was asking the question for both of them, grandfather and grandson.
“I’ll catch a boat from Barisal dock and tell Tegart, man to man.”
“That’s your plan, Robert?” Ramkumar was bitter. “Simply talk to Tegart, and he will be converted? You will read him your grandfather Padraig’s letter—and Tegart will understand, because he is an Irishman. Is that it? You told us that he is from the North, and his kind suppressed his fellow Irish before they won their freedom in the South. There’s Tegart, and then there’s Dan Breen. Don’t you see the difference?”
“Ramkumar-babu,” I said firmly, “do not take me for a child.”
“What, th-then?” asked Santimoy.
“I tracked down Santimoy and shot him dead in the night. I threw the body in the river, so no evidence remains. On the way back, I fell sick.”
“Tegart is too clever to fall for this lie,” said old Ramkumar.
“I have not finished.” My voice silenced them both. “Monimoy will take up his job in the minor judiciary service in Dacca. There he will work for the British government, a civil servant, and refuse to discuss the tragic death of his brother. In a few years, he can retire—if he pleases.”
Ramkumar flashed me a quick comprehending smile. Santimoy nodded as he too began to understand my stratagem.
“It is not the first time my b-brother and I used to trick our friends and t-teachers, by pretending to b-be the other. It was usually my b-brother’s idea,” he began, then grew thoughtful. “I shall b-become my brother Monimoy for the r-rest of my life! Each t-time someone speaks my n-name, I will become my b-brother again and again. My n-name is gone. Which p-part of me will live?”
The old man left the room in silence.
“I will give you something,” I said to the young man, unwrapping my bundle. “This is your pistol now. Use it if you have to defend yourself. I am done using guns.”
I lay down to sleep for one more night in this grand and doomed house, thinking of the rows of pillars along the graceful verandah outside, their colours flaking, ochre and blue, all of which would soon fall to ruin and be reclaimed by the tropical grasp of vegetation in this land where houses stand as long as people live in them.
• • •
F
ROM THE DOCKS
I went directly home to see my father; I had been away for over three weeks, leaving no explanation. Here I was, touched by mortality, gaunt from that encounter. Yet I had retrieved Padraig Aherne’s letter from its grim domain and oblivion, although it bore Death’s finger-smudge in every line. I would need to explain to my father how I came by it—and Tegart’s murderous subterfuge would unravel.
So let it happen
, I decided.
I came upon my father sitting in his study, peering in the afternoon
light at me through the open door. With a gasp he stood up, reaching for me.
“Robert?” he whispered uncertainly. “Oh is that you, Son?” I could not tell if I was holding him up, or he sustaining me, clasping hands, as if to be sure of each other’s proximity.
“I have something for you,” I told him, “from Grandpa Padraig.”